Aspergers and BPD

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In addition to the similarities between AS and BPD and the possibility of misdiagnosis, there is a subgroup of autistics who have both autistic traits and emotional dysregulation. In the Netherlands some of these may be diagnosed with McDD (multiple complex developmental disorderThis disorder also includes psychotic symptoms however.

As for me, when under serious stress, it is pretty easy for me to display quite a classic BPD situation. However, I am not sure how much of this is a mostly stable person responding to an instable situation (eg. 16 months on a locked ward), and how much is instability in myself.

I feel a bit silly for thinking there was a link, obviously I didn't have time to research it enough to see that it's a genetic predisposition, etc. So you can't really have both. I did like reading the posts though. Very interesting.

While this is true, I meant more than just that they associated me with him, or found him more memorable. Some people actually did not recognize me.


Again, while true, I don't think I tend to explode over little things like that.
Many times it's a helplessness, that I seem to not be able to express myself, that when something does go wrong, I can't explain it correctly in order to get it fixed, and partly that when I was a kid, if I got snappy or annoyed, I'd get screamed at, so small things would escalate. I don't think that I inherently do that, though. Now when I get upset, Kris will ask if it's his fault (it never is) and if there's anything he can do (sometimes there is, usually there's not) and then just give me some space. What I need if I'm freaking out is somewhere quiet and cool and darkish. I think a lot of times in the past when I was accused of having emotional freak-outs, it was because when I got upset, people got in my face. If I can go hide in a hole (not literally.. but we have this bizarre room over the garage that you have to go through our bedroom and bathroom to get to.. it gets more air conditioning than the rest of the house for some reason, and it's always very quiet and calm back there. That's where I like to go if I'm upset now), I'll eventually feel a bit better. Before, if I got upset, I'd then get followed and harassed and bothered, and then they'd act like it was me who was crazy for getting more upset.



I over-analyze everything. I wonder if perhaps the last therapist I saw thinks about me what you said about borderlines disappearing, but really, why should I be paying someone $120 per session to "help" me over-analyze things? Particularly when she refused to help me analyze why people reacted to me in strange ways. Although even if she'd tried to, it probably wouldn't have helped. She tended to twist everything I said in the strangest ways.

I was about to post a reply, thinking that BPD meant "Bi-Polar Disorder", which my son has. I started reading other replies and was going "What?!" That's not bipolar!

I'm glad I read ahead.

What's the difference between emotional dysregulation and BPD?

I notice when I get upset and angry I tend to get REALLY upset. I can't just suck it in and count to 10 (yea right ). When I get angry I feel like I have to yell profanities and hit things. I also become extremely depressed with short notice, sometimes just from feeling tired or "coming down" off some activity that's drained all my energy.

I don't fit BPD at all if you count doing impulsive and illegal things. I don't drink much and I've never been addicted to a substance or even tried illegal drugs. Heck I've only had one speeding ticket in my life. I have the uncomfortable boredom all the time when I don't take medication for it. But the boredom doesn't drive me to do anything negative or self-destructive. I merely feel like I have to spend all my time thinking about special interests. If I can't do certain "fun" things I get really uncomfortable and agitated/angry/impatient. I don't think I can work a 9-5 job if it isn't something that stimulates me.

Are any of the symptoms I have universal to autism or AS? I don't think so but I don't know what they are exactly.

Yeah, my guy was one of those who always said, "...you have a very interesting point."

At least he tried to help by moving me into different rooms and asking what I thought about it all. So it was helpful in environmental changes or unexpected change.

Exactly-that drives me absolutely nuts when they follow me. That is usually why I explode about it, or if I am trying to comprehend the wording of something and people keep circling around giving me a straight answer. I really snap about that.

I've done quite a bit of research on BPD in an effort to figure out what's wrong with my mother. I have come to the nonprofessional conclusion that she does fit the criteria for BPD.

The first thing that I'm noticing is that most people with BPD will not, on their own volition, admit that there is something wrong with them. Everybody, and everything is either black, or white with them. This includes their own view of themselves. They're either not to blame at all, or totally to blame, which would mean that they're 'bad' in their eyes. They usually won't question their own role in life. It's always someone else to blame when something goes wrong. Aspies usually will over analyze a situation that went wrong trying to determine what could've happened, and often times taking more than their fair share of the blame. I think we're used to being the ones that get it wrong so much that we jump to that conclusion to quickly. Borderlines just fly into attack mode as soon as they perceive anything that even looks like a threat to them.

If you've ever had any kind of relationship with a BPD, then you know how dealing with them seems as if you're walking a field filled with landmines. At any point, something you said or did, or didn't say or didn't do will set them off. They will twist your words, and actions into something that wasn't there. You're constantly being accused of things. Aspies do have communication problems that may superficially look like those of a borderline, but isn't. It's usually down to a misunderstanding with someone with AS. With borderlines it usually comes down to them believing that everyone is out to harm them in some way. As soon as you do, or say something that shakes up their ideal of who you are to them they freak out. Their identity relies heavily on those that they feel close to at that moment. They have no boundaries, because they can't see where others begin, and they end. Aspies usually have very clear boundaries, between themselves, and others. If my husband goes out for the night with a friend I think "Yay! More time to pursue my own interests in peace." A BPD thinks "why are you leaving? You must not love me like I love you...." This loop will continue into despair, anger, and eventually threats from the BPD. They won't even care if the entire evening is spent arguing, because in the end, the spouse didn't leave. They stayed there with the BPD, and that's what they wanted to accomplish in the first place. If the spouse did leave, not only will there be hell to pay, but the BPD will file the incident into the brain as another time you've hurt them, and something to be brought up at a later date.

