siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh someday someone will explain the difference between us

An artist's interpretation of true events. And by that I mean it didn't happen this way, there was no conversation like this, but it's emotionally real to me anyway.

"Haha, BPD is so relatable."

"Everyone stop finding BPD relatable!"

"Oh. I'll try to remember it's different and worse for borderlines and false equivalence just gets in the way of understanding."

here. have some fucking ““”””relatable bpd content””””””.

"Haha gpoy! Wait, no! Oops. Guess I'm evil then! Wait no, they're evil! Haha silly splitting me, maybe I'm BPD! Guess that makes me evil then! Woohoo! I'm evil! Yes! Average person oppresses 7 borderlines factoid actually just statistical error! Sunset Georg, who is a blight on gods and men and oppresses ten thousand borderlines every day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted!"

I feel the same way about this book about BPD:

"So if this happens then you validate your loved one..."

"Fuck yeah! I can totally understand completely ruining your life on an impulse! That makes perfect sense. I would tell that person that it's totally normal to fuck up like that. Then they would feel totally normal, which they are, mission accomplished, validation achieved."

"But you definitely wouldn't validate the invalid. Of course you wouldn't say you can understand ruining your life on an impulse like that."

"Fuck you I do what I want."

What? Are the rest of us not allowed to have problems? I'm so tired of not being allowed to experience anything if someone who has BPD experienced it first. Remember: if the person talking about the experience happens to have BPD then they're feeling it in a special and unique way. What's the difference? Oh there isn't one that can possibly be put into words. But you're totally evil if you think this thing that sounds just like you is relatable at all.

siiiigh I'm not interested in being sorry for having feelings anymore.

 

So, reading this was actually quite upsetting. I say that not to make you feel bad but to point out that if my response seems emotional - it probably is. But I want to try and be able to explain as objectively as I can. Any you statements I make are the general you, nothing against you, and I'll elaborate on each bullet point, cause there are a number of issues, I guess. I kinda understand where you're coming from, so I'm only writing this to help you better understand where we come from. I am willing to talk and to listen so if I need to elaborate further just ask.

• The problem is not that you relate to the symptoms.
• Saying/Implying that borderlines are no different from other anxious people serves to invalidate the existence of BPD
• We just want you to respect our boundaries as a community
• We will never be able to put how bad it is into words
• We are traumatized and we are constantly being traumatized
• The difference is that I'm obviously abusive and you're not </sarcasm>

So, to elaborate..

• The problem is not that you relate to the symptoms.

So there's actually multiple problems with this, hence my other bullet points, so for time's sake, I'll keep it brief in this elaboration.

We are hyper vigilant and are constantly reading between the lines. Hearing "relatable" reads to us as "I understand" and then "I'm here to help" when it's far more likely you don't give a shit what happens to us, how we feel, and are more likely to write us off as crazy and irrational than try and actually help us get through the rough patch.

We are constantly doubting our diagnosis along with our entire identity. Hearing "I'm not borderline but" causes us to, at large, disassociate and fall into a spiral of thinking we're faking and that we're making ourselves out to be worse than we really are.

• Saying/Implying that borderlines are no different from other anxious people serves to invalidate the existence of BPD

Ties back into my last point. When non-borderlines at large say our posts and our symptoms are relatable, it basically says that BPD is not a diagnosis that it should exist on it's own, that it's instead a combination of other disorders and that all of us with it are just overreacting and trying to take something that doesn't exist for ourselves. This may be a factor in institutional problems considering therapists at large see us as untreatable, too much of a hassle, and too risky, and getting a diagnosis is extremely difficult.

• We just want you to respect our boundaries as a community

When we say "don't reblog if you don't have BPD" we mean it. A non-borderline reblogging it is going to trigger us, it is going to make us disassociate, and it is a boundary we had a hard enough time setting for it to be crossed willy-nilly. It is not hard to just listen to the posts that say that and not reblog them. Go find another post that doesn't say it and go reblog that one instead if you have to so badly. You might still get borderlines mad at you, but then at least you have a case to make in your favor because the boundary wasn't communicated properly, if at all.

• We will never be able to put how bad it is into words

The best way I have found to put it is that I am constantly on fire. It's probably a grease fire and water will only make it worse. I don't know that though so I throw boiling water on myself to put it out. Maybe it helps for a few moments but then I'm right back to where I started - on fire, in pain, and with no easy way to put it out. It's always going to re-ignite and no matter what I do it's always going to hurt. Our posts are universally relatable because no words exist on this planet that describe exactly how we feel, so we make do with what we got and even then it's a gamble and it's probably a far cry from the truth. I don't just get suicidal, I imagine in full gory detail exactly how I'm going to do it and exactly how I want people to react to it.

