Borderline personality disorder

"In my next life," I told my therapist last week, "I want to come back as an idiot who is completely oblivious to her feelings."

"You already did," she replied.

And I thought I was a bitch. This is the woman I referred to as Annie Sullivan? [Note my use of the past tense.]

With images of my sister-in-law flooding my mind, I asked, "Excuse me? I'm an idiot now?"

"No, of course not," she answered.

"But you know I believe I have enough feelings for everyone in the universe."

"Yes," she answered. "I know you believe that you have a lot of feelings."

Bite me. I hate that "reflecting" shit. Makes me fucking nuts.

"But," she continued, "you only fully let yourself feel one emotion."

Let's take a wild guess, shall we?

According to Our Lady of the Couch, I cannot tolerate psychological discomfort of any kind. Apparently, I trot out my go-to emotion--anger--every time I start to feel sad, stuck, frustrated, powerless, irritated; in short, every time I inhale. Think of me as Sibyl, except with only one personality.

As the session ended, Our Lady told me she would fax me some homework. The next day, 16 pages of "distress tolerance" exercises showed up. I noticed they are adapted from the Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder.

Awesome.

On the cover page, she had included a handwritten notation: "We'll have to talk these through. You are not a borderline personality." Yeah, whatever.

So my new goal is to become better at tolerating distress. According to the manual for people who may or may not have borderline personality disorders, I can do so by (1) distracting myself, (2) using my senses to "self-soothe" or (3) improving the moment.

The one about self-soothing makes me laugh for lots of immature reasons. As for improving the moment, I give the probability of my succeeding a solid 0%.

But you never know. Each of the aforementioned methods has many different strategies. Maybe I'll try a new one every day [or every day I feel like it]. I'll keep you posted on my progress. Think of it sort of like "Julie and Julia" but without a deadline, publishing contract or movie deal.

One caveat. If I feel like I'm losing my edge, the experiment is over.