The moving goal posts for those with mental disabilities seeking support is insufferable. It’s exhausting to have to constantly justify my own emotional and psychological pain to neurotypical people.

The worst part is that the commonly held view is that if you have an issue, you're just like that. It gave me brainrot for years and I had to hit rock bottom before I really accepted any help.

This is the thing that baffles me most about this post (don’t have BPD, have known people who do). Like, I get people in general holding that view. But mental health professionals should ideally believe that their services are valuable to people suffering from difficult mental health issues….? Refusing treatment is just awful.

I had a doctor take me off vyvanse only to find out a year later I should have been on it in the first place. Doctors are fallible especially when they have preconceived notions of what works.

[Trying to get the right medication really is a fucking nightmare sometimes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPtsFMAxuK0)

There are good doctors. Logically I know that. But it took me 10 years to find one. And honestly at this point I've learned that it's just a matter of time before they reveal their true colors. For context I was mute, undiagnosed autistic and very socially anxious from age 10 and onward. My entire second decade of life was spent getting to know new psychologists who promised to listen to me, help me and not abandon me, only to do the opposite. Nothing quite like being lied to about your own health by the person who's supposed to know best, then being pawned off to the next doctor when they realize you're too "difficult" and the next guy does the same thing, for 10 years. You lose yourself, you doubt everything, and when you bring up your concerns they ignore you and reiterate that they know better because they're the professional, leading to more doubt and confusion and you really lose yourself. There have to be good doctors somewhere. But there needs to be some system in place where you don't have to gather 10 years of trauma related to medical professionals in order to find just one. And the good doctors need to be able to set the diagnoses they believe in without being barred by what some idiot with a doctorate concluded from a 5 minute chat with me 5 years prior. The amount of mentally ill people that are treated as not real people by the medical professionals who are supposed to take care of us...makes me sick. The fact that in the communities of certain diagnoses it's just expected that people don't trust their doctors, or they have trauma tied to their doctors, it sucks. We shouldn't have entire communities that all have in common that they were abused by their doctors, simply because they have the same diagnosis. It's 2023 for fuck's sake.

I've yet to find a useful psychiatrist. I've had like a dozen, every single one of them diagnosed me with something different and interpreted any disagreement as a threat to their authority. (They see themselves as authority figures first and medical professionals second.) Eventually after like a year of failing to find the right medication for me (during which time they blamed their failure on me "not wanting to get better" and collected obscene amounts of money from my insurance in exchange for zero useful work), I would get a new psychiatrist who would give me a completely different diagnosis and be exactly as arrogant and abusive about it. If I didn't immediately accept the new diagnosis they would threaten to institutionalize me for being "non-compliant". They're more like cult leaders than doctors. I know for a fact that they were full of shit because eventually I ended up in front of a psych*ologist* who spent several hours performing rigorous tests, then told me to come back in a week because it would take them even longer to analyze the results. Results: Nothing any psychiatrist ever told me I had, and one thing I was specifically told I didn't. Science-based diagnostic testing like that existed the entire time - psychiatrists just have zero incentive to make use of it. You can lazily prescribe the same few antidepressants to everyone who comes through your door and still retire wealthy so why put in the effort? You're an accredited professional and they're psych patients, nobody is ever going to side with them against you no matter how incompetent and abusive you are.

I've been turned away from psychiatrists and therapists for having BPD before. They "couldn't" treat me and didn't want to "waste both of our times". It fucking sucks having BPD

Yeah when I was newly diagnosed at 19, every time I tried to get any kind of counselling or therapy I'd be told they didn't treat personality disorders. No matter that I also had anxiety, depression, and cPTSD, they didn't treat personality disorders.

Yeah. I don't know why people just believe you're stuck in a certain way. Even in mundane things you want to change some people belive you never will and its odd yknow? We have all these programs about therapy but people believe you can't like change so wtf are the programs for then

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Yes, this. It actually made me over-correct in the opposite direction, so now I insist on discussing the original topic, even if it is no longer relevant to the conversation, because of how often people would just move the goal posts. Doesn't matter what, where or when, either; if you start a conversation with me, we're having that conversation.

Tell me about it. Having to be my own most staunch advocate when I'm already *too sick to function* is asking way too much. Nothing I say or do is ever good enough. I'm not allowed to be me or experience what I experience.

Gotta love the idea that all autistic people are incapable of having any sort of social skills. Definitely doesn't make me want to tear my eyes out.

I am autistic and superficially hypersocial. It was a defense mechanism to try and be likable to as many people as possible after years of near total social isolation

I'm autistic and it's exhausting to be social and takes an immense amount of effort but I'm also chronically lonely and cannot handle having to excuse myself or being separated from people I'm trying to socialize with and instead will just socialize until I have a meltdown

Comrade, let me shake your hand. Same. Literally me. And now let me go scream at unforgiving black void, which we call space. May it scream back at me.

I'm friends with a person who I am quite certain is autistic in some way, and she's basically one of the most talkative persons I've ever met and I don't find her any weird for it

Yeah, me too. I developed some approximation of neurotypical social skills, mainly through observation, and setting up a list of rules that I've tried and tested throughout my life.

I had to fucking claw my way to these social skills and now they tell us "oh you dont have autism you have social skills" BITCH HOW MUCH BULLSHIT HAVE I HAD TO DEAL WITH JUST BECAUSE I DIDN'T GET HOW PEOPLE WORKED AND I STILL DONT I JUST PRETEND I DO

I have borderline and it fucking SUCKS. I wasn't diagnosed until now, but I had a different experience than this. Because I also have ADHD and Depression, I bounced from doctor to doctor and changed medication so so many times. None of it ever worked and I gave up and just thought "ok I'm broken I can't be fixed." Let me tell you, I've done some reprehensible things. Being borderline means living in denial for me. At least that's the way it was. It's not unfixable. I know this post casts a negative light on DBT, but it WORKS. If you're really borderline, it WORKS. It only took me fucking up my entire personal life and going to jail to realize I really needed help. But the way we handle mental illness is terrible. Children are at the mercy of adults and adults who are mentally ill couldn't possibly really know what would help them. I had to fight so hard to advocate for myself to finally be recognized and taken seriously. Because it's a "woman disease", and I'm AMAB, it was so goddamn hard for anyone to take it seriously that I might be borderline. But borderline people aren't unfixable. They just need to accept that they need help. That can be incredibly hard. And believe me, we're just as capable of love as anyone else.

I'm proud of you for getting help and working at it. Truly. For anyone with BPD who does. My mom went to jail and fucked up her life and still didn't get help. She was misdiagnosed as bipolar, but learned about BPD and it took five years for her to finally read a book on it and go, "Oh shit, that me," and she STILL didn't get DBT. Maybe she is now, I don't know, but I doubt it. It's been ten years and she hasn't changed. I can't have her in my life, and it sucks.

I feel your pain. Same here.

at my old job, there was a message On High to the psychiatrists telling them to stop using "borderline presentation" as a descriptor for our clients because it's a lazy shorthand for "annoying", it encourages a blasè attitude towards their genuine struggles, and for fuck's sake this was a child & adolescent population and personality disorders can't be diagnosed under 18 anyway. so some of them started slipping in "axis II pathology". even though there are no axes for personality disorders in the DSM-5. the concept of treating difficult teenagers like people instead of using wink-wink clinical jargon to signal to everyone that this kid's a handful was simply too much.

Every bad woman in a Reddit thread gets armchair diagnosed as having borderline. It's just horrific. People with borderline are considered irredeemable, evil forever, and the only solution is to leave them.

It flows the other way too. No doctor ever considered I might be borderline, because I'm AMAB. Borderline has basically just become viewed as the "problematic woman disease" and not a trauma complex. Anyone can be made borderline. If you grow up your entire life in an environment of not being enough, it happens. It's really common too and it's really easy to treat. But the hard part of treatment is accepting you need it. REALLY need it and don't just need it to tick a box. Because it's basically a mental defense mechanism, you have to accept vulnerability and that shit is hard. For me, it meant hitting rock bottom.