• We are traumatized and we are constantly being traumatized

BPD usually stems from abuse. Usually. There are cases when it doesn't but most of them are a direct result of trauma and abuse. It can stem from any kind of trauma and the best way to keep us traumatized is to leave. The best way to re-traumatize us is to leave. Our emotions are intense enough that a lot of things are traumatizing and so we're stuck in this endless cycle of being traumatized by every goddamn little thing. You want to do some serious damage to us? Just leave. It's super-effective.

• The difference is that I'm obviously abusive and you're not </sarcasm>

The horrible, horrible thing about having BPD is that you are constantly told, directly and indirectly, that you're abusive. You see it in PSAs about abusive people - don't display these borderline traits or youre abusive. Bar none. By default. Die. None of them actually say that's what they mean but you know it is because that's what the professionals think too. They don't have to say "oh but these are only inherently abusive if you're borderline" because that's already implied. The difference between us even if we share the symptoms? I'm abusive. I use my symptoms to use, abuse, and manipulate into getting what I want - I'm not actually suicidal I'm just baiting you, using it as a weapon against you. I am traumatized when you leave because I want to be, not because it's legitimately traumatizing. Clearly if you see I've been traumatized you'll come running back. You, as a non-borderline, are not any of this. You're only abusive in your symptoms if you intend to be. We are doomed from the start to become our abusers and you still have a chance. </heavy sarcasm>

 

Right back at you for this.

I will ask a lot of questions then.

Why is that not a you problem? You read things into other people's words that were never said. I can't even imagine that working out if the person relating to you is borderline. Are all of you part of a secret mutual assistance society? Because otherwise reading "relatable" as "I'm here to help" doesn't seem like it's going to work out for you.

Why don't depressed people dissociate and fall into a spiral of thinking they're faking if other people have some but not all symptoms of depression? Why don't autistic people dissociate and fall into a spiral of thinking they're faking if other people relate to their symptoms?

Why doesn't this happen to autistic people when smallish clusters of autistic symptoms are actually diagnosed as their own conditions, e.g. dyspraxia, ADHD, prosopagnosia?

I think you made a leap of inductive logic somewhere that you didn't mention. As you've stated it none of this makes any sense. It sounds analogous to saying that diabetes can't be its own separate condition if you admit that non-diabetics might also go blind. What's the missing step in your logic that you forgot to explain to me that makes this make sense?

I don't really care about getting borderlines mad at me. I don't reblog #relatable mental illness posts. But I'm getting a little tired of "don't you dare relate to this, let me just describe all your problems, what a bad person you would be if you related to this" posts.

That sucks. I'm sorry you're in unimaginably much pain.

The specific post I linked in my OP includes:

• contemplating suicide after not getting a text back
• fantasizing about killing someone because they’re closer to your favourite person than you
• cutting yourself & sobbing for hours because of one tiny mistake
• not remembering what made you so upset or how it even feels to be upset afterwards
• constantly getting angry for no reason
• being a literal empty shell unless you have other people around to base yourself off of
• falling in love with someone because they laughed at your joke one time
• being unable to trust anyone no matter how long you’ve known each other
• splitting on all of your friends
• wanting to die when they finally leave you because they’re sick of your bullshit
• being an irredeemably Bad person who deserves to suffer
• shoplifting, binge eating, drinking until you puke, cutting, drug abuse, spending all of your money, impulsivity in general
• that feeling of constant paranoia because you know everyone will abandon you eventually and you’ll be alone forever, like you deserve to be

If all those things are universally relatable then I'm just very confused about normal people. Very, very confused. I was under the impression that it wasn't normal to never trust anyone or be convinced you're irredeemably bad and deserve to suffer. I was under the impression that only a relatively small fraction of people overreact that much to small mistakes. I was under the impression that euphoric recall didn't prevent people from remembering what their pain was like unless that pain was far outside of normal everyday experience.

Are you saying that no one else goes into detail about how to die, where to die, what day to die on, what letter to leave to emotionally manipulate people into the legacy I want to leave behind, what kind of tearful last conversation would be a good idea, anything like that?

Never mind, you just said it's somehow different for you. Do you want me to just take it on faith that every time you say you experience something how I experience it, you actually have it worse and I just can't even imagine?

That sucks.

Since you put it here I take it you meant this as part of your explanation. I don't quite understand what it has to do with the question of finding BPD relatable. I haven't followed a lot of the logical connections you must be making so far.

What am I doing wrong by thinking I know what it feels like to see PSAs about abusive behavior and respond with a storm of self-harm because you clearly deserve it, you evil monstrous abuser, you're the worst, you just ruin everything by being alive?

