Demonized BPD: Save Your Stigma

When you Google “books on BPD” (abbreviation for the psychiatric diagnosis “borderline personality disorder”), among the first offers that appear are the following copies: “Stop walking on eggshells: regain control of the behavior of a person with borderline personality disorder “and” Loving someone with borderline personality disorder: How to ensure that uncontrolled emotions do not destroy the relationship.

I try to convince myself that the authors of these books had the best of intentions. I am aware that my BPD diagnosis impacts my relationships (as practically any diagnosis would, to a greater or lesser extent), that it influences the way I treat others, especially those closest to me. I watch with pain how sometimes my anger attacks, my dissociations, my anxiety, my trauma, my panic of separation or abandonment (to name a few “symptoms”) hurt my loved ones alike.

I am aware that, just as my loved ones strive to adapt to my “special needs” that society calls them and to my limitations, it is in my power to make an effort myself to control my behavior because no psychiatric diagnosis is an excuse to treat worse to nobody. Thus, whoever wants to remove me from his life for not being willing to live with my “madness” or my ailments is within his right; and whoever sticks and stays deserves my care, deserves to be taken into account when expressing my emotions.

But this does not mean that it bothers me at least to seek help to live with such a disabling diagnosis and to find that two of the most famous books that deal with BPD pose my experience as that of a relationship-destroying monster.

If I get fussy, it might even seem unfair to see my loved ones as “victims” of my diagnosis when too often they have had so much to do throughout my life that I end up living my emotions in this way. In this pathological way before society and doctors. Let’s share responsibilities (which you don’t blame), please, before we dramatically victimize ourselves.

And this is related to the belief that people with psychiatric diagnoses go through life doing harm and are “dangerous” without medication and without treatment (and I say this from my perspective of a patient who takes medication and receives therapeutic treatment). When there are already studies that show that in reality our diagnoses make us more often the target of violence and damage, being us the target and not the one who shoots.

I repeat, all this does not mean that there are people with BPD who have hurt others. It’s undeniable. I’ve done. But it exhausts me that a behavior of mine that could be found in another “healthy” person is directly related to my diagnosis, that the dots are tied so quickly and it seems to conclude that relating to someone like me is “walking on eggshells.”

I have been hurt too much, directly or indirectly, more or less subtly and voluntarily or unintentionally by “healthy” people before society for me to now be willing to allow outbursts of anger or damage to be blamed solely on a diagnosis . Especially when, as a woman, I’ve been redirecting this anger towards myself for so long in the form of self-injury.

How to help a person with BPD

So, in my opinion, if you want to help a close person with this diagnosis (and even another) please listen to them before reading these books. Ask yourself what you are willing to give as a person and what you hope to receive, and if the balance is positive, then stay.

Because it is possible to prioritize your own well-being and take into account at the same time that of your loved one, with BPD or not. Because it is possible to find a middle ground.

And I do not believe, personally, that those two books (which are nothing more than common examples of a culture that demonizes us people with disabling psychiatric diagnoses) hold the key to this peace pact as the most sincere and most sincere conversations do. possible assertions.