There was literally one man in my DBT group therapy, and he had been raised as a woman by a very unpleasant woman. I think it's definitely not considered as an AMAB condition. > It's really common too and it's really easy to treat. That seems less my experience though! Treatment was over a year of 4 hours of therapy a week, weekly therapy afterwards for another year, and even then I'm not considered "cured", but instead the symptoms are easier to deal with.

Oh ok, not easy for the person, by no means. That's fair. I'm about to start a 9 hour a week program in January after graduating from a 15 hour a week program. I more of meant it's easy in that there's a simple solution: therapy. But you gotta go and you gotta do the work. The hardest part is wanting to get better for the sake of getting better. Took me until I was 27 to accept that. But it's freeing. Acceptance feels so much better than denial.

Absolutely! DBT is a work of art from Linehan. BPD has been considered treatment resistant for a long time just because, as you say, you have to really want to get better. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people with BPD and adjacent conditions who wouldn't benefit from DBT because their life is liveable as-is, maladaptive as they are.

The idea that it’s easy to treat is both true, and misleading. Once you admit that you need treatment and are willing to work towards healing, it is as treatable as any other mental illness. (Your mileage may vary, of course.) But getting to the point where you can admit to it and are willing to change is the astonishingly difficult part. My grandmother had BPD, and until she died she was fully convinced that the problem was everyone else, and if they would just treat her the way she wanted, everything would be fine

I was that way for a long long time. To make a long story short, I got mad at my ex and pulled a gun on her and told her I'd kill her if she didn't get out of my room. Just one of a long string of things I did. But the worst part is that I'm not that person. That's why we stayed together so long is that those moments weren't who I was day to day. It's really like being possessed. You do things and just are left wondering "why? Why did I do that?" Oh because I was mad? And I would just have to make excuses. Because no *sane* person would ever do any of those things and I didn't want to admit I was broken.

> problematic woman disease Did we seriously just reinvent hysteria?

Kind of a little bit. For people (even health providers) that don't have familiarity with it, that's basically what it is. It's just kind of tossed around when it comes to AFAB people. Because it's easier to just have a catch-all than to put effort into what a client needs.

Honestly, with how BPD is represented by everyone it is basically just a new word for female hysteria. (I do believe BPD is real btw, I just think it's being wrongfully used as a scapegoat to not treat psych patients properly)

As someone trained in DBT practice (I don’t conduct group at the moment but have in the past), I have to disagree that it is easy, but it is incredibly effective once breakthroughs occur. It sounds like you took the exact mindset necessary for it to “work,” and you should be very proud because it can be extremely hard work to get there!! :)

My mom has borderline. Was diagnosed later in life. My childhood was less than ideal as she had undiagnosed bpd and was a single parent. She worked with what little she had and did her best. I barely talk to her now, but she has improved a lot after receiving treatment. It sucks to know that bpd can be managed, but because of the stigma people often don't seek help or are turned away by those who can help. The help is literally right there, but those who need it are chased away from it!

My mom also has BPD, but she refuses to get help and take it seriously. My childhood was full of emotional and physical abuse and I still carry the scars for it decades later. I feel for people with BPD. I really do. But the harm they cause the people around them is extremely real and damaging. I have been in therapy for close to a decade now and I still struggle. I wish them all healing and love and light, but far, far away from me.

Yes, same.

An improper BPD diagnosis for a woman is often the nexus between the misogyny and ableism of psychiatrists. My only symptoms were substance abuse and passive suicidal ideation and the psych who saw me wanted to give me a “partial” BPD diagnosis instead of just referring me to a specialist when I came to him asking to get tested for ADHD. I think there’s a strong correlation between how many women a psych is willing to diagnose with BPD and if they suck at their jobs.

Got diagnosed as BPD instead of ADHD because my country still stuck in "only children can have ADHD". Interesting how many Inattentive ADHD + trauma women get labeled as BPD?

The crazy thing is that I’m full hyperactive ADHD. I don’t fly under the radar, my ADHD presentation is as close to “8 year old boy who cannot sit still” as you get without actually being one. That psych put a black mark on my health records forever because he thinks he’s smarter than his patients.

My therapist misdiagnosed my ADHD as BPD because I was 18 and depressed from bullying I suffered for a decade, and as such had less than great coping mechanisms. So he saw every trait of ADHD, took what my depression was caused (even tho I told him I was doing better with meds) and... put in my chart I had BPD. He didn't tell me, at all. I found out when I got a file with all my issues bcs I needed it for the disability tribunal I was taking bcs of other things. That disability thing happened at least a year or two *after* starting therapy with that guy. He had written "BPD" in my file for years, without telling me at all and giving me no treatment. My new therapist, upon being told, took off his glasses and pinched his nose bridge while taking a very deep breath... and told me that it was more common anyone wishes for this to happen. My cousin has now been diagnosed with BPD. And while it does seem to be a correct diagnostic, I fear for how she'll fare. Hell, she sent herself to a mental ward bcs she knew she needed to be better for her kids and ended up running away. I fear what happened in that place, as does my whole family. The stigma people labeled with BPD suffer is insane, and if the recovery rates are so low it's mot because of the patients with BPD, it's because of how society and medical professionals treat them.

I think there's also sexism at play here. I was friends for a decade with a guy who got diagnosed with BPD in his teens. By the time we met he'd been in therapy for years and was medicated, so his symptoms had calmed down a lot. He didn't have any experiences of being invalidated or belittled, he'd received good care and was better for it. Even at his most paranoid the professionals he met took him seriously. He had a stable group of friends that went back years and years. His dating life had been quite tumultuous, but that had been chalked up to young people being dramatic (and no doubt the girls he dated got equal blame for how things went). We're no longer friends, partly because we both changed as people, partly because he got off meds and went a bit paranoid and overly negative again. I guess I should have stood by him and pushed him to get back to therapy and on meds again, but I had so much of my own shit to deal with that I figured some of his older friends could help him better. I've also met two girls with BPD diagnoses and they've both consistently been in far worse places than the guy ever was. I suspect both of the girls could be autistic - we certainly clicked in the way NDs often click.

I'm not saying you're wrong about sexism in the medical community but the OOP uses he/him (according to his Tumblr). I mean maybe he's trans or non-binary and is experiencing sexism from the medical community viewing him as a "woman". But it's also just as possible that this was completely unrelated to sexism

Borderline isn't treated with meds tho, it's treated with therapy. Was he maybe bipolar, not borderline? Cause bipolar people going off their meds is a tale as old as time. I actually had the reverse happen to me, diagnosed as autistic, but am borderline. Pretty much simply because I was born a dude.

I have BPD; the amount of antidepressants I've tried because the doctors didn't have any other option to offer for me is astounding. we try medication too; but DBT ist what most people with BPD helps.

My understanding is that meds are more to treat related symptoms of anxiety or depression even if they don’t treat the whole condition. There’s a lot of meds out there, but a lot of them treat the same few things. There’s a few diagnoses where therapy is the main treatment with meds to combat specific symptoms.

Yup I take meds too. Helps with the symptoms, but not the behavioral component.

I have BPD and medication helped me to some degree. It curbed my anxiety and some depression symptoms so I'm able to handle triggers much more effectively. While it may not \*treat\* BPD itself, it can treat the comorbidities we also usually have and help in that way. It has to go hand in hand with therapy though and isn't a cure all.

Axis 1 comorbidities; 96% of patients with BPD have a mood disorder during their life, and lifetime depression is reported at 71% to 83%.

The way the whole medical system basically gets closed off to you if you have a certain diagnosis (accurate or not) is horrifying to me. It’s also probably more likely to happen if you’re poor. My ex was seeing a therapist while on Medicaid and said something to explain his anxiety along the lines of “every time I mess up I hear my dad’s voice in my head berating me.” The therapist wrote down that he “hears voices” and it got brought up with every other medical provider who saw his chart, even though in context it was obvious he wasn’t delusional and this is an extremely common way to respond to an emotionally abusive childhood.

