Asperger's and Borderline Personality Disorder

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princess_serenity
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06 Apr 2012, 9:58 am

Hi I'm Rosie and I am new to this forum. Because I am new, I have written a lot of background info, but I would equally appreciate responses that just say hi or just relate to the title.

I am not sure if I am AS, BPD or maybe even something totally different, so I am going to give some information I think may be relevant.

In my opinion I changed at the age of 7, and really really changed at 14. I am now 21 and want to sort things out before I am too old.

I am an only child and grew up with my mother, and infrequent contact with my father.

I am not sure if I have always to some extent been 'different'. My earliest memory is when I was about 18 months/2 years old. I got myself caught up in my duvet and overreacted in the way I do to things now, so I think that whatever is 'wrong' with me started either when I was born or very young.

New experiences have always felt very overwhelming for me. I can remember starting school and having a hazy, slightly scared, detached feeling, which I would go on to have more severely later in life.

I never had a bad day at school in the sense that I was impeccably behaved and always worked to the best of my ability. Socially, however, I felt very intimidated by other little girls and just could not figure out why they would gossip, copy my work, take mine and other peoples' pens without asking etc.

When I was 7 I was taken to the head teachers office and there was my Dad and a psychiatrist. I had always viewed my mum as all good and my dad as all bad so I was quite scared by this situation. The psychiatrist said that my mum had been telling him all about me wetting the bed. I started crying and he told me I was oversensitive. It was too much for me to deal with so I forgot about it and got on with my life.

I continued to have difficulty fitting in, but also to be very much top of the class in almost all subjects (except for sports). This was until I was 14 and my Dad dropped the bombshell, explaining the psychiatrists visit and how mum had accused him of sexually abusing me when I was too young to remember.

My immediate thought was 'I trust mum's judgement so he must have abused me and that must be why I struggle socially' and then my delayed reaction was 'what if mum is actually a liar and my whole childhood is tainted'.

To make matters worse my Dad told me not to discuss the subject with anyone, not even mum. From that moment on I started to fully dissociate from myself and have not been the same since. My grades and my relationships with my peers gradually got worse and worse until I dropped out after my first year at university.

Having relentlessly fought over my custody all my life, neither of my parents were then very interested in me. Mum gave me some money to survive with value added guilt, and Dad didn't do anything. I made the decision to cut him, and my poor choice of friends and boyfriend out of my life once and for all, get myself a job and get back into university.

I'm now back at uni and even though things are getting a bit better studying wise and I am looking after myself better, I don't feel able or ready to make friends or have a boyfriend. I see things very black and white. I'm attractive, I'm intelligent and I'm funny but something is missing that integrates all of me together, and give me that sense of having a 'personality'. I can't be blase or overlook things. Where as some people would man up and get themselves out there I am very worried that people will ask why I don't already have friends etc. and what I will say.

I don't think I am making much sense. But if anyone has any idea what I am on about then please post. Thankyouu x



AldousH
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06 Apr 2012, 11:04 am

This may sound cliche but you shouldn't care so much about what people think. If they don't want to be your friend just because you are otherwise friendless then they are not worthy of the bother. It's not wrong to lie to the more gossipy pieces of trash if this is what it takes to maintain an acceptable popularity level.

And on that other issue - it sounds to me that your mother was lying.

How does your borderline manifest? You've talked about it so little as to make the title misleading.



princess_serenity
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06 Apr 2012, 11:18 am

Hay thankyouu do much for taking the time to read my post.

I realised after I'd written it that I did not really specifically mention AS or BPD, but I didn't really want to make my original post even longer.

My gut instinct is that I was born with AS and that life events have caused BPD symptoms, although I have no idea as to whether this is the case or if it is even possible for that to happen.

Despite like I said always being very sensitive/passive and top of the class, I never did any homework, I had a real aversion to it, and would throw a real strop about it, I still do it even now with my university coursework. Also, once in a while my mother would ask me to move my things from the living room back to my bedroom and I would absolutely snap. I just couldn't physically do it.

But when I hit 14 and started to experience severe depersonalisation and dissociation, things changed and I became more 'flexible' but not necessarily in a good way. This is when I think BPD may have manifested itself. I had problems with concentrating, spending, relationships, everything, and eventually dropped out. Because of my rigid thoughts this was literally like the end of the world for me.

I am very interested in your thoughts on this and also point you make about my mother lying.

I think I thought that if I cut my father and then boyfriend out of my life then things would get better, but I think I will always be 'fragile' and things have yet to really improve that much x



AldousH
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06 Apr 2012, 12:28 pm

As far as I know borderline has environmental causes and starts manifesting when you're a teen.



YellowBanana
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06 Apr 2012, 1:54 pm

I haven't read the original post in full as I am short on time but I just wanted say I received a BPD diagnosis last month (though in my case the actual label preferred by my psych is Emotional Dysregulation Disorder (EDD)) on top of my ASD diagnosis which I received last year. Psych said EDD in my case was most likely caused by the trauma of growing up with with an undiagnoses ASD and the constant (unintentional) invalidation I received as a result. So yes, EDD/BPD is caused by environmental triggers but those triggers can be directly related to the ASD (if you have one). In my case most of my current difficulties are caused by the EDD which has been getting significantly worse over the last few years as I unfortunately put myself in a very invalidating environment for a long time and didn't recognise it so everything was retriggered... and all my EDD/BPD behaviours got more and more out of control. I don't like having this diagnosis but it will help me get the treatment I need to significantly improve my life and I pleased about that - this has been going on too long. I will always have the ASD but with hard work and the right support I don't need to be in the hell of EDD/BPD forever.


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Female. Dx ASD in 2011 @ Age 38. Also Dx BPD