I love Reddit. There is a community here for everybody. But there are certain subreddits that I am now removing myself from because I am sick of our illness being stigmatised by armchair psychologists who want to blame a person’s shitty behaviour on BPD despite the fact that all they know about that person’s clinical history is a few sentences about a single interaction.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been consistently abused throughout my life by people with mental illness and I understand how destructive a person’s actions can be when they refuse to address their issues and instead use it as an excuse to justify their awful behaviour. But we’re not all like that. I have done my best to break the cycle and distance myself from those people as well as using their behaviour as a template of what **not** to do. Some of us have devoted ourselves to recovery and to respecting and trying to add value to the lives of our loved ones.

I will be the first to admit that I have not always been perfect but I have done my best to atone not only by apologising for my poor behaviour but *demonstrating* that I am committed to change. I attend regular psychotherapy sessions and take my medication every day. I meditate and use mindfulness techniques to defuse. I try to put myself in somebody else’s shoes and adjust my behaviour accordingly. I strive every day to prove to myself that my disease does not control or define who I am as a person so I find it pretty hurtful when somebody says things like “all BPDs are crazy abusers, cut them loose”. We are human beings. We are more than a diagnosis. Painting all of us with the same brush is offensive and ignorant and just adds to the stigma of mental illness.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk