TL;DR, I’ve been given conflicting feedback of being completely neuro typical or BPD a couple times and I’m confused because I dont relate to the experiences I read here or the DSM V definition. The background is relevant to why I’m seeking answers:


My mother sent me to therapy when I was a teen because she would have these blowout fights with me every time I’d give her attitude and it got to the point she’d scream in my face or slap me. As an adult I look back and just realize I was being a bitchy teen but anyway, it always left me feeling overwhelmingly guilty and I started cutting myself just to snap out of all that I was feeling. I was diagnosed as BPD at 15 through a short one page survey and a 20 minute interview with a psychiatrist I’d never met before. I recall trying to be very generous with my answers and with how bpd is and being a teen, I’m not surprised I qualified. Like, I didn’t fear abandonment but that sounded like it would be a reasonable thing to fear so “yes.” But the truth is, I read books about it and couldn’t relate. I tried medication and it gave me mood swings which I realized I’d never experienced before. But my mom always told me there was something wrong with me so this diagnosis always lingered in the back of my mind making me doubt myself.

My family is very invalidating and my brother went out of his way to manipulate me, and abuse me physically and sexually. Nevertheless I always felt like I had a happy childhood. I’ve always been very happy in general. 

The problem I see now at 35 years old is that I was in relationships my whole life with unhealthy men. Children of addicts, alcoholics. I didn’t know that at the time but it came out later. I was in two LTR’s then was single for the first time really in my later 20’s and got raped three times by being drugged in otherwise very normal situations. This didn’t drag me down since I didn’t feel that it reflected on me and the experience itself wasn’t terribly traumatic. 

What was traumatic was that I worked really hard on myself to build a solid successful career, put myself through school, have a healthy savings and good credit, and to stop attracting predators. I met a man who was incredibly popular and sweet, talented, wonderful personality and happened to be successful and wealthy. I thought I was finally reaping the rewards of my hard work and was very happy. Unfortunately, the level of psychological abuse I experienced over the next four years was literally unbelievable. I felt like I was going crazy and the old concerns about bpd made me doubt myself enough to stay and to create a diary of suspicious events and disappearances just to combat the gaslighting. My therapist was there when I finally put an end to it and validated all of the weird effects it was having on me. She thought he was likely aspd and felt my reactions were normal. 

Smashcut to a few months later. I’m struggling with some depression but quickly getting my life back on a new track. I happen to have an autoimmune condition and I share the experience of many others that I’m being denied medical attention and told I’m crazy because my symptoms aren’t severe enough yet to be “valid” despite being debilitating. Again Im having my sanity questioned. 

So in a PMS’y exasperated moment I begged my therapist to “be real” with me. She’s told me all along that I’m normal. I had brain scans done in neurofeedback and those came out neurotypical (except the past few years abuse showed up). So she says again “I don’t know how many times I can tell you you’re normal” but then contradicts herself saying she was in a difficult place because she thought I felt like a diagnosis would upset me (?). I had to remind her I was paying her $600/mo to be honest with me. She points to the diary keeping in the manipulative relationship and the timelines of my life she’d asked me to create for her as evidence i was disordered. I’d never done that in any other scenario and the timeline she’d asked me to create I specifically put in a lot of effort to be pithy and detailed. I want therapy to be productive, not her prying info out of me. 

She got mad at me for this interjection and wouldn’t continue her thoughts despite my apologies. She hasn’t scheduled another appointment with me which just feels bizarre and a little unprofessional. 


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So, she and I had previously gone through various DSM V definitions and I just don’t fit them. Yet she seems to think i have bpd anyway. So I want to understand if anyone else feels this way:


I don’t fear abandonment at all. I don’t chase people who leave my life or worry that they will. Only the two breakups that were legitimately traumatic were hard for me. Others have been fine. 

I don’t idealize or devalue or have black and white thinking. 

My self image and goals are very stable/consistent even if I do feel hopeless and ugly after a relationship that told me I was for years. 

I’m not impulsive 

I’ve had suicidal thoughts and hit myself after hours/days/weeks of nonstop abuse and circular arguments with this person who was manipulating me. My therapist thinks they were pushing me to that deliberately though. 

I feel depressed and anxious and a little empty now but not usually. Definitely not when things are stable. 

I’ve never dissociated. 



I don’t fit criteria for any other PD or ED either. I am editing my question to ask if anyone here has the diagnosis and also doesn’t relate to the criteria?