Female Aspies= Borderline personality disorder??

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Based on what? Why would they give you a diagnosis of BPD if you didn't meet the profile? I'm not doubting they would, I'm just wondering what the reasoning of the clinician was.

Well, during the 1-hour interview, I admitted to:

* Meltdowns
* Having trouble maintaining relationships - but I was clear they didn't dissolve into fighting and drama
* I said I had experienced dissociation while I was in an abusive relationship 20 years ago
* I admitted to binge drinking during social occasions (and going to those occasions to drink)
* I admitted to suicidal ideation over a period of 15 years (up to and including 2010)
* I said that I had trouble living with roommates because they would get angry at me and say nothing and then get angry at me again when I couldn't tell that they were angry in the first place
* I admitted to having a non-binary gender identity
* I admitted to having for a period identified as bisexual before identifying as lesbian before identifying as queer

That's all I can remember right now.

I have been perceived (by a layperson with absolutely no clue) as having borderline personality disorder, because of my ability to mirror the behavior of other people.

I guess the difference is that I would KNOW that I'm just mirroring other people, and more for their comfort than my own. I have an underlying sense of identity, but I think other people can't accept me just being me, unless I filter it for them.

i've given this one a lot of thought, especially since i had a friend some time ago that i am sure had borderline personality disorder and although she was ultimately impossible to deal with we did have our similarities. she was very obsessive about her interests and her emotions were laid bare. there was no facade or hiding anything. the emotions were an explosion. and she was very immature emotionally.

i think a person with borderline personality disorder has this in common with someone with ASD: they make a lot of social errors. the reasons are different and the resulting behavior is different. they are very focused on their own needs and act directly on how they feel which overwhelms them and takes precedence over everything else, and so they are oblivious to the needs of those around them. this could appear as a lack of empathy but really it's neediness. the social inappropriateness could present like an inability to read social cues. and their acting out could look like a lack of engagement with other people but it is probably more accurately an over engagement.

i saw a guy recently at a public event who i think was likely an aspie and he was yelling at people and demanding that they hear what he had to say. he was unknowingly disrupting something very organized that was transpiring and was upset that he was not being allowed to talk. but it was because he did not wait his turn, and when he was told so, he was still angry because he didn't see the point of following any rules. a borderline person could do something similar, get angry at someone in public for not hearing their concern about something. but the reason would be that it did not take on the level of importance they felt it had, rather than that the person failed to understand the protocol for having their opinion voiced. now even as i write that i think an aspie could equally become very enraged that someone did not think something was as important as they did. but it's different. with the borderline it would be a need for emotional reassurance; with the aspie it could be a need for accuracy, routine, or truthfulness.

i was diagnosed bipolar II. this was in 1991. there was no AS diagnosis or any talk of high functioning autism and i hadn't heard anything then about borderline personality disorder either. it was not yet in vogue.

i've also given a lot of thought as to why diagnosing women is such a puzzle. if we do in fact hide our difficulties more thoroughly i think it's because the price to be paid for failing socially is too great. above all, women are expected to be nurturing and sociable. and if you don't really know how but you do know to just shut your mouth, sadly people will just form their opinions of you based on your looks and maybe your level of confidence or how friendly you seem. so choosing silence or presenting an agreeable exterior may mask some traits (as well as a woman's personality). i read we're good mimics, but i couldn't deliberately act like anything if my life depended on it.

I question the idea of women hiding better or having different symptoms because you're already dealing with the basic problem that clinicians do not take women and girls as seriously as men and boys, and specifically with ASDs and ADHD, this means women and girls who present with these symptoms are frequently not diagnosed with them.

Er, I don't mean the idea is necessarily wrong, just that there are other confounding factors to deal with as well.

I was diagnosed at 8, but I think that was because my parents were very strong in wanting me to receive any help I could because they have been very supportive. But if it weren't for my parents giving me excellent support, I don't think I would of got diagnosed until later on in life.

My meltdowns have always been verbal. I swear and shout and become very argumentive with family members living in the house. Well I don't call them meltdowns, I call them outbursts. But in an outburst I never shut down. I go the opposite - I'm full of all this energy and all these strong words are rushing into my mind, accurately describing how I feel.

Also I can read body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and emotions. In fact I am very good at it. After 8 sessions of telling my psychiatrist how I feel about everything, she said that I seem very bright, not so much acedemically, but more socially. In other words, I am very good as sussing people out by ''reading'' non-verbal expressions.

