I hear and see a lot about Borderline Personality Disorder, but until I was diagnosed with it I'd never heard about Dependent Personality Disorder. I'm not sure I understand the true differences or if the treatment and coping strategies of one personality can be used for another? Is this even something you can be 'cured' of or is it something your stuck with? Are than any resources that are for people with personality disorders and not just for caretakers and family members (something with less the tone of these people are abusive and if they just tired harder they wouldn't need help)? Also is there any truth to the stuff I used to be told that doctors use personality disorder as code for 'is uncooperative and asks too many questions'? I had someone one get me to stop going to a doctor because they thought I might have BPD because that meant they were just 'writing me off' and I'd never get any meaningful help with that on my record. It's hard to see the diagnosis as anything but a black mark again me. :/
I wouldn't put it that strongly. My shrink has said that, when she was working in a larger practice with multiple therapists, they had a solid rule that no therapist could have two BPD patients at once. However, it's worth noting that there's been huge progress in treatment over the years. There was a point at which no known treatments were actually particularly effective for BPD, but we are long past that point. I don't know as much about DPD. My understanding with some of the others is that "cured" may be sort of unusual, but "living happily without significant distress" is a pretty practical goal to shoot for. If anyone does know more about DPD specifically, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