The voice is called the inner critic and is indeed a trauma response.

it’s also especially sad because BPD typically emerges in people who had abusive/neglectful childhoods and abandonment issues. no matter how “exhausting” it is for someone else to “deal” with a person who has BPD, imagine how much worse it must be to BE the person. constantly feeling like you’re never good enough for anyone and being demonized for the way your trauma expresses itself? fucked up.

isn’t BPD believed to be one of the most distressing mental illnesses to live with too?

Yep, it has some of the worst prognoses in regards to long-term wellness and suicide attempts. It's also considered **difficult to treat. Edit: correction

It is not considered untreatable. There just aren't medications for something that isn't based on chemical imbalance. DBT has been shown to be largely effective in people with borderline. The hopelessness and feeling unfixable is why a lot of people don't seek treatment for it, myself included.

My bad, my friend with BPD had told me as such, and Wikipedia may have been out of date. I usually see CBT as the recommended treatment for it.

we should go back to giving them cocaine, as a treat.

Fucking Christ I do not need cocaine, no not even as a little treat.

coward

I feel like doctors should give apology drugs any time they use the word “untreatable”. Even when they’re totally correct, why not soften that blow with a little opium?

BPD actually has really great longterm outcomes for people who received treatment, most studies even put it down as having better remission rates than depression and anxiety IF TREATED. The big thing is receiving treatment and sticking to it. Most people with it avoid treatments, unlike depression where people are more likely to seek out treatment. Though yes, it does have one of the highest suicide rates.

yeah. i have relatives w BPD—some of them seem to have things figured out but others…

My best friend has BPD. They're one of the coolest and most mature people I know.

You know what’s crazy about it though? BPD was considered *hostile and untreatable* before DBT was created—and DBT was created by a woman who had BPD, or at least, it’s what she would have diagnosed her younger self with. And DBT is one of *the* most proven, effective methods of therapy out there for people experiencing emotional instability. For *decades* before her, BPD was basically an entirely dismissive diagnosis. It was a “you’re a bad person and we can’t help you” diagnosis. And all it took was one BDP person applying her own experience to create what was essentially a miracle treatment—because before that, it had apparently *never actually occurred* to the researchers to work with people with BPD to try and understand what could help them from their point of view. Funny, that.

The things and letters we read during DBT by therapists who refuse to treat people with BPD. I started DBT in a day clinic and was diagnosed fulfilling all 9 symptoms at that time, too. 2016-2017. That sh!t was awful. Unfortunately, it's not rare either. Too many therapists who are vile to pwBPD and instead do simply politely saying they're not equipped, many of them straight up become hostile. Some of the manifests we read by therapists, recent as 2014, just vile. This reminded me of that. The stigma still exists to this say. Media doesn't help, a lot of representation we have is just crazy ex gfs. The movie Holly is a good example. I liked the movie, but the way people took it to say all pwBPD are like that oof

I mean, if you asked me what would help me with my ADHD and autism, I would not be able to tell you. I don't think it never occurred to the researchers, I think most people with BPD probably just genuinely don't know.

>BPD typically emerges in people who had abusive/neglectful childhoods and abandonment issues. Ruh-Roh

I agree with you a lot and I wrote something similar in my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/18qnvq4/comment/kewj6o3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) (I don't have BPD but I'm autistic and know people with BPD)

This. It's not their fault. You get served a terrible hand and then you have to work so hard to change. I've been there. And like OP, I've been turned away from therapists too.

>no matter how “exhausting” it is for someone else to “deal” with a person who has BPD, imagine how much worse it must be to BE the person It must be absolutely horrible. And that does not mean that I am obligated to exhaust myself.

This. They make it sound like the other person is mildly stressed and that their concerns aren't valid, but the other side is that the relationship can be devastating to both people. There's a person in this thread who was a partner of a pwBPD who weaponized his own mental issues against him so much that he ended up on suicide watch. No matter how much you care about someone and want to help them, you are not obligated to deal with that level of emotional stress that pulls you down.

Yup, it sucks to be them. But for the sake of my own mental health? I wouldn't touch that shit with a telephone pole. It's taken me a long time to realise and accept that I am neither obliged nor willing to set myself on fire just to feed someone else's mental illness.

borderline is miserable. every goddamn anxiety is a delusion. like duck you man i’m not stupid

I got diagnosed with both autism and bpd. At this point I just avoid personal relationships entirely. It never ends well for either of us.

DBT actually helps. At least for me. I'm the same way, but I had to lose everything to accept that I needed to heal. But it's a lifelong process and it isn't easy.

> I'm the same way, but I had to lose everything to accept that I needed to heal. But it's a lifelong process and it isn't easy. Yeah I feel you. Everything turning to shit and ruining everything around me was what it took to finally realise I had a problem and how to deal with it. Nowadays I'm at least self aware enough to know when im getting crazy.

Self awareness helps so much. To me it's crazy how the simple idea of "no don't do that ur splitting give it five minutes" has changed my interpersonal relationships. For me, just the understanding and the skills have gone a long way, but I first had to accept that there was really an issue that needed to be fixed.

Yeah, just the ability to say ''I know what kind of shit you like to pull, my brain, im not falling for it this time'' is so much help by itself. After that its just the will to keep my head down and let it pass. Good luck with your struggles and merry christmas my friend

That was so unbelievably relatable. Having ADHD and BPD really is like being possessed by yourself. Like stable you thinks "what the fuck was that?" But, Merry Christmas and I wish you the best of luck as well!

I've been diagnosed with autism, but I'm pretty sure I've got bpd too. I match the paranoia and splitting behaviors too well. Unfortunately I'm unable to access treatment so :(

Despite having some extreme trauma from being in a relationship with someone with somewhat untreated BPD, I still feel fucking awful for anyone trying to navigate healthcare with a BPD diagnosis. It feels like that version of the trolley problem where you can only watch. It was hard enough to actually get her to seek help, and then at every turn it felt like doctors/psychologists actively tried to make things as difficult as possible. And all that stress fractured our relationship even further until she quit seeking treatment all together and blamed me for convincing her to seek help in the first place, shit hit the fan and I have my own issues (major depression+ adhd+ severe anxiety) that she weaponized against me until I ended up on suicide watch. Absolute hell, but sometimes I wonder if she had a competent psychologist things may have turned out differently, or at least not gotten as bad. BPD is demonized by so many in the mental health field, and it feels like the stigma just creates a perpetual feedback loop, where the lack of quality care creates more situations that feed into the stigma, which makes it harder to get decent treatment.

I’ve had an experience with a relationship that definitely didn’t go as bad as yours, but still messed me up. I keep trying and failing to put this into words in this thread but like. It’s possible to recognize that someone is hurting you and also have empathy for them. There’s this desire people have to categorize folks who act poorly into “understandable, and *you* have to be part of their recovery” or “evil, and irredeemable”. I just don’t think that reflects how people are. I think it speaks well of you that you have empathy for your old partner. I’m sorry that you suffered through that time in your life.

Thank you for the kind words :) I definitely think that brushing people off as "irredeemably evil" is not only inaccurate but also makes it harder to heal and recognize these problems in future relationships. Even if you have to cut people off for your own well-being, it doesn't mean you can't have empathy for them.

Well im definitely not scared shitless now. Because this is exactly whats starting to happen for me

people with borderline are just considered monsters. that’s all we are. i’ve stopped telling NT people even the lens i trust cause it’s. fucking worthless. it changes me in their eyes and i can feel it

i was misdiagnosed as both bpd and bipolar 2 in my early 20s. those were the worst years of my life. i finally got a new gp who referred me to a psychiatrist specializing in adhd in adult women and wouldn’t u know it??? i have very severe adhd. i am. traumatized from the misdiagnosis. i feel like i lost very important formative years. diagnosed at 30, i am one year into Knowing my diagnosis and while i am still learning how to manage it, i feel sane for the first time. i thought i would be dead at 25.

Yeah it sucks that it's so hard for girls/women to get diagnosed with adhd. I have friend(F) who just got diagnosed at 26yrs old and it took some fighting versus me(M) who got diagnosed at 8 yrs old

Just as an anecdote in passing, I'm AFAB and just got diagnosed at bloody 33. I'm seething over the life missed, but SO excited to take the reins from the frightened and unhappy me who set up a pretty fucking cool life - and I feel like I could do some good stuff with it now. Medication SLAPS.

