Where do we belong? Keynote talk at the First National Personality Disorder Congress
| Date | 14 December 2010 |
| Published date | 14 December 2010 |
| Pages | 16-20 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.5042/mhrj.2010.0732 |
| Author | Andy Brooker |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Mental Health Review Journal Volume 15 Issue 4 December 2010 © Pier Professional Ltd
16
Andy Brooker
Where do we belong?
Keynote talk at the First National
Personality Disorder Congress
Abstract
The author provides a personal perspective on personality disorder, based on his involvement with
Borderline UK and Personality Plus. This is based on a presentation originally made at the First National
Personality Disorder Congress.
Key words
Personality disorder, First National Personality Disorder Congress, service user view.
‘An emphasis on stories or narratives rather
than naming encourages educators, clinicians
and researchers to view clients not as objects of
knowledge but, instead, as authors of knowledge
from whom others have something to learn.’
(Nehls, 1999)
Through the work I have been involved with,
in Borderline UK and Personality Plus, I have been
personally touched and impressed by the way
people who may not have had an appreciation of
the issues around personality disorder (PD) have
been genuinely moved and informed by our work,
and it has enabled many more people to hear
about and appreciate the plight of people with PD.
One of the most painful experiences of PD
is feeling you don’t belong anywhere; we have
no sense of belonging to anything or belonging
in ourselves. There is no sense of belonging to
anything outside of ourselves, such as family,
friends, the opposite sex, the community and even
the world. Perhaps most damagingly, you can
have a strong sense of not belonging in the mental
health system.
No sense of belonging to self
Adlam and Scanlon (2005) describe PD as ‘a sense
of internal and social dismemberment’ and say that
often due to early negative experiences, the psyche
is unable to be spiritually housed within the body.
This leads to what Adlam and Scanlon describe
as an ‘unhoused mind’: we people with PD are
literally ‘out of our heads’. They go on to explain
that this sense of dismemberment leaves people
in a state of liminality – longing to have the
very thing they fear the most, ‘connection’. I
also suffer with body dysmorphic disorder so I
was interested to read how this and other body
image problems are also connected to the sense
of being psychically ‘unhoused’.
The identity jigsaw puzzle
To me, having PD is like getting up every
morning to see the contents of a jigsaw puzzle
thrown on a table in front of you. The jigsaw
puzzle is me – but I never have a clear idea of the
picture on top of the box; even when I look in
the mirror I can’t see who I am. Every day I have
to learn how to construct the pieces through my
interactions with others.
This is very challenging, as to gain a consistent
sense of self I have to be treated in a consistent
way by everyone I engage with. However, the
picture that generally emerges to me is of someone
who is despised, unlovable, repellent, derided and
derisible; a nuisance who is unwanted, hated,
ignored and shunned. In the end you want to
say ‘FUCK OFF’; you become the rejecter and the
rejected. You hate yourself and end up hating the
world for rejecting you.
10.5042/mhrj.2010.0732
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