Hmm. I prefer using complex PTSD as framing for the vast majority of people who say they have BPD - it's a similar symptom cluster, it's just framed in terms of "some things fucked up your ability to trust and emotion incredibly badly" instead of "part of your personality, it'll be there forever". (Also BPD is sometimes used as the Difficult Female Patient diagnosis rather than, you know, actually looking into why the person does the thing.) Similarly, some people here are more Dependent Personality Disorder than Borderline Personality Disorder, so that's another thing you should be checking out. The thing that I believe (mind you, I have no actual degree) is the core of BPD/CPTSD/DPD/(whatever acronym they made up this week) is that the person with it isn't good at managing their emotions in healthy ways, and as such ends up with their emotions stampeding all over their life in an unpredictable and destructive fashion. This can often lead to people with whatever-the-hell-this-is attempting to outsource their emotional management to other people; this is invariably unsuccessful and can result in unintentional abusive behavior. In this framework DPD is unconsciously relying on other people to tell you how you should feel, but basing it on criteria that get you hurt. Remember that our concepts are boxes, and that the boxes are constructions. If no diagnosis precisely fits, cobble together a few things that are close by, explain how you're using them, and hope. Let me just go back through and pick up some quotes... As noted above, unconsciously relying on other people to tell you how you should feel: this is why it's a thing that might be happening. The first thing to do here is to separate out actual reason from the influence of jerkbrain. Hm. This reminds me of how I was when I was younger, which was weirdly somewhere in between simple and complex PTSD - terrible family was terrible, but I was connected to the Internet strongly enough that other people helped me figure out some semblance of sanity. That's 100% explainable by depression jerkbrain, and not the kind of unstable sense of self that the criteria are talking about at all. Okay, let me try to explain the logic behind this line of the criteria: What all of the things have in common is that they're things that people do to drown out feelings. The things they list are the ones that are the most likely to land people in deep trouble and/or psychiatric care. However, that doesn't mean it's exhaustive. The real criterion is that: 1) you're engaging in something that makes you feel things other than "empty"; 2) it's screwing up your life somehow: either because you do it way too much, or because it's extremely dangerous (or sometimes both). Unless you're genuinely addicted to video games, I don't think there's much else that would qualify. This sounds like it's explainable by straight depression too. Your feelings scale has been miscalibrated by depression; the things you consider "eh" are probably the kind that a normal person would experience as horrible. On the one hand, this means that you are very strong; on the other hand, it also means that it's hard for you to see how much room for improvement there really is here. Again: that gray area between PTSD and CPTSD that I know so well. You know just enough to try to protect your relationships but not enough to figure out how to protect yourself. Yeah, a lot of people with CPTSD-type stuff dissociate. (Weirdly enough I don't. I have a strange mind.) ---- Wow that was long. Anyway, conclusion: results are mixed; remember that your emotions are valid even if they don't exactly fit into boxes.
This is actually something that always confuses me when looking at things like this, because I can't tell whether the symptom is having the impulse/strong desire/intrusive thoughts of/whatever to do the thing to drown out feelings, or whether everyone has the impulses/desires/whatever, and the symptom is not having enough insight to not do the thing, however much you want to. (Apologies if hijacking thread, that just chimed on a thing that keeps confusing me.)
Having a father that yells, stomps around, and brazenly smokes in front of you, and who most likely made you terrified of standing up to anyone for any reason, is plenty traumatic enough. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I don't get impulses to do things like that, because "unloading my entire brain at someone through IM" has always been enough to make it stop hurting...?
The other problem with that is that a ridiculously high proportion of autistic people have some form of PTSD, whether complex or not, because people (especially but not solely) parents are of course shitty to them. Like, not trying to be unhelpful, I just figured that might be more useful data for you.
