Long post, but thanks for bringing this up cuz it’s important af:
I have been grappling with this for a while now, as y’all may have guessed from my flip-floppy posting about it earlier on. When Invictus joined us and gave some thoughtful mental health insight about diagnosing others, I remember apologizing to everyone because I was indeed playing armchair psychiatrist and I really try not to do that…but I’m gonna break my rule YET AGAIN.
Y’all already know I’m a Borderline and I saw some alarming symptoms in her (extreme impulsivity, difficulty regulating emotions, substance misuse, deep emotional attachments to certain people and therefore fear of abandonment when/if they leave) and I was like, “Woweeeee this ho is a Borderline!”
I still think she is…but to an extent.
It is possible to have multiple personality disorders (don’t read that as the illness called “Multiple Personality Disorder” haha). She shows a LOT of Borderline symptoms, but they are heavily overshadowed by symptoms of narcissism and, yes, maybe she’s a sociopath as well.
If it’ll educate anyone (and this is based off of factual info I gathered when I was diagnosed years ago):
—Narcissism primarily involves egotistical behavior, severe lack of empathy, excessive sense of self-importance. You are the cream of the crop. You are the “smartest person in the room.” You are more sexually desirable than anyone else. You need to be constantly praised. You need to be recognized as the most talented, the most gracious, the most hardworking, the most valued, the most whatever. You don’t understand why people feel what they feel, because you can’t envision their experiences from their emotional perspective.
—Borderline Personality Disorder is primarily identified as having difficulty regulating your emotions. Your emotional responses are unstable. I had to go two days without my medication a few years ago and I went to the grocery store. One minute I was smiling at customers passing by, gettin’ all excited over the options in the snack aisle, and maybe seven minutes later I can only remember being sprawled out on the floor a few aisles over, sobbing uncontrollably and whimpering nonsense to a startled old woman who was hurriedly tugging tissues out of her purse to give to me and asking me what happened. That’s the thing: I had no idea what happened. There are no triggers sometimes. Without medication (and therapy helps a TON), your brain chemistry can be an absolute roller coaster every hour/few hours—sad, then manically happy, then maybe suicidal, then numb, back to manically happy, back to numb again, then content, then furious, then sad. It’s extremely hard to control without good mood stabilizers and a therapist to help you cope; don’t get me wrong, some people make it out alive, but it’s no easy feat and it’s exhausting having to check yourself every ten seconds. Borderlines don’t walk around feeling like they need their ego fed. They just have an extremely low sense of self-worth that they turn inward towards themselves and struggle to process without necessary mental health resources, which can impact the comfort of those around them.
I’m against stereotyping people with mental/personality disorders, but hey, you wanna stereotype a Borderline just to remember who we are? Remember this: unstable moods/emotional, fear of rejection, terrible self-esteem. You wanna remember narcissists? Here: self-important, egotistical, zero empathy for others. There’s a huge difference.
I don’t say this because I feel that friends in here look at me and people like me in a hurtful manner and so I’m being defensive—not at all!! This is a piece of info more for the MANY who are lurking who might not understand the difference between the PD’s because BOTH are stigmatized. But BPD is not the worst thing; people just believe we’re terrible because they don’t like dealing with over-emotional, clingy people. NPD is the REAL bad one up in here.
Sorry, Diamonds, for the babbling lol. ❤
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