So I've seen how the debate over self-diagnosing has blown up on this sub lately and wanted to add my own experience in the hopes it might help some people. Sorry for the long post and thank you to anyone who reads it all the way through.

I was diagnosed with BPD earlier this year with the help of my therapist who was pre-licensed. He referred me to a psychologist he knew who made the diagnosis official after assessing me. I learned after the fact that my therapist, being pre-licensed, was NOT supposed to make any sort of diagnostic call like this, but he trusted his gut, and I will forever be grateful to him for getting me this diagnosis even though it risked his career. I am extremely fortunate. The diagnosis itself has really has helped me understand myself better, has been an amazing tool for self-reflection and self-improvement, and has– most importantly– validated my lifelong belief that there was something fundamentally different about me from neurotypical people, and it wasn't until I understood how my BPD contributed to that difference that I felt I was able to do something about it. 

About a month ago, I ended up committing myself to a mental hospital because I was in a dark place and was afraid to be alone with myself. It was my first time being committed, and it was awful. While it did help me get over that especially strong suicidal spell, that was mainly due to the other patients there who helped me get perspective on my life and appreciate that my situation really isn't so bad. The staff, on the other hand, were uncaring, discompassionate, and rude. 

The worst part came when I met with the psychologist, who I only met with twice for 15 minutes each. I told him I had been diagnosed with BPD and was suffering from really intense and dark mood swings. This absolute asshat heard "mood swings" and almost immediately diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder. I tried to tell him that my therapist and outpatient psychologist had already ruled out Bipolar Disorder for me. I tried to explain why I felt like Bipolar was not applicable to me. He even had me fill out a diagnostic inventory questionnaire specific to Bipolar symptoms to see if I qualified for the diagnosis, and for almost every question my answers indicated I did not suffer from Bipolar. 

But this psychologist wouldn't hear it. He dismissed and invalidated my BPD diagnosis everytime I tried to explain why I know that's what I have. There was a med student in the room observing our meeting, and at one point the psychologist just started ignoring me, turned to the med student, and said: "You see, Borderline is really the waste paper basket of mental illness diagnoses. It's just a mish-mash of a bunch of different symptoms that most doctors don't understand, but they feel like they have to label it something, and so they call it 'Borderline'. But if Borderline really exists, it's simply not treatable. Medications don't work, and DBT doesn't work. So there is no point in entertaining this diagnosis because there's simply nothing you can do with it."

He completely invalidated me, my feelings, my symptoms, my diagnosis, my hope for treatment, and he didn't even look at me when he did it. He said all this to some med student in the room and then he just increased my dosage of Depakote (a mood stabilizer typically prescribed for Bipolar patients) and asked me to leave. I felt crushed and grabbed a nurse and insisted upon being discharged immediately. After I put up a fuss and threatened to sue and talk to someone in the media about how awful their hospital is, they agreed to let me go that day. In the weeks that followed, I met back with the original psychologist my therapist set me up with, and he reaffirmed my BPD diagnosis while disaffirming the Bipolar diagnosis I had just been given. My OG psychologist also reassured me that BPD is much more treatable than that shitty psychologist had made it out to be.

I count myself lucky. From what I've heard, so many mental health professionals (especially older, more traditional ones) have this attitude about BPD. They're simply confused and frustrated by it, they think it's too difficult to treat, and they would prefer to deal with a patient who has a disorder they can fix primarily by throwing medication at it. For so many professionals, BPD is just a "waste paper basket" they will not even consider or that they may even invalidate as a general rule. They think it's untreatable or something that was made up as a catch-all for miscellaneous personality disorder traits. It's honestly a miracle I was able to get diagnosed as quickly as I was.

While I generally do not advocate self-diagnosing, I get why self-diagnosing is the only option for people who don't have access to good mental health care. It's a particularly difficult diagnosis to lock down. If you think you might have BPD, being able to confirm that is hugely validating and, for me, it really helped me begin to work on myself and manage the symptoms of my disorder that were going unchecked and ruining my life. So I think– if it really helps you understand yourself better, if it helps improve your mental health, if it makes your life better– diagnosing yourself with BPD can be a good and necessary step on the path to healing, especially if you're not as fortunate as me in the quality of mental health professionals you have treating you. But I think it's equally important to remember that, if you do self-diagnose, you're playing with fire a bit. Because you're not a qualified mental health professional, you could be wrong, and the time you spend convinced you have a personality disorder you don't, in fact, have can potentially change the way you behave, and not for the better. You could end up acquiring or worsening certain traits of the disorder you believe you have. You could end up hurting yourself and hurting others around you. 

So IF you have diagnosed yourself, I think you should feel welcome and find the help and community you're looking for here. But you need to use GREAT CAUTION and really, really do your research on the disease from credible sources (NOT TIKTOK OR ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM)  BEFORE you settle on the diagnosis. Most importantly, you also NEED to actively be pursuing some form of therapy and you NEED to be finding ways to do the work to manage the disorder you've diagnosed yourself with. That is the point of getting diagnosed. Seek counseling, find DBT programs or classes (you don't need a formal BPD diagnosis to do these), practice mindfulness— DO. THE. WORK. Because, as others have pointed out, BPD is not fun or something to take lightly. While it's valid that you want the diagnosis, the underlying disorder itself is not something you should want, and you don't want to spread misinformation about. It is not a badge for you to wear and not something to make part of your identity. It is a POTENTIALLY LETHAL DISEASE that RAVAGES your identity, and you should only self-diagnose if your goal is to better equip yourself to fight that disease and save yourself from it.


I love this community and I hope it can be a safe place of empathy and understanding for anyone who feels like they might belong here, as it has been for me since I was diagnosed. Thanks for reading.