“There is no glamourous mental health disorder and I’m certainly not going around collecting trophies for getting different diagnoses.”

Stigma alert: I’m manipulative, attention seeking and toxic. You will feel like you’re walking on eggshells around me, and I’ll leave you feeling drained after every interaction. I will lie, feign illness, and seek drugs. Nothing you can do will help as my personality disorder is untreatable so its important that you cut me loose as soon as possible. Don’t forget to tell my loved ones how poisonous I am and encourage them to restrict or sever contact.

Still with me? Congratulations. It takes approximately seven seconds to form an impression, and this is what people say about people like me with borderline personality disorder. If this is the narrative that people come across first, then is It any wonder we are treated like second class citizens? We are the untouchables.

How do you feel about me right now, do you feel any of those things I’ve mentioned? Have you believed any of those things in the past? Do you hear other people talk about BPD that way? What chance do we stand when this type of narrative is perpetuated?

So, it’s an uphill battle because those three words Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) make people see me through a lens of the negativity believing that I’m an awful person, dangerous and a combination of all those negative traits I outlined above.

In fact, would it surprise you that I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist who had never met me. It was my first admission into hospital due to experiencing suicidal ideation and on my second day the psychiatrist pulled me into a meeting told me I had Borderline Personality Disorder, that hospital wouldn’t help me, and so they were discharging me.

Everything since has been seen through this lens, it’s a big red mark on my file and it weighs heavy. People make these assumptions about me even though I’m nothing like they perceive.

So, meet the real me; I’m kind, caring and very loyal. I am a strange mix of introversion and extraversion; I can be both depending on how I’m feeling. I have great relationships with people, I am driven, intelligent and very perfectionistic (sometimes to my peril). I would do anything for anyone (including strangers) and I’m the friend everyone comes to with their problems. I’m very resourceful, like to be independent and have a passion for making the world a better place.

The problem is though that I get treated through the lens of BPD even when it doesn’t fit me and my experience. When I’ve presented with problems that are outside of BPD I have been dismissed. A topic that is off the table is my mood, which can be at either end of the spectrum, but in BPD moods usually change within minutes and hours unlike mine which are pervasive and last weeks and months at a time.

Instead of receiving care for problems such as psychosis I become a second-class citizen and told that it’s not real because people with BPD don’t experience that. Cue the narrative that I can’t hear voices.

So instead of people considering what’s actually happening and considering that its something other than BPD at play, I just get told I’m attention seeking or feigning other disorders for my own gain like medication and ‘a better diagnosis’ – I have to admit that last one made my eyes roll so far back I almost lost them. I mean have you seen how people with severe and enduing mental health problems get treated? There is no glamourous mental health disorder and I’m certainly not going around collecting trophies for getting different diagnoses.

Amongst all my ramblings I have a message, its painful and hurtful to be accused of all these negative traits, often when they don’t fit at all but know this… Even If I was struggling with some of things I described in the first paragraph, I would still 100% be worthy of love, understanding and treatment.

We must stop demonising people with personality disorders and placing all the responsibility on them for ‘their problems’. For most people with BPD, they have experienced unspeakable trauma and society gaslighting them and marginalising them is the very last thing they need, especially when it comes exactly from the professionals who are supposed to understand and take care of them.

So next time you catch that thought about someone, ask yourself where it’s come from, is it based in truth? Or an unconscious bias that you’ve picked up along the way? You can be the change.