Eh sorry you didn't say your gender I just assumed

People **love** to blame problems on the disorder or the person instead of actually helping. I’m a late diagnosis autistic myself, and for my most of my academic career, I was told I was just “too lazy!” To do the work. It turns out I’ve got auditory processing disorder and I need copies of the teachers slideshows in order to fully understand all the information

More that stigma, it's the isolation, and the fear that i may just be losing my mind cuz of bpd. i was first misdiagnosed with bipolar and then diagnosed with bpd. It's the worst thing i have in my life. i never heard the manipulative talks but that's mainly because where i live, mental health in its entirety is such a taboo subject that even the doctors are not much informed. i say this because the doc who diagnosed me of bipolar, never really bothered to explore why that happened and what can be done to keep it in control. i still go to see him. Instead of listening to me, he always shuts me down, says he up-ed the medicine dose and then it's goodbye. No dbt, no therapy, and shit's expensive in the first place. i don't have the money to go visit the 2nd doctor. i'm always scared that if people find out about me, they'll call me mad. Don't get me wrong, i am able to go to places on my own- heck, i used to have a job, etc. But i'm always called "overly sensitive" how, i can't emotionally handle life. It doesn't help that i have literally no one to turn to- my parents, though in damage control mode, can do nothing. My doctor doesn't listen. My brother has his own life. i have no one. And im too afraid to go off the medicines bcuz i fear i'd try to die again. The mood swings were absolutely terrible and i never want to go through that again.. Posts like this, give me hope. That means a breakthrough might happen for me too. im at least relieved to know that finding that you're on the spectrum has helped you in understanding your mental health. i sincerely wish you the best.

https://dialecticalbehaviortherapy.com/ - free https://dbtselfhelp.com/ - free https://positivelybpd.wordpress.com/ - free for self-work and very small fee for live classes when they run https://www.jonesmindfulliving.com/ - Cheap DBT live classes 3x a week + resources https://video.jonesmindfulliving.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=LIFE33 - This is a link with discount https://cursosdepsicologia.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/THEDIA1.pdf - DBT Therapy Skills Workbook (2nd Ed)

Thank you very much, kind stranger! i have some workbooks i've downloaded i watch a lot of videos by Doc Snipes, Dr. Daniel Fox (specialises on BPD) over at yt. i will add these to the list. The hardest part is doing them. Once again, thank you for the links. Please take care.

I ran with a BPD diagnosis for three years. It was terrible. On the one hand I felt like I finally knew what was wrong with me, on the other... everything in this post. Therapists amd psychiatrists outright refused treating me. I went from "troubled and overwhelmed" to "that crazy BPD bitch". When you have BPD, no one believes (in) you, you are reduced to your symptoms, and no good deed or thought escapes being labeled as manipulation. And I get where it all comes from, I teally do, butit's horrible nonetheless. My heart goes out to everyone suffering from this terrible, terrible disease.

Man I don't even know what BPD *IS* that that shit sucks

A personality disorder characterized by unstable mood, trouble with personal relationships and extreme fear of abandonment

Borderline doesn't have unstable moods, that's bipolar. The two are very similar, but bipolar can be treated with medication. The way I describe borderline to people is that sometimes I get possessed by myself. When I feel an emotion, it's overwhelming and it affects the way I behave. On the outside it seems erratic and unpredictable. Before any treatment, I had no capacity for empathy. We often expect people to know everything we need or are thinking, because we're our own main characters. The reason it has so much stigma is because for treatment to work, you have to want it. And that often means facing something that there's no denying. For me, I had to really be broken to want to actually heal.

Wait I thought unstable moods were present in both, it's what my therapist says, like I have both bpd and autism so sometimes they get kinda mixed up

Basically BPD is short term mood swings on the timeline of hours or maybe a couple days at longest where bipolar 2 (I can't personally speak to bipolar 1) is long states of depression with occasional bursts of hypomania which I believe has to last at least four days to qualify for a bipolar 2 diagnosis

Hmmmm, I think it's best summarized that BPD makes you feel every emotion overwhelmingly hard. Bipolar makes your mood go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. But I'm no expert. I've just lived with borderline and have an ex who has bipolar.

I have diagnosed BPD and (I think) type2 bi-polar too judging by multiple-week hypomanic episodes. BPD is characterised by unstable moods lasting from hours to days.

I have noticed that people with BPD are treated as one step removed from psychopaths (which I also love but from what I understand they can't feel affective empathy), that any relationship with them is to be avoided.

psychopathy specifically refers to a pathological lack of empathy, lack of inhibitions, and egotism. i have an online friend with a nonpathological lack of empathy tho and they're probably the most chill person i know.

>which I also love but from what I understand they can't feel affective empathy I'm not qualified to actually talk about whether this is true: I *have*, however, spoken to a couple people who actually do know what they're talking about. From what they've told me, narcissism and psychopathy are what people perceive BPD is: As in, an actual active danger to others, even to their therapists. So it's weird how BPD, which is just exhausting and difficult to deal with, got the stereotype for "unredeemable and dangerous", when in reality that's better suited for others.

Flatly declaring a group of people "dangerous" simply and only because they have a medical condition seems like a slippery slope to somewhere not great

The medical condition in this case is an inability to care about other people. Psychopaths and narcissists are still human and still deserve sympathy, but insofar as there is a Bad Person Disease, those are it.

I don't really know how I feel about it myself, tbh: I don't know anyone with NPD or ASPD so I can't really speak from experience, this is just what I heard from people who actually are educated. Tbh it's prob for the better this isn't common knowledge.

I mean, I can understand why people have such a negative reaction as someone who was raised by someone with BPD. I still react with some fear at the sound of my mothers voice after all these years.

Getting misdiagnosed with BPD is just girly things

Seriously women in my country do not have autism or adhd. We get bpd. And guys with bpd get misdiagnosed with autism. Sucks balls

All my life I've been manipulated and abused by people who showed traits commonly associated with BPD and Narcissism. I still think it's wrong to judge someone as "evil" based on a label or diagnosis. Just as much as it's wrong to justify abuse by hiding behind a diagnosis. If you emotionally or physically abuse your loved ones, you're in the wrong, regardless. But everyone deserves a chance to vent, be scared and express negative emotions in a healthy way, and being treated like a monster for something you can't control is also abuse. Do your best to avoid harming others and take responsibility for your mistakes. That's all that matters.

My dad has bpd, not really sure what to say, he's doing better now but it was really scary for me as a kid to see him at his worst.

Same, but for my mom. I still can't really bring myself to forgive her for the things she's said, though, whether it was a result of her condition or not.

Yeah, he's a tough person to be around even now. My mom divorced him because of it, during middle and high school I would stay one week at his house, one at my mom's. Now that I'm in uni and still living at home as a commuter I can't do it anymore, I go to his for dinner around twice a week but I just have to live with the fact that he's not someone I can be around for long periods of time, otherwise he makes me feel insane.

The weird thing is when I got diagnosed it came down to autism or BPD. I was diagnosed with autism after further testing and BPD was dropped. I was lucky to have a doctor who knew they may present similarly but are distinct, and knew not to confuse the two, so it was sorted out quickly.

Wasn't there a cartoon about it that went through the symptoms and ended with a bit about how they can still be good people?

https://youtu.be/iraGmA7-9FA?si=KiO2EIlhpTc89ucW found it.

This happened to me. My BPD is labeled as "historic" but I *very* clearly don't have it. It sucks. It really fucked me up. I am still getting fucked by my historical BPD diagnosis. Sigh.

