I’ve been diagnosed for years and it never made sense to me. Other diagnoses I’ve had sometimes just “click” immediately and I can go, “oh, yeah, I never considered that but of course that’s it”. But BPD… nope. I was just confused about it. It just does not feel right to me in my gut. I’ve actually been diagnosed with 8 mental illnesses in total, but nobody ever focusses on anything except the BPD. It sits like lead ball in my belly, you know, like  that gut feeling that something is extremely wrong but nobody else sees it. I’ve had many borderline friends and I am nothing like any of them.

I fully admit I for the criteria. I’m not doubting that. I just think the criteria I fit is better explained by one of my 7 other diagnoses, or perhaps autism and/or cptsd (which I am not diagnosed with but highly suspect I have).

But….. every time I try to bring it up with a   doctor/psychiatrist/therapist, I get shot down. Immediately. No matter what I suggest, such as screeners or differential diagnoses or even asking for a explanation of my bpd diagnosis. And it’s not like I’ve asked just once. I’ve been through 4 therapists and 3 psychiatrists the last 5 or so years. Most of those barely even met with me before immediately referring me to someone else without even telling me my diagnosis or why they’re ditching me as a client. My mom (more on her later) is a therapist and has been telling me for years that the reason why professionals hate me without saying why is because I have bpd, and she doesn’t blame them because she also hates borderlines. Which…… is understandably extremely upsetting and traumatic, and has been making my treatment WAY harder and slower than it needs to be.

Mom has been making the medical abuse worse single-handedly. I am the scapegoat child of narcissistic parents, and so my mom tends to hyperfixate on my mental illnesses as personal flaws to the point of being emotionally abusive. She also projects onto me  a LOT and brings up random bpd symptoms in random situations that have nothing to do with it, as a weird bargaining chip to show how untrustworthy and broken I am. But at the same time she accuses me of malingering because I’ve been taking longer than 6 months to be cured from two decades of complex trauma. While I’m still living in the traumatic environment. She actually said that to me. And there’s countless more stories like that, just from her. And she is a THERAPIST!

My current therapist is the first I’ve ever had that wasn’t pre-approved by my mom. I had to take extreme measures to make sure she wouldn’t hunt her down and contact her and try to get involved in my diagnosis and treatment like she’s done so often in the past. I’ve event had to warn my local mental health treatment hub to stop giving her my confidential information. Because she will call them up and lie about me being underage to get my personal information from them. I’m 26, dammit! I’m an adult!! In the past, on the topic, my mom has said “I know a lot of people, so they tell me things they wouldn’t tell other people”. That’s terrifying, right? Coming from your abuser? Controlling the only way you can get mental health treatment in the whole ass city? 

I like my current therapist a lot, and she conceded that I likely have a mix of bpd and cptsd, but she is absolutely unwilling to budge on the bpd thing. Last session she asked me why I’m so insistent that I don’t have bpd, and I just replied, “I’ve been treated like absolute garbage by so many therapists and doctors because of it, can you blame me?” Because I have. A giant chunk of my trauma and difficulty in getting any kind of actual treatment is because of my medical trauma. Being tossed around and not told my diagnosis and not getting treatment because I was never told my diagnoses until recently, when my currently therapist read them off my file. I learned I had ocd…. Nobody EVER told me I had ocd! How am I supposed to heal from my crippling anxiety if I didn’t even know why I was having it? Let alone the personality disorders and all the other stuff they didn’t mention or treat me for but discriminated against me for!

Last thing I want to mention is that I’m trans. I was assigned female at birth (AFAB) and identify as a nonbinary boy. But I look female in every way, due to reasons beyond my control. But I’m not a woman. My brain does not work like a woman’s brain, it’s always been closer to a man’s brain (of course brains are not inherently gendered but gendered socialization tends to create a slight gender divide in thinking patterns). But since I look female on the outside and the majority of people diagnosed with bpd are female, I fit the “look”. I told my currently therapist about my little sister’s bf who was diagnosed with bpd and had a super great treatment experience with no discrimination at all… my therapist immediately told me “that story doesn’t make any sense, he must not have bpd”, to which I replied “of course you immediately assumed I got the story wrong, because he’s a cis guy and doesn’t fit the ‘look’ of bpd like I do”. 

I know I’m coming off as anti-bpd or anti-therapist, but I’m honestly not. I’m just desperately trying to understand myself. I’m not convinced that bpd is the sole cause of all my problems like people keep making it out to be. I’m not even fully convinced I have it at all. Regardless, because of the way it’s gotten me treated since the time (I suspect) I was first diagnosed, I don’t consider it an acceptable diagnosis for me. But I want to heal and grow and get better… it just seems completely hopeless for me at this point. It feels like a curse that was placed on me to always be treated like crap by mental health professionals and forever misgendered with no way out. Forever misunderstood and alone.