Living with Borderline Personality Disorder

[Mal12345]

My states vary a little... Sometimes I feel well, like I have no issue and everything is more or less fine, but I mostly experience feelings of dullness, laziness and lethargy, apathy. I often experience the chornic emptiness and feeling like this world is a very dark and scary place, which usually leads to panic, anxiety and derealisation.
These states are the most typical for me... Sometimes though I can experience sandess and loneliness too, these are less typical for me now and were more true for me when I was a teenager.

I sometimes can feel a little bit hypomanic as well and can get into the state when I work a lot, I don't really need to sleep and feel energetic.

I mostly can't stand when I have a feeling of chaos, I sometimes feel like my thoughts are very messy and unorganized and I can't think clearly, I can't get into relaxed state and feel tons of inner tension.

That's more or less it.

That reminds me of my Dysthymia days.

 

[Mal12345]

Symptoms and causes - Persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia) - Mayo Clinic

 

[Mal12345]

Interesting thread. I'm curious how BPD presents differently in males than females. To my understanding, BPD was largely considered a "female" disorder, as opposed to Asperger's which is frequently regarded as a "male" condition. We know that some women do indeed have Asperger's, though it may present differently than it does in males. Likewise, BPD can manifest differently in males due to various factors - cultural norms/gender roles, etc.

Much the same way that BP and BPD are often misdiagnosed for each other, I see some commonalities between BPD and Asperger's, like not understanding boundaries, misreading social interactions and intense interpersonal difficulties. Also, the emotional meltdowns of aspies and others on the spectrum seems like it could easily be mistaken for BPD, especially in women.

Just did a quick Google search and found an interesting page that compares and contrasts the two:

The Borderline of Asperger’s: The similarities and differences between Borderline Personality Disorder and Autism

But I'm still curious [MENTION=13589]Mal12345[/MENTION], in your experience, how BPD manifests in males differently than both Asperger's in men and BPD in women.

Your mentioning of autism gave me some food for thought. My BPD step-daughter does have some autistic traits. I said "No" to autism because she doesn't lack the sociability that is common in the autism spectrum. However, she does have the issue with the tongue, the amazing ability to memorize details almost effortlessly, and she tends to avoid eye contact. Even when staring a person straight in the face from six inches away, her eyes will lock to the right side and just stay there. Not always, but it's a trait held in common by her and her biological father. In the realm of socialization, however, she is not autistic at all. She is BPD. She has other traits that sometimes go along with it, such as oppositional disorder traits. She also has the family background commonly with seen BPD patients, in terms of the chronic family chaos and constant moving from place to place. As far as I can tell, they only stayed in one place for a period of about a year when she was growing up. And they were homeless twice.

So what can I say: autism with BPD? I don't know for sure about autism, but it'll be worth looking into.