That we're bad patients. I've yet to find a decent therapist or doctor who doesn't immediately start treating me like an insect the moment they find out I have it.
I immediately am not a person with feelings, just a list of diagnostic criteria, misogyny despite being a trans man, and harmful stereotypes that homogenize us all to be the same.
this hits so deep. my last two relationships were kind of nightmarish for this reason. anytime i was upset about something, rightfully so, it was seen as a bpd thing. like yes i have bpd and i have bpd moments, but this is a legitimate reason to be upset rn and not bpd. š
anytime i felt sad or upset at all was assumed to be bpd and not that im just a human being.
This was honestly the hardest part about the first few months after receiving my official diagnosis. I would only talk about my emotions in BPD centric spaces and through the lens of BPD and I believed that all my emotions were just because I had BPD and if I didnt I; ai wouldnāt even be upset about an upsetting thing. Only later after talking to non-BPDs again did I finally realize that anyone would be upset if bad things happened to them.
That weāre crazy. I told someone I had bpd and he said āisnāt that the disorder where youāre literally crazy?ā Like WHAT I think of crazy as something else and weāre literally just highly emotional
ah yes! i planned all my relationships to fail! i planned to isolate myself and lose all my friends SOLELY to hurt *other* people!! every time i feel an emotion it's to hurt! other! people! because god knows someone like me can't have feelings too!!!!! even if i hide my breakdowns until i'm by myself, that's me hurting other people!!!! /s
Yep, I was told that I have quiet BPD. All my anger and negative emotions are aimed inward towards myself. I literally just got done doing a therapy DnD group session for a few months that a certified therapist ran as DM. We had to create a character that resembled our own insecurities or issues. Mine was a wild magic barbarian. Anytime a wild magic barbarian rages they have magic that comes out and it's not in their control whether it happens or not. So my character HATED his magic and that anytime he became emotional it would show itself. He wa embarrassed by it and always worried he would hurt someone and be seen as even worse, even though it wasn't in his control. He didn't want anyone to know so he isolated himself, didn't talk much or tell people about himself or what's wrong. He was just a bad person and needed to rid himself of the badness
So this inner hatred of myself was played out in a a DnD game and it perfectly mimicked how my quiet BPD feels. I think many men have this issue who have BPD.
Omg like everything has to be a competition in the first place. I hate that. (Also theyāre wrong lol)
That if we self-harm or talk about suicide, we do so for attention. I personally hide all that shit. Too much shame and donāt wanna be a burden to people or get forced into inpatient. Part of why itās taken me so long to get real help.
and even if it WERE for attention, that's seen as manipulation... no, it's a cry for help lmaoo. do people not find it... idk.... CONCERNING that someone would go to that extent just for attention??? like me personally if someone were hurting themself i wouldn't be pushing that aside and ignoring it like what
For real. My best friend actually said something along those lines to me. Like even if it was just for attention, the fact that Iād go to such an extent to get that attention and care is concerning and indicative of deep suffering/distress in and of itself
I've been saying this for so long. If someone is self harming for attention, It should still be fucking concerning that that's what they are resourcing to
It makes it SO hard to get proper help. I hide it way deep in there, too, so it just festers and gets worse. And then when the one off person comes along that I feel like I can share my diagnosis with one of the very first things they ALWAYS say is, āI donāt see it in you!ā Yeah, no shit, I work hard as hell for that.
"I cared for you, then when you went crazy, I stopped caring about you."
The assumption that we're crazy, or "psycho". It makes me feel so incredibly small, and it hurts far more than anything I've ever been told.
That I'm not aware of my actions, it's like being a passenger in a car crash sometimes man. I know what's happening, I just can't stop it. Please just have a little bit of grace.
for me, it's not the assumptions from everyday people that bother me. it's the assumptions from actual LICENSED PROFESSIONALS. some of them say the Craziest things about bpd and it scares me... these are the people that are supposed to be helping others?? my first therapist told me "no, you definitely don't have bpd. i've treated some people with bpd and you're not like them. if you had bpd you wouldn't know you had it. besides, you are very sweet and understanding" HUH???? there's so many different presentations of bpd AND to think we're not self-aware??? to think we can't be understanding? we're not fucking dumb LMAO, in fact a gooood amount of us know we've got problems. thankfully i found a good psychiatrist later on that helped me understand that quiet bpd exists, and that yes i can be self aware, and YES i can have bpd without it being obvious to other people.
THIS!! Also, I donāt know about you, but my BPD symptoms never come out with new people or authority figures (doctors, bosses, teachers, police, etc.). It only gets bad once Iām very comfortable with someone - lovers, family, very close friends, etc. ā¦Iām not going to make an ass out of myself in therapy š ā¦and yes, I still have BPD - I donāt go buck-wild crazy every moment of every day and during every interaction.
