Looking for analogy for borderline mental disorder

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As I went through public middle school and high school, looking back I can see the undiagnosed autistic / AS traits. For example, social anxiety (ok with friends, moderate to severe in large groups), monotone voice, taking things literally, fixating on subjects, social and emotional naivete, and others. At the time I was clueless, unhappy, didn't fit in, hated nearly every moment of school life. I needed a compass but didn't have any idea that I needed one. I blundered through, alternating between severe shyness and screwing up badly in social situations, all the while slowly, painfully improving. As I came out of my shell and started speaking - speaking very bluntly and inappropriately... in hindsight I wish I would have stayed in my shell a bit longer.

It would have been better if it would have been worse. Something more clear and obvious and therefore a better chance of being seen and diagnosed.

-- can anyone think of an analogy to help explain the borderline aspect? Something that's just mild enough to not be noticed (by myself or others) but just bad enough to lead to self-destructive or self-sabotaging behaviour later on.

Self-diagnosis is PDD-NOS. A mix of traits from different disorders- many on the mild end of Autism/AS and Borderline Personality Disorder, fewer traits of other disorders.

Well, some Borderline PD traits and autistic traits are overlapping.
Actually quite a view, like self-harming and moodfluctuation and so on.

Just wanted to mention that.

The way that I explain Borderline Personality DO to my psych students is by saying that a solid identity never forms, thereby making it like the person is in a permanent state of being a teenager, with all the angst and turmoil that goes with that time of life never ending.

That is just like someone I know with Borderline...

They still remind me of a teenager who can't find their way yet, and they're much older than I.

That could also explain why ASD and BPD are sometimes missdx, because ASD is a developmental disorder.

I'm not a BPD expert, but what I read it is something like an emotional disregulation disorder. But maybe this concept doesn't crasp all aspects of Borderline. I don't know.

The maindifference between ASD and BPD is, that autistic ppl are very bad in reading social skills and that's the area a lot of ppl with BPD are above average.

But to the OP:
I would be carefull with self-diagnosis

The self diagnosis is changing constantly so I can't take it too seriously. (Therapied out right now and in between therapists. I think I have a good referral for my next one). One issue there is that I'm looking back at my mental state during the teenage years and trying to piece together why I became so self-destructive. Meanwhile, I'm in a different place mentally - as if some basic neural connections finally took place later in life allowing me the self awareness that I didn't have back then.

I'm thinking that an analogy might help in simplifying and explaining the borderline issue. Besides being just mild enough to not get noticed and diagnosed/ just bad enough to self destruct-- another way of thinking about is that I'm at the mild end of mild. The mild end of AS which is the mild end of autism. Or I'm on the borderline of BPD. What would be a good analogy for that?

Permanently stuck in the teenage years is a good one. I'd estimate that I was mentally and emotionally a teenager until about my early 40s.

An analogy for this could be one of those things that pops into your mind when you're not trying, when you're thinking about something else.

I'm reading a book titled Crazy (subtitle: A father's search through America's mental health madness) by Pete Earley. Here's a quote:

The phrase "on the brink" got me thinking of a new image or analogy for being on the border:

It's as if I'm walking near the edge of a cliff - to my right is a steep rocky hill and the cliff is to my left. Dangerous to step left; daunting, exhausting, painfully difficult journey to try and climb up the hill on my right. I can only see a few feet in front of me. I'm ok as long as I walk slowly and mostly keep to the edge. I stumble and fall often if I turn too far left or right or walk too fast.

Going over the cliff represents full-blown serious mental issues and the hill to my right is the NT world of normalcy, health, and people for the most part achieving their goals and dreams.

Any thoughts or comments?

Being on the border of ASD, I feel like I don't quite belong in either the NT or ASD world. As time goes on, I will say that the cliff doesn't seem like such a far drop and the hill is getting less treacherous and steep.

What else do you think you could have and why?

I see it more as a moodfluctuation disorder, also related to Bipolar, but still a lot different.
But with the being like a teenager, there is something to it. A friend of mine is dx with it and she isn't the manipulation type, but freaks out constantly when stuff is going wrong. She just doesn't seem to be able to control her emotions and behaviour.

I think Borderline Personality Disorder, along with many other conditions having to do with behavior, is wildly misnamed. Originally it meant somebody who is supposedly halfway to being crazy. Having known two eventual schizophrenics before they became that, I can tell you that their condition was nothing like that. They were both off in the ozone somewhere, where they couldn't quite think coherent thoughts.

The godawful Freudian and Freudianoid theories of the time supposed that "neurosis" and "schizophrenia" were part of the same process and the latter was just the end state for the worst affected. So the theory required that some people be somewhere in between. BPD was invented for just that purpose and was applied to patients their therapists disliked. (By the way, Schizoid Personality got its name the same way.) BPD patients did tend to have enough things in common that the term means more than that their therapists didn't like them. By my point of view, the main feature of BPD is anxieties about emotional attachment that make them run hot and cold so strongly that they can't maintain relationships for the most part. Having a very emotional temperament can contribute to getting it.

I have seen not-all-that-old writings on BPD that make out episodic or terminal craziness to be an essential part of it, but I think most psy people know better than that by now. What crazy behaviors they may do are things like doing something really stupid when upset, or paranoid thinking, neither of which require one to have schizophrenia.

I'm all but certain you don't have BPD. You might want to learn some things about avoidant personality (also terribly misnamed) though and see if that fits.

By the way, I am not a professional and you have a perfect right to ignore everything I say.