Originally Posted by lillib
I was misdiagnosed with BPD years ago. After being re-evaluated as an in-patient at a trauma treatment facility (twice, on two separate occasions, plus by other therapists long before the BPD and immediately after), I can tell you that I'm pretty sure I don't have it. Nonetheless, when I received treatment for this diagnosis (in the form of a year-long DBT course), there was much stigma to go around. I lived in a halfway house at the time with others who had mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective, PTSD, substance use disorders, etc. I was the only one (mis)diagnoed at the time with BPD. The social workers who ran that semi-independent halfway house told me, "You borderlines always cause trouble," right after I had reported a rape that happened to me to the authorities. I was homeless at the time, so when I entered their program, I was a mess. I lost my careers, my money, everything. I willfully gave my daughter up for adoption not long prior to my becoming homeless. I was also silenced at the time by my past military sexual traumas, so I never brought those up when I tried to seek treatment for my current rape. Because I was depressed and suicidal, and because dissociative identity disorder wasn't even been screened, the anti-psychotic medications they gave me had an adverse reaction on me. I dissociated, lost time, self-injured while I lost time (I'm NOT a self-injurer, as evidenced by my age of onset - age 30 - and my many diagnoses before and after all related to PTSD only). I was not allowed to cry, so I was quickly told my emotion regulation issues needed to get under control. (Little did they know, however, that I had a hard time expressing emotion until I finally broke from all those homeless and post-rape stressors, and from losing time and not being believed.) They put all those symptoms together, as opposed to looking at iatrogenic effects of the treatments they were giving me based on their assessments of psychosis, and many told me that "Borderlines make up rape all the time, that I needed to stop wanting attention." This was all in the early 2000s.
I never self-injured before the age of 30! I only self-injured when I dissociated on anti-psychotics. The psychiatrist I saw took me off the meds after I begged for a re-evaluation, which they said initially that "all borderlines say that," and they found that my conditions and my self-injury and my appearance of psychosis decreased a lot. For two years I was monitored without any meds, and they knew that I would only benefit from talk therapy after that. I don't remember self-injuring myself; later I found out it was an alter who was dared by a member of the DBT group to self-injure, while I was under the influence of anti-psychotics and dissociative. My self-injuries only occurred for a period of six months while I was on anti-psychotics. I never had problems with self-injury since they weaned me off those meds. I still lost time, however, and dissociated, but thankfully I left the DBT group after completing all their modules. It wasn't for me.
Also, no one even asked me if I were a veteran, and no one cared to even ask me about my past accomplishments or my strengths. If they had, they would know that the latency of my symptoms were not normative for those with true BPD diagnoses.
As in another thread you had made, I related more to CPTSD than BPD, as I didn't have many of the symptoms that those with BPD have, if they looked at my childhood and early adulthood accomplishments. There's no way a person with BPD could pass polygraphs and the police reserve academy, for example! All of those psychosocial history components were negated in place of the present-day symptoms, many of which were due to the meds they gave me.
After I realized that DBT was "common sense" to me and also making me worse by peer deviancy (one of the members from that group stalked me repeatedly after I tried to befriend her but later told her that I couldn't hang out as much or didn't feel comfortable) as well as emotional subduing. I needed to express my emotions and cry. It was a frustrating period; my needing to maintain the silence of my victimizations were once again reinforced.
That said, those I've gotten the privilege to know who have BPD (I mean real BPD, not a misdiagnosis), often said that they felt judged, labeled, invalidated, undermined, misunderstood, mistreated, shunned by therapists who blatantly told them that they were "too complex" for treatment, and infantilized (in a condescending manner). I cannot speak for those with BPD, but I can tell you that the way they are treated is awful!
As a person who has that misdiagnosis on my record, even though it has been ruled out by many therapists before and after that time I was misdiagnosed with it, I can NEVER get certain jobs that I would have been eligible for now because it was recorded once on my record. Once is enough, even though it was a misdiagnosis!
Thankfully, I have an honorable discharge - always have, never had to change it. However, many veterans were not as fortunate as I. Many veterans who dealt with military sexual trauma were misdiagnosed with BPD, and thus got less-than-honorable discharges coupled with no service-connected disabilities to substantiate their MST claims. They were disbelieved, and their records forever tarnished. Their dreams dismissed. At the age of 30, my dreams became tarnished as well.
I feel for anyone who truly has that disorder; it's a hard disorder to manage, and it's even harder with the stigma surrounding it.
Overall, the BPD diagnosis affects more than those with BPD; it affects those who were misdiagnosed with BPD as well!
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