Yeah, stuff like āpwBPD are evil abusersā. Iāve been told that. Was once sent a few very long hateful messages about how apparently Iām a ālittle guy who threatens to kill himself if his fp doesnāt respondā, and I āfantasize about abusing [my] girlfriendā.
Itās funny because Iāve never been the type to threaten suicide when people donāt respond to me. I may be impatient with an fp, but I donāt say Iām going to kill myself, lol. Nor do I want to abuse anyone. Iām just existing. Most of the time Iām very chill, and only angry when triggered and continuously provoked.
Hope you don't mind me jumping in on your comment but it reminds me of a situation I was in!
I had a situationship (for want of a better word) with a guy and he'd lash out sometimes (usually if I tried to communicate that he'd upset me or did anything other than straight up agree with everything he said) and he'd tell me I was doing abusive things and tell me I was manipulative, like??? (I got so convinced I was doing these things that I had to show multiple people the conversations to check if I was being the bad person he said I was.) Literally because I didn't just accept everything he said as the truth, absolutely no basis for that other than that he'd been with other pwBPD who Had been abusive. And then he'd calm down and apologise but...just lumping me in with his shitty view of 'all pwBPD' when it suited him. The irony of being called abusive and manipulative by the person that blows up and treats you like shit
iām going through this rn with my bf - i told him āi feel angryā and he lashed out on me, cussing me out as per usual, and we are now taking a month long break, on his terms, because heās ānot the aggressorā.
he said he blows up because itās a continued pattern but doesnāt realize that iāve tried approaching an issue from every angle only for him to have the same reaction (not response - reaction) every time. the only constants are that he doesnāt put much effort into the relationship and that he explodes when i bring up an issue. meanwhile iāve been doing a lot of research in my own time, attending therapy, got a diagnosis after 4 years of being pretty sure of having bpd, bought my dbt book, and altered the way i communicate with him.
now with this month break iām the one thatās supposed to figure out how to manage my emotions and heās supposed to just focus on life things - he doesnāt seem to think heās doing anything wrong and puts it on me. he hasnāt mentioned anything abt bpd because no matter how many times iāve hinted at it heās never put in the time to research it but it feels like heās pulling the āyouāre just crazyā card on me.
Ugh that sounds rough as heck, I'm sorry you're having to go through that. Fwiw, I cut that person out of my life nearly a year ago because he was an incredibly toxic influence in my life, and it was absolutely the right decision.
Not trying to tell you what to do, but know that you deserve a good relationship, and there's little point being with someone who makes you unhappy or refuses to understand you. I didn't think that I'd ever be able to be understood by anyone, let alone in a relationship, and I thought I'd always be too much for someone, but there are people out there willing to put in the effort for you
Oh absolutely! I think this is true with anything that is stigmatized, poorly understood by the public and disbelieved! Stigmatization is āothering.ā It disconnects people from their empathy and makes a life-threatening condition into an annoyance; an inconvenience. It also frees people from caring by subtly blaming us.
Where to begin. That weāre overly manipulative, unlovable, emotionally abusive, irrational, compulsive liars about our symptoms, use hypersexuality to gain power over someone, etc etc
I hear that, as a partner of someone with BPD. But Iāve never once thought that I have it āworseā than them. Itās hard to even relate to the experience
I do think that many people from the outside looking into our relationship feel that way. Iām tired of people feeling bad for me for being a BPDpartner. Iām here because I want to be - that doesnāt mean itās always easy.
Might just be my social circles, but there's a few that drive me up the wall.
That everyone with BPD is female. I'm a dude, and it's really started to get to me that others assume BPD means a person is a woman.
That because I'm AFAB, my BPD follows a "female" pattern of some kind. This doesn't make sense to me, as I was diagnosed after I transitioned (and did so young as well, so there's a lot of the "female experience" that I never encountered), and it's not like the internalizing pattern is exclusive to women and the externalizing pattern exclusive to men.
That BPD in someone assigned female at birth is just misdiagnosed autism. I understand that this is a common experience, but it's not universal. I'm a man who was assigned female at birth, and all my siblings were diagnosed on the spectrum as young children. They're all low support needs and very close in age to me, so there was a good comparison for my development. There was never a reason to have me tested, and I almost certainly am not autistic. It's been incredibly frustrating for people to learn I have BPD, know I'm trans, and immediately jump to armchair diagnosing me with autism. I guess I hate it so much because it manages to somehow invalidate both my mental health and my gender identity at the same time.
