I’ve been seeing all these posts on my dash lately that are like “people with bpd are good + lovely + kind” etc etc, the usual tumblr balderdash, and they make me really uncomfortable as someone with BPD. 

Like is there a legitimate stigma against people with BPD in the psych community? Yes. I’ve had therapists write me off as a lost cause because of my BPD or tell me it was a psychiatric death sentence.

And there is no word in any language I know for the horrible crushing self-loathing that overwhelmed me when in the first fumbling stages of being diagnosed, and my terrible relief that I was something besides broken, something that might even be human again one day, I looked up BPD on the internet and all I found was websites devoted to helping people deal with family members or friends who had BPD, websites that painted BPD as some sort of irredeemable all-devouring monster. 

Does there need to be more awareness of how having BPD can make you vulnerable and put you at risk for being manipulated, instead of this current view of BPD turning you into some viscous manipulative monster? Yes. I’ve had my BPD wielded against me with clinical precision by an abusive ex. 

But these posts and the mentality surrounding them still make me deeply uncomfortable, mostly because while all of the above is true, this is also true: I’ve manipulated and hurt people I care about. I’ve lied to them with careless ease and in staggering depth. I have violent impulses.

Acknowledging that I have had terrible things done to me and BPD was a survival mechanism that in a lot of ways kept me alive, while also acknowledging I have to take responsibility for the terrible things I have done to others as a result of my BPD is an important part of recovery. And the way these kind of posts seem to me to hand wave it away—to imply that if you have a personality disorder you are not responsible for your own actions really upsets me.