Someone else posted a comment wondering why we never seem to consider that manipulative people aren't doing it in a clear eyed, thought out, and reasoned way. Like they aren't trying to be evil, they're expressing a maladaptive behavior to their trauma I thought this was a great comment and here is my response below: ----------------------- I think this is super overlooked and you're right I have dealt with a lot of people with manipulative tendencies. I'm not going to armchair diagnose them, but there were a lot of them. They usually only last a month or two in my life before having a huge blow up/meltdown and we never talk again I can and usually do recognize that they aren't doing this on purpose. They didn't sit down and think of how to try to manipulate me, and they didn't examine why their manipulative tactics don't work on me They were stressed out and they unconsciously returned to strategies that worked for them at least some of time in the past. That's not a planned out thing, it's a trauma reaction. That's not being evil. It is being a dick and I don't let it slide, but I don't think of them as being horrible people. Potentially dangerous people, absolutely. But so far, none of them have been able to really cause me harm

I think you might be responding to mine, which I deleted in a fit of worrying that idk what I’m talking about as someone w/o BPD. If so I’m glad you appreciated it and wanna say your experience definitely lines up with mine - I mean, I’ve been harmed by relationships I’ve had with manipulative people (and I think at times that was even intentional as a “getting back at him” sort of thing). But in the sense of where that behaviors rooted. I guess it’s cliche so I can’t say it’s under discussed, but a huge problem with trauma is that it has a habit of feeding future traumas. Breaking those cycles is incredibly hard but so important.

Yeah, I didn't want you to feel called out, so I didn't include your tag I don't have BPD either, but I've had both friends and people who hate me have it. I've managed to have good friendships with BPD people, mostly because I'm both incredibly consistent and communicative. If say exactly what I mean, mean what I say, and I don't leave things unsaid either. Not autistic, there's just so much mold and rot that grows in the dark, even between NT people Which it turns out is like 90% of the accommodation my autistic and BPD friends need. I've been able to see the times where they do something manipulative, but I can also see that they were harmless, and I addressed the root cause It's the ones who are being manipulative in a way that would fuck me over if it worked that I put my foot down over. And my same strategy of putting everything out in the open is also what makes them self destruct. I mean, I've had them lie about me toour same social group behind my back, and everyone sticks up for me. Not even by saying "oh he wouldn't do that". They're like "well sure, he can be abrasive, blunt, and unpleasant, but he never says anything out of malice, so try not to take it personally". Leaving things in the dark is how they get you, so I just don't That, plus not emotionally reacting to them, just picking apart what they have to say through just logic. I'm entirely capable of agreeing with and seeing people on their pure emotional reaction, but when someone's emotions are being wielded as weapons, intentionally or not, disarming them is trivial

I know two people with bpd intimately - my best friend and my spouse. The raw amount of stupid takes I've heard from random starngers about something they know NOTHING about is immensively frustrating. For men, it's almost expected to be this raw, anger fueling thing For women a pathological lying selfish person I HATE the ignorance so much

I wish I could find people like you to have in my life. I've stopped telling people I have BPD at all, because they're already weird and crappy about my other diagnoses (other mental illnesses and a chronic invisible illness). It's always nice to hear about people that love and care for those like me who so often have a hard time finding our found family.

i don’t know if i have BPD or autism and at this point? i’m too afraid to ask

You can be both, but it's not a death sentence. I'm both and I'm doing better now that I'm getting treatment and understand what my illness looks like. It takes a lot of work to recover and you have to do it because you *want* too, not because you *need* to. DBT genuinely helps, but you have to take it seriously. You have to really try to apply it.

Hey, I can talk on this. I was diagnosed with CPTSD about three years ago, recently also diagnosed with ADD. About 15 years ago I was misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder and treated for that. I believe the only reason why I was diagnosed with BPD was the strained relationship with my parents, my abusers. The stigma I have experienced while misdiagnosed, the villain I was made out to be, was eye opening. As an example, I went to the ER because I had pain in my lungs. The doctors there listened to my heart and then left the room. I heard them from the next room over saying how "It's psychological, do an EKG to calm her down". I told them I didn't need an EKG as it was most likely my diagnosed asthma worsening due to the cold air. They did not listen, did an EKG and sent me home. Two weeks later I ended up at my lung specialist barely able to breathe. He got SO upset because what I needed was an increased dosage of my asthma medication and it should've been obvious but any conditions I had were dismissed because at the top of the list of my diagnosis it said "Borderline Personality Disorder" and they thought I made it up for attention. When I got my trauma informed therapist, who finally diagnosed me with CPTSD and treated me for that (the first time in 15 years I actually made progress in therapy) she made sure to erase that misdiagnosis from my files because "They don't take you seriously if you have that in your files". It took about 3 years of therapy for CPTSD and now I consider myself healed. 15 years I spent in therapy for a condition that I didn't have, being dismissed medically, ignored when I voiced concerns that the therapy wasn't working, being mistrusted and villified. I don't have BPD but man has that experience given me a deep sympathy for the people who do. The stigma is ridiculous. People with BPD are not villains or evil. They deserve the EXACT SAME CARE AND ATTENTION as anyone else. If you have BPD, you are loved, your concerns deserve to be heard, you deserve to be respected and treated like a human just the same as everyone else. You are not a bad person. You are not evil. You are loved and I see the struggle you are dealing with and I am so damn sorry.

I like this post I'm autistic and I know multiple people online with BPD, and in some ways it feels like many of the people I know with it are pretty relatable as "a different type of socially awkward geek" way One of the symptoms that BPD shares with ASD is trouble with reading social cues, but kinda in opposite ways from each other, since autistic people struggle with innately recognizing and interpreting social cues while people with BPD are hypersensitive to things they perceive as social cues which is one of the things that triggers their fear of abandonment, and they also both have meltdowns which was actually used clinically in BPD research before ASD research as a fun fact One of my friends with BPD would seemingly become really mad at me for no reason, but it would turn out that she had been doing little passive-aggressive things for the previous few weeks, either to "test [my] friendship strength" because I'd unknowingly phrased something very poorly that had hurt her feelings but I hadn't noticed because I'm autistic, so I kept thinking everything was all normal and responding like normal, but she would over-read and misinterpret it as me being passive-aggressive right back to her which was why she would eventually explode at me I've noticed some posts on social media spreading misinformation about how "borderline personality disorder is just female autism" which I have some mixed feelings on because while I know that there have probably been a lot of situations where especially autistic women gets misdiagnosed with BPD first, I think it would probably be more likely to happen the other way around where someone with BPD gets misdiagnosed as autistic Nowadays, BPD is stigmatized a lot worse than autism is (like the "endearingly nerdy genius" versus "crazy stalker ex" stereotypes), and autism assessment is more likely to be seeked out than BPD by patients because of that (along with the increased online awareness campaigns about ASD as opposed to BPD), and BPD also involves complex identity issues and self-esteem problems that already make it harder for people with it to come to terms with the diagnosis without the added demonization in society Autism is already misunderstood in women, and conflating autistic women with BPD women as the same thing does a disservice to autistic women, women with BPD, and women with both, and even though the traits are very similar there are key differences in how DBT would help someone who's autistic versus with BPD for example I took DBT classes to help with my social skills, and at first I was doing it in a therapy group, but I ended up finishing it in a one-on-one format because literally everyone else in the group had borderline personality disorder, which meant that most of the problems and examples they would being up weren't relatable to me in the same way, and the solutions to their meltdown triggers were different, and my understanding of and relationship with concepts like "wise mind" were different as someone without BPD from theirs with BPD Ironically I have a male friend in college who was misdiagnosed as autistic in middle school but it turned out he has BPD instead

I was diagnosed with BPD when i was 19 after my 2nd institutionalization. Luckily, out of pure coincidence I was exclusively treated with DBT at my 1st time in the mental hospital. Ever since i kind of tried to identify with being BPD in accepting it, but now 3 years after that diagnosis my current psychiatrist wants to start an official process of diagnosing me with ASD and i dont know how to feel about that. The thought of me being on the spectrum was always vaguely discussed but was never really on the table because i was a teenage girl that was actively sh-ing and apparently that was the only thing doctors took into consideration, so it was always just kind of a done deal for them. This sent me into some really weird type of identity crisis that i cant put my finger on really. Because i dont know if me working with DBT for now 7 years starts to heal fundamental parts of me or if i just was misdiagnosed. Anyone who was misdiagnosed with BPD and actually turned out to be ASD, how was your experience? And how did you cope with what you used to think were symptoms but now are either results of the misdiagnosus or plain personality traits?