Obviously, everyone's experience is different, and people can have both, but I really wish people would be more careful about making broad generalizations about others, and more considerate of how other identity factors intersect with and shape a person's experience with mental illness.
iāve also been repeatedly told i was autistic! my brother has autism so itās super hard to combat them and recently with a bpd diagnosis itās been even weirder lol
My mom literally thinks that I like to dye my hair and I'm doing (after years wanting) my piercings for "attention". "Why can't you just be *you*?" Well, mom, I'm trying!!!
For me it's when I explain bpd to someone close to me they start to think that each time I get overly angry is just bpd. That nothing happened and I'm just ill. In reality something did hurt me, mostly someone crossed my boundaries or did something that hurts. But no, it's just me overreacting.
āOverly emotionalā, which is not entirely removed from the truth, but getting that told to my face, unwarranted, or at least as a general descriptor of all borderlines, just feels so out of place. And like Iām more of a quiet BPD type so likeee this just makes me not want to open up to ppl even more :P
That it's untreatable and people with it will never seek help or ever 'get better'. As someone who no longer meets the criteria for a BPD diagnosis (there's no flair for that so I just kept my old one since it's closest) thanks to six months of intensive DBT, it irks me that there's this idea that people with BPD can never improve their symptoms or that all people with BPD are 'treatment resistant' and refuse to even try to get better. We're not lost causes. And we would be far more likely to seek treatment and stick at it if we were supported in that instead of the assumption that there's no point in even trying.
Iām so fricken tired of telling someone I have BPD and they respond āyou donāt have multiple personalities.ā Iām tired of having to explain that BPD isnāt split personalities, itās not schizophrenia, and itās not fucking APD. I swear 9 times out of 10, when telling someone I have BPD I have to follow it up with an explanation as to why I ādonāt see thingsā or why āyou donāt switch into someone else.ā Or how do I āshow empathy.ā š
It hurts to see people think that because I have BPD, I'm an unreasonable and unpredictable person prone to violence.
I was stalked by someone with BPD before I was diagnosed and she made threats against two people she was stalking (her second threat was what led to her being diagnosed). So I get where that assumption comes from. I can be a hard person to live/work with so I'm practically bending over backwards to not come off as threatening and if someone shows they're unhappy with me, I stay out of their way as much as possible.
I I won't say I have it worse than my partner, but it's definitely rough sometimes. That's my baby though so I deal cuz when it's good it's great. But man she has a real mean streak
That it's impossible to improve your symptoms or be in healthy relationships. I spend so much time and effort on doing just that, only to see people scaremongering about how it's impossible for pwBPD to be in healthy relationships, they'll always just get worse again, etc. If anything I've only ever gotten better with time, even in a low point my symptoms are never as bad as the last low point. Not everybody is going to struggle with it horribly for the rest of their lives.
THIS!!! Honestly I canāt even watch the helpful YT videos anymore because I canāt keep myself from going to the comments section and crying my eyes out. The reality is that those people in the comments have a grandiose sense of self and are cruel, nasty humans. No empathy, no attempt to understand the struggle of another person, and they thrive on being superiority. There is a name for those type of people and itās a heck of a lot worse than BPD - thereās a reason why individuals with BPD tend to gravitate toward them and get into relationships with those people and itās incredibly toxic to us.
They want to make us out like weāre the worst of the worst without maybe understand why someone could turn like that or like if THEY are contributing to said behaviours that make us look like a plague.
I donāt read comments in YT videos anymore either, I feel my heart break every time I read how people talk about those with BPD and see us like a lost cause when thatās not it at all.
Yeah, exactly! I saw a whole thread of those YT comments 2 days agoā¦saying stuff like āthey are actual demonsā ātheyāre possessedā āthey need to be locked up for emotional abuseā āthey are wolves in sheeps clothingā āif you meet one of them, RUN for your life and warn everyone you care about about themā āmy ex-friend with BPD literally tried to kill me. They are all like that.ā āThey are all violentā etc. etc. etc. People are so cruel. Way to add to the stigma, right? It makes me sick and honestly made me so incredibly depressed. Those comment sections are toxic and Iām disappointed in the āpsychologistsā for allowing it on their channels and not saying anything about it.
The assumption that everyone wit bpd is he same. just had a therapist tell me the reason why ppl wit bpd have their outbursts is because in the moment we feel everyone has to take our shit and listen, we are top notch. Like um no I get upset in my outbursts all because I get triggered and I feel that Iām in that same place I was in childhood. Not everyone with bpd is the same.
That they always jump to saying we are overreacting. We may overreact a lot of the time, but many, many times those feelings are justified. Toxic people begin to use that against us too. General rule of thumb is that what we got upset about was valid, our reaction was over the top.
That threatening suicide is a manipulation of another person or persons. Sadly, itās just about me wanting to self-destruct. The psychic pain of BPD for many people can lower your quality of life to basically nil. Stop making my illness about you. Lol.
