Hello, I'm terribly sorry to bother but I've got a question/request if you'd be up to answering
Can I ask about your experiences with dpd? I'm questioning if I have it and would like to hear others experiences with it to better understand it
This ask is completely /nf (not forcing a reply) and I don't expect much
If at all possible could you tag @sadgethethird when answering if you do answer? Though I would not recommend going on that blog as it is my vent blog.
Thank you so much for reading this and I truly appreciate any response
I'm happy to answer that, yes! @sadgethethird
For me, the discovery of having DPD has been a complex process, since there was a period of time where I thought I had it and was diagnosed by a therapist, then was convinced by both another therapist and a DP that I didn't have it (both of these people turned out to be less trustworthy than initially thought), but then some events happened and I discovered that DPD was the most likely explanation for how I reacted to them, which my current (more trustworthy) therapist agrees with.
When I initially started questioning if I had DPD, I was disabled and living with my family, but people expected me to eventually become more independent, which I never felt as though I could really do on my own. (I am now living somewhat independently, but not quite as much so as my family hoped I would; I can talk a little more about how that interacts with my DPD if you would like me to.)
I started learning about DPD when I started making more neurodivergent and persodivergent friends online, particularly a friend who thought he had DPD at the time but later concluded he more likely had BPD and not DPD. (For my part, I later discovered that I have BPD too, or that my brain does, but I'm a system, and the alter responding to your message does not have BPD symptoms, only DPD and possibly AVPD symptoms. I can talk more about that if you'd like, too.)
The concept of a "depended person" - someone a person with DPD looks to for guidance, wants to make decisions for them, etc. - seemed accurate in some respects to how I felt about my adoptive family (the ones with whom I was living at the time). I also had two friends at the time who I called DPs due to my strong attachment to them, but I think it was more likely that they were FPs, since I did not have the sense that I wanted them to make decisions for me (but I also didn't realize I had BPD).
My current situation is that my partner is my DP, but due to a variety of reasons (the long-distance nature of the relationship being a large one), I do not feel like they can take care of me the way past DPs have. This is something I am currently working to find a solution to, although I'm having a very hard time with it.
Here are some other DPD experiences I have or know about that might be helpful to figuring out if you have the disorder:
Difficulty initiating everyday tasks (e.g. cooking, cleaning, etc.), where there is a sense of anxiety surrounding the task because you can't do it or aren't good at it.
Overall fear of not being good enough at things, and often not trying to do them at all as a result. This can even include failure to engage with interests, especially if you have to be active in your engagement with them somehow or there's some element of skill or memorization.
Perception of other people as inherently more powerful than you in some respect.
A difficult relationship overall to the concept of "power"; it's hard to explain, because this exact thing isn't a clinically-described symptom, but for me, when talking to people without DPD about my concepts of power - where it comes from, who has it, how people develop it, how easy it is to remove power imbalances from situations, etc. - they seem to think my ideas about power are unusual, and it's most likely because of the disorder.
A desire to be taken care of by others, especially in a romantic/intimate relationship. Some people with DPD at first attribute this tendency to preferring certain relationship dynamics, and it would be valid of them to say they do prefer those dynamics. However, unlike someone who likes behaving a certain way in a relationship, a person with DPD will often experience a certain type of anxiety, unfulfilment, or distress over not having a relationship like that than somebody would if they wanted it for non-disordered reasons.
A lack of life direction and a desire for others to determine your life direction for you. I struggled somewhat with higher education because of this symptom, and while I have multiple degrees, I don't use them and am on government benefits. While I am indeed disabled (outside of my DPD and including physical disability), part of what led to my current situation was an inability to figure out a life direction and a partner who basically actively discouraged me from pursuing any life direction other than being his partner.
Fears of being abandoned, especially by your DP. I don't experience this as much, because I usually fully trust my DPs, but my therapist says that people with DPD tend to idealize their DPs, and my trust in my DPs (especially when that trust has not always been warranted in the past) is likely a part of that. However, some people with DPD are capable of distrusting their DPs, to the point where even hearing about their DPs other friends can make the person with DPD uncomfortable.
Separation anxiety from one's DP. The DSM describes this anxiety as caused by fears that one cannot take care of oneself, but separation anxiety can also entail fears that the person is gone because they have abandoned you, worrying about the person's wellbeing because you don't know what they're doing, and feeling unsafe without that person.
I know this was quite a lot of information, but I wanted you to have more rather than less of it in this response. There's so little discussion of DPD out there, and I'm happy to contribute to there being more of it.
If anybody has any more questions about DPD for me, please feel free to ask them. There are a few situations I have gotten into involving my DPD that I do not talk about publicly, so I may have to talk around some things depending on what questions I am asked, but I will try to respond in a way that would be helpful to someone trying to understand either how to live with the order or how to interact with someone who has it.
