Female Aspies= Borderline personality disorder??

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I was diagnosed because of impulsiveness, meltdowns, my former self-medication-with-alcohol-in-social-situations habit, and the fact that I have no idea how to maintain a relationship. However, my relationships would tend to fall apart because I'd do things like forget to keep in touch, not because of, say, arguments and turbulent emotions. I suspect that the fact that I tried to function as bisexual before identifying as lesbian, and that I mentioned having a non-binary gender/not feeling like I had a gender contributed to the diagnosis (as supposedly, bisexual people are frequently bipolar, and people whose gender falls outside of the typical gender binary (you identify with what you were assigned at birth) - that is to say, anyone who's transgender, anyone who's genderqueer, etc. - are considered to be likely candidates for having BPD.

The actually funny thing is that I've been open to the possibility of it being true, but so far two professionals, my family, and friends I've known for years don't think it's true at all. Most people who assume that I tried to fight it any longer than the first couple of weeks after I learned about it don't really seem to understand my motivations for going through the steps I've gone through to get diagnosed and evaluated - which is, specifically, that I am aware that I have significant difficulties with daily life, with employment, with adaptive skills, and so on. These deficits are so obvious that it's been very easy for me to get diagnoses over the past year. And I do want correct and accurate diagnoses because I would like to get as much assistance and useful treatment that I am able to access to improve my personal situation. Which means, speaking logically and rationally, if I have BPD, then I want it diagnosed and treated, and is why I have done a lot of research on available therapies and medications to see what can be done if it's true.

But only one person who's met me believes it's true and two clinicians have said it was a misdiagnosis and I do not have it. So I'm going with that. I've also spent a lot of time reading BPD-focused forums and found that there's not a lot I can relate to.

I think I covered a lot of this on the second or third page in this thread in response to Chronos.

However, the diagnosis made BPD and by extension personality disorders in general a subject of interest for me.

What's the point of your bolding the letters B, p and D? Okay, so, bipolar, like Borderline Personality Disorder can be abbreviated with the letters B P and D. So what? That's relevant to absolutely nothing.

Aspergirls and Women from Another Planet? are next up on my reading list. Right now, I'm just starting Aspies on Mental Health, edited by Luke Beardon and Dean Worton. It's got lots of chapters by women, including the two I've read already. So far, it's proving to be a good read.

I will get back to this...but I have been diagnosed with both Asperger's and BPD. Oddly enough, the doctor who diagnoses me with one condition does not believe I have the other. The only consensus is I also have co-occuring bipolar disorder and PTSD.

I have heard of AS and BPD being diagnosed together...which also happened to a friend of mine. Oddly enough, once he started transitioning from female to male, the BPD symptoms DISAPPEARED.

*goes for more tea*

I was also once under BPD-tendencies suspicion.
Even that I was very typical as a child, so because of my childhood actually very easy to detect.

But I have also gender dysphoria since I'm little and had traumatic symptoms at that time (nearly gone now, the trauma occourt nearly two years ago) and that was just "too much".

But even with that combination I don't even fullfill 5 diagnostic criterias.

Last edited by Raziel on 05 Sep 2012, 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was diagnosed with it when I was about 12, but honestly I think it was a misdiagnosis. My parents took me there because I had been cutting myself, but - and that's the truth - I didn't do it out of depression, it was kind of a scientific experiment. Because a friend of mine had been hurting herself out of desperation and I wanted to try if it really helps. It doesn't.

Self injuries can also be part of autism, because autistic people do have very often problems with the regulation of emotions, but that's still considered something different than being emotionally unstable.
But they can look very simmilar and there are a lot of simmilarities.

I also noticed that sometimes that I have difficulties regulting my emotions but than I can do it just fine and that's the difference to Borderline. People with BPD have more or less allways trouble regulating their emotions and not just once in a while or not just in certain situations.

I heared that BPD and autism combined is very rare and very extreme.
Because then you have the autistic problems regulating emotions AND emotionally instabillity.
Autistic people can act very simmilar, but usually it's just a period and through stress and usually not BPD.

Oh my gosh, my old Psychiatrist thought this too!

I was myself diagnosed with BPD.

Originally from Czech Republic, I never met anyone EVER diagnosed with autistic spectrum there.
Doctors were mystified by my condition,
but eventually they thought BPD was the best fitting DG.
EVEN THOUGH I read in the papers things like total lack of eye contact
or even though they were present when I was mute, in shutdown, ect.

Few years ago after a major shutdown I was in a mental hospital,
where I met another BPD girl,
which I now ALSO believe was just an autism spectrum case.

She was far from being manipulative, she was just sick and lonely and lost.
Very beautiful inside at the same time.

In 1991 when I was diagnosed with BPD I believe Aspergers syndrom was not yet an official DG,
and it actually IS pretty similar in many ways,
thus, they kept it,
even though at times they did not agree with it,
however as they do not understand autistic spectrum,
they did not look into that direction.