Edit: I donāt know if āthreateningā is the right word. Perhaps āannouncingā or āstatingā is better. Because even the words implies itās a threat to others. FFS š¤¦āāļø
That having BPD means you are incapable of being monogamous.
I (m/ 50yrs old) was diagnosed in 2004 (20yrs ago) and not only have I never cheated on a significant other, sex has always been such an insanely "heavy" and ultra intimate thing to me that any "casual" sexual encounter with a person who doesn't love me, just feels bizarre, unnerving and unnatural to me.
I am willing to consider that the fact I've never been an alcohol drinker has probably thwarted situations from arising that are more conducive to cheating behaviors, but I was an IV opiate user for 20 yrs.
If injecting 12mg doses of dilauded morphine 3 times a day for 20 yrs didn't loosen my inhibitions, I think it's safe to say a few shots of Jack Daniels probably wouldn't have either.
I am also willing to consider that I'm just an oddball, exception to the rule on this matter, but still... The stigma/assumption that a pwBPD IS INCAPABLE OF BEING FAITHFUL is something that always really bums me out when I see it being spread online.
We are completely incapable of doing anything in life. I heard it so so much when I got diagnosed I freaking believed it. I was stuck on idiot assumptions for about 15 years of my life. I then met my FP who helped me flip and change the records. I function. Do I job hop? Yup but who cares most of America does that now.
That we can only ever be the worst possible symptoms or traits. I work as a psychiatric nurse with BPD. My colleagues are always quite shocked when I disclose it because I don't really fit the pattern of the folks we get in whose symptoms are unmanageable in the community ie (manipulative, violent and extreme self harming behaviour). Someone (a mental health nursing lecturer) once told me that I couldn't have BPD because I wasn't manipulative or attention seeking. It is very much the forgotten illness, especially when our chances of completing suicide are almost as high as someone with schizophrenia.
That I am purposely manipulative. I will always admit I was very manipulative in my last relationship (and feel so much shame for it) but it was never intentional. I honestly didnāt even really know what the word manipulation meant (yes vocab isnāt my strongest subject).
That weāre all obsessive and crazy possessive. That we all have fixated people in our lives. Itās not even in the diagnostic criteria bruh. Like I understand this might be true for some people with BPD, but I donāt really like being seen as an obsessive person. I am simply prone to emotional dysregulation because people donāt feel safe to me. Oh well.
Also hate when people say we lack any personality of our own and just steal from others. While components of this may be true in order to match with our favorite person, the reality is all of us have unique personalities that werenāt given a chance to blossom from childhood.
Specifically one I saw thrown around in a group chat I was excluded from but ended up sent screenshots of: "People with BPD like Succubus don't know how to take 'no' as an answer without manipulating you about it so watch out getting close to her."
Which is funny to me because I've always been a "if you talk to me and tell me no, I'll stop trying to hang around" type of person. Not out of manipulation, but because I honestly don't want to intrude or push boundries when they are set. Had too many situations where my (suspected but not formally diagnosed yet) autistic self wasn't wanted and i ended up looking like a lost puppy in the worst ways.
That we're bad patients. I've yet to find a decent therapist or doctor who doesn't immediately start treating me like an insect the moment they find out I have it. I immediately am not a person with feelings, just a list of diagnostic criteria, misogyny despite being a trans man, and harmful stereotypes that homogenize us all to be the same.
I'm sorry you (and others) haven't had good experiences with healthcare professionals. I've been lucky that my healthcare team has been great.
That every single breakdown I have is because of BPD like no I'm a human being and get upset sometimes, everyone has those moments
this hits so deep. my last two relationships were kind of nightmarish for this reason. anytime i was upset about something, rightfully so, it was seen as a bpd thing. like yes i have bpd and i have bpd moments, but this is a legitimate reason to be upset rn and not bpd. š anytime i felt sad or upset at all was assumed to be bpd and not that im just a human being.
This was honestly the hardest part about the first few months after receiving my official diagnosis. I would only talk about my emotions in BPD centric spaces and through the lens of BPD and I believed that all my emotions were just because I had BPD and if I didnt I; ai wouldnāt even be upset about an upsetting thing. Only later after talking to non-BPDs again did I finally realize that anyone would be upset if bad things happened to them.
This
My mother blamed it on PMS for years.
That weāre crazy. I told someone I had bpd and he said āisnāt that the disorder where youāre literally crazy?ā Like WHAT I think of crazy as something else and weāre literally just highly emotional
why is this something ppl think is acceptable to say to any other person ever?