I didn't get the message that I'm not actually abusive if I don't happen to have your specific diagnosis. The implied "oh but these are only inherently abusive if you're borderline" isn't actually stated anywhere, so it never made me feel any better. I only ever read the actual text that was actually there, not the text that exists only in someone's imagination. Honest question: are these secret ways to say "borderline" in code that completely accidentally made me feel bad too because I didn't know the code that everyone else knows? Would the writers of those PSAs laugh if they knew I felt bad, would they take me aside and tell me in a whisper it was never meant for me, only for you? Or is it just somehow different and worse for you when you see those PSAs, because every pain is just worse for you?

 

I can answer this, as a person with BPD.
people with BPD inherently struggle a lot with having a sense of identity, to the point that a lot of us cling to our BPD as our identity, or at least as part of our identity. is this healthy? not really, no, but that's part of why those of us with BPD benefit from treatment. anyway. that, plus the fact that one of the listed potential traits of BPD is dissociation (as a response to lots of things) tends to lead to this: someone who says they don't have BPD reblogs something and says "oh, this is so relatable" or "me" or "same" or whatever response you want to use as 'I experience this to'. to me, and to other people I've talked to, this can read as "this is normal". and then we, the people with BPD, spiral into "fuck, if this is normal, then the thing I've built my identity around isn't something I actually have" and from there we go to "I don't have an identity and I don't know who I am." the resulting panic tends to cause us to dissociate and think we're faking, because if that's normal, then BPD must not be a thing or we must just not have it! and part of this is because a lot of the "relatable" BPD posts are about symptoms that are hella common in BPD--like reacting with wanting to kill yourself over spilling sugar, or being impulsive as hell, or having an incredibly strong reaction to something that doesn't warrant such a reaction. when other people say this is "relatable", we go "wait, I thought this was just specific to BPD. if it's not, what does that mean about BPD? what does that mean about me, and my identity?" and then we panic.
I'll admit the thinking can be flawed--I mean, being impulsive isn't necessarily specific to BPD. I have other disorders that can cause me to be impulsive at times. but a big part of this is that people with BPD will tend to post a lot of things about our incredibly strong emotional reactions and overreactions to small mistakes, and then someone comes along and declares that they experience the same thing, either because they do or because they think our post is an exaggeration to be relatable or funny or something, and to us that means 'this is not specific to BPD', but the thing is....our emotions are incredibly, incredibly strong. if you do not have BPD, you cannot understand the intensity of what we're feeling. like, if I'm upset over even the most minor of things? it feels like a dying sun just exploded in my chest and my brain. that's not a normal reaction according to what others have told me about how they feel when upset. and based on reading your post, it sounds....sort of possible to me that you might have BPD? because the thing is, I know people who don't have BPD....and they don't get where I'm coming from. I could show them that post you linked, and they wouldn't get it at all. at best, they might get one or two things on that list. the fact that you say you understand all of them leaves me....wondering, no offense.

 

Doubting our identities sometimes even to the point of stealing personality traits from others is a symptom of BPD and not of autism and depression, that's why. I'm sure there's instances where these people do, but it happens more with borderlines because that's literally one of our symptoms. @chaoticArbiter beat me to the punch and explained it better than I could.

Maybe it is, but that's how we, at large, think by default. BPD takes years of therapy to learn how to cope with. I know when I tell a friend I understand, aka "I relate to that feel", I'm also saying that I'm willing to talk about it and listen and help where I can. It's not a far stretch for me to expect the same from others.

Refer to the post above me, because, again, Cinder explains it better than I could at the moment. We build ourselves around our diagnosis and when that's threatened, so is our entire livelihood and the image of ourselves we've built.

All we ask is that you don't reblog certain posts pretending you understand when we've said a million times that that's not possible unless you're also borderline or cluster b. I don't get why that's so hard to understand and respect. So what if we said it a little too harshly? We're kind of mad. We have a right to get mad when we hear "but what about me" in a post we made for ourselves. It's like derailing a post about girls and saying "but what about men". No, not what about men. Go make your own post if you wanna talk about men.

Sorry, I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but thanks anyway.

The way we word them pings people are relatable because tumblr is known for blowing things out of proportion for comedic affect. But on some level I can imagine even "normal" people would experience some anxiety over being left on read by someone they care about, or being so happy they forget what it's like to feel sad until they feel sad again, or getting jealous and taking comfort in not-so-healthy fantasies. Those are just common emotions. The difference between everyone else and borderline/cluster b folk is that those are common emotions cranked up to 11 with a side of screaming.

Not what I meant to imply, but I can imagine that'd be an extreme response to an extreme event. We get like this when we drop the last clean spoon on the floor nearly every time without fail, even though the logical step is to just pick it up and clean it.