My special interests are based around social factors. I write stories about social cliques, I make my Sims have social lives, I've always drawn pictures of people, I am obsessed with interaction in films, I observe people all the time, I have strong empathy, I enjoy listening to conversations, I enjoy expressing how I feel, I enjoy small talk, I can have conversations with someone (one-to-one conversations are more easier and enjoyable).

Maybe I do have a borderline personality disorder. Maybe I should get myself re-diagnosed with something else.

But then comes a day when I'm acting all Aspie in everything I do.....

Notice the maneuver here...what "looked like" major mood swings were actually "meltdowns" which, as you might surmise from reading this statement, are something completely different.

News flash: they're not. "Meltdown" is just a less damning word for "major mood swings", flipping out, psychotic outbursts, etc.

It blows my mind how people can, time and time again, be suckered in by this kind of "logic".



And if we parse this kind of statement out, we arrive at the truth about the correlation between BPD and Asperger's/ADHD: Asperger's/ADHD is generally a "male" profile. It most closely fits the general male manifestation of the underlying neuropsychological dysfunction. BPD is a general "female" profile of the same basic neuropsychological dysfunction. As in, a male and female with, for instance, severe white matter dysfunction will typically present as Asperger's/ADHD and BPD respectively.

Keep in mind we're dealing with generalities here. Obviously there are times when men present as BPD and women as Asperger's. Also keep in mind that this isn't a black and white issue--there are a million shades of gray between these manifestations.

Women who are quite rightly diagnosed with BPD covet the diagnosis of Asperger's because the former condition carries a lot of connotations that the latter does not. "BPD" = bad person, while "Asperger's" = quirky and even interesting person. Also, in BPD, the failed relationships, rejection, psychosis, depression etc. are all built in, while Asperger's generally leaves them out--in other words, the diagnostic criteria of BPD tell you a great deal about the individuals in question, while the diagnostic criteria of Asperger's tell you very little (despite the fact that the individual diagnosed with Asperger's generally suffers the failed relationships, rejection, psychosis, depression etc. just as much as the individual diagnosed with BPD).

Now, it's not the fault of doctors for diagnosing the same basic neuropsychological dysfunction as "Asperger's/ADHD" in men and "BPD" in women, because they DO accurately reflect the general difference between the male and female presentations of this dysfunction.

But, as BPD ladies have become wise to this diagnostic "game", they've gone to great lengths to show how typical BPD traits can be interpreted in terms of Asperger's. They INSIST that they were "misdiagnosed" with BPD, in such great numbers and with such great frequency that it has almost become reflex for any woman who receives this diagnosis to assume that she has been, in fact, misdiagnosed. Have you noticed how there are throngs of women who say I was misdiagnosed with BPD, but finally received the correct diagnosis of Asperger's/ADHD yet virtually NONE who say I was misdiagnosed with Asperger's/ADHD, but finally received the correct diagnosis of BPD? That's because this tide only moves in one direction.

For the record, I sympathize with women who have been diagnosed with BPD, as I think this diagnosis can sometimes cause as many problems as it resolves, but the "solution" to this diagnostic game is not to foster misunderstanding.

My impression of the so called mental health professionals is that if you are a young female and seeing them then you are automatically considered to have BPD. I didn't tell them anything about me, I couldn't speak I was so nervous, yet they wrote down I probably had BPD. My friend had a traumatic experience and got the same suggested diagnosis after seeing one of them for only 5 minutes. It took an autism professional to understand me.

I don't know, all these ways of labelling people because we are not all the same.

Perhaps I am odd in that I am turning against psychiatric diagnoses 90% of the time due to the fact that I think most of what the psychological world spews out is pointless psycho-babble aimed at labelling anyone who is different as mentally ill.

Yup ok, in some cases, mental illness might play a role, but not everyone who is different is suffering from some kind of pathology.

Please excuse us for not being exactly the same as every one else out there! Please excuse me for having intense interests, for not enjoying small talk and chit chat, for not enjoying socialising because I find it confusing, and for getting upset and depressed because very few people on this planet seem to understand me and want me to be something I am not just so I fit in and conform more.

It is hard having to try and pretend to be something I am not especially when I am not very good at keeping the pretence up because it doesn't feel right or honest. I simply cannot do it for very long so I keep my social interactions short most of the time. It is hard pretending I know what I am doing when I do not. It is hard pretending to be 'normal'.

..But, looking at the list of traits described by it and the diagnostic criteria the traits don't actually seem very similar to Asperger's/ADHD at all.

You can [try to] claim "Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)." is the same thing as a metldown, that appears to be similar enough.

Looking through the rest of the list though... what's listed aren't even traits associated with "female autism" if you're so insistent that its the female version.



