Borderline Personality Disorder

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Does anyone here have a comorbidity of ASD and BPD? Whether you be an actual dual diagnosis or just someone who's diagnosed with one but also shows strong signs of the other... Tell me about your story. Tell me what parts of your life are affected by one, the other or both. Tell me how you're different from other people. Tell me about how you're doing; what you've done, what you're trying to achieve and what you struggle with. Tell me everything.

I was diagnosed with BPD & Aspergers when I started seeing my psychiatrist at 20. I doubt I'd meet the criteria for BPD now cuz I'm not the same person I was in some ways when I started seeing her. I was going through a bad psychotic depression over my 1st realtionship ending. My BAD anxiety & OCD caused me to become very needy & clingy & believe things were going on within the relationship that probably weren't. I became very controlling & demanding as a result. I had LOTS of mood swings within the relationship where I'd feel really happy for a while but then something would cause me to worry or something & I'd get controlling & demanding & we'd have a fight. I'd become very upset & accuse her of stuff & then I'd cool down & feel really guilty. I'd do my best to make up for it & then I'd go back to being happy again. I think maybe my anxiety & OCD were causing me to have Aspie meltdowns & I'd go back to being happy again after the guilt wore off.
I fell into a BAD depression & I was having lots of mood swings with that. I'd wake up in a good mood but later on something would remind me of Emily or our realtionship & I'd suddenly feel like total crap & I'd hate myself & want to die or I'd be extremely p!ssed off with how the world & society screwed me over & want revenge.
I gradually got better as my depression lifted but I'd still been more sensitive & moody. I got off the meds & I felt better off them than I did the whole time on them but I'm sure they helped hold me together while I made changes in my life like getting a job & becoming more social & learning about myself & Aspergers more.
I had some of these problems after I got in my 2nd relationship. I realized some of it was due to anxiety so I started an anxiety med. It helped but I was still having problems & my improvement was too little too late to save the relationship. I had a hard time getting over Meg & realized some of it was OCD so I started an OCD med. It helped & I got in my current relationship shortly after. I haven't had the extreme problems in this relationship but I think some of it is cuz of the meds & the fact that Cass is kind of needy & clingy too.

I have both these conditions. It's been on papers for several years but I just a few weeks ago decided to read about borderline and I can see myself in many things. I have very strong feelings. I do not often explode in anger, but feel intense anger, hurt, anxiety, boredom etc. from the inside. I self-harmed a few years ago but have other stratefy now: Music (loud) and distraction. I try to occupy myself all the time because when I get alone or time to think I get paniced right away.
I have hugely severe social problem. When I start to know new persons I just shut down and never contact them again. I never understood why but it could be shame to show my quick temper switches that goes from very social to not social and good mood to bad mood/anger/anxiety...

What I like so much is other human beings thats very social and talkative. That keeps me in good mood and away from the intense bad feelings I often have. I always searched to very social folks and will keep doing it. Try to find someone is a dream but I have never engaged in a "real" relationship for more than a week because I do not let them in to my apartment and if I sleep away I always want to leave as soon as I wake up. I am very sensitive to rejection and blame.

I have much work problems. I am from the beginning a little "odd" or unusual as a person but due to my problems inside I always leave my jobs after 3-4 occasions. I was in these work groups and other groups that has nothing to do with work but always leave them too very early. I was in an autism group but left after 3 occasions, I felt like they did not like me or looked strange at me and locked me out. Then someone from the group contacted me and asked why I had not been there for long "Everyone miss you" he said and those words were a shock to me. What!!

My goals are very unclear. I want to survive and find meaningful activities to interfere with the loneliness. When I think about it I want meaningful activities with people that I am very very comfortable with and that are on the same length as me (intense, talkative). But it is really hard and a struggle to find much hope for the future.

I see a big difference in my appearence now and from 15 years age. I am just turned 29 now and feel like I turn more and more toward anxiety, quick tempers, depressive without able to talk to people but also great mood when something interesting happens. So something drastical has really happened those years and I guess borderline explains what I am going through now.

I was misdiagnosed with this when I went for psychiatric help when I was in my early twenties.

I have never, and did never, have a fear of abandonment. I did go from one relationship to another but that wasn't to avoid being alone and I did have disturbed and intense relationships but this wasn't to do with my emotional problems.

I did have an emotional instability, and I did self harm, but the Dr who diagnosed me failed to ask if the problems I was having had happened for 5, or more, years. They hadn't.

