Thanks, heyitsryan and welcome! (or re-welcome, as the case may be... ) I'm really glad for you to have gotten the right dx and wish you luck in your work with it. Was bringing up your experience of reading (and not relating to one, but to the other) and bringing this up with your professionals one of the factors in helping get the right dx? If so, good work, because our input is so important --we're the only ones that live inside our heads after all(!)

Though I'd heard the words, for years I didn't know what either one was about really. When I did finally read about BP (in the midst of reacting very badly to only ADs after a mis-dx as MDD), it was reading my life story, and I cried it rang so true and clearly. Later, when I started educating myself on other psych issues, I had the opposite reaction to reading borderline stuff. Really key features are totally foreign to my experience, especially "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment". Try as I might to understand this frame of mind and the reactions that follow from it, I can't. It utterly boggles me. Also, the "Identity disturbance, such as significant and persistant unstable self-image or sense of self" (I think this is where the "empty" feeling thing lands too.) Again, can't relate. I may have low self-confidence (except when hypo, when I'm obnoxiously over-confident! ), -- years of depressions have taken their toll -- but I definitely know who I am and have, since forever, had the attitude that such things as peer pressure can go **** themselves. NO ONE will tell me who I am or what I should do. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a time I'd even asked for advice, let alone approval. Other symptoms I can't relate to either, but those, to my observation, are truly halllmark to those who struggle with borderline. (Thanks, btw, krisakira for putting the list close at hand. ) I'm sympathetic to those having to deal with it, I just can't personally relate.

Blah blah blah. Kind of rambling there (who? me? lol). I totally agree with you that BP seems to have become some kind of "it" dx, too quick to be jumped to, often for less-than-ideal reasons and that has unfortunate fallout. Like the waters aren't muddy enough(!) Again, good for you on doing your research in getting on the right track, and good luck!