Our family member was diagnosed with BPD many years ago via a full psych evaluation, but always hated the diagnosis. Recently she left her psychiatrist and found a “lived experience” therapist that tells her if she identifies as autistic, that’s all that matters. She’s autistic because, “Nobody knows how her brain works like she does.” No tests, no evaluation, the prior (multiple) diagnosis are irrelevant. She received the autism diagnosis the first visit…walked out with it.
This also allows her to reject the BPD diagnosis…it’s like it never happened.
She mocks anyone who tries to talk to her about BPD, “Oh you know better than my actual therapist!?!” And this seems to have give her carte blanch to behave worse than ever…she feels she should be allowed to rage at us without any consequences because it is “ableist” of us to expect her to treat us “normally.”
She’s adopted new behaviors like walking on her toes (she’s 24 and never did this before) and claims her “special interest” is whatever she wants to do at the moment (so we have to all go along or we don’t understand her autism…for example, if we are selecting something to watch as a family her special interest is the show or movie she prefers).
So, it seems like this new identity is giving her everything she’s wanted: a rejection of the BPD diagnosis she hated and thus a reason that supports her having quit DBT, an excuse to not attempt to regulate her emotions AT ALL, a sense of belonging in the online communities and total support from others there when she complains about how her neurotypical family is so closed-minded and won’t accept her diagnosis (as if we somehow have a problem with the concept of autism in general, rather than knowing she’s basically cosplaying the part), and a way to control the rest of us by calling us ableist and hateful neurotypicals if we don’t acquiesce to all of her mood swings.
We don’t know what to do.
This sounds so familiar! While I suspect my sister might also be on the spectrum, and genuinely has ADHD (which she likes to blame most of her issues on), she told us about three years ago that she was diagnosed with BPD. She now says that she never told us that and that she has a "mood disorder". It honestly sounds like she could not handle the BPD diagnosis because it put too much of the work on her. I'm suspicious that her therapist is using "mood disorder" because it sounds better to my sister. My sister also tells the family that we are toxic and she needs to get away from us, so I know she's lying to the therapist about the family dynamic. She's literally made up abuse and neglect in her childhood and likes to state that the physical abuse from my brother (that I told her about) happened to her. She was the bully since she was capable. Any trauma from her childhood was literally caused by her (and I and my mother endured), but she has made herself the victim in her memories. This seems to be the norm in BPD characters, as their egos are so fragile that they cannot even handle the diagnosis or take responsibility for it.
YYYYEEEESSSS! That’s exactly it! The BPD diagnosis put the onus of work on your sister and my family member…taking it away and calling it autism gives her (per her, and seemingly her therapist) the right to expect everyone else to cater to her neurodivergence. Even if she was autistic, that wouldn’t be the case.
I swear I don’t think I’ve ever seen her happier. She has a new lease on life, escaping all accountability. It’s…maddening, considering what she’s put us through. 😩
I'm so sorry. I understand.
My sister claims it's PTSD but I think it's to absolve herself of all blame. It's everyone else's fault for traumatizing her and triggering her.
It's impossible to not trigger them. Everything is offensive. The only one abusing anyone in the house was my sister. She doesn't even remember the bad times when we were poor and my mother was working 2 jobs and going to college and having breakdowns from it. Life was so much better for her financially and psychologically from the outside, but she literally had fits of rage every morning because she didn't want to get up and every afternoon when she got home from school, and over homework. The ADHD medication had something to do with this, but it was traumatic to me and my mother. She would scream and curse and throw things, slam doors, stomp through the house when she was in middle school. Nothing my mother did was enough. Never the right clothes to wear. She wanted my mother to do everything for her. She demanded everything and got exactly what she wanted. One time (she was maybe 10 or 11) she demanded something that my parents refused to get her - she laid in her room and screamed at the top of her lungs for three days until my parents gave in because they didn't want her to hurt herself (and it was terrorizing us).
