Asperger Syndrome vs. Borderline Personality Disorder

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It is funny to see this thread. My wife was diagnosed with BPD and I suspect I am an Aspie. We are the epitome of opposites attract, having almost nothing in common. I can't stand to be around people, where she is not relaxed unless she is around lots of friends. I don't see the point in having more than 2 good friends, where she has over 30 that she keeps up with. We have been together almost 13 years now. I hate the mainstream normal life though, and she and I are definitely not normal. This is how I suspect we keep pushing on together.

The distinction between Autism, Bi-Polar Disorder, Schizophrenia, OCD, ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder is not clear-cut.

There's a significant overlap in symptoms and genetic correlation between each of these "disorders". Co-morbidity is also very common.

Personally, I lean towards the notion that Autism, Bi-Polar Disorder, Schizophrenia, OCD, ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder are not individual conditions but as different expressions of the same spectrum.

I would also argue that these are not disorders, but normal variations within human behavior that have been pathologized for no other reason but the rather eccentric and unusual behavior of people within, which makes them more difficult to manipulate and control.

I've found this forum very interesting. I have ASD and suspect my sister is BPD (her husband actually brought this up).
A recent conversation with her:
Her: "You know how you have Aspergers, do you have problems with strong smells, like perfume?".
Me: "I have sensory issues and I dislike strong smells but they don't cause significant issue".
Her: "Because they make me start throwing up and have to be taken to the emergency room."

At which point I don't know where to go with the conversation, because my sister creates medical "problems" to manipulate people and/ or get what she wants/ get out of doing things she doesn't want to.
For example: I text her and asked if she could pick me up from a friends house (someone she also used to be friends with but has fallen out with). She said she couldn't because she had a headache that was developing into a migraine and thought it make her too disabled to drive. When I got back to her house 10 min later she did not appear to be in any pain, no further mention of a headache etc.

I've been diagnosed with both. It took me awhile to get my BPD diagnosis because the psychiatrist I was seeing at the time thought my 'acting out' and emotional disregulation could be explained away by AS. I kept pushing him though because I know plenty of people on the spectrum and they weren't stuck in the kind of self destructive cycles that I was.

Autistic spectrum disorders are innate, we are born with them. Personality disorders are created through life experiences. As a rule any personality disorder won't be diagnosed in a person under 18.

BPD is characterised by destructive behaviour centred around feelings of rejection. As a person with AS I think I had a greater exposure to rejection but you can experience rejection without developing BPD traits, as many people with AS do

Whoever said AS could lead to BPD has rocks in his/her head.

^ I don't think anyone really implied that. I think causation is a hard thing to determine.
I think it's similar to how Bruno Bettleheim observed that autistic children had similar patterns of behavior to people held prisoner in a nazi concentration camp.
He was correct in thinking those children found the world stressful, wrong in thinking it was caused by "refrigerator mothers".

I get you.

And you see autistic-type behaviors among children in Romanian orphanages (based on film produced, I believe, in the 1990s).

We know that :

● People with Autism are more likely than others to be subjected to neglect & abuse during childhood
● Borderline Personality Disorder typically develops as a consequence of neglect or abuse during childhood

Therefore, people with Autism are more likely to develop symptoms of BPD than people without Autism.

But the autism itself doesn't cause the BPD.

Yes, of course autistic people could get abused in childhood, and perhaps develop symptoms of BPD.

So can non-autistic people, obviously.

My point is that there is a genuine correlation between Autism and BPD, albeit an indirect one.

I guess there could be an indirect correlation.

Something to watch out for.

But definitely not an inevitability.

autism can be non verbal; aspergers is not, although there maybe overpowering emotional shut down of speech in the latter.

I like Paul Isaac's Blog Doing versus Being.
I would ponder all this with my best mate called my highly volatile husband 'emotionally intelligent'. He was likely BPD but he was an older version of BPD with years of experience of living with his emotional rollercoaster. I was, I suppose, 'intellectually intelligent' being an older version of Aspergers (Dx). Ok his emotional extremes would set my aspie meltdown off like chucking a hot ember into a box of fireworks ! But in day to day life, he taught me emotional intelligence and I taught him how to be rational and patient. Like Captain Kirk and Spock. We were a great team.
Why did we buck the trend? and swap the male female roles? Cos of our upbringing (I was brought up by my classical apsergers father, he by a fiery mother) and because he had an outlet for his passion being a brilliant musician. I'm an academic scientist. To be fair I probably have BPD but nothing like his. He probably had ADHD. I feel its helpful to play around with these boxes if we treat them like Venn Diagrams.