It is different for me. If you're not borderline then we have a line between us that separates how we feel and think that neither of us can cross to walk a mile in the others shoes.

Put it as explanation that our emotions are so much more intense than others. If you feel that your emotions are this intense, you're probably cluster B like us.

There is no secret code for borderline, but listing pretty much word for word (enough to get a plagiarism warning sometimes) borderline symptoms as abusive is a pretty good way to alienate the cluster B PD group. And yes, every pain is just worse for us. And no, some of the writers of those PSAs will deny up and down they think borderline people are inherently abusive, but the likelihood they do think that and just don't know it is high. Even our therapists see us as threats to the people around us, why is it such a fantasy to think other people will see us that way too?

 

@MayaaFeys re: reblogging, do you just have objections to non borderlines who reblog bpd posts and in that reblog mention that they are not bpd, or do you also have objections to people who reblog bpd posts who don't publically indicate if they have bpd or not?

(could much of the distress caused by non-borderlines reblogging bpd posts be alleviated by them not mentioning that in their reblog?)

Spoiler: personal ramble

in the past i have gone through very similar thought processes to S about the "dont reblog if you're not bpd" topic because i do find most bpd posts relatable on some level

and... i did think "wait what if i have bpd" because so much of it was so intensly relatable. but then that kind of lessened and i don't currently relate to the posts with the same kind of #ME as i did before? lower case #me now. mainly because a lot of the relatable parts for me were about like, abandonment and having a fp and my fp (or, like non-bpd equivalent of an fp?) ditched me so (after a several months long mental breakdown) it could be that i dont... really have a target for all the feelings and they are hibernating? or maybe i have bpd but it's too mild to like be worth diagnosing?

idk

 

Spoiler: this is exactly what you don't want to read...

I can understand that! When I was a teenager I did things like that. Not with BPD, but I had the same reaction to things that I clung to that way. It was a bad thing to do and it was a good thing when I learned that people having one trait of something is a thing that happens. It was also a good thing when I stopped clinging to "but only these specific people can possibly understand me!" as an important part of my identity and started trying to relate to people who didn't have what I did. I guess I can understand if your BPD itself makes it harder for you to stop doing that. I guess having stronger reactions would make it harder to deal with any of them, that one included. And I believe you that it feels worse for you than it did for me because you have stronger emotions. But it would have done me so much good if someone had explained to me that people can have just one symptom or that some symptoms are common to multiple conditions. Because those are two of the things I learned that helped me stop doing that.

Spoiler: and this is me thinking I can be helpful

Of course if you panic about not knowing who you are every time someone relates because BPD is the only piece of identity you have then congratulations, I don't think you need to worry about not really being borderline. You pretty much have to have some mental illness in that case.

So you have a lot of people who say something sounds relatable who think you're exaggerating and then keep not understanding and saying they understand? That sounds terrible.

I'm not offended and that's not the first time I've had someone say something like that.

Spoiler: in case you care whether I have it or not

Even though a lot of it sounds extremely relatable I have great impulse control and know who I am. And I only have extreme emotions sometimes. Like the thing where you, by which I mean I, get slightly uncomfortable because the grocery store is chilly so you sob uncontrollably in the parking lot for half an hour. That only happens to me rarely. It's more common for me to be able to take things in stride. Fine, I'm chilly, whatever. I think I know what you're talking about, from experience, but it's not my only experience. Though I don't understand what it would feel like if a dying sun exploded inside you. I can't turn that metaphor into anything except that you would literally burn to death.

I'm not used to assuming that when people say they relate. Or meaning it when I say I do. Maybe I'm clueless or maybe it's a cultural difference.

I didn't say that I want to reblog your posts. I didn't complain about how harshly you say something.

If it would be evil for me to reblog your posts to relate because I can't possibly relate, I must be totally wrong about my feelings, my feelings aren't real and don't count and only yours count, I am bad, I need to be punished and utterly destroyed. It isn't about whether or not I want to talk about them to you or to anyone else. I don't. Which I just said. It has nothing at all to do with any harshness in your tone.

If you're allowed to ask literally everyone to change their behavior to avoid triggering your irrational thoughts and not say true things about ourselves because you would panic and believe it invalidated everything about you, then there you go. There are mine. Maybe you can respect them. Or maybe you won't, because it turns out that having irrational thoughts that make you hurt yourself every time someone says something they have every right to say doesn't actually mean it's wrong for the rest of the world to shrug and go on doing what's their right to do.

It's not sarcastic.

