BPD and the myth of manipulation
So as someone with BPD myself I hear this myth get thrown around by a lot of not only professionals, but people in the public sphere, that people with Borderline Personality Disorder are manipulative. Honestly it angers me for a number of reasons. Because as someone with bpd, there is so much stigma out there about the disorder, over the years I have been called treatment resistant in the public system, told due to the guidelines that sorry we can only keep you in hospital for 24-48hrs maximum and even turned away from certain emergency departments when experiencing crisis because their guidelines stated they couldn’t admit a patient like myself. Or was told I was just trying to manipulate them, for what? A crappy hospital bed in an emergency room to keep myself safe? The world has gone mad I concluded at that point in my life. Had it not been for my father willing to drive me around with the doors child locked all night until I got a bed in private hospital I may not be here to have a story to tell. This is how much the idea of being ‘manipulative’ can damage a patient with BPD’s access to care, it can become life threatening.
So the definition of the word manipulative means essentially that you intend to control or influence artful, creative, often unfair or selfish way.
Next look at the word intend which is defined as you have decided or planned to do something.
Now henceforth to be manipulative you need to deliberately plan to selfishly influence others, and when it comes to borderline I will relate this back to one trait from the DSM-V, which is frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment to which someone with bpd in a relationship with affective instability, attachment issues and unstable relationships that switch in and out of that splitting (slang for idolisation and devaluation/black and white thinking) may then switch across to one of the other traits of bpd as a maladaptive coping mechanism of someone we love dearly leaving or them threatening to leave our life due to our mental health. This can be a very big trigger for a lot of us which can lead to anger outbursts or impulsive behaviour, mood reactivity, stress related paranoia/mild to severe dissociation. All that I have mentioned are symptoms of BPD outlined in the DSM-V and often one symptom switches to another but manipulation requires preparation and premeditation which people with BPD like myself just don’t have the capacity to do and are usually reacting in the moment based off impaired impulsive judgment that is so extreme that it is very hard even to explain that what a normal person feels is nothing like what we feel.
I compare having BPD to feeling like your a volcano on the inside full of molten lava but on the outside you have to appear as though you’re a glacier.
Soon I will have some new art up that’s BPD focused to go with this theme as it’s BPD awareness month
In general help break the stigma for BPD 💚🖤
For more info about the diagnostics check out the link below it leads to the DSM-V go to page 663
https://repository.poltekkes-kaltim.ac.id/657/1/Diagnostic%20and%20statistical%20manual%20of%20mental%20disorders%20_%20DSM-5%20(%20PDFDrive.com%20).pdf
