Does DBT really work?!

I have a lot to say about BPD. Im not too sure about DBT as what worked for me. Its really how you look at the diagnosis. The psychiatric community doesn't understand the implications of telling someone who has a lot on internal issues already that their personality is all ****** up. Instead im going to tell you how things really work.
You don't just "catch" BPD. You are not born with it. You are born with traits that put you at risk for developing it. However I have not met one person with BPD that doesn't have a childhood abuse story to go along with it. That's pretty indicative in my book.
You are not BPD. You have BPD. Don't worry about "losing yourself" in therapy. BPD like all the other PDs are really just illnesses of COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS. Basically skewed perceptions of reality. Everybody has them, non chemical imbalanced related depressed people have a lot of them.
Bad interpretation of reality/thinking leads to bad feelings and bad behavior which leads to bad situation that reinforces having distorted cognition.
So, for you to stop being "borderline" you have to change how you think, not who you are. Identify cognitive distortions when you come across them, and learn how to replace these thoughts.
The book "Feeling Good" by David Burns covers this pretty well, and talks extensively about depression and anxiety, the two ingredients necessary for a nervous breakdown and the appearance of the PDs.
Do your own research about the diagnosis and how it relates to you. There is no "cure" like DBT is advertised as. But its also not a death sentence or untreatable the way ignorants try to make it out to be. But you can understand yourself better and make changes where you want them.
Also this was very helpful for me and i want every borderliner to see it.

http://www.aapel.org/bdp/BLemophaniaUS.html
'Hope that helps.

Someone who was diagnosed asymptomatic about a year ago for BPD.

DBT works for people who have the discipline and focus to engage in it, like it's homework or a job. It's not typically the highly personal kind of therapy, though that depends to some degree on the therapist; it focuses on techniques for managing the symptoms of BPD. If those techniques are followed, it really does work, but many people don't have the discipline to follow those techniques.

I have BPD also and i was wanting to look into DBT, everything you described i experience since childhood, still dealing with it at 27, it will get just alittle better but thats all i can tell you sorry.

Your personality is who you are. It's very hard to change behavioral routines with therapy, and changing your person is even more difficult. DBT or any of the cognitive-behavioral therapies will help you moderate your ideas about yourself and your world, and stabilize the mood, which could lead to a reduction in self-mutilation. The most important factor in attempting to radically change yourself is your level of motivation. I can see by the way you framed the question that you seem ambivalent about change. If this is the case, and you can't give yourself many good reasons to over-ride your automatic behaviors and belief system, its not likely that anything will work.

Make a list of benefits for changing, and see if it's worth the effort to you. If its not yet, maybe you ought to wait until the degree of misery is so pervasive that you truly are motivated to work hard at changing. The alternative is to age out of the worst aspects of Borderline Personality (it could go strong into the 40's and beyond).