Spoiler: in case you want to hear about me

I think I might just be stressed. Not normal stressed. Stressed to the point of having absolutely insane reactions from being at the end of my rope and completely out of chill. Maybe it's like the difference between someone with chronic pain and someone who's badly injured and just keeps getting more injured every day and I would get better if things ever stopped being constantly terrible. I might just be in extreme situations every day. Maybe. Not sure. Is having someone quietly listening to annoying music in another room when you're tired an extreme situation? I didn't think that was extreme enough to justify being furious and having trouble calming down.

Spoiler: this is probably invalidating to you but I want to answer this and ask stuff

My emotions are horrible but I don't think they're always like yours. But they are sometimes and it's sometimes from trivial things.

Yesterday I did something that's very similar to dropping the last clean spoon. I shrugged and ignored it. Just left it where it dropped and pretended I didn't want to use it anyway. But a few days ago I thought I could cheer myself up by practicing mindfulness while I was drinking soup. I thought about the soup instead of anything that was on my mind. Then halfway through the bowl I thought something about mindfulness itself, I had an opinion about mindfulness. So I set the bowl aside so it wouldn't spill when I punished myself for not doing it right because I can't do anything right and I can't even drink soup because everything I do is WRONG. But I didn't spend literally hours sobbing so I guess it's not as bad as it is for you. What does that sound like to you? BPD? Not BPD?

I think we're thinking of different PSAs. I'm thinking of the "people who punch walls or furniture or are violent toward inanimate objects are always doing it to threaten to hit people because they're evil abusers who want to hit you" post and others like it. I'm sorry there are PSAs listing the diagnostic criteria for BPD and calling them warning signs for abusive behavior.

 

so.....I read all of what you posted. and I'm sort of inclined to think this: you may not have BPD now, at this exact moment, but it sounds a lot to me like you did at one point, and you're now in the process of still kind of having it, but not at the level that would call for an actual diagnosis. this can totally happen--people with BPD can go undiagnosed and then actually get better without therapy, or they can go the opposite way and get worse, but it sounds to me like you are in the process of getting better from having full-blown BPD. just my opinion, and of course I'm not a doctor--but I do know BPD pretty intimately, and a lot of what you're saying pings as 'person who's recovering from BPD' to me. hopefully I didn't step on any toes suggesting this, but that's just how I'm thinking after reading that.

 

@chaoticArbiter just to clarify are you talking to me or @sunsetbreezes?

 

oh, oops, sorry, @raybot! I was talking to @sunsetbreezes.

 

the discomfort is triggered by people explicitly saying in the reblogs they dont have BPD. it would be alleviated if they didnt say this cause im in no position to judge whether or not they do.

also @sunsetbreezes currently I am skimming you response because I am stressed, but I just want to say I'm sorry for being upset. I'm trying very hard to not be upset at you and it's difficult because I feel like 1) I'm being personally attacked, which I know logically I am not and 2) I feel like my and my experiences are being invalidated when someone says "I understand" when they're also saying that they don't, or I know they can't. So I'm sorry for sounding and being aggressive. I'm trying to have a conversation and if I get upset more I will excuse myself. I hope you don't take what I say personally or feel like I'm attacking you, but if I am, I apologize.

Actually, yeah, I'm going to excuse myself. I didn't mean to invalidate you because I myself felt invalidated, but I feel like that's what happened. I believe you when you say you experience these things but I am getting mad at the implication, that I read into it, that what you experience is common in people with other disorders and I don't quite like feeling like that. I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me.

 

@MayaaFeys I'm sorry, in an actual apology-because-it's-my-fault way, that I:

• Caused you to feel personally attacked
• Caused you to feel like you need to apologize for being upset

There's a sense in which I couldn't have done better, because I was also upset, but in that case I need to take responsibility for learning to calm down or at least act calm when I'm not. I phrased things in inflammatory ways while knowing I was speaking to someone emotionally vulnerable. That was wrong.

I'm sorry, in a sorry-to-hear-that-but-I-admit-no-guilt way, that:

• What I said interacted so badly with your issues and made you feel so awful
• You feel invalidated by the implications you read into my posts

You don't deserve to have to feel that way even if this part isn't my fault. It sounds awful and I want to express sympathy.

In answer to your apology for getting mad at me for things I didn't say: I accept. I forgive you. I can also see why you did it and why it wouldn't be a hard mistake to make. I won't ping you in this thread again. I'll probably answer cA but you don't have any obligation to read that and I hope you can do something that will help you feel better soon. I'm not going to hold a grudge against you. If you feel like telling me whether you're going to hold a grudge against me I'd feel better, just knowing either way, but you don't have to if you want nothing to do with this now. Actually I think pretty well of you for writing long explanations when you feel upset. Posts like that are always hard and they're harder when you just want to light the entire planet on fire.