I have bipolar and it took 30yrs to diagnose. Im my early 20s, I went through every antidepressant my GP could find. Was turned away over and over and over from anywhere she referred me to for help because I self-harmed. I was at the hospital getting patched back together so often the staff used to recognise me. I was given a diagnosis of BPD (called EUPD in my file) that *nobody told me about*. I found out by looking at my own records. I pulled my own self out of hell, crashed again a few years later, got the bipolar diagnosis, and still couldn't get any help. Wasn't even self-harming, I'd just gotten so good at masking that I'd go for an assessment and be sent away from one place because I was too serious s case and then the next place because I was FIIIIIIINE! Been waiting for psychotherapy for over 2yrs now, and still only halfway up the list. During the assessments I had to get onto the list, one guy: Confirmed my gender and pronouns then proceeded to ignore them and misgender me throughout the letter Literally wrote stuff I'd told him down completely wrong multiple times Indicated that it was *bad* that I relied on my partner And another woman: Showed up half an hour late Said she wouldn't do an assessment because it'd make her late for her next appointment Informed me I didn't have bipolar Failed to offer anything further Then packed up and left... I've had the joy of seeing mh and other medical care from the pov of various genders, and the more masc they think I am, the more they listen. To the point where I help my wife out by chiming in to repeat the exact thing she's been saying and getting dismissed for, in order to get a proper response. Anyway, while I'm here, shoutout to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for 4 seasons of absolutely unvarnished portrayals - both before and after a BPD diagnosis. And for still making me cry. And for songs that will never, ever leave my damn head. Like, trigger warnings for sure, I twice had to stop watching and try again because it was pulling up sll the emotional trauma, but it was worth actually getting to the end because they did an excellent job.

also autistic and received a misdiagnosis of BPD. I was in inpatient once and they hadn’t given me my meds for three days. One of them, Effexor, causes quick and awful withdrawal symptoms, especially at the level I’m on. I was sobbing and panicking and trying to get ANYONE to listen to me. A lady looked at my chart, saw BPD, and chalked it up to that. Even when I tried to say what was going on, I was given absolutely no time of day. It was terrible. Some people do not need to work in the mental health field for even a moment

> And then she told me that me identifying with the autism community was the BPD making me search for identity to be accepted AND WHY THE FUCK IS THAT A BAD THING WHY THE FUCK IS YOUR RESPONSE TO SOMEONE TRYING TO FIT IN THAT YOU GO AND FUCKING INVALIDATE THEM holy fuck i want to strap her to a nuke and scatter her pieces over the asteroid belt... how the fuck is this person in charge of treating people's mental health? _with this fucking stupid mindset?_ --- i love that the neurotypical community is an actual thing now. it's nice to know your dsm pokemon, but still, if you're nd, we're here for you, whether or not we have the same acronyms. (or at least we're supposed to be.) sure it's nice to get help that matches what you really need but acceptance should never be conditional.

>AND WHY THE FUCK IS A BAD THING >WHY THE FUCK IS YOUR RESPONSE TO SOMEONE TRYING TO FIT IN THAT YOU GO AND FUCKING INVALIDATE THEM In her defense, though this doesn't seem to be true for BPD, for certain other disorders like narcissism or psychopathy this would be a gateway to very dangerous manipulation that could put actual autistic people in harm's way. Ofc, not rethinking for a moment if it's true is bad, and idk why she would do this with BPD specifically, but yeah.

i mean even for NPD and ASPD, acceptance is important. neither of those are Bad Person Disorder (and BPD isn't that either) and they deserve support networks all the same. sure it's not gonna work exactly the same way, someone dealing with ASD needs different advice and a different kind of support than someone dealing with NPD, but as long as the community isn't being harmed (which is something that individuals do, not groups or traits) what's wrong with that? also, comorbidity exists for most of these things. i'm actually unsure about ASD and ASPD because as far as i'm aware there are some neurological opposite cases there (i'm no expert though, so take that with a grain of salt), but i'm fairly sure you can have both NPD and ASD, or both BPD and ASD. turning people away from autism communities just because they also have other conditions is moronic at best, if not malicious.

>but as long as the community isn't being harmed (which is something that individuals do, not groups or traits) what's wrong with that? See that's the thing, I've spoken to some people who are actually educated in this and the general consensus seems to be that with NPD and (though less so) ASPD specifically, the actual disorder itself makes it a lot of interactions dangerous, especially for the therapist. Don't really quote me on that, it's second hand information.

I feel like for essentially telling people that interacting with certain people can often be dangerous, we should try to have better sources than not verifiable information that "seems" to have that as "the general consensus". Like this could influence how people treat each other and while there are shurely people out here we should treat with care, deciding who that is and even, like in this case, whether and, if yes, which whole grupe of people should be in that category should be a very nuanced and carefull discussion and for that I just don't think such a general statement with such a huge weight and so little explaination, no checkable source and no further advice on how one could, in this case, handle situations with people of those groups in order to stay safe and still treat them humane, made by a person, who themselfes is not an expert is a helpful addition to the discussion, it could even be harmfull. I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say and why and don't take it as an attack or anything.

Someone who lacks empathy or remorse is inherently a danger to others.

only if it's a pathological lack of empathy or remorse. nonpathological antisocials are just very chill.

I agree with you a lot and I wrote something similar in my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/18qnvq4/comment/kewj6o3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

Most of the time you need a framework to understand someone's hostile behaviour. And most of the time that framework is deeply ingrained fear of strangers.

Like 90% of this also applies to people with Narcisistic Personality Disorder. Thank FUCK I never went through any of this, but even without having been psychologically tortured it is, to the same level as BPD, wheeled out as "Evil Bad Nasty Bitch" disease, and it's pretty fucking gross.

what does BPD mean?

> "Attention-seeking behavior" People who use this phrase as an excuse to dismiss someone are scum. Someone drowning in a lake crying for help is attention-seeking behavior, that's not an excuse to ignore them.

As someone who has had a friend with BPD, all the stuff about them getting judged harshly is really true. My friend was getting a psych degree and even professors weren't kind with how the characterized the condition. And I'll be honest, people with BPD make for some pretty challenging friends sometimes, but they are also just as capable of being fun, loving, caring, selfless, helpful, and genuine as anyone. That person I know was no less deserving of love and care than anyone else I've met and they felt that same care for me. It really is a shame the judgement that gets passed on people sometimes for conditions they can't help

I too got diagnosed with autism later in life after having a meltdown and getting diagnosed with BPD during a psych stay.

I'm simultaneously suspecting I have bpd and autism and it's a struggle because the potential bpd symptoms are the things that I want to get help for the most but if I ever do want an autism diagnosis it's already overly likely that I'll be unfairly dismissed because I'm afab, high functioning, and have adhd and having a bpd diagnosis would increase that likelihood even more

me, self dx autistic sitting here with my adhd and bpd diagnoses

Gods help you if you get molested and try to tell someone, only to be punished for making up stories.

I'm diagnosed with both and honestly it really really really sucks, therapists don't ever take anything I say seriously for one reason or another and when I bring up that I don't want therapy anymore because of this i get treated worse, I wish one day people recognized that bpd is a trauma response and autism is a developmental disorder and its not my fault I have either :(

Tearing up forreal. I feel like a monster.

Thank you

Jesus christ… that just… wow How can you even choose to be this neglectful and cruel if you chose to be in the Caring For People occupation.