I'm really glad this topic has arisen, actually, since I've suspected myself of maybe having BPD for a while...I mean, I don't meet all the criteria, but I do meet a few - such as worrying that everyone I care about is eventually going to leave me, the self - endangering behaviors (I don't watch my weight, I go for walks after nightfall, and I used to "punish" myself for making mistakes by beating my head, biting/scratching myself, or hurling my body against walls), and needing something that used to belong to a loved one close by....after a Japanese friend of mine had to leave the states to return to her home, she threw away a small hand towel, and I pulled it out of trash and keep it with me. Also, whenever I was depressed over not being able to be with my aunt, I would lie in bed with a Pikachu plush she gave me and cry, and would freak out whenever I misplaced it. My aunt also gave me a doll of one of the Wild Things that I have taken with me on every move into the dorms, too.

Also, I've read about people's experiences with BPD and can see some of myself in them.

I'm going to ask my psychologist about this possibility the next time I see her....she says she's already identified me as having "Anxiety Disorder NOS" (which I suppose is true) but I don't think she's in a position to give me a concrete diagnosis of anything.

Out of personal interesst I have a question:

What does it mean if someone behaves just in certain situation borderline-like?

I ask, because I had a trauma after I was brought in a closed section against my will in a psychiatric hospital. I had to stay there against my will for 2 weeks and totally freaked out, because I have claustrophobia and noone believed me.
I stayed there ambulant in that hospital for therapy for nearly two years and nearly every time I came, I freaked out because of little sentences I didn't understand, was very ambivalent to my therapist and was afraid that the trauma could ouccour again. I had meltdowns and so on.

Because of my gender dysphoria I had to bring the opinion from another expert, who doesn't work in that hospital and of course I behaved there totally normal, how I also do it in normal live.
After that I was cicked out of the hospital after nearly two years and they toled me I would have highfunctioning autism and borderline tendencies.
But no psychiatrist exept in the clinic noticed behavoiur like this on me.
I just behaved there like it, after the trauma and not in normal live.
I still feel very ambivalent towards the people who work in that hospital, but I'm glad that I don't have to go there anymore.

So, what does it mean?

Anyone with an answer to that?

Under duress people behave in particular ways. If the situation caused the behavior and it is not typical for you, then you're probably not BPD.

The thing about BPD is that it sometimes leaves people feeling like they're under duress all the time. Among other things.

Okay, that's what I thought, thanks.
No, I haven't shown this irritated and stressed behaviour I showed there, in other situations, befor or really afterwards. Just shortly after the trauma I showed more confused, irritable and unstable behaviour than usuall. But now, not being there anymore, there are a lot better again. But I still kind of freak out talking about the time in that hospital, espessially the time in the closed section there.
But after the trauma occoured in that hospital I was very ambivalent towards the people who work in there.
But not against other psychiatrists, doctors or other people who have nothing to do with that psychiatric hospital. Even in that time.
So it was really a strange situation. In that hospital when I stayed there ambulant I got really strange reports and from other psychiatrists not working there, even at the same time (I was transfered) my reports were nearly the opposite.
So, I really can't explain it to me any different.
My psychiatrist when she released me complitely from the ambulant therapy there toled me that it has been a mistake letting me stay there and she gives me the advice not go into this psychiatric hospital anymore.
After the traumatic situation in the locked up section I was never there stationary anymore and I totally freaked out when she toled me that I should get the same medication against depressions that I also recieved in the locked up section two years ago. After I freaked out so much and got at the same time the report from the other expert who doesn't work there, that he couldn't find any personality disorders and that I have clearly a gender dysphoria I was released there as a patient (ambulant) and toled it is best to avoid this hospital in the future.

It's just shi**y if the traumatic situation happend in a psychiatric hospical in a locked up section, because of claustrophobia.
I can understand how this happend.
I even believe that they kind of recogniced it in the end and that's why I was transfered to someone else. But I'm not sure about that.
I think the problem was that I showed that behaviour and that they couldn't write: "we traumaticed the patient on accident, because we didn't believe him that he is claustrophobic and we had to do something"

So I kind of understand it all logically, but it still messes me up.
I was cicked out there a week ago and I'm kind of mad about he trauma and everything that happend and that they didn't realice it, but I still have to work on it to come over this situation that happend there complitely.
But anyway I'm also very releaved not having to be there anymore, not even ambulant.

So, I would guess the time in the closed section in the psychiatric hospital was traumatic for me, espessially because of my claustrophobia.

But anyways: Is it even possible to get BPD after a traumatic incidence with 26?

Last edited by Raziel on 07 Sep 2012, 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Me too...as well as bipolar and avoidant personality disorder.

I take anti-depressants, but at a very low dosage...as in I am 27 taking the dosage prescribed to children.

Well here's a curious one.

I have picked up a tentative diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder AFTER my ASD diagnosis. The ASD diagnosis is not in doubt and has not been questioned by anyone. The autism specialist and I both question the BPD suggestion as we think that the behaviours could be explained by the ASD.

Prior to my ASD diagnosis I was diagnosed only with depression and anxiety. I have since been told that I do not have, and likely have never had, depression. That it's all anxiety. Which probably comes from the ASD.

Mental health problems are a confusing thing for everyone involved I think.