Borderline what?

"How long do you think you'll be here?" The psych ward doctor asked me just the morning after I was discharged from a medical hospital because of a suicide attempt. I'd been coming to this hospital for many years, many times a year sometimes kept for months at a time, my symptoms were so severe.

But I had never had this doctor on this particular unit. Clearly though he knew about me.

" Hospitals aren't always helpful for people like you," he said. He went on to describe me as "chronic" and said, "There's nothing we can really do to help."

How could he know these things right off the bat, before even meeting with me?

That is the stigma of a borderline personality disorder diagnosis. My reputation preceded me.

I had just almost lost my life at my own hands but every day this doctor would spend just a few minutes with me, not offering any options to help, just asking how long I thought I would be there. I had never experienced anyone not trying to keep me.

Borderline personality disorder is characterized by instability of mood and relationships, constant fear of abandonment, self-destructive behaviors and intense feelings of emptiness. I prefer to think of BPD under the framework of complex PTSD instead of a personality disorder. BPD carries so much stigma, viewing those who suffer with it as manipulative,toxic, dangerous. Whether I agree with the BPD diagnosis myself or not, often times the things  do and feel are medicalized as a personality disorder, not truth and authentic feelings 

For example, the next time I was assigned this doctor I put up a fight. I sobbed, I begged to be switched to a doctor that knew me better and actually believed in me instead of writing me off immediately as hopeless.

Instead of giving my a different doctor they decided I was doing the borderline behavior called "splitting," which means not being able to balance the good and bad in a person at the same time, seeing them as all good or all bad. It didn't matter that I had interactions with him that were harmful to me as well as not helpful. All I was to them was a diagnosis.

The first time I was diagnosed as borderline I was a teenager in my first hospitalization. The psychiatrist used that term to have power over me. I felt incredibly stigmatized. Inha difficulty speaking. Around the same time I was taking an abnormal psych course at Harvard where the instructor talked about her roommate, that she armchair diagnosed as borderline, and how she got jealous and lit a fire in the trash bin. This is not how I thought a borderline person should be characterized to an entire class. We also had a text book at the time that described borderline patients in a very bad light, ending it by saying "one thing borderlines don't do is get better." This is what we were being taught. And worst of all, I bought into it. I walked around feeling toxic, evil, manipulative. 

There's debate about what causes BPD. It's most common in people who have significant trauma or who grew up in very invalidating environments. Both are true for me.

I carried around that diagnosis for years, labeling myself and being labeled by others. It became  very damaging to me. Only recently have I begun, on a good day, to separate myself from a label. It's easy to fall into being just a diagnosis when you practically live in psych wards.it can be comforting in a way even. It's scary to venture out and  begin to see who else you really are beyond a mental patient. I am still struggling with this concept. I am institutionalized in many ways.

No matter what your labels are, know that there is so much more to you. You are not doomed. What your feel is real and valid. You are not Bad or Problematic. You are suffering and that is not your fault.

Stay strong borderline babes.