Why do borderline personality disorder lie

I went to bed hours ago, but some thoughts kept me awake until I was forced to get up and write about them, right now. First off, let me explain to you that, eight years ago my therapist wrote in her personal notes the suspicion that I may have BPD, but she never told me. Over a year ago, my boyfriend started researching my symptoms online. I have bipolar 1, but he felt that I was presenting symptoms outside of the spectrum of bipolar.

Several things came up, which is why armchair diagnosis is not good and rarely accurate, but he kept coming back to BPD. Six months later, while he was sleeping in bed, I took a BPD aptitude test. Yes, I know how silly that is.

You see, Borderline Personality Disorder is highly stigmatized and misunderstood, not only by the general population, but specifically by medical professionals. I say specifically because it is their job to be informed and they are routinely misinformed. I went home upset and feeling somewhat stabbed in the back, for having this information kept from me for so long.

But eight months later, after reading everything I can about BPD, and involving myself in multiple support groups, I finally understand why she felt she was doing me a favor. I can see why she felt keeping something from me that has no treatment would make sense, she was sparing me the grief.

If this is what she was sparing me from, are you less mad? Because after hearing stories about people with BPD being turned away from the emergency rooms, hung up on by crisis lines, dismissed by doctors, and psychiatrists, and shunned by their friends and family, I am the opposite of mad. I could spend all day listing off each untrue claim and explain to you why they are myths.

But rather, I want to focus on something I feel is more important for you to understand. What we know within the autism community is that the opposite is true.

People on the autism spectrum generally not only feel so intensely in their emotions, but also experience high sensitivity sensorily. They spend so much of their energy processing all the input that they have little energy left over for output. But can you see how all of these symptoms are related? We display different than someone on the autism spectrum, but the idea is the same; which is, we are so profoundly sensitive that often we act out in attempt to protect ourselves from harm.

Too many of us use self harm as an emotional regulator. Get when someone sees the diagnosis of BPD hanging around our necks. The very thing we need to mend is withheld by longstanding stigmatization, ableism, and misinformation.

When my daughter was 14 and in a psychiatric hospital, a substitute psychiatrist her regular Dr. My daughter is happy, graduated from college, has a great job, and was just accepted into graduate school. All of this after she was finally diagnosed with severe BPD. She usually writes about politics, social justice, and her BPD, and you can find her tweeting much the same femmenistfatale. Her website is tillygrove. Borderline personality disorder is often misunderstood.

Many of the symptoms of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder overlap, particularly with type 1 bipolar disorder. Do you know the difference between borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder? Personality disorders are a group of mental health conditions that are characterized by inflexible and atypical patterns of thinking, feeling, and…. People with passive-aggressive behavior express their negative feelings subtly through their actions instead of handling them directly.

Read on to…. Paranoid personality disorder PPD is characterized by intense mistrust and suspicion of others. Learn about similar disorders, diagnosis, treatment…. Having quiet Borderline Personality Disorder BPD means that you direct mood swings and behaviors inward, rather than directing them towards others….

Everyone behaves impulsively sometimes. Most of the time, we can work to limit those behaviors on our own. Sometimes, impulsive behavior is part of an….

With a total of test…. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, Ph. Share on Pinterest. It can be extremely distressful. It can be traumatic. It can be very abusive. The action urge associated with the emotion they are experiencing may carry an associated urgency to act fast to avoid a potential threat.

In addition, people with BPD often experience deep and entrenched shame, so lying may be one way to conceal mistakes or weaknesses that increase shameful feelings. I once had a male client who told everyone in the group that he had been team captain when he played varsity baseball at his old school, when in fact he had never engaged in any sport previously and would have been too young to play on a varsity team.

In a desperate attempt to fit in, a young woman told friends that her father had been in jail for several years. In fact this was untrue and the father in question was currently running for a school board position!

People with BPD may have difficulty identifying cause and effect. In order to make their own chaotic world more predictable and manageable, they may create a false narrative that explains why things happen to them the way they do. If you refuse to go along with their wish, they may accuse you of any manner of nefarious motivations or actions without realizing their behavior caused the refusal they are experiencing in this moment.

AND they will believe it to be true! The potential for broken relationships and ill will is high. Resentment, confusion, frustration, and burn out on the part of the family or the therapist is completely understandable. The threat of abandonment can be real. Another significant problem with lying is a phenomena known in DBT as apparent competency. Apparent competency occurs when the individual appears more functional than they really are. It also communicates to the treatment team, family and supports that the individual is more capable than they are, leading to unreasonable expectations and more contention when expectations are not met, as well as an increased sense of failure or self-hatred when the individual is unable to do as well as they believed they could.

Behaviors such as lying are typically treated in comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy DBT which refers to teaching skills interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. These skills can be used to target lying behavior and others such as aggression as well as to reduce the appearance of apparent competency through the emphasis on developing prosocial skills to replace what are at the core dysfunctional behaviors. I may be able to help you find a certified DBT therapist, accredited higher level of care, residential treatment, or boarding school for your loved one.

In cases where finances or local access to treatment are obstacles, I can teach you how to interact with the local providers to come up with the best available plan for your loved one. Family members also benefit from skills training. I offer individual and group parent skills training, group parent education and support, and individual and group parent coaching for more specific concerns.

My approach includes a combination of weekly therapy sessions and a weekly 2-hour skills training group. You must be logged in to post a comment. My mission is to provide high quality, evidence-based tools to meet the unique needs of individuals and families who want to create a life worth living, and coaches who want to help others do the same.

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