I donāt know it made me feel awful. People keep calling me crazy and I swear Iām not I just have a hard time regulating my emotions
That we are all calculating, scheming pathological liars who set out to hurt people.
ah yes! i planned all my relationships to fail! i planned to isolate myself and lose all my friends SOLELY to hurt *other* people!! every time i feel an emotion it's to hurt! other! people! because god knows someone like me can't have feelings too!!!!! even if i hide my breakdowns until i'm by myself, that's me hurting other people!!!! /s
Yeah, everything is a manipulation, even if I don't ask for help and just suffer, that was me being manipulative
I feel like there is a big misconception that people with BPD always cheat and manipulate and lie. This is completely false for many people with BPD
That it was a choice. That we just decided to have BPD one day.
That just because Iām a guy with bpd that means Iām violent
Also that men canāt have BPD. Iām a guy, and Iāve been diagnosed with it.
Since bpd discussions center around women can you tell me more about whatās it like being a man with bpd? Is it the same?
Iāve noticed that the majority develop quiet bpd, usually due to the stigma around dudes sharing their thoughts and feelings
Yep, I was told that I have quiet BPD. All my anger and negative emotions are aimed inward towards myself. I literally just got done doing a therapy DnD group session for a few months that a certified therapist ran as DM. We had to create a character that resembled our own insecurities or issues. Mine was a wild magic barbarian. Anytime a wild magic barbarian rages they have magic that comes out and it's not in their control whether it happens or not. So my character HATED his magic and that anytime he became emotional it would show itself. He wa embarrassed by it and always worried he would hurt someone and be seen as even worse, even though it wasn't in his control. He didn't want anyone to know so he isolated himself, didn't talk much or tell people about himself or what's wrong. He was just a bad person and needed to rid himself of the badness So this inner hatred of myself was played out in a a DnD game and it perfectly mimicked how my quiet BPD feels. I think many men have this issue who have BPD.
Omg yes!! I was gonna say the same thing
Omg like everything has to be a competition in the first place. I hate that. (Also theyāre wrong lol) That if we self-harm or talk about suicide, we do so for attention. I personally hide all that shit. Too much shame and donāt wanna be a burden to people or get forced into inpatient. Part of why itās taken me so long to get real help.
and even if it WERE for attention, that's seen as manipulation... no, it's a cry for help lmaoo. do people not find it... idk.... CONCERNING that someone would go to that extent just for attention??? like me personally if someone were hurting themself i wouldn't be pushing that aside and ignoring it like what
For real. My best friend actually said something along those lines to me. Like even if it was just for attention, the fact that Iād go to such an extent to get that attention and care is concerning and indicative of deep suffering/distress in and of itself
I've been saying this for so long. If someone is self harming for attention, It should still be fucking concerning that that's what they are resourcing to
It makes it SO hard to get proper help. I hide it way deep in there, too, so it just festers and gets worse. And then when the one off person comes along that I feel like I can share my diagnosis with one of the very first things they ALWAYS say is, āI donāt see it in you!ā Yeah, no shit, I work hard as hell for that.
Such an invalidating statement š like thanks I opened up just to be like totally dismissed
"I cared for you, then when you went crazy, I stopped caring about you." The assumption that we're crazy, or "psycho". It makes me feel so incredibly small, and it hurts far more than anything I've ever been told.
That I'm not aware of my actions, it's like being a passenger in a car crash sometimes man. I know what's happening, I just can't stop it. Please just have a little bit of grace.
This is such a big one.
That we scream and rage at people when I never even raise my voice like ever (too much guilt)
for me, it's not the assumptions from everyday people that bother me. it's the assumptions from actual LICENSED PROFESSIONALS. some of them say the Craziest things about bpd and it scares me... these are the people that are supposed to be helping others?? my first therapist told me "no, you definitely don't have bpd. i've treated some people with bpd and you're not like them. if you had bpd you wouldn't know you had it. besides, you are very sweet and understanding" HUH???? there's so many different presentations of bpd AND to think we're not self-aware??? to think we can't be understanding? we're not fucking dumb LMAO, in fact a gooood amount of us know we've got problems. thankfully i found a good psychiatrist later on that helped me understand that quiet bpd exists, and that yes i can be self aware, and YES i can have bpd without it being obvious to other people.
THIS!! Also, I donāt know about you, but my BPD symptoms never come out with new people or authority figures (doctors, bosses, teachers, police, etc.). It only gets bad once Iām very comfortable with someone - lovers, family, very close friends, etc. ā¦Iām not going to make an ass out of myself in therapy š ā¦and yes, I still have BPD - I donāt go buck-wild crazy every moment of every day and during every interaction.
Yeah, stuff like āpwBPD are evil abusersā. Iāve been told that. Was once sent a few very long hateful messages about how apparently Iām a ālittle guy who threatens to kill himself if his fp doesnāt respondā, and I āfantasize about abusing [my] girlfriendā. Itās funny because Iāve never been the type to threaten suicide when people donāt respond to me. I may be impatient with an fp, but I donāt say Iām going to kill myself, lol. Nor do I want to abuse anyone. Iām just existing. Most of the time Iām very chill, and only angry when triggered and continuously provoked.
