October 11, 2024
I had a conversation with one of my best friends this morning. She’d been reading her psych notes and saw the Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis. She reacted in horror, just as I had when I read my psych notes. For a while, I felt like shit about myself. But after a while, after I studied a bit and pondered on the sad sorry sordid label for a year or so, I figured out that Borderline Personality Disorder is a bullshit diagnosis.
I’ve lifted the traits from an article titled: What is borderline personality disorder (BPD)?
I will now attempt to refute each trait, because BPD is a bullshit diagnosis:
I often feel “empty.”
Who hasn’t felt empty at some point in their life? We can never know another fully nor be fully known. Recognizing we can only every have imperfect incomplete connections results in a feeling of emptiness. Normal. Human.
My emotions shift very quickly, and I often experience extreme sadness, anger, and anxiety.
Having mood shifts in response to certain stressors at times sounds pretty normal and pretty human to me.
In my case, I have the added bonus of rapid cycling bipolar. Not all the time, but certainly at times. There have been periods in my life when my symptoms have persisted for days, weeks, even months. Those “mood shifts” aren’t something I can reason away. I can manage the condition, I can manage my behavior, but in my case, in my experience, the turmoil inside simply has to run its course. That’s primarily brain chemistry, not a personality disorder.
I’m constantly afraid that the people I care about will abandon me or leave me.
I don’t know if there’s ever been a relationship where this fear doesn’t occur. Hopefully it’s fleeting. Hopefully it’s not because you’re staying with someone who isn’t all in or who threatens to leave you. All of us learn to figure that out over time. And if the fear is unwarranted, get therapy.
I would describe most of my romantic relationships as intense, but unstable.
The best romantic relationships are intense in all the best ways.
There’s always a feature of instability in any relationship because there are no guarantees in life. If the feeling of instability persists, it’s important to get to the root of it. Get therapy. If you come to the conclusion that the guy is a dick, dump his ass.
The way I feel about the people in my life can dramatically change from one moment to the next — and I don’t always understand why.
When someone is gaslighting you, manipulating you, or lying to you, you feel it in your gut long before you consciously recognize the behavior. If your gut self-protection instinct is working for you, you begin to dislike and distance yourself from that person pretty quickly. (That’s why it’s so important to always trust your gut.) Over time, you may figure out that your gut response to certain situations is a carryover from your need to defend yourself in childhood and the response no longer fits. You figure this stuff out from — you guessed it — therapy!
I often do things that I know are dangerous or unhealthy, such as driving recklessly, having unsafe sex, binge drinking, using drugs, or going on spending sprees.
Yep. I used to do stupid shit a lot. Then I got better, I grew to like myself more, and I did it less. That’s the maturity that comes with age. And four decades (egads!) of therapy! Now, I love myself, all of myself, and I don’t do it often. But ya, sometimes I’ll have that fourth martini. And sometimes a fifth. (Ugh, hangover.) Sometimes I’ll drop $60 into those stupid slot machines in the back of every bar in Portland (usually after that fourth martini…) Sometimes I’ll buy that pink Keurig just because it’s pink even though I really can’t afford it… (Oh my God I love that machine!!!)
I’ve attempted to hurt myself, engaged in self-harm behaviors such as cutting, or threatened suicide.
I’ve attempted suicide many times. (Always with Klonopin. Beware benzos!!!) I don’t threaten to do it, I just do it. It’s tragic I’ve had the struggles I’ve had with mental illness. I’m better now, I’m better right now, but again, there are no guarantees in life. I aggressively manage my condition with therapy and medication, and I’ve learned to manage my behavior. I’m not perfect at it. But I’m much much better now than I was even a year ago. I’m out of the situation with my mom; that has everything to do with the fact I’m better. I’m hopeful things will continue on this positive trajectory. (No guarantees…)
When I’m feeling insecure in a relationship, I tend to lash out or make impulsive gestures to keep the other person close.
When I was young(er), of course I felt insecure in romantic relationships and lashed out or made impulsive gestures to manipulate my partner. What young woman doesn’t do that? You keep doing it, too, until you’ve enough relationship experience that (1) you recognize it’s more harmful to you than to your partner, (2) you figure out you’re never going to have a rewarding, long-term relationship with a man who stays because you manipulate him into staying, and (3) you learn to value yourself enough that when a man doesn’t want to be with you, you let that motherfucker go. Some men just aren’t worth fighting for.
My contention is, these traits can all be chalked up to (1) the immaturity inherent in being young(ish), and (2) the existential angst that every human being who ever lived experiences.
I got labeled with this diagnosis when I was in the hospital last, just over two years ago now. And it was devastating to realize how I’d been perceived. The fact that I was diagnosed with a “personality disorder” made me question everything about who I was. We all know about narcissistic sociopathic personality disorder from watching Donald Trump for a decade. To have “borderline personality disorder” fall on the same spectrum as Donald Trump’s monstrousness is horrifying. And yet, BPD isn’t on the same scale as Trump’s depraved personality disorder. Furthermore, BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER IS A BULLSHIT DIAGNOSIS.
Manipulating others isn’t just a function of age and maturity. I’d like to think I’m beyond that behavior now, but I still fall into it occasionally. I tried to manipulate Married Man and I was in my 50s. It was a function of my mental health at the time (which was psych-hospitalization-worthy) and the very fact that it was an affair. My contention is that affairs are inherently unstable. They naturally make you feel incredibly insecure about your worth as a woman. Nothing absolves me of the responsibility for making such a self-sabotaging relationship choice, but that’s secondary to this argument. In this argument, I’m saying that if you’re a mistress, you aren’t feeling really good about the position you have in your Married Man’s life. You recognize you’re way way down on his list of priorities and it’s fucked up. All that culminates in self-loathing to one degree or another. (Which, I contend, is why affair endings are usually marred with some degree of revenge or retaliation. Very immature. But also, very human.)
Is all of this just a big rationalization, my attempt to explain away a diagnosis that I believe to be inaccurate? Maybe. If the diagnosis was accurate, I’m “cured” because I no longer exhibit most of the traits, and those that I do, I don’t exhibit persistently.
Every single trait that marks Borderline Personality Disorder is experienced and exhibited by everyone at some point in their lives. It’s not a personality disorder. Those traits are existential. They’re human.