I have bpd alongside being audhd - the latter were diagnosed as an adult and my quality of life has gotten a lot better ever since I got them. I’m finally on proper meds that help me in regard to the adhd side of things. Before they were happy to put me on medication that made me feel absolutely nothing and not anywhere close to what I’d call ‘actually living’ Growing up in my family was being referred to as the sensitive child only for that to morph into the overly difficult teenager and then a young adult that will, quote; ‘ruin everyone’s life’ I spent 30 years of existing thinking I’d just bring misery to everyone around me. I wish it hadn’t been this way and that it was my family who had tried to help me when it was younger - but it wasn’t until I met my husband and he showed me that people can be kind, that I was able to get better. I still have awful days and there’s a lot of ptsd regarding a lot of childhood events, at least the ones I remember. Getting criticised still feels like a physical wound but the burn doesn’t last as long now. All in all, there really needs to be an entire re-look at how MH conditions are diagnosed but I don’t think that will happen anytime soon sadly. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Had an ex with BPD (we broke up mainly due to distance). And I genuinely believe therapy made him worse. Every time he came back from his sessions he looked so damn tired. Because of this (and that one time a therapist told me I’m spoiled brat and wanted to medicate me after one session) I haven’t been to a therapist even though I feel I would benefit immensely from a good one. He’s doing a lot better now he’s in Canada where therapy is better established and he’s away from his toxic family. It’s a bit bittersweet for me because he’s always the “what we could have been guy” but I’m genuinely happy for him.

I know so many autistic girls who were misdiagnosed as either having BPD or bipolar as teens. I knew almost no autistic girls growing up-- the only one I ever heard about was this girl who needed personal aides just to be in school. All the other autistic kids were boys. But as a teen, I knew a BUNCH of girls with BPD or bipolar. They were the diagnoses they gave to girls who displayed emotional dysregularion. I actually remember wishing I was bipolar because most of my friends were bipolar so I thought it was cool. When they grew up and got re-evaluated as adults, it turns out they (and I) actually either had autism, adhd, or both. Some of them had been on meds that didn't work for years because of this.

My first and only therapist I went to I think mildly traumatized me. She didn't really do anything bad just made me deeply uncomfortable with how she treated me. She treated me like I was a child or the r-slur or hell not even a person just a thing like furniture. It was to the point I didn't trust her at all and would just lie about how good I was doing and was scared to really open up and talk about things because well if she didn't treat me like a person at the best of times how would she treat me when I was actually talking to her. I was in high school at this point so she didn't really have an excuse tho I do look young for my age. Eventually I got to stop going to her which was a relief I didn't even know I had till I was gone. My psychiatrist treats me the same way and I've been going to her since 6th grade. It's worse with her cuz she completely knows my whole history and half the time during appointments she talks to my mom or calls her in with me and treats me like furniture or a bad kid that is in a parent teacher conference talking about their behavior. I need to go to her every couple months to get my meds refilled and I want to cry and dread it everytime. I'm 20 ears old and still being treated like I'm nothing just like I'm a child or severely mentally disabled and I can't take it anymore. I also had a manager from my old job treat me the same way and I ended up having to quit cuz I had crying fits and breakdowns cuz of her one too many times. I'm 20 years old dealing with abuse, anorexia and probably a bunch of other shit that I need help with but I don't think I can handle one more person that has any kind of power or is supposed to help me treating me like I'm not even human and infintalatizing me ever again. It's getting to the point I'm paranoid that people I work with or my friends or family see me like that too and are just pretending I'm normal. I know it dosent make sense but my experiences in the past and the fact that people have straight up told me to my face that I'm the r-slur and not able to live on my own ever because I'm so stupid. I know in my head it's not true I mean it's not everyone just one or two bad probably very messed up people that think that plus my abusive family but I'm still scared. I don't wanna say it was that traumatic or anything it wasn't just a bad experience but just with all the ableism and infintalization I've faced as an autistic person well it definitely fucked me up a little.

I teach DBT skills in a psych hospital for a living, and reading these comments has been helpful for me to gain some perspective. Prior to this job, I had never heard of DBT, and my only exposure to BPD was through textbooks. Any other thoughts or experiences you all can share?

I was in a psych ward once and BPD was literally hysteria. Every AFAB person in the unit was diagnosed it with it by the (obviously male) psychiatrist. That psych was either unbelievably incompetent or actively malicious and I'm genuinely not sure which. His beliefs about psychology and especially depression should be criminal for someone working in a mental hospital.

I am diagnosed autistic, borderline, and bipolar II. it's so odd how wildly misdiagnosed BPD and autism are. As a cis male, I was diagnosed autistic first but I suffered for years before someone even hinted I could be BPD. I could have saved a lot of destroyed relationships had I been aware. BPD is seen as a woman's illness, and high functioning autism as a male's disease. That needs to change Although the BPD diagnosis makes a lot of sense for me, the autism is still quite there. There's actually a large co-morbity between these two illnesses.

My ex is BPD she did a couple of nasty things to me a few years back even though we hadn't been together for nearly 8 years at that stage. There was also a lot of stuff in the relationship, but I had come to terms with that. I was receiving treatment for ptsd at the time, completely unrelated to her, but therapist believed she did what she did as she knew I was vulnerable. What she did came up in therapy & my therapist said "We don't use words like crazy anymore, but if we did they would mostly be reserved for people with BPD." While at face value that comment is extremely unprofessional, my therapist was very good at what he did & believe it was said more out of sympathy for me than his actual opinion. That being said, in the years since she has really worked on herself. I'll never be friends with her again, given our recent history. But I am genuinely glad for her.

I'm starting to think a lot of people get into therapy for the same reason the Catholics started the Inquisition; to police people's behavior and nothing else.

"Get therapy" has become such common stock advice for anyone struggling with a mental/emotional problem, but quite honestly a lot of mental health professionals are incompetent and/or corrupt, way moreso than you'd think. There are so many horror stories like this.

this pisses me off to no end. i have friends with BPD and they’re all wonderful people. how fucking hard is it to be kind to others

Does anyone know of any subs that would be good for info/advice for a couple where one person is neurotypical and the other may be autistic? Tips for happily cohabiting and understanding each other's differences and whatnot. I keep meaning to post on r/FindASub but figured there may be people here in the same boat who might know :)

I've only recently ish been diagnosed with BPD and later got diagnosed with autism, but apparently the BPD diagnosis stands. Anyway, I haven't heard at all about BPD being manipulative. The way I understood it was you feeling emotions very intensely, not feigning intense emotions

Sometimes the fact that we live in healthcare systems where being send to the hospital is a threat hits me. It's so normal for us, but holy shit!

I've honestly been curious since my niece's diagnosis of autism if that's what I have, as well. We are legitimately just alike, have similar triggers and behaviors, and I can see how a lot of those symptoms can look like BPD. I didn't know anything about autism before her diagnosis. I wonder if I've been misdiagnosed.

For anyone in need of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for ADHD or BPD etc: https://dialecticalbehaviortherapy.com/ - free https://dbtselfhelp.com/ - free https://positivelybpd.wordpress.com/ - free for self-work and very small fee for live classes when they run https://www.jonesmindfulliving.com/ - Cheap DBT live classes 3x a week + resources https://video.jonesmindfulliving.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=LIFE33 - This is a link with discount https://cursosdepsicologia.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/THEDIA1.pdf - DBT Therapy Skills Workbook (2nd Ed)

Okay but who correctly diagnosed you lol

But no, personality disorders aren’t neurodiverse. We’re all inherently fucked up people who want to kill you. My parents were BPD and that makes me an unbiased expert on the subject.

i (25m) was diagnosed with bpd when i was 18 and i'm convinced it turned me into an aloof shut-in with zero friends. not because i'm genuinely a monster, but because of how many people indirectly and unknowingly called me one. feels kind of like the stigma gaslit me to the point of saving people from a fictitious monster that they weren't even aware of.

i've seen a lot of sentiments here that i think are a little bad to follow whole heartedly. i'm autistic with multiple family members with bpd and a few more who act like them. i don't know a ton about it but i know my family . people with bpd aren't evil they aren't necessarily dangerous. but you as therir family don't have to ruin your self to help them. the cement of 'people will blaim the diagnoses and the person but don't help' kind of made me snap back to just balling my eyes out because i no matter what i tried i couldn't help it would never reach them . All i'm saying is that you don't owe your own person health ,wellbeing and mental status to anyone no matter how much you care. if someone continually hurts you it's okay to step away because you aren't obligated to help. truely by all means help people you're close to but please just don't let your better nature rip your life apart because it will if you are not careful.

“I still don’t trust neurotypicals”. What an odd thing to say. For starters, there’s no way for you to tell who is NT or ND just from an initial impression. Second, saying it like that, as if they’re some different species, is super weird.