 

You're not the first person to think I must be in recovery from BPD either. This many people coming to the same idea independently is making me think.

Spoiler: If you're interested...

It wasn't until you said this that I remembered that it wasn't until almost two years ago that I started having a sense of self. I had sort of forgotten that I didn't for so long. Ha, is it weird to forget that? Anyway thanks for bringing up the possibility. You might be right. It would make me wonder why my shrink didn't catch it when I was seeing a shrink at 14 but then again I don't know if they're a shrink who's good about PDs or not.

Spoiler: and I'm cynical and mean

Does this mean that by tumblr rules I'm allowed to have opinions about BPD discourse? Because if I am then my opinion is stop doing this "stop relating to me" thing. /sort of joking

 

I don't hold a grudge against you or anything like that. It was kind of a good thing I got upset when I did because I was able to go to therapy today and talk it out.

 

well....you being 14 might also have had something to do with it, honestly. psychologists/psychiatrists are very, very hesitant to diagnose personality disorders in someone who's not 18 or older, simply because of the possibility that at that age, there is still a chance you'll get better on your own without needing the therapy. they will do it in extreme cases, but....those have to be, like, really extreme cases. I haven't heard of many people who fit the bill; I certainly didn't and I was a giant mess from basically age 15 on. that said, the 'not having a sense of self until two years ago' really pings me as 'had BPD, is now recovering'. if you wanna consider the possibility more, I'd definitely do that.
also, I mean, my opinion on the BPD discourse is basically "idgaf who reblogs my shit, but if you know it's meant for people with BPD, please just don't tag it 'I don't have BPD' because if you just tag it 'same' or literally anything else than 'I don't have BPD' I literally will not care, I'm not gonna run around demanding to see the Official BPD Membership Card from everyone who reblogs my BPD posts." heck, honestly "I don't have BPD but this is making me wonder" is fine by me. the only thing I take issue with is just straight up 'I don't have BPD' and it's left at that. and I personally don't see a reason to take a post you know is for people with BPD and reblog it and tag it....to say you don't have the disorder characterizing the post you just reblogged. but that's just me.

 

Considering I don't fit the criteria now and the only shrink I could possibly go to thinks you have to be manipulative to be borderline and a BPD diagnosis is like a scarlet letter I'm not sure what I could do.

I don't want to have to care. I know what my problems are and I know what they used to be and I don't need labels. I resent needing to care whether I fit a specific category*. But if I have to deal with these categories then I don't know what I can do besides go to the formal definitions and admit that this one doesn't apply to me right now. But what am I supposed to think when other people keep telling me my feelings don't count unless I have these specific words written down by a shrink somewhere. Or if not that then I have to believe they're the same kind of thing* as something like cancer and that I either do or don't have a lump of something called BPD somewhere inside. And that a shrink could look and see whether the thing is there or not. The fact of the matter is that I do know what emotions up to 11 feels like from experience, that I don't have those very often, that I don't know if I'm highly sensitive or not, that I don't know if I was raised in an invalidating environment or not, that I have experiences that almost no one who doesn't have BPD ever talks about having, that I don't fit the diagnostic criteria right now, that there are some common BPD experiences I don't have, that I suffer in silence without anyone else knowing anything's wrong very often, that I don't act like people with BPD supposedly usually act, that parts of DBT are useful to me and parts are useless, that I don't know if I ever fit the criteria, that multiple people think I sound like I had BPD at some point but am recovering, that I just figured out how to have a sense of self but I also think I had one at some point as a child and forgot it, that I only know I don't usually have that level of emotions because I've experienced them and can compare them to my usual, that my thought processes are more characteristic of someone with BPD than they are of someone without it, and that I don't want to figure out whether I'm a blegg or a rube* when all I want to do is know whether laughing at how much a text post that's like me is like me makes me a bad person! I'm sorry this turned into a rant. Thank you for listening. And thank you for trying to help me figure out what's going on in my head. I do know more now about myself than I did before you said anything.

*I'm a big fan of Disguised Queries, by the way. I'm also a translucent red egg-shaped furry thing that contains palladium and glows in the dark.

 

This is a thing that I think is an etiquette question: I see a post, I find it relatable, I reblog it without stating my diagnoses. Are the kinds of "BPD-specific posts" you're talking about (@chaoticArbiter specifically, but this goes to anyone) generally labeled as such in the text of the post? Because if so I would understand and likely not reblog (no promises but it's likely), but if it's just in the tags or something I'm not gonna go to the OP and hunt for a message that may or may not be there.

 

Problem: I want to vent in a vent thread about this but I don't want to make there be even more threads.
Solution: it's my thread and I can put what I want in it.

