I am very sensitive to our reputation as bpd-rs, very sensitive to our stigma.

So, when I hear that a psych major "just wants information," I don't know what to do with that.

My first response is HIDE, NOW, FAST as I can!
My second resonse is anger....because this the only place in my life where I can give free rein to who I am, expose what I am thinking, how I see things. It is a "personal space" to me, I guess.
My third response is....well.........maybe if they hang around, they'll see that there is so much more to us than the shallow and sensational portrayals in the media--and even in Abnormal Psych books.
My fourth response is: "Wait a minute." We all have stories of a-hole therapists--and they're not students anymore, they're professioinals. Also, I've had my dx for a long, long time, and I am still learning how to cope with it, I am still reading research on it, I am still learning how to speak of it so that "normals" will understand......even within our forum, we can get pretty excited with each other and alarmed by each other........so, I think it's unlikely that a psych student is going to "get" us.
But, my fifth response is.........well, silly girl, it's a public site, after all.....and that makes me very sad.

I'd like responses to this.

And I also want to say that I know one of the worst parts of the condition is the feeling of shame that comes from believing that we are being judged. The differenece between guilt and shame is that guilt is for things you have done. Shame is for who you are. Because ours is called a personality disorder, we very often think it is who we are....duh! But as we have shown in many, many of our posts--in our humor, in our encouragement of each other, in our anecdotal evidence of growth and change and recovery, we can and do change.

Who the heck do we think is judging us anyway? Is it the "bully within" that I read about this morning in the link in a post from TheByz? I wonder if most of the time that's exactly who it is...that "bully within".....