I've also found this very true. If you described me without leaving out that I was female, people would without question link it to Asperger's. I was explicitly told when I was younger that it was because I was female that it wasn't worth pursuing a diagnosis.

For people who'd deny this, I really would like to see a list of descriptions of males and females without their gender and with their gender and see what people claim. There are strong biases. Some people in the mental health field even explicitly admit this.

I'll just link this here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 101332.htm

Relevant articles:

http://jad.sagepub.com/content/14/2/167

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 2209001619

You mean, nothing in the couple of texts you linked to?

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r7q47qw007h87431/


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0X02000159


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 4605001648


And if you're tired of that peer-reviewed stuff, how about:

http://www.estronaut.com/a/women_attention_deficit.htm

Note, also, that I am not claiming anything so simplistic as BPD and AS/ADHD are flip sides of the same coin--the relationship I describe between these diagnoses is much more nuanced. By the way, are you forgetting the fact that ADHD and Asperger's are, like, almost impossible to distinguish in many cases?



Once again, as I said when you brought up this research before (which you still seem unable to understand), you have to take severity into consideration, and where cutoff lines are drawn, and who's drawing them.

Take a look at this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg-h0-M5G9I Jump ahead to 0:36 where we meet Dena Gassner. Boy, is this clip appropriate to the conversation, or what?

If Dena was evaluated by the people who did the research you're referring to, do you think they would have described her as having autism? Can't say for sure, of course, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not likely.

Listen to the way she contrasts "developmental issues" with "mental illness"--as if these things were two entirely unrelated categories. This, despite the fact that her own diagnosis is CLEARLY an example of the confluence of the two!

Most importantly, note Dena's response to the question posed by Kristen at 4:39. She asks, "Do you have any advice for other women on the spectrum who may not be as well adjusted?"

Now, the reason for Kristen asking this question is quite evident. Let me put it this way--if Hans Asperger or Leo Kanner would've been presented with Dena and told that she'd received a diagnosis of autism, they would have laughed. In other words, in Dena, we have evidence of the autism diagnoses being broadened almost to the point of meaninglessness.

Dena stumbles a little and tries to mitigate this obvious incongruity by saying something about "good days and bad days".

The thing is, if you draw the threshold between autism and normality low enough, you WILL at some point exclude cluster Bs, as one cannot be a "bad person" without a certain amount of functionality. It takes more functionality to develop, then destroy a relationship than it does to live in isolation (as a cluster A, etc.) But that's not the trend--the trend, over the last few decades, is to RAISE that line. In other words, to start interpreting "milder" conditions with different labels in terms of the characteristics of autism.



Yes, and I have explained why, quite reasonably and in a way that is right in line with modern thinking about these conditions.



You are making absolutely no sense. The "strong underlying connection between BPD and AS/ADHD" is the BASIS for that bias, and absolutely nothing you've posted indicates otherwise.

I think the subject heading puts it way too simply. No, they aren't the same. Yes, the idea of misdiagnosis is worth talking about. As is, I think, the idea of a valid dual diagnosis for some people. But to equate them, no.

With Borderline Personality Disorder, there seems to be an innate component in many (but not necessarily all) cases. But it's also a trauma disorder. A response to hurt. Which puts it in a very different realm than Autism and Asperger's.

As I see it, BPD is, in essense, a psychological injury that needs healing.

The texts discuss the link of ADHD alone and BPD. A study I linked in the previous thread made it clear that significantly higher BPD diagnoses were linked to ADHD, but not to ASDs alone or ASDs with ADHD. They were higher than the general population, but not so high they reflect anything but a minority of people diagnosed with ASDs.

This is why I stopped talking to you that other time - you misrepresented the data I linked, and I realized that talking to you was a complete and pointless waste of time. My opinion has not changed. That's why I deleted those two paragraphs - because I can't think of anyone on this forum I'd less prefer to discuss these things with. And because I knew you would misrepresent the data I linked again. And here we are, again with a post full of Poke misrepresenting data to mean something it doesn't actually say. Good show.

Also, that was pretty strange of you to attempt to appeal to Kanner and Asperger in reference to Dena in that video. They dealt with children, and Hans Asperger claimed that only boys had had the autistic psychopathy. Their expertise is irrelevant because the science and understanding around autism has advanced well beyond what they established. I'm not going to deny that they did something valuable with their work, but you really can't use them as an argument against a particular person today being autistic. It's irrelevant and meaningless. I believe the appropriate logical fallacy is "appeal to authority." As for the researchers in those studies, I can't say what they would do because I am not them and I don't react well to leading questions.

