No I'm not a therapist; I work in a field far removed from psychology. I come here sometimes b/c I want to spread the message that BPD is "curable", medically inappropriate as that term is, and that one doesn't have to identify with BPD if one doesn't want to, because there really is no scientific backing behind the term. (Of course, if people want to label themselves as "borderline", I won't tell them not to do that, it's their choice). I was borderline for many years, so can readily relate to people that are dealing with different degrees of "borderline" symptoms now.

But, my opinion is that it's sad and harmful for many people when they're told that BPD is a mental "illness" they will inevitably have for life; that is simply not supported by evidence, and a stronger argument can be made that BPD (the "disorder", not the symptoms) is "curable" on the one hand, and "nonexistent" on the other.

That sounds paradoxical. When I say "noexistent", it doesn't at all mean that "borderline symptoms don't exist - of course they do, in innumerable degrees and varieties - it means, rather, that there is little evidence that BPD represents a syndrome, i.e. a grouping/pattern of symptoms occurring in people more frequently than would be expected by chance. It can be very difficult to see this, given how everyone is told by psychiatrists that "BPD" is a real medical illness. But the evidence for its validity and reliability, and thus its existence as an "illness", is shockingly weak. If it is used at all, BPD might be understood better as a symbolic, vague descriptive term resulting from the faulty medical model of psychiatry, rather than as a valid diagnosis or illness.

Another way of thinking about this is that there is no reliable/scientific way that "borderline" conditions can be separated reliably from less severe or more severe emotional problems. If you understand this lack of clear boundaries, a lot of the supposed science and theory behind BPD falls apart, again in my opinion.

Having said all this, the misinformation, stigma and confusion surrounding the BPD label will not get better, until there is a better alternative way of thinking about severe emotional problems. I'm interested therefore in discussing how so-called "borderline" conditions can be reconceptualized in a way that is optimistic, empathic, and hopeful... and also in a way that doesn't always use a "diagnosis" or label to explain suffering if people don't want it. In my opinion that might be best achieved by abandoning the notion of a "borderline disorder". But that would be a much longer discussion on a different topic. You can probably figure out by now why I have the name bpdtransformation.

I wrote more about these ideas here - https://bpdtransformation.wordpress....-bpd-debunked/