in your opinion/if you have it or have family members, friends, colleagues or a partner/ex-partner with it, does BPD deserve the negative representation it often gets as a condition, in the popular media and also in real life ?

[Nonoanddefintelyno]

I read somewhere that bpd can be compared to having full thickness, raw burns all over ones body as a representation of how it feels for people with BPD to try and get through a day where the otherwise smallest social interaction, look or body language change, can cause genuine alarm, fear of abandonment or provoke intense anger in someone with the condition. I imagine it must be really shitty to deal with as the sufferer and i generally feel like virtually everyone with BPD has developed the condition because they have been exposed to or have had to experience a higher number of traumatic life events compared to the general population. Ive often heard BPD be described as the form of PTSD that never actually got diagnosed so it just turned into BPD because it wasnt recognized that it started as PTSD initially

You do mean Borderline or EUPD? Not bipolar dont you?

Borderline personality disorder and eupd are the same thing bipolar is completely different

What do you mean by 'unconditional love'?
That those around them need to put up with abusive, controlling behaviours, unconditionally?

As a Psychotherapist I totally agree.
This thread is disgusting.

I know two people diagnosed with BPD. The first a relative has all the same symptoms as my daughter, my daughter has an autism diagnosis.
The second a friend is a lovely person, tries to help people and takes on too much, she has infrequent phases where her emotions are just too much for herself and others and she hurts herself. But in all honesty I don't see her in any of the descriptions of BPD, I'd says she has been damaged by awful, awful medical treatment and probably has some form of ND.

People should be allowed to share their experiences on here, and shutting down a thread and calling it disgusting is just a way to prevent people from having differences of opinion.

I agree - and we can see a wide range of experiences which ironically helps dispel myths and harmful stereotypes.

Life is relational and both parties involved in any connection have the right to speak out their lived experience and not be silenced. Discussion is an opportunity for education and understanding.

Have you been on the receiving end of abuse from a person with a PD including BPD?

I think as a psychotherapist more than most you should be aware that there are two sides to every story and both sides are valid.

By all means discuss your experiences but as a psychotherapist you surely should know that dismissing abuse is not appropriate ever.

I think the point is not to undermine your experiences of abuse at the hands of a person with this diagnosis. It's a challenge to your insistence that all people with this diagnosis must be like that person was.

Through work I deal with a lot of traumatised women. Many are diagnosed with BPD or EUPD but actually have complex PTSD. The presentation is remarkably similar but a BPD assessment doesn’t look at traumatic incidents in the same detail. Part of my job involves having women properly assessed and in all but one matter I have worked on, once their traumatic past is properly considered by an independent psychiatrist, they are found to have PTSD, not BPD.

The stigma attached to having BPD is huge, and women with the diagnosis are routinely disbelieved regarding other matters because they are considered unreliable and even liars due to the diagnosis. I have seen this so many times that I think it is another example of misogyny in medicine.

The other day, a thread describing people with ADHD as irritating and annoying for talking a lot about their diagnosis was taken down for being ableist and causing distress.

This thread, describing people with BPD as "nasty, abusive, lying, manipulative, attention seeking, mugs, victim mentality, run for the hills, don't touch them with a ten foot barge pole, deserve negative representation, deserve the reputation, aren't worth the hassle or effort, a fucking nightmare"

Those are all direct quotes.Admin, can you please step in here? Given that a thread that described some people with ADHD as irritating and annoying was taken down, it is hard to see why this thread, describing a different disability in far more disgusting terms, is allowed to stand

Imagine if it was said about any other group of people protected by the Equality Act (because yes, it is a mental illness and a disability, and in law a protected characteristic)

Free speech does not equate to hate speech. Admin, please can you help here?

Those are your words not mine, I have spoken about my own experiences of BPD, relational patterns that are harmful to abusive, the fact that it looks nothing like ASD.

There are two sides to BPD the sufferer and the people in the other side of the relational harm from the condition. By definition the condition as part of its diagnosis require that relational harm/maintaining relationships as part of the condition. It is intrinsically linked to the condition.

@Wimble2 Some of us on here are abuse victims and have had our lives ruined. The abuse I went through was over five years ago and I am still in therapy and still picking up the pieces of my life (which included a massive smear campaign against me for things I didn't do). We are speaking out about our experiences of knowing and being involved with people with BPD. While I don't think "everyone" with BPD is like this, I still find myself extremely worried about being around people who have the condition. That is a result of MY trauma, MY experience, and the abuse that I was put through. My story also deserves to be told.

To their own detriment? I noticed this comment, too. In my experience, it doesn't matter how much love you pour. My friend's need was bottomless and all-consuming. That's not fair to anyone.

I don't understand what you mean by "those are your words not mine". I've given my understanding of what I think your position is, but if I'm wrong just tell me.

I have done that with my posts.

I don’t think everyone with any diagnosis is the same those are your words and I’ve spoken about my own experiences of BPD and the rest is your interpretation of my words.

YOUR story does deserve to be told. But not in a way that actively harms other people. Many of the comments on this thread are in themselves a form of abuse.

Imagine if, for example, a person had been severely physically harmed by a profoundly autistic person (it happens) , and there was a four page thread asking for opinions on autistic people, and people repeatedly used abusive and harmful stereotypes. To say that thread was harmful would not be to invalidate the experience of the injured person. It would be protect nonviolent autistic people from verbal abuse and stigma.

This thread is disgusting.