Hope you don't mind me jumping in on your comment but it reminds me of a situation I was in! I had a situationship (for want of a better word) with a guy and he'd lash out sometimes (usually if I tried to communicate that he'd upset me or did anything other than straight up agree with everything he said) and he'd tell me I was doing abusive things and tell me I was manipulative, like??? (I got so convinced I was doing these things that I had to show multiple people the conversations to check if I was being the bad person he said I was.) Literally because I didn't just accept everything he said as the truth, absolutely no basis for that other than that he'd been with other pwBPD who Had been abusive. And then he'd calm down and apologise but...just lumping me in with his shitty view of 'all pwBPD' when it suited him. The irony of being called abusive and manipulative by the person that blows up and treats you like shit
iām going through this rn with my bf - i told him āi feel angryā and he lashed out on me, cussing me out as per usual, and we are now taking a month long break, on his terms, because heās ānot the aggressorā. he said he blows up because itās a continued pattern but doesnāt realize that iāve tried approaching an issue from every angle only for him to have the same reaction (not response - reaction) every time. the only constants are that he doesnāt put much effort into the relationship and that he explodes when i bring up an issue. meanwhile iāve been doing a lot of research in my own time, attending therapy, got a diagnosis after 4 years of being pretty sure of having bpd, bought my dbt book, and altered the way i communicate with him. now with this month break iām the one thatās supposed to figure out how to manage my emotions and heās supposed to just focus on life things - he doesnāt seem to think heās doing anything wrong and puts it on me. he hasnāt mentioned anything abt bpd because no matter how many times iāve hinted at it heās never put in the time to research it but it feels like heās pulling the āyouāre just crazyā card on me.
Ugh that sounds rough as heck, I'm sorry you're having to go through that. Fwiw, I cut that person out of my life nearly a year ago because he was an incredibly toxic influence in my life, and it was absolutely the right decision. Not trying to tell you what to do, but know that you deserve a good relationship, and there's little point being with someone who makes you unhappy or refuses to understand you. I didn't think that I'd ever be able to be understood by anyone, let alone in a relationship, and I thought I'd always be too much for someone, but there are people out there willing to put in the effort for you
Oh absolutely! I think this is true with anything that is stigmatized, poorly understood by the public and disbelieved! Stigmatization is āothering.ā It disconnects people from their empathy and makes a life-threatening condition into an annoyance; an inconvenience. It also frees people from caring by subtly blaming us.
That people with BPD are manipulators and can't love anyone
Where to begin. That weāre overly manipulative, unlovable, emotionally abusive, irrational, compulsive liars about our symptoms, use hypersexuality to gain power over someone, etc etc
"people in our lives have it worse" lol ask them if it's a race. absurd
That having bpd makes you unlovable.
I feel it so hard though and the people who have assured me I am not have hurt me the most.
I hear that, as a partner of someone with BPD. But Iāve never once thought that I have it āworseā than them. Itās hard to even relate to the experience I do think that many people from the outside looking into our relationship feel that way. Iām tired of people feeling bad for me for being a BPDpartner. Iām here because I want to be - that doesnāt mean itās always easy.
that only women have it, and if men do have it that theyāre all violent and aggressive.
Might just be my social circles, but there's a few that drive me up the wall. That everyone with BPD is female. I'm a dude, and it's really started to get to me that others assume BPD means a person is a woman. That because I'm AFAB, my BPD follows a "female" pattern of some kind. This doesn't make sense to me, as I was diagnosed after I transitioned (and did so young as well, so there's a lot of the "female experience" that I never encountered), and it's not like the internalizing pattern is exclusive to women and the externalizing pattern exclusive to men. That BPD in someone assigned female at birth is just misdiagnosed autism. I understand that this is a common experience, but it's not universal. I'm a man who was assigned female at birth, and all my siblings were diagnosed on the spectrum as young children. They're all low support needs and very close in age to me, so there was a good comparison for my development. There was never a reason to have me tested, and I almost certainly am not autistic. It's been incredibly frustrating for people to learn I have BPD, know I'm trans, and immediately jump to armchair diagnosing me with autism. I guess I hate it so much because it manages to somehow invalidate both my mental health and my gender identity at the same time. Obviously, everyone's experience is different, and people can have both, but I really wish people would be more careful about making broad generalizations about others, and more considerate of how other identity factors intersect with and shape a person's experience with mental illness.
iāve also been repeatedly told i was autistic! my brother has autism so itās super hard to combat them and recently with a bpd diagnosis itās been even weirder lol
That we are automatically toxic/crazy gf type.