BPD meltdowns are different from AS meltdowns. What I see with myself is that I have a hard time feeling, detecting, and understanding my own emotions at any given time. This is something that I'm really working on. I can go from thinking that I'm calm to meltdown mode without noticing my emotions climbing. It just suddenly feels as if the world ended at the drop of a hat. It's usually due to sensory issues, or a change in my routine. At that moment in time, it feels like everything is wrong, and will never be right again. A borderline will be going on about how hurt they are, and how horrible you were to do such a thing to them, and how your relationship won't ever be the same again. For aspies the situation was black, and white. For the BPD, the person is black, and white.

I know that I had a lot more to add, but it's getting too late to add anymore tonight.

I think a lot of aspies also get pulled in by the borderline games. Where an NT might be able to insist that they did nothing wrong when a borderline is twisting their words and insisting they did something horribly offensive, and aspie might not have much choice but to believe them.
There have also been times in the past when encountering a borderline where I thought I'd made a friend. When you first encounter them, and they think you're so great and "just like them" and that you understand each other so well.. yadda yadda.. it's hard to determine that it's in their head.
And then since I didn't really know all that much about making friends, I think I kinda thought that was how making friends was supposed to go. I didn't really have too much to compare it to, so when it seemed like I had a friend, how was I supposed to know that this was all something crazy going on inside somebody else's head?

(And it is driving me INSANE that "else's" is, apparently, not a word. How is it supposed to be spelled? Or what word is supposed to be used there?)

AS can indirectly cause BPD. An Aspie can be emotionally abused, usually by his family, and develop BPD. In these cases, the family has to be abusive because of AS. I don't know if there are any statistics on this.

My problem with BPD, besides having a mother and wife with it, is that borderlines are not much more unpredictable than anyone else. Now that I know the symptoms of BPD, I can avoid them, or, at least, adjust to them. In one case, I convinced a (foreign) friend that her child has BPD and needs to be evaluated and treated. Unfortunately for all of them, her narcissistic American husband can't accept the possibility of imperfection in his child, so the two women in his life continue to suffer.

So you think that many aspies actually do develop BPD, rather than symptoms that LOOK like BPD?
I think maybe a few do, but I think more of the time, it's not much more than mimicking borderline behaviors. Since aspies don't really know how to form relationships, when exposed to a borderline relationship model, that can be taken as normal. Personality disorders specify that such behaviors have to be far reaching across many parts of the person's life. An aspie choosing a bad social role model happens frequently, and while it will result in some relationships that look very borderline, the underlying borderline-ness won't actually be there, any more than with any other social behavior an aspie mimics. An aspie mimicking an observed social dynamic doesn't integrate that dynamic into themselves long-term; they just mimic what they see because they have no good internal reference point.
AS can cause many of the traumas that perpetuate BPD, but I've just seen some fundamental differences. Most borderlines I've known have been very convincing, very social adept, very able to change themselves to be what other people expect and/or want them to be. They tend to be able to convince most people, for awhile, at least, that there is nothing wrong with them, that they've been victims of all kinds of things, that it's all somebody else's fault. This is the opposite of the experience that aspies tend to have.
Borderlines also form attachments and relationships very quickly. Again, something that's very unlikely to happen in an aspie.
While borderlines have a very unstable sense of self, their social patterns are incredibly pervasive and intense. An aspie is the opposite; Although frequently confused, aspies usually have a slightly better sense of self, but no sense of relation to others. Not knowing how you relate to the rest of humanity may seem at first to be a lot like not not knowing who you are, but they're really quite different phenomena. Being misinterpreted by others leads to a lot of questioning, but most aspies still seem to have some underlying sense of who they are. Most can't put it into words, but I think it's still there. I may question things when people act as though I'm nothing like what I know I am like, and I may not be particularly good at describing myself, and I may not have much idea how I should relate to others or express myself, but there's an underlying me that I know is there. I royally suck at putting specifics to it, but there are things within me that are always there no matter how I feel who who I'm around, and without those things I wouldn't be who I am. Borderlines seem to define themselves by how they relate to someone else. There are many people here who relate to others in much the same ways as I do; but they have different personalities, different selves.

personality disorders is what is used as a diagnosis by a psychiatrist that has no experience with autism and does not want to take the time to learn

i was forced in different personality disorder s before and the type would keep changing

these doctors would decide for me why i did not want to do things and they would only ask questions for a yes and no answer and would not try asking why i do not want to play foot ball and other sports or go to music concerts or have many friends and when try to tell them why they do not want to listen

they decided for me it was because i did not want to have friends and do not do things they decided i should do from being depressed and if they would take the time to ask me why then they would learn the reason is every time i try to get a friend my age the person always does things to either take advantage of me or not able to be friends for 5 minutes from deciding i am too strange and they only want to hate me

and for not playing sports i have asthma and doing those things make me not able to breathe and i also just do not like sports

not going to music concerts is from too many people and noise hurts my ears and that does not make you depressed

i am fine with 5 or 6 people but not the 1000 or more based on what the arena can have