Spoiler: nothing in here is anything I really think is completely true or unbiased or clear-minded

Me: "Well that was a civil thread, considering how intense it was. Good thing everyone mostly talked like mature adults and there aren't any hard feelings."
Also me: "They only don't think you're evil incarnate because you've evilly deceived them into thinking you're one of them! You're actually evil! ...I'm not really hurting you though because self-harm is something borderlines do! You're not suffering! Why are you crying? It's not because you have a lot of feelings! You don't have a lot of feelings! THEY have feelings! You're so pathetic for crying so hard about this! What an overreaction! I can't believe you think you're overreacting! You're not really overreacting! YOU DON'T KNOW TRUE PAIN! You think this counts? THIS DOESN'T COUNT! YOU'RE NOT SUFFERING! STOP APPROPRIATING! YOU DON'T HAVE REAL PROBLEMS! EVERYONE FEELS LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME! Why can't you stop crying? I can't believe you can't stop crying. That's completely ridiculous and there's no reason to cry so much! Did you know you don't have real problems because everyone cries like this? If you had REAL problems you'd be SOBBING FOR HOURS STRAIGHT EVERY DAY! The months you actually did that don't count! You'd have to sob for hours straight every day of YOUR ENTIRE LIFE! OR IT DOESN'T COUNT! YOU'RE NOT IN PAIN STOP CRYING WHY ARE YOU CRYING SO MUCH YOU'RE NOT REALLY CRYING!"
Still me: "I bet tumblr will be distracting."
Tumblr: "help, my wife is napping and i miss her but she deserves her rest"
Me: "Haha I know that feel WAIT WAIT I'm not married, what if it's different, how many toes am I stepping on, oh gods, oh no, I'm probably not a woman, I don't know if I love women, is it different for wlw, how awful am I? LITERALLY THE WORST!"
Also me: "So fine, that fucked me up worse than I thought it would. People were invalidating. I'll just never have anything to do with borderlines again."
Even more of me: "Stop blaming them for that last part! You're being ridiculous! That's a you problem! It's your own fault! Blame yourself! They are cinnamon rolls and you just keep hurting them!"

Me, looking at what I just wrote: "At least now I know cA is right. Haha that's really funny! I hope if cA reads this fae'll think it's funny too. WAIT NO that would be going 'lol relatable' at a borderline and that's EVIL and you can't make light of your problems! You can't have anyone relate to you! You can't just laugh about this! You can't just treat that like a laughing matter that anyone can understand! THAT WILL HURT PEOPLE! You have to treat it like a deadly serious secret that you can never tell anyone!"
Also me: "No one said that. SO YOU'RE WRONG AND STUPID TO THINK IT!"
Me again: "It's the obvious implication of a policy designed to protect them and, given the number of people who've now said this, me too. I'm not protected by this policy and cA thinks I should be."

Me thinking about the thread: "Why is it that no amount of explaining can get anyone to see that I don't care whether they actually enforce their policy by getting mad at me or not? Do I want to remind people who are talking about whether people will get mad about this? Or do I want to pretend this never happened?"

Me being as impartial and fair as possible: "On the one hand are their brainbugs where they'll feel upset if someone relates to them without being diagnosed with BPD. On the other hand there are my brainbugs where I'll feel upset if they pretend their brainbugs have any moral weight or that the things they want people to say are true. But then again sometimes they are because people sometimes say they understand when they really don't because they think they're just exaggerating for effect. But sometimes they're just outright telling people that saying true things is bad because it can't REALLY be true because if it were true it would hurt their feelings. And mostly I just care about how much they're hurting my feelings! So obviously the fair and impartial thing to do is for everyone to agree that we should respect my feelings instead of theirs!"

That could probably be a real post if I felt like it but I don't want to. That would mean I would have to do work and type more things and use effort. I don't wanna.

 

the ones I'm talking about are only the ones that say things like "this is a BPD-specific post" or are titled "some BPD feels"--because you can clearly tell they're BPD specific, and yet I've still gotten people who reblog those posts (I've made some of them myself) and tag them 'I don't have BPD' and just. leave it at that. or worse they tag it with a star sign. and I'm just kind of "????" at both of those. it's very clearly about BPD, not Libras, so why are you doing this.
if it's in the tags, or it's not labeled BPD-specific at all, idgaf. honestly? idgaf even if people reblog BPD-specific posts when they don't have BPD--just please don't tag it with only 'I don't have BPD' and leave it at that, or god forbid, don't tag it with your fucking star sign.

 

So now I've mulled this over calmly for a while. I think I know what opinion I'm going to keep holding.