What had happened was that my ex partner had raped me and as a result I ended up very emotional damaged and ended up self harming more. The unstable relationships happened because I couldn't trust any one after that. If the Dr had spoken to me about the whys to my emotional instability he'd have discovered that I didn't normally have unstable relationships and that I was prone to long term, committed relationships.

Being misdiagnosed almost ruined my life. I actually do have psychosis and I needed medication, that I was denied access to, because it was thought I had a personality disorder. I had been under treatment for psychosis before, and after, the misdiagnosis. I dropped out of university because of my problems.

I am really offended by being misdiagnosed. Often it's used as a clinical insult and I personally can't tolerate people who are diagnosed with BPD. They are to emotional and too unstable for me and to be linked to something like that effected my self-esteem.

My emotional instability went away with some CBT, time and therapy.

How I am doing now is a little better. I have got a correct diagnosis, I am on meds that work and I am going back to university to finish my degree.

No-one has mentioned BPD to me again. The Dr who "diagnosed" me only did so when I went for a second opinion. He never wrote to my GP telling them the diagnosis and he never told me. The so called diagnosis was simply made to block me from accessing services that I needed. Gate-keeping.

I feel bad for anyone with BPD because they need more help, and love, than I am able to give. Apparently the recovery rate is good if someone is given treatment. I hope that such people can find healing.

Deleted. What’s the point.

I was misdiagnosed as having BPD when I should have been diagnosed with autism. All my counselors that I had post BPD diagnosis had always doubted that was my issues were.

I was diagnosed with BPD and MDD at the beginning of this year. I was diagnosed with chronic depression as a teen, but had known there was something wrong with me for as long as I can remember.

I knew it wasn't just depression, especially since antidepressants didn't really help do more than mask the symptoms. I have above average intelligence and probably due to my life long depression and seeing my mother go through depression herself, I always had a keen interest in psychology and sought to better understand or even self diagnose myself.

At first I thought I had social anxiety until environmental factors proved I have GAD (self diagnosed). Raped, date rapes, and generally feeling like a worthless piece of s**t up to teen years made things worse, and I developed a drinking problem.

The drinking problem was replaced by an abusive psychopath who isolated me completely and then impregnated me - my son is the best thing that ever happened to me though because I made the decision to have him and to get help for myself and make a better life. It took nearly 4 years before I left that relationship, a long with sever PTSD .

During my isolation I spent most of my time researching psychology- to prepare for raising a child, but also to understand myself and heal myself, to get help. It was during this time that I suspected I had aspergers. I still think I may be in the spectrum, although BPD does explain me very well. Additionally I suspect I may have a bit of covert narcissistic PD going on.

My BPD diagnosis came after admitting myself to a public hospital (where I'm from, that is scary, and you get hardly any help) because I could t afford real help, for suicide watch. My condition was deteriorating but because I'm high functioning and used to living in survival mode, it took a friend committing suicide to make me decide to do the same for the first time since leaving the abusive ex. I was also in another similarly abusive situation, but the perpetrator was my sister with whom I was living after she promised to save me from the previous situation - ironically. At the hospital I was mainly drugged up on tranquilizers and anti deoressants but the psychologist who eventually saw to me a few times decided i must have BPD and the psychiatrist agreed. They did want to send me to a month long inpatient program (at the local government loony bin) but because of my son and because at the time I thought I could manage with meds, I refused to go, much to their displeasure- though my psychological said I should be fine depending on the environment.

I got meds, carried on work I had been doing on self care and mindfulness, but healing was difficult while trying to find work and support my child alone mostly (my mom struggles but helped all she could). I was, and I think always have been, searching for love, despite my horrible social skills. Then I met someone amazing - we clicked so beautifully that we fell in love almost immediately. He has aspergers, but assured me he has overcome most of the condition and has worked to rewire his brain and his way of thinking to function better socially. He also had anxiety but says he has worked through it to the point that he no longer has panic attacks but stress does affect him heavily. He has some classic AS symptoms and because of all these factors, I thought I understood him, he understood me, we could read each other so well in the beginning.

At this point I was 6 months into my antidepressants and since I hated the idea of taking medication and felt the euphoria of the kindling love, I decided, with my partner, to wean off my antidepressants. Then I moved in with him, but his mother had been living with him too, and so ensued 2 months of living in a space where she made me feel so unwelcome and unwanted, she bullied me and passive aggressively maligned me and it brought back my depression, anxiety panic attacks and feelings of worthlessness ten told.

Nearly two months after her leaving (we get along fine now, shes apologised, but I still feel weird around her since I was bullied my entire life anyway) months and life and murphys law throwing every possible wrench in the cogs of our relationship, we are struggling to communicate on very emotional topics.

