I'm very confused about this as a notion. I'm feeling opposite things with regard to this, and I'm being told opposing things too. 

Common wisdom seems to hold that people with BPD are emotionally immature, that we have some 'arrested development' situation going on with our emotions. My psychiatrist seems to imply that I'm emotionally immature, or at least underdeveloped. However, people fairly unanimously tell me that I'm particularly mature for my age. Some people have described my supposed maturity as 'scary' for my years, which confuses me, considering what I've been told. It's true that when I get really upset, there's no maturity anymore. Is emotionally mature an interchangeable term with mature in general? I don't know. 

And what about weakness? Are we emotionally weak? I can see that we have trouble coping with strong emotions - but wouldn't anyone react strongly to such emotions? Haters and professionals alike seem to imply that we're deficient for reacting the way we do, even for having such feelings, even though the intensity can be such a gift. 

But when I consider that I'm living independently and succeeding at uni and in other endeavours - wouldn't that imply strength in the face of the feelings of weakness that my out-of-control emotions inspire in me? That I've kept going, doing as much as a healthy person does, with a lot more obstacles from day to day? Am I still weak then because of these obstacles? That looks resilient to me, despite my constantly being told that I pathologically lack resilience. 

I'm sure a lot of you BPD sufferers feel similar, and have been spoken to similarly. Do you think you're more immature or weaker than others?

