Borderline between what and what?

"Have you ever confused a dream with life?

Or stolen something when you had the cash?

Have you ever been blue?

Or thought your train moving whilst sitting still?

Maybe I was just crazy, maybe it was the 60's

or maybe I was just a girl, interrupted"

- Girl, Interrupted

I am just about through with dealing with so-called mental heath professionals. I'm thinking of writing to someone with power but I don't know anybody and no-one will listen to me because, two years at the age of twenty, some quack decided to bang a label on me that does nothing but create stigma, alienation and unfair treatment.

I am talking of course about those hideous three words that should be burned out of every single DSM handbook.

Borderline Personality Disorder.

The diagnosis (unlike, say, Schizophrenia or Major Depression) is pejorative.

It means that the patient is difficult to deal with, he's angry or demanding, asks for different treatment or doesn't react to treatment, stands up for themselves and is therefore PROJECTING. It also means that they are probably a twenty something female.

MEN ARE HARDLY EVER GIVEN THIS DIAGNOSIS.

Why not? Why is it just young girls that get this? Because it's more socially acceptable for men to act in a 'borderline way', far more acceptable for them to binge drink or drive recklessly or sleep with more than one person. Or because a lot of the 'impusive' behaviours the criteria mentions are actually quite 'normal female things' like going on spending sprees and eating binges.

Eating binges. Yes. FOOD. Despite the fact that not all that ago you were anorexic to the point of near death, it means nothing anymore. And the reasons for it are left unsaid, or else paced off as just a 'part of the puzzle.' That is complete bullshit. I saw TOP CONSULTANTS who were more than happy with my explanation for my ED, and not one little bit of it had anything to do with 'borderline traits' but rather a nice little mix of genetics and all the cliched ED bullshit you can go read in 'The Best Little Girl in The Word' or Heaven forbid 'Girls Under Pressure', where everything is always alright in the end because suddenly we see that we are GOOD AT LIFE and eat pizza and drink full fat Coke and generelly never speak of the whole sorry buisness again.
But anyway, charging onwards!

Treatment-wise things aren't any better. A lot of people give up because genrelly the prognostic implications are not that great and these 'borderlines' don't dramatically get better despite what they will claim as 'numerous efforts'. Their numerous efforst tend to only be one or two, though, although they would never admit to it. They will offer you DBT as 'the last hope' despite the fact that it is merely a sticking plaster, a cover, that makes everything look nice on the outside. Oh, you don't cut yourself anymore, how beautiful, you must be feeling bloody marvellous.

Well no, actually Dr Quack, I have a slight issue with the shit you can't be bothered to sort out, or are the years of analysis it would take just too much of an expense? Too much money to shed out on these manipulative, angry, demanding young women. The diagnosis ends up being it's own endpoint, it doesn't leave room for alternate explanations or else they just fade into the background and we're left to call them Borderlines.

Victimised. Stigmatised by the mental health profession, not by your average Joe on the street.

And finally, just one more thing, surely the first rule of any professional relationship (excluding hookers)

DO NOT EVER FUCKING SHOUT AT YOUR CLIENTS.