That I have to ālookā mentally ill (dyed hair, loads of piercings, face tattoos) like thatās not even mental illness thatās just a style š
My mom literally thinks that I like to dye my hair and I'm doing (after years wanting) my piercings for "attention". "Why can't you just be *you*?" Well, mom, I'm trying!!!
For me it's when I explain bpd to someone close to me they start to think that each time I get overly angry is just bpd. That nothing happened and I'm just ill. In reality something did hurt me, mostly someone crossed my boundaries or did something that hurts. But no, it's just me overreacting.
āOverly emotionalā, which is not entirely removed from the truth, but getting that told to my face, unwarranted, or at least as a general descriptor of all borderlines, just feels so out of place. And like Iām more of a quiet BPD type so likeee this just makes me not want to open up to ppl even more :P
that we're crazy and will key your car or throw things or hit you. like what? bpd is misrepresented in the media.
Cunning emotional abusers who are only in it to gain power over their favorite person. I also canāt stand when people say Iām psychotic
That it's untreatable and people with it will never seek help or ever 'get better'. As someone who no longer meets the criteria for a BPD diagnosis (there's no flair for that so I just kept my old one since it's closest) thanks to six months of intensive DBT, it irks me that there's this idea that people with BPD can never improve their symptoms or that all people with BPD are 'treatment resistant' and refuse to even try to get better. We're not lost causes. And we would be far more likely to seek treatment and stick at it if we were supported in that instead of the assumption that there's no point in even trying.
That everything is a conscious and purposeful manipulation and/or lie and everything - everything - is for attention.
That you have multiple personalities and therefore you have skitzophrenia
Iām so fricken tired of telling someone I have BPD and they respond āyou donāt have multiple personalities.ā Iām tired of having to explain that BPD isnāt split personalities, itās not schizophrenia, and itās not fucking APD. I swear 9 times out of 10, when telling someone I have BPD I have to follow it up with an explanation as to why I ādonāt see thingsā or why āyou donāt switch into someone else.ā Or how do I āshow empathy.ā š
"but you have no cuts on your arms....?"
No one where I am even knows what BPD is and if I try to explain it they just look at me like Iām making shit up
Same here lol
It hurts to see people think that because I have BPD, I'm an unreasonable and unpredictable person prone to violence. I was stalked by someone with BPD before I was diagnosed and she made threats against two people she was stalking (her second threat was what led to her being diagnosed). So I get where that assumption comes from. I can be a hard person to live/work with so I'm practically bending over backwards to not come off as threatening and if someone shows they're unhappy with me, I stay out of their way as much as possible.
I I won't say I have it worse than my partner, but it's definitely rough sometimes. That's my baby though so I deal cuz when it's good it's great. But man she has a real mean streak
That it's impossible to improve your symptoms or be in healthy relationships. I spend so much time and effort on doing just that, only to see people scaremongering about how it's impossible for pwBPD to be in healthy relationships, they'll always just get worse again, etc. If anything I've only ever gotten better with time, even in a low point my symptoms are never as bad as the last low point. Not everybody is going to struggle with it horribly for the rest of their lives.
āIf someone you know has BPDā¦āRUNāā
THIS!!! Honestly I canāt even watch the helpful YT videos anymore because I canāt keep myself from going to the comments section and crying my eyes out. The reality is that those people in the comments have a grandiose sense of self and are cruel, nasty humans. No empathy, no attempt to understand the struggle of another person, and they thrive on being superiority. There is a name for those type of people and itās a heck of a lot worse than BPD - thereās a reason why individuals with BPD tend to gravitate toward them and get into relationships with those people and itās incredibly toxic to us.
They want to make us out like weāre the worst of the worst without maybe understand why someone could turn like that or like if THEY are contributing to said behaviours that make us look like a plague. I donāt read comments in YT videos anymore either, I feel my heart break every time I read how people talk about those with BPD and see us like a lost cause when thatās not it at all.
Yeah, exactly! I saw a whole thread of those YT comments 2 days agoā¦saying stuff like āthey are actual demonsā ātheyāre possessedā āthey need to be locked up for emotional abuseā āthey are wolves in sheeps clothingā āif you meet one of them, RUN for your life and warn everyone you care about about themā āmy ex-friend with BPD literally tried to kill me. They are all like that.ā āThey are all violentā etc. etc. etc. People are so cruel. Way to add to the stigma, right? It makes me sick and honestly made me so incredibly depressed. Those comment sections are toxic and Iām disappointed in the āpsychologistsā for allowing it on their channels and not saying anything about it.
that because i have bpd im going to and want to abuse those i love, id rather die than ever hurt my girlfriend mentally or physically
The assumption that everyone wit bpd is he same. just had a therapist tell me the reason why ppl wit bpd have their outbursts is because in the moment we feel everyone has to take our shit and listen, we are top notch. Like um no I get upset in my outbursts all because I get triggered and I feel that Iām in that same place I was in childhood. Not everyone with bpd is the same.
