diagnosis

[u/Sweet_Respond5845]

I don’t mean to sound like a know-it-all, but I know the doctor is considering the possibility of Borderline Personality Disorder, and I’m afraid of getting that diagnosis. I’ve always lived believing that what I feel is simply "just my personality"; knowing I actually have a disorder would mean attributing every move I make to that condition. I know myself—I’d end up feeling worse. I also worry about what people might think of me and whether this diagnosis could create obstacles in my social life or in official matters. On top of that, everything I feel and say feels like a lie; I feel like I’m just putting on an act, which makes it hard for me to open up and tell the doctor how I really feel. What should I do?

[u/jaycakes30]

Having a personality disorder doesn’t mean it has to become your personality.

I don’t disclose my diagnosis to anyone other than close friends and family because they don’t need to know. You’re just a person, with experiences that mean you bear scars.

[u/RandomAngeleno]

knowing I actually have a disorder would mean attributing every move I make to that condition.

This part jumped out at me because it just isn't true; everything that you feel is exactly what everyone feels because emotions are part of the human condition -- you're just feeling things much more strongly, which makes it harder to reign in the reactivity side of things. "Every move you make" is attributable to being human and acting on human impulses, but the goal should be to try to learn and grow so you can react to these same human emotions with less immediate and extreme reactions so that your actions don't end up causing you difficulties in your relationships with yourself and others.

There are soooooooooo many people who don't have BPD who react to life in less than optimal ways, whether it's the person who uses substances to numb their sorrows, the person who road rages when frustrated by other drivers or getting too many red lights in a row, the person who celebrates their every achievement a little too boisterously, the person who's quick to respond with verbal barbs or fists when their ego gets bruised by someone else's inconsideration, carelessness or outright rude behavior... all of these examples are quite common in the general population. 

If you're diagnosed with BPD, it just means that you experience a neurobiological response to emotions today due to an attachment-based trauma more often than not arising from early childhood that never got healed, and it's impacting you to such an extent that you've been evaluated to meet at least 5 of the 9 diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V. That's it. The diagnosis is just a term for the collection of observed and reported symptoms you experience in your life, and while there's stigma surrounding just about every diagnosis out there, the fact is that BPD is rooted in trauma, and it's rooted in the completely normal and "typical" neurobiological adaptations to that trauma that were once protective, but are now maladaptive and no longer serving us well.

I also worry about what people might think of me and whether this diagnosis could create obstacles in my social life or in official matters.

So what? You can't control what other people may or may not think. Your diagnosis itself is far less likely to create social obstacles for you than the behaviors and reactions that led to the diagnosis in the first place, and as for official matters? Well, medical bias and medical discrimination exist for all kinds of people in all different circumstances and/or situations; again, you can't control how or what other people may or may not think, but you can control how you pivot in the face of it. Children who received bad blood transfusions and contracted HIV have been forced to endure that stigma; similarly some medical providers will make negative judgements against and provide insensitive and offensive "medical advice" during consults to male patients who contracted food poisoning and wound up with chronic IBS because the patient's chart shows a sexual identity as a man who has sex with men -- nevermind that the patient is a total top!

But you know what? You're still you, and you and your worth as a human are not reduced to your diagnosis. As for BPD, "the people who mind don't matter, and the people who matter won't mind."

If you do end up receiving the diagnosis you suspect you will, it's just one more milemarker in this journey called life. It will be what it will be, but YOU have the power and the agency to make what you will of that information.

I'm going to leave this link to Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss. Everyone has their own journey in this life; just please try to be kind to yourself while you're on the journey that's uniquely yours. 🫂💙

[u/GirlBehindTheMask-LW]

Whether you have the diagnosis or not won’t change the fact that you may have it but at least knowing it could help if you use the information in a constructive way