Please quote and highlight anything I’ve said that actively harms others.

To be fair I do think this is true of a lot of people who don't have a PD. A very "normal" ex of mine was dating women in their early 20s when he was mid 40's, cheated on a long term partner with a family member of his (which he never disclosed to her) and remains friends pretending to be a support to her and confidant. He has never ever once reflected on his behaviours and how they hurt people around him and is anti-therapy yet continues to date people and cause havoc in other people's lives. He once said to me "why do women always want the bad guys?" not recognising himself at all.

At least most of the people with BPD I know have engaged with therapy at some point. It's obviously better for them and people around them if they keep going but at least they have some awareness they need help. I say that having had the father of my child stalk me and try to take my child away from me through the Court system - despite having multiple current addictions.

I strongly suspect my SIL has BPD.

I can't say if it's down to the fact she's not being treated but she's made our lives hell for years. It would take me hours to list everything she's put us through and the things she's done. We've finally gone NC because she's a danger to us and our family. That doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to her.

The other person I know who has BPD has never been horrible to me particularly. For a while she was really friendly with my DH and I and seemed to think we were amazing and it did make us feel special. I thought we were good friends. Then, one day, she stopped responding to our messages, uninvited us to a party she was having and never spoke to us again. We bumped into her in town once and she was really awkward and clearly didn't want to talk to us. It hurt but I've let it go. My DH was more upset about it.

The thing with all the Cluster B personality disorders is that they do result in collateral damage to family members and sufferers are often reluctant to get treatment or diagnosis.

It's interesting that you rarely hear people calling for more compassion for people with NPD, although there's a lot of crossover.

I suggest you take another look at the diagnostic criteria as stated in ICD.

Nowhere in the diagnostic criteria is relational harm mentioned.

Difficulty maintaining relationships is mentioned, but this is also true of diagnostic criteria for many other conditions

Relational harm is not a criteria for BPD diagnosis.

And this is exactly why this thread is so damaging. It is full of misinformation.

👏👏👏👏

I think treated and controlled BPD, and never been treated BPD, are often two very different things. Many people work extremely hard in therapy to understand themselves and get themselves back on an even keel often after a very traumatic childhood and subsequent BPD diagnosis.

I think the professionals on here have to remember though that dealing with anyone with an untreated personality disorder can be extremely challenging and often abusive. People aren't going to have huge sympathy for a physically abusive man on the basis he is mentally ill with antisocial personality disorder and has a history of being abused himself. It's not realistic to expect people to have huge sympathy and understanding for an untreated condition that can lead to a person being very abusive to others, whether that's emotionally or physically. And people with untreated BPD can be very emotionally abusive. I would have to agree with others that it is best not to be in a relationship with anyone with untreated BPD and I would expect this is where most of the very negative posts are coming from.

I spent 25 years with someone I now suspect has covert NPD, it was so subtle and manipulative that I spent most of that time wondering whether I was just unreasonable or if there was something really wrong with me - he completely messed up my head. Lying was more natural and safer for him than telling the truth. He had no idea who he was, he was like a chameleon that would be what he thought people wanted (including me). Sometimes he would 'try on' different personalities. He had no empathy (but knew how to pretend he did) and no remorse, nothing was ever his fault and he had no genuine depth to him, everything was fake and superficial. He secretly thought he was amazing and there was something wrong with people for not recognising his amazingness, he was constantly looking to be complimented. People were pawns to him, useful or not useful, binned off when not useful. I was like his pet, I belonged to him and he thought I was lucky to have him, he told me at the end that he'd never actually wanted to be with me, he just didn't have anyone else. He had spent 25 years pretending to me, my family, our friends etc that he loved me, but my whole life had actually been a sham. It was on MN that I first learnt the term covert narcissist.

Would the professionals on this thread expect people with a non medical background to be as sympathetic and understanding towards other personality disorders such as NPD or anti social personality disorder I wonder? Both also often stem from childhood trauma. If not why not?

I think it's also worth mentioning that people with ASD and ADHD are at higher risk of developing personality disorders due to the difficulties and trauma they often go through as children. ASD may be misdiagnosed as BPD but it is also quite possible to have both.

But that's what @scoobysnaxx and @MoonWindy were saying, that this thread contains a lot of generalisations about people with EUPD that don't apply to all such people, and you took issue with that and said that @scoobysnaxx obviously hadn't been on the receiving end of abuse from someone with BPD. I'm sorry if I haven't understood you properly but I don't understand what your problem was with what they said.

@CarterBeatsTheDevil I am not expecting people with BPD to like what I have to say about my experiences of people in my life with BPD. Maybe it might trigger something in them like unfairness or shame (it is not their shame to bear) or maybe they are projecting themselves into those descriptions where they don’t apply.

It is a relational disorder and there are patterns that come up for suffers that impact on their ability to maintain relationships and yes that is typically shows up in relational harm because we end relationships due to relational harm.

It is the condition (trauma based though it is) that gives rise to the relational patterns. I had significant trauma in childhood and by any standards my family fits in the extremes of dysfunction so I do know how difficult childhood trauma is to deal with so I am sympathetic to sufferers, my husband was raised with one of the people I am speaking about so he knows intrinsically the pain growing up in that environment.

We are not immune to the fact that she is suffering, and not everyone with BPD is going to have the same relational patterns and not everyone with BPD is going to have the same level of resistance to treatment but the experience of dealing with her is challenging.