As BPD goes, I took 10 steps forward in positive progress (read: medication, constant socializing, alcohol and epic amounts of disassociation) and once things really looked bright for my future and my relationship, I've taken 15 steps back to the point that I'm self sabotaging, ruining my relationship, putting my job in jeopardy and having almost daily episodes. I've self harmed badly for the first time in years (even when I attempted suicide there was no self harm) because of this and the fact that the communication between my partner and I is so difficult that I feel like he pushed me to the point of self harm.

His seeming lack of empathy toward my extreme need for love and affection is deeply hurtful and subconsciously I think im on a rampage to hurt him back and thus prove my inner demons right about the fact that im useless and unworthy of love. He has done SO much to show me he loves me - he knows about my past, he has taken on care of my son and treats him so well, he has helped me to protect myself from my sons father to the point that my ex has threatened his life and to hurt his family, he took me to help me get a restraining order and apply for maintenance, even helping with communication with my sons father to ensure that legally I have the upper hand with regard to custody, to putting up with my panic attacks and more recently my manic episodes of self harm (its deescalated to scratching my skin, pulling my hair and sometimes drawing blood but at least not cutting - he took all razor blades and threw them out so I'm also super hairy which is not nice).

He has been amazing in so many ways, encouraging me and helping me and keeping me positive. This place we are in is so diffic6and I fear it will break us. I love him so much, i really feel like this is my forever person. BPD and PTSD makes relationships so hard, and I think especially when aspergers is also involved. It feels like we cant understand each other and we spend days fighting over the same small things. I'm only 25, so there's lots of time to heal and learn to cope, right? I cant get help right now because I cant give my ex any ammo against me, we are starting to battle about visitation and custody etc and if I get a formal diagnosis now, even if I open up to any professional right now, they could decide I am not stable and take my so n. Which is awful because since I'm high functioning, my son doesn't see me breakdown, and we never fight near him at all. But I fear the misunderstanding of the condition will count against me.

Now I think I'm rambling, but I'm glad I found this forum and this thread and am extremely interested to hear about other experiences. If anyone has advice for me that would be appreciated too or a reference to any other thread here would be amazing. Ok, essay over. I'm verbose and unapologetic for it.

I have both of these diagnoses.

It's tricky, as I think a lot of autistic people, women especially, can be misdiagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder rather than having their autism recognised.

In my case I genuinely have both conditions; I believe them to be distinctly separate conditions, though there may be some crossovers with how both effect frontal lobe efficiency in the brain.
In BPD the dysfunction of that area is meant to be profound.

It's difficult. I actually spent quite a long time in my twenties in treatment for BPD, and my autism was consistently misunderstood.

I was accused of ''thinking I was special'' because of my sensory issues and not wanting people to be too close to me in the common kitchen area. Other aspects of my autism were grossly dismissed and misunderstood.

Group therapy for people with personality disorders is definitely NOT appropriate for an autistic person, as it can easily make someone on the spectrum worse. HOWEVER, if an individual has both conditions, what more can be done?

I developed BPD because of a grotesquely emotionally abusive and ''unmentalised'' family experience.

The symptoms of BPD such as- continuous distress and suicidality, unstable self image, radical identity confusion, disproportionate rage and anger, getting intensely attached, self-harming behaviours etc. etc. were all very strong in me. But they were complicated by my autism.

(One thought: I think that both people with autism and people with BPD have problems coping with criticism, but for quite different reasons.)

Part of my autism is a need to sort everything out ''right now'' which I have to make a huge effort to not succumb to and to calm down in how I organise my life.
The two conditions overlapped.
I'd engage in BPD behaviours all at once, so to speak.
Like trying to sort out a new identity ''right now''. This had disastrous results in various ways, multiple times.

I never really succumbed to promiscuity like some BPD sufferers because of my rigid need for restrictive routines due to my autism. For example.

Ironically, if I didn't have autism and a fundamental inability to ''drop'' things and not persevere, I'd almost certainly have killed myself by now, because my suicidality was so debilitating & intense for a long time. Aspies tend to persevere rather than act out, which probably saved my life.
That was one huge difference that I noticed between myself and some of the other patients at the BPD treatment I attended.

I could say more. I think it's appropriate if you have both conditions, to treat them as separate even within yourself. As equally serious though distinctly separate illnesses/conditions.
After all, autism is a lifelong neurological condition that also effects the nervous system, and cannot be cured.

