BPD is a weird diagnosis. I don't mean to pry and feel free not to answer, but if you have any trauma history I'd look into changing it to cPTSD. I was hit with a 'developing borderline personality organisation' in early 2018 and knowing how stigmatised the label is I marched right into my psychiatrists office and told her to remove it from my records immediately. She pointed out I met some of the criteria - impulsive drug use and self harm, some unstable relationships, emotional dysregulation, suicide attempts, dissociation.
I pointed out that I have friends who are diagnosed with BPD, and for some of them it cost us our friendship when they were undiagnosed and they had pervasive issues in their relationships. I don't - my mates have been my mates for years and shit doesn't change. We have normal ups and downs, but nothing major. The ONE unstable relationship is with my father (highly abusive).
I pointed out that my drug use and self harm are not impulsive, nor is the self-harm done to avoid abandonment. The drug use is deliberate and a response to a trigger and an attempt to avoid or self punish, and the self-harm is linked to shame and self punishment. I explicitly hide my self-harm and do not discuss it with friends unless I need to seek medical attention, and I do not do it in response to interpersonal issues.
The emotional dysregulation one I didn't argue with. Absolutely true, but could be other explanations.
Suicide attempts were through reckless behaviour, not fear of abandonment. I wanted to end the issue of my familial abuse.
I do dissociate, when triggered.
When I disclosed my trauma history to her, she was like 'ahhh, you don't have BPD, you have cPTSD' and I'm like 'what? I didn't want a new diagnosis I just wanted that one gone.' 'CPTSD, like PTSD but, you know, a bunch worse. So all the normal symptoms plus major interpersonal issues. Actually now I think about it this makes total sense. You've always had issues with self-blame, self-worth, shame, guilt, and trust. I'm surprised I got it wrong. The self-harm really threw me off but it even fits in this context with self-punishment instead of a behaviour to affect another person.
So yeah, that got wiped. But I learnt through all this that BPD is very treatable. In fact, it is one of THE most treatable mental illnesses in the world, if you engage in the correct therapy. And it has to be DBT. It likely will not work otherwise. And you have to really, 100% engage. You honestly don't really need meds, you need to hit therapy harder than you've hit anything in your life. BPD has an 80% remission rate with successful BPD - that is legitimately more successful than mild to moderate depression or anxiety, all without meds! And plenty of people have been found to age out of BPD as well when they reach their 40s and beyond.
So your future, as bleak as it may look, is actually quite bright when compared to some other situations. Like I have cPTSD (which has zero actual approved treatment and isn't even in the DSMV only the ICD10) and Bipolar and I recently applied for disability and like, I deliberately avoided being put in the same category of people who suffer from debilitating untreatable schizophrenia who live in secure units their whole lives while being bombed out of their mind on anti-psychotic medication and still hallucinating. Honestly when compared to that, even as shitty as my mental health is I got it pretty good.
I really implore you to dive into DBT if you haven't already and attack it like nothing else you've ever gone at. I did exposure therapy for cPTSD and it was the absolute shittest 6 months of my life - every session I'd had to have a 1-2 page handwritten account of some awful criminal shit my dad did to me, then I'd sit in front of my psychologist trying to open my mouth and physically read the words on the paper. And honestly sometimes I genuinely couldn't do it and I'd start panicking and rush out early. But eventually, I went from freaking out and getting defensive whenever someone mentioned my dad, to being able to disclose my entire trauma history to therapists and chosen friends who said yes without freaking out. And that was thanks to that 6 months of therapy.
It isn't easy, but it is so worth it.
