Is there anybody else out there who was diagnosed “late” in life? All I read, both here and elsewhere, is stories of people diagnosed in their teens and early twenties, with even people who got their diagnosis in their late twenties worried that it’s “too late” for them to truly heal.

I’m currently 44 years old and was just diagnosed with BPD last year. Before that I was pegged with just about everything else you can make: major depressive disorder, acute panic disorder, ADHD, bipolar I and II and so on and so forth. In hindsight BPD makes complete sense, to the point where I wonder if past therapists suspected the same but simply didn’t want to mention the dreaded B-word.

As a middle-aged man suffering from this disorder, there seems to be basically zero representation of anyone like me out in the world, and I can barely find any online resources that discuss people in my situation. In addition to the regular negative thoughts that tell me that I’ve wasted my entire life (I feel like a colossal underachiever for my age), I also have the nagging thought that at my age I no longer have the sort of neuroplasticity needed to “change my brain”.

I would LOVE to hear from others who have had to struggle with BPD in middle age, especially ones with success stories to tell. What has worked? What have the challenges been? Surely I can’t be the only one out there!