About 6 months ago I guess she decided that she wanted attention, so she started screaming in her room that her legs were hurting. She's 35 now. She was crying, but it honestly sounded ridiculous. She begged someone to take her to the hospital, my mom was over her shit, so my dad took her. They waited in the ER for hours. She asked to go home. She gets home and starts screaming again, so my dad takes her back, and she asks to go home again. She never followed up with a doctor about her legs, and later admitted to my boyfriend that it "wasn't that bad". She's done this before over her blood pressure, freaking out and screaming, demanding my mother buy her a blood pressure cuff, my mother ignoring her, so she escalates, she screeches for hours. I'm so fucking tired. My mother is 68 and on chemo. She deserves a small point in her life where she's not catering to a selfish, demanding brat.
I've noticed that my sister is convinced it's only PTSD that she has and not BPD (honestly, could be both). It really feels like she feels like absolves jer of responsibility and the other doesn't.
I think so. And then it makes everyone else the villains.
It’s funny because treatment for BPD and autism often includes DBT in both.
Looks like she thinks autism is an excuse, and that people with autism don’t have any agency or accountability at all.
Interesting about DBT! Thank you for that!
It doesn’t sound like she’s getting ANY real therapy-therapy…just affirmation after affirmation. She’s increasingly intolerant of any contradiction…HER “lived experience” is all that matters. If we try to point out/reason with her that we also have “lived experiences,” she says as neuroptypicals we need to stop being ablest and adjust to her neurodivergency “for once.” As if we haven’t spent years walking on eggshells around her.
This whole situation seems like it’s letting her BPD run the whooooole show.
You can’t contradict someone with un/undertreated BPD, especially when they’re in a meltdown. Pivot, redirect, grey rock, do anything but contradict. Directly challenging will almost always end badly.
This must be more common than I thought. My daughter has claimed her BPD diagnosis is wrong. She has now been diagnosed with Autism, Bi Polar Type 2 (I have this), PTSD and has even said there is nothing wrong with her. She claims I am just a shit parent. I wonder what is wrong with everyone else she treats like crap.
I've also seen her claim other personality disorders. She has claimed DID, Schizophrenia and more. Somehow all her identities when she claimed DID were Greek and Norse gods. She would then blame her outbursts on whatever God was a war God basically.
It was exhausting. It stopped when I told her I would not believe any other diagnosis without proof from her psychiatrist or a psychologist. The only proof I have gotten was for her BPD and anxiety.
I was wondering if it was common…apparently it’s not too hard to find a therapist that doesn’t gives crap about actual testing and will just go on vibes, or whatever.
Her behaviour only has a chance of improving if she accepts she has a problem and actively seeks & maintains a state of recovery. This will require daily efforts on her part and regular therapy and possibly medication. This requires a choice on her part to do so.
By rejecting her diagnosis and claiming something else, she had effectively “relapsed”.
Much like the advice given to relatives of alcoholics; you didn’t cause her behaviour, you cannot control her behaviour, and you cannot cure her problems.
If she has decided to relapse, your options range from severing contact and protecting your family, through to offering support to help her get back into treatment, but know that you cannot force her to change her mind and she is choosing to relapse because that is preferable to her than accepting she had a problem.
BPD patients often weaponise therapy at the best of times. It seems she is very much doing so to attempt to live in denial about a diagnosis she hates, and try and force you all into accepting it too.
If it were me? No contact. I’ve had enough cluster B for one lifetime
No contact kind of feels like a dream, honestly. But we have relatives in common that make it impossible for me not to see her, unless I cut them out as well. Some are teenagers and don’t have a say in things…NC should be possible in a few years once they are older. I don’t want to abandon them.
My sister did the same. She’s had everything but BPD. In front of clinicians they all would dance around labels, because they knew if they rejected her-ascribed labels or insisted on the BPD label she’d bolt. When I asked them directly without my sister in the room, they affirmed the BPD and said they had no idea where she was pulling all this other stuff. Their goal was to basically keep her in some form of treatment. My sister was taking their non-committal answers as far as their opinions on autism/cptsd/whatever as affirmation that her self diagnoses were correct and gospel truth.
Even the therapist that I thought my sister had completely fooled was not fooled. She was just trying to keep her in therapy because of how unstable my sister was.
I strongly suspect this is what your sisters therapist is doing, and your sister is running with it.
