I'm in the UK, so we refer to it as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, but I will refer to it as BPD in this post since that's better known. My official diagnosis is BPD with avoidant traits.

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If I may speak frankly, I feel like this diagnosis is a death sentence. I feel like I've been handed an official, notarised document telling me I'm a bad person. As it happens, I already thought of myself as being a bad/evil person, but I guess I maintained a small hope that I just had really low self-esteem and my view of myself was warped. It wasn't warped and I wasn't being cruel to myself. I really am just that awful.

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I don't want to further demonise any of you who have also been diagnosed with BPD and I actually wouldn't consider you to be bad people. But for me, this diagnosis is a confirmation of every terrible thing I have ever believed about myself, and I can't bear it. Thinking about it makes me feel like my head is about to explode. 

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There is a wellbeing service I attend and I have a support worker there. I really felt like I'd built up a solid, professional relationship with her (less formal than patient/doctor but similar). However, over the year that I've been assigned to her, she would dismiss any negative things that I said about myself, but then referred me to be assessed for BPD for the exact same aspects of my personality that I criticised. That doesn't make sense to me. 

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It feels like so many life goals I had have just been extinguished. Completing a degree, being in a long-term relationship, being a mother... How can I do that? How can I accomplish any of that when I'm just this vat of poison? I feel so afraid and so hopeless. I really wanted to be a good person, and I think I could have been good if I'd just tried harder, but now I'm permanently stained by this BPD diagnosis. I'm so disappointed in myself and disappointed by my own weakness and cowardice. I don't want this to be who I am.