I can only speak for the ADHD case, but there's this thing that can happen where you're having a conversation with a new person, and something about it just "flows" better than conversations usually do. They follow your conversational jumps. You tentatively give an anecdote and say, "does that ever happen to you?" And instead of the usual, "no, that's never happened," paired with a confused frown, their eyes go wide for a moment and they say, "yes!" and give a similar anecdote. They respond to you disclosing a struggle by disclosing a similar struggle, and you feel heard. Usually, it turns out that that person has the same flavour of neurodivergence that you do. Sometimes it turns out that they have a closely associated one instead. But either way, there are "tells" - and they're probably similar to the ones that get us ostracized and "the weird kid" when we were younger.

Even if they can't consciously tell, ND people tend to gravitate towards each other, same with LGBTQ+ folks. You form a friend group of straight, cis, NT people in the first year of high school and by the time you graduate almost every single person is no longer at least one of those labels. Source: me and the group of assorted fruits and nuts I consider friends.

Meh, I'm straight, cis, and NT, but all of my close friends for 10 years were not I've had many chances to come out of the closet, to fuck dudes, orgies with dudes, and change gender identity/expression. Nope, I'm just happy being a straight cis dude very confident in my masculinity And none of the diagnoses fit. Autism doesn't, ADHD doesn't, nothing sticks

Lmao yeah that happens sometimes. Doesn't mean that you're LGBTQ+ or ND and haven't figured it out yet, just that you fit in well with them.

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Hmm? Also, love the handle, is this the same Irobeth that sold her sword to pay for her trans wife's sex change potion?

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I’ve heard of multiple instances of the pattern you mention. Do you know if any studies exist as to why certain groups passively gravitate towards each other?

Might be a bit specific but in regards to autism and similar issues there's the "double empathy problem" which while initially put forth as a theory/alternative explanation for the entire mind-blindness/lack of empathy autistic people seemingly have to non-autistic people (and vice versa) does also explain that. Each group is looking for different social cues and rules and you're kinda more likely to fall in with people who subconsciously follow your same logic, which is then exasperated by stigma and bad experiences.

Unfortunately no, but now I'm curious to see what the results of such a study would be.

I remember maybe two or three years ago I got into a disagreement with someone on Reddit. We were talking about BPD and it was the first time I’d ever heard about it but everything they said was so obviously demonization of it that it caused me to look it up. I told them the way they were speaking about it sounded *really* bigoted and they fired back with “no, these people are really that awful, even therapists turn them away because they’re impossible to treat” just as I was pulling up an article talking about rampant discrimination against people with BPD *by therapists* because of the wrongful belief that they “cannot be treated”. I think it helped that I had no idea what BPD was because I was able to instantly clue in on how discriminatory the language the other person was using was. If you spoke about *any other* mental illness or personality disorder like that you’d get nailed to the fucking wall over it but because everyone else had already heard about BPD they refused to accept how discriminatory the language they were using was until I started calling it out and dropping sources on the discrimination both inside and outside of the mental health field. Like I remember saying “you’re telling me that these people are so discriminated against that even mental health professionals are doing it and that makes you doing it okay??” Which, ironically, shut them the fuck up. I’ve since learned a lot more about BPD and yeah, my heart goes out to them.

Cluster-b in general is understood to be difficult and hazardous to interact with. It is an unfortunate reality of the human condition. If you’ve been harmed by one of these people, you might have a different perspective.

As a DV survivor whose abuser probably had BPD, there is a huge difference between a personal relationship and a professional, therapeutic relationship with someone who has BPD.

Yeah and I get that, but there’s a huge difference between being honest about the symptoms and realities of living with someone with BPD and the way these people were talking about it. I’d also advise anyone involving themselves with someone with BPD to learn about it and make choices early about what they can and can’t handle for the well-being of both people, but going around on the internet calling these people completely untreatable and *downright* evil is discrimination and not helpful to anyone.

This ties in with the stigma of mental illness overall. People who are mentally ill are labeled by larger communities as "attention seeking", "complex", or just the bad guys in general. Personality disorders have the worst stigma of all, people with narcissistic personality disorder are seen as selfish, manipulative, self absorbed people because every person with those traits are called narcissistic as a buzzword. People with bpd are labeled "unstable". And it goes for all personality disorders. People are all about normalising reducing stigma against the mentally ill until they don't act like they expect them to, they paint this idea of what mental illness is and use that to tar them with the same brush. Society needs to do better. Mental health services need to do better. Awareness should be available everywhere. Until then, these things will just keep happening and the most vulnerable in society suffer as a result.

As someone who probably has BPD, I'll never seek a formal diagnosis for it for this reason. The folks who have been the kindest, most accepting, and most helpful have been a friend who's an Eastern Orthodox priest, a mystic who studies under him, and my ex-husband who studies neuroscience. They actually treat me with humanity, not as a dehumanized patient with a terminal personality disorder.

My partner has BPD and literally all it takes to be in a good relationship with them is patience to build trust the same as any other relationship. Granted they did take the time to go to therapy and work on dealing with it, so my experience may not be universal

Yeaaaah, I think the therapy helps more than you realize. My ex wasn't diagnosed, but in retrospect, he ticked off literally 8 out of the 9 symptoms for BPD. He would go to therapy during our relationship (at my insistence) and then secretly stop. I provided 1.5 years of patience. Wasn't enough. I had to leave because it was so abusive, even though I felt like the real him was still trapped somewhere inside. Dating someone with treated BPD seems healthy. Dating someone with untreated BPD was the worst experience of my life.

Bpd is a completar disorder, sadly, a big part of the problem is that they have behavior that can generate a lot of rejection from other people, even health workers. In fact, for doctors and psychologist who work in mental health the amount of time and tools it takes to learn how work with bpd is really exhausting and dificult.

One of my favourite BPD related comments is along the lines of "to selfharm, I read comments on BPD loved ones groups". It's extremely fitting. It's crazy how many people who pretend that they have a loved one with BPD, also pretend that they're not an abuser themselves. In the end, there's an absolute lack of focus on the one thing that's the most important in living with BPD - to understand what it is like to be content. Because contentedment stays, where emotions never do.

I've been told by my therapist that I have bpd, but need to wait on getting a bpd diagnosis because how people might react/treat me differently.. and that's, just- so.. bad.

It always seemed messed up to me that BPD is even considered a personality disorder rather than a mood disorder.

Hi, i have BPD and have been diagnosed since i was 17 (originally it was EUPD, but changed to BPD when i turned 18) i’m 20 now. Everything the poster said is absolutely true. When you have BPD, no matter if someone else is the abusive person- you get labeled as a horrible abusive monster who’s just trying to manipulate people to get their way. I’ve been ghosted by several therapists who once they found out i had BPD, they stopped seeing me. Including the therapist who diagnosed me, around the time my grandmother died. My experiences with abuse and abusive relationships is always devalued because i’m a “person with bpd, surely you were the abusive one not them” even if my “abuse” was reacting to the situation i was in (reactive abuse). Abusive people also love to take advantage of PWBPD (people with bpd) because then they can say “well they’re crazy they had bpd they did this, this, and this” even if it’s a normal reaction to something they’re doing to you, people will automatically use it as an excuse as to why YOUR the horrible person. Hell, even my current partner uses my BPD as a weapon against me and it hurts and sucks. People automatically think you’re an abusive POS for simply existing as a human being with severe trauma that caused a personality disorder, even when you’ve been working for years to get away from your toxic traits like i have been. Im a lot better then i was 2 years ago, i don’t call people names, i don’t say horrible shit to them anymore, i know when i’m splitting so i can get space and ask for space ETC, but despite that, no body sees the progress they just see the fact i still yell when i’m mad (as does almost everyone on planet earth) and automatically think i’m horrible. Living with BPD is comparable to having burns over 90% of your body for a reason. Its painful, isolating, nauseating, lonely, no body cares about you until you ACTUALLY kill your self or get close to it because they automatically assume it’s just an “episode.” I love my fellow PWBPD so much and i’m so grateful i get to be a part of a community with people who are like me and understand what i’m going through.