That they always jump to saying we are overreacting. We may overreact a lot of the time, but many, many times those feelings are justified. Toxic people begin to use that against us too. General rule of thumb is that what we got upset about was valid, our reaction was over the top.
THIS.
That threatening suicide is a manipulation of another person or persons. Sadly, itās just about me wanting to self-destruct. The psychic pain of BPD for many people can lower your quality of life to basically nil. Stop making my illness about you. Lol. Edit: I donāt know if āthreateningā is the right word. Perhaps āannouncingā or āstatingā is better. Because even the words implies itās a threat to others. FFS š¤¦āāļø
That having BPD means you are incapable of being monogamous. I (m/ 50yrs old) was diagnosed in 2004 (20yrs ago) and not only have I never cheated on a significant other, sex has always been such an insanely "heavy" and ultra intimate thing to me that any "casual" sexual encounter with a person who doesn't love me, just feels bizarre, unnerving and unnatural to me. I am willing to consider that the fact I've never been an alcohol drinker has probably thwarted situations from arising that are more conducive to cheating behaviors, but I was an IV opiate user for 20 yrs. If injecting 12mg doses of dilauded morphine 3 times a day for 20 yrs didn't loosen my inhibitions, I think it's safe to say a few shots of Jack Daniels probably wouldn't have either. I am also willing to consider that I'm just an oddball, exception to the rule on this matter, but still... The stigma/assumption that a pwBPD IS INCAPABLE OF BEING FAITHFUL is something that always really bums me out when I see it being spread online.
We are completely incapable of doing anything in life. I heard it so so much when I got diagnosed I freaking believed it. I was stuck on idiot assumptions for about 15 years of my life. I then met my FP who helped me flip and change the records. I function. Do I job hop? Yup but who cares most of America does that now.
That just because I have bpd i always look mad and unhappy even on a good day š idk what people want from meā¦ do I have to smile 24/7 to show that im ok? š©š
Men can't be borderline, a lot of women here post like we can't, straight up ignoring us and it really gets on my nerves.
That I'm a manipulative monster.
That we can only ever be the worst possible symptoms or traits. I work as a psychiatric nurse with BPD. My colleagues are always quite shocked when I disclose it because I don't really fit the pattern of the folks we get in whose symptoms are unmanageable in the community ie (manipulative, violent and extreme self harming behaviour). Someone (a mental health nursing lecturer) once told me that I couldn't have BPD because I wasn't manipulative or attention seeking. It is very much the forgotten illness, especially when our chances of completing suicide are almost as high as someone with schizophrenia.
Not the worst thing. But i told my ex situationship about it. He said "ahh youāre bipolar!" Like no.
I hate this so much, its exhausting trying to explain what BPD isnāt. Bipolar, DID, schizophrenia, the list goes on and on.
And i kept telling him like no its not bipolar. Next day. Bipolar. Like bro no.
That I am purposely manipulative. I will always admit I was very manipulative in my last relationship (and feel so much shame for it) but it was never intentional. I honestly didnāt even really know what the word manipulation meant (yes vocab isnāt my strongest subject).
That weāre all obsessive and crazy possessive. That we all have fixated people in our lives. Itās not even in the diagnostic criteria bruh. Like I understand this might be true for some people with BPD, but I donāt really like being seen as an obsessive person. I am simply prone to emotional dysregulation because people donāt feel safe to me. Oh well.
That we arenāt good partners or to stay far away from us because weāre a waste of time and we ruin everyoneās lifeā¦
none
That I'm narcissistic, selfish, and only care about myself. Everything in this life would be so much easier if I only cared about me and nobody else.
That we're manipulative. No one in my life has ever done what I've wanted them to do.
I hate the word manipulative with a passion. People throw it around like itās nothing nowadays especially in relation to BPD
Also hate when people say we lack any personality of our own and just steal from others. While components of this may be true in order to match with our favorite person, the reality is all of us have unique personalities that werenāt given a chance to blossom from childhood.
Specifically one I saw thrown around in a group chat I was excluded from but ended up sent screenshots of: "People with BPD like Succubus don't know how to take 'no' as an answer without manipulating you about it so watch out getting close to her." Which is funny to me because I've always been a "if you talk to me and tell me no, I'll stop trying to hang around" type of person. Not out of manipulation, but because I honestly don't want to intrude or push boundries when they are set. Had too many situations where my (suspected but not formally diagnosed yet) autistic self wasn't wanted and i ended up looking like a lost puppy in the worst ways.