Definitely a waste of time.

OK, I don't know a lot about borderline personality disorder but this is a list of symptoms I found for it. I suspect I may have Aspergers but cannot see a connection between the symptoms of Aspergers that I identify with and the symptoms of BPD (although of course I may have neither) so...

Yes I get up and down emotions when I am on antidepressants. For years my drs diagnosed my moodswings as a mood disorder. I drop the dose of antidepressant I am taking and after a week long episode of despair from changing doses, my moods have stabilised. Indicating my moods swings were not a mental health problem but a side effect of medication.

Another misdiagnosis by the psychiatric profession!

Actually for a female, when not affected by medication, I am usually told I am more logical than people would expect for a girl lol. I am far from devoid of emotions but I do not identify with other females who seem to be purely driven by emotion most of the time. When I do make friends it is usually with males, as I identify more with men even though I am biologically female and happy being biologically female (I don't want a sex change lol). It is just that men are more logical and easier to talk to, especially when I am in need of assistance. They seem to provide practical advice rather than just sitting there, giving me a hug and going 'awwwww'. The later is ok but the former is much more useful!

Ergo I prefer the company of males or females who are not overly feminine/emotional. Not that I can never be emotional, I always cry at the end of titanic (a lot of people died, in reality, it's not just a movie) and I think the Andrex puppy and kittens are sweet not to mention all smooshie and snuggly and cuddly! Adorable critters that they are...Pass me the Kleenex please...



Yes because I struggle with communication due to:

differences in attachment of meaning,
My difficulty in reading subtle body language (although I can read obvious stuff)
The intensity of my hobbies
A tendency to go into monologues about said hobbies and
My habit of talking about the same thing all the time

These things seem to drive people away.

The occasional meltdown that happens when I am in pain and cannot make anyone understand I am in pain (either emotional or physical) even though I have told them I am in pain (I usually get the response of 'oh it does not hurt that much' errrr actually it bloody damned well does thanks, I am sensitive to things Ie light, certain materials, too much background noise which brings on a migraine and so on) does not help either.

But whether or not that could be BPD I don't know.



No I know who I am thanks and can be stuck in my ways rather than morphing into what people want. I try sometimes to bend and flex in order to keep the peace and compromise so that people are happy, but cannot do it for long as my personality along with all its quirks soon surfaces anyway. In other words, whilst I can indulge in some self improvement like everyone else, I am who I am and that is that.



Errr no, I am not a big risk taker as I like sameness and stability. I tend to plan things more often than not rather than act impulsively. The only exception is that I might impulsively rant if I am very upset but I usually isolate myself from people if I feel it coming as I don't want to upset anyone.



I have been suicidal but only when I have been living in bad circumstances and have become very depressed (ie in an abusive relationship or due to bullying at school). I really don't get suicidal as a matter of course. I have to be severely depressed and in order to be severely depressed there needs to be something in my life that is seriously affecting me. I do not get depressed for no reason. There is always a reason.

I also do not self harm. I have no desire to want to hurt myself and even when I was suicidal I really did not want to die. I wanted help as I was in so much pain I did not know what to do with it. It hurt ya know?

I don't hate myself enough to want to inflict harm on myself though, I just wanted to feel better.



I don't fear those things, but as I live an isolated life right now and have no family or friends with very little human contact I do get lonely. Please excuse me for being human and not wanting to be a complete hermit for eternity. It is just that some days it feels like I am the only human alive, so isolated is my existence at the moment.Therapists always think it is about just needing company but it is not. Just being in someone's company is not enough, I need that person to understand me and my world. But alas, they don't understand my world and I do not not understand theirs! I am as confused by their world as they are by mine.

At the same time I struggle to maintain friendships due to the fact that I cannot keep up with the amount of socialisation they require. I like company sometimes, but I am also introverted and like a lot of time to myself so I can tinker around with my hobbies.



No, I never get anything like that.

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I am a female and I suspect I may have an ASD but as far as I can see (unless I am interpreting it incorrectly) I do not fit the criteria for BPD so I fail to see how they can be the same disorder?

Many symptoms of borderline disorder fits me. But i'm not afraid of being alone. In fact, i love being alone.
Many psychiatrists are such jerks. I have been to 7 psychologists and 3 psychiatrists. All 7 told i have nothing (just one told me i'm hypersensitive) and the 3 psychiatrists said i have depression, though i don't have it because i had a sort one, so i know how it is.
This world is so stupid. Never trust people 100%, better be careful with them.