Spoiler: rape is mentioned in an analogy

First of all since everyone ignored the fact that this is what this thread is about and everyone who's responded has been responding to a completely different question, even though I said this more than once, I'll just say this again: I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT WHAT YOU SAY IN RESPONSE TO SOMEONE REBLOGGING A SPECIFIC POST. THAT IS NOT THE PROBLEM. SAYING THINGS LIKE "PEOPLE WITHOUT BPD CAN'T RELATE TO THIS EVEN IF THEY THINK THEY CAN" IS THE PROBLEM. SAYING THAT REBLOGGING IF YOU DON'T HAVE BPD WOULD BE WRONG BECAUSE YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY RELATE AND ARE BEING AN APPROPRIATIVE NEUROTYPICAL IS THE PROBLEM. TELLING SOMEONE AFTER THEY REBLOG THAT YOU WISH THEY HADN'T IS NOT THE PROBLEM. SAYING THESE THINGS ANGRILY OR POLITELY IS EXACTLY THE SAME AND IT DOES NOT MATTER. THIS IS NOT ABOUT TONE. THIS IS NOT ABOUT SAYING SOMETHING RUDE. (Edit: I am frustrated but the capslock is to draw attention if you're skimming, not to sound like yelling.)

Maybe someone will read that this time. This is about saying that people shouldn't, not about getting mad at people who do.

The two themes in the arguments I've heard as I understand them are:
1. There are people who think certain posts are joking and exaggerating and say they relate but only because they don't take the posts literally at face value
2. People with BPD, through no fault of their own, have an uncontrollable and very severe negative reaction to anyone saying they can relate to anything at all that can be a symptom of BPD without having BPD, whether it's true or not.

I'll even throw in a third point that no one made specifically and explicitly but that seems reasonable:
3. People with BPD catch so much shit from everyone, and have to face so many uncomfortable situations, that disappointing NTs a little to let people with BPD stay in their comfort zones for possibly the only time in their lives just seems fair.

Point 3 is important because without it point 2 is obviously worthless. So the obvious question is who is inconvenienced? If "no, I mean this literally, it's not an exaggeration" doesn't clear things up then it's someone who really thinks this describes their actual experience. There are two groups of people who don't have a BPD diagnosis and do have experiences symptomatic of BPD: people with other mental illnesses and people who don't know they have BPD. Then if people with BPD are anything like people with other mental illnesses, there's actually another group that will worry: people who have BPD and know they have BPD but can't stop worrying they don't really or they're faking or they don't count or any of the other things that people tell themselves when they can't be confident about their own conditions. All of those groups are vulnerable people in a lot of pain. Telling them that they can't really be feeling what they think they're feeling is invalidating. Can't think of any problems invalidation could cause. It's not like being constantly invalidated causes any, I don't know, serious mental illnesses or something. And dangling Schrodinger's inclusion in front of someone, saying "here it is, here's someone who knows that feeling, you aren't alone... maybe, or maybe not, maybe you're different, maybe this isn't for you, maybe there's nothing for you, maybe there really isn't someone like you out there after all" and holding up certainty in a specific diagnosis as the price of admission is just cruel. "Feeling this way is a thing other people experience and talk about! You don't have to be alone... just as long as you're sure you have exactly the right mental illness! Do you? If you don't then you don't get to feel like anyone else understands you after all! This is just for people whose feelings count. Yours don't."

It isn't about reblogging. It has never been about actually reblogging. It's about the reasons for it. I know no one heard the first few times I said this. Here's an analogy. If someone says all lesbians should get raped that will make a lot of women feel unsafe around them. Even if they say they're too lazy to actually go rape any lesbians, will that make you feel better? Maybe safer. But if you're a lesbian with self-esteem issues you'll still tell yourself "you deserve it, you should get raped" over and over and over again all day. If you're not even a lesbian but you think you might be mistaken for one you might still shiver anyway and worry and wonder if you deserve to get raped or if this person thinks you deserve it. This is true even if this person says on national TV that they're impotent and pathetically frail and afraid of the law and only pray that someone else will do their dirty work for them. That won't help.

Telling people not to find BPD content relatable is more morally defensible than saying all lesbians should be raped. And the power dynamics aren't the same. But the important part of the analogy is this: IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU ACTUALLY SAY WHEN SOMEONE ACTUALLY REBLOGS YOUR POSTS. This isn't about being afraid of being dogpiled.

Now that I've heard the reasoning behind these statements I'm even more sure about this than I was before and I'm even angrier at these policies for existing at all.

That's all as fair as I'm ever going to be. I endorse the above. That's my calm opinion.

This is not my calm opinion:

Spoiler: I do keep saying I'm mean and cynical and that's because it's usually true, really, I'm serious, this is mean ranting I might not agree with later

Pick something else to build your identity on, too. Helping people is a good choice. Why don't you just try that instead?