One thing everyone would say to both her and me is that the label is less important than the symptoms and the disruption to their life they were causing. So it doesn’t really matter the label, as long as therapeutic steps are happening to help with symptoms.
How is she doing now?
Better? This summer was hard (you can go look for my post history). She fired her psychiatrist because the psychiatrist challenged her. Multiple involuntary hospitalizations. I had to file a missing persons report once because the cops took her to the hospital and no one told us. I ended up having to take a step back because of the stress, so we aren’t really talking much.
She got in an outpatient clinic meant for people experiencing their first psychosis. It felt like she was psychotic, but I honestly don’t know if I believe it (because I literally can’t believe anything from her), so I’ll defer to the medical professionals opinion. I don’t think they tolerate her shit. She’s back at work and not calling me at 3 AM because she lost her car keys, so…
Wow…I wonder how common this is? This weaponization of the system?
One thing…my pwBPD shopped around until she found a therapist who would mind her. She dumped her psychiatrist and looked until she found a MFT who “specializes” in autism. She just rubber-stamps everyone who comes in, it seems, with autism if they say it fits their life experience.
My pwBPD has a bunch of work accommodations thanks to this autism diagnosis. Works from home part time, claims she didn’t understand directions when she doesn’t complete tasks (she’s never had a hard time with directions), gets feedback in writing so she doesn’t have to face her boss directly, etc.
She’s just crafting a little world to suit her. And it’s making her behave worse, Lather, rinse, repeat.
She might have the therapist hoodwinked, especially if she didn’t have her records transferred. I’m just saying don’t take it as a given.
My pwBPD was also diagnosed Autistic by a “therapist.” What’s especially awful is that I have a sibling with genuine and severe developmental disabilities and the pwBPD is now consistently accusing everyone of supporting my sibling’s disabilities while punishing them for their “autism.”
I’m so sorry that you’re going through this with your person. It’s genuinely exhausting, and you’re right in that they see this as the ultimate get out of jail free card. Not to mention the language they learn and weaponize in order to justify their abusive behaviours.
Uuughhhh. I’m so sorry. That’s maddening. Yes, my pwBPD has a similar issue. We have a younger family member with autism (not actually blood related FWIW to my pwBPD) and she’s complained about how much better she’d be today if only HER autism would have been diagnosed young as well.
She wasn’t diagnosed young because she had ZERO symptoms. 😡
But now it’s evidence of how we ignored her. Or something.
That's hilarious because I had long feared that maybe I had it* because I had a few thought patterns and sensitivities etc. So I asked multiple therapists about it once theyd known me well enough and they've all adamantly said no... but I do have ADHD and a mood disorder and screened positive for "probable" autism (but decided not to pursue it since as an adult there are no services or anything offered.) Like the emotional dysregulatuon is there, but I contain it; the lack of understanding others at times is there, but it's not a lack of empathy and I've learned to compensate. So yeah maybe a layman could mistake the two at a glance, but a professional shouldnt.
*"it" being bpd but bot tried to ban me from posting it that way.
People with BPD do try to join discussions here. I found that having the automod warn people when submitting certain phrases (that indicate they have BPD) is more effective then catching and banning people.
My ex with BPD also claimed he was autistic.
I am autistic and have cPTSD. And I can also clock autism miles away, most of us with neurospicy brains can. He does not have autism. The weird thing was that his “autism” only came up when he was trying to avoid any responsibility. Suddenly I was being ablest and not understanding him.
He also apparently had ocd, major depressive disorder and adhd. None of those things seemed to matter unless he was avoiding responsibility.
Interestingly, I’ve always thought my mom was BPD but after another family member got a legit autism diagnosis, I do see some similarities.
I do feel really bad for people with clinical autism / ADHD. Certainly in men you can spot both a mile away and in both cases they can be rationalised with, are self aware and capable of self reflection (assuming no learning difficulties, which obviously makes this harder). It's just that outward empathy isn't the first thing that springs to mind, can take a bit of work and needs to be timed right.
Awareness is great and all, but not when it's used as a licence to manipulate
My family member with BPD (diagnosed) also tells people she has autism. She also is no longer seeking treatment