Borderline Personality Disorder can and has been shown to respond to treatment, no matter how many decades it can last and how debilitating it almost always is.

Autism is genetic. I think BPD is caused by damaging experiences primarily. I believe BPD is basically a form of Complex PTSD, personally. Any thoughts on this point?? ??

Just my two cents

Hope that helps....?

I too share traits from both, i have a huge fear of abandonment, i experience switching, my partner is either the most amazing or i feel like he doesn't love me or care, there is no inbetween but is this not overlapping with black and white thinking?
I was promiscuous but only because i believed being like the girls from sex and the city would make me socially accepted. It sort of did for a while but not in a nice way. I was a poly user of stimulants and empathogens to help me mask socially and with inhibitions lowered i found myself often in situations where i was expected to have sex, or so i thought. It feels now like a very dangerous combo, wreckless impulsivity and the social naivety of AS.

I had a fine childhood when i spent more time with my paternal side, my maternal side was not great. Too many kids and a mother and step dad both possibly on the spectrum but don't know it, it wasnt terrible but i have not had the best relationship with that side of the family. I am the black sheep. I feel misunderstood.
My teen years i showed traits of BPD according to a doctor after trying to throw myself from my bedroom window during a meltdown and the term was thrown around but i was never diagnosed. I did suffer a selection of traumas as a teen, i didnt realise some of the things were wrong. I just wanted badly to fit in i would hang around with the wrong people. Do things that i now know were not safe. Put myself in very scary situations but not really understanding any of it. I ended up pregnant at 15 with a completely terrible skill set to cope. I managed, just about with support from family.

Moving on to my late teens to late 20s, i had a long term relationship that failed due to me being so difficult to live with, i had a fear of abandonment due to this same man giving me the run around for around 2 years before we got into a serious relationship or atleast i presume so, i was single for some time after we split, no interest in being with anyone, was a hermit, then met my sons father some years later who was abusive and with all my issues as well it made for an intense and exhausting 3 years, when our relationship ended i was suicidal and depressed from the whiplash of everything.

My late twenties I was single getting my life back together for a while hyperfocused on nutrition and gym and feeling really positive but that was short-lived when i was raped by a "trusted friend" this caused me to have extreme agoraphobia, issues with paranoia, not trusting anybody. Always assuming a motive, panic attacks, probably a whole load more symptoms. I retreated to my bedroom and basically didn't leave much for two years. In this time found my best friend and soul mate by the power of the internet in a desperate soul seeking mission. A desperate need to understand who i am. I was not to know this man would change my life.

He's undiagnosed AS/ADHD also. My fear of abandonment is slowly going away through constant reassurance and understanding more that he needs his alone time and so do i because when I've got past that initial panic I'm happily chilled on my own for hours and find it hard to snap out of my lonely behaviour when he returns. So...ASD and BPD? They really are two very different things i believe despite having many cross over symptoms. There isn't a doubt in my mind I'm an aspie, I feel like they fight for centre stage at times of high stress also and i completely agree that PTSD and BPD are very similar. I believe I've had this conversation with my partner.

What exactly is Borderline Personality Disorder?

I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Aspergers.

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-sup ... A-57OLgo2w

You feel very worried about people abandoning you, and would do anything to stop that happening.❌
You have very intense emotions that last from a few hours to a few days and can change quickly (for example, from feeling very happy and confident to suddenly feeling low and sad).❌
You don't have a strong sense of who you are, and it can change significantly depending on who you're with.✅
You find it very hard to make and keep stable relationships.✅
You feel empty a lot of the time.✅
You act impulsively and do things that could harm you (such as binge eating, using drugs or driving dangerously).❌
You often self-harm or have suicidal feelings.✅
You have very intense feelings of anger, which are really difficult to control.❌
When very stressed, you may also experience paranoia or dissociation.✅

Looks like I qualify for BPD

Some of these things do sound kind of similar to what I go through but I'm pretty positive mine is actually Bipolar Disorder which runs in my family. I have experienced full manic episodes several times and when I crash it's like I have no energy at all.

I think BPD and BD are both mood disorders right?

I think BPD is a more a personality disorder as it is not defined by changes in mood , I think one obvious difference is the mood swings of bipolar disorder are not triggered by interpersonal conflicts.

I think it all depends who you speak too as some of the things that have been said about autism is complete rubbish.

That's true. I honestly don't know what to believe about any sort of mental health problem anymore because it feels like evey doctor says something different about the same condition.

There are some many nuances involved in personality disorders that unless you saw a specialist you'd probably doubt them after some googling