Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone,
I came across a thread on here talking about autism (particularly female autism) and borderline personality disorder (BPD). I noticed a few posters felt very indignant that they had once been diagnosed with BPD and felt that, once they got their diagnosis of autism, this eclipsed their BPD diagnosis and made it defunct. They didn't seem to think that one could have both at the same time. They think I've got BPD; the diagnosis was confirmed after a crisis where I had to spend the night in A&E, but it had been talked about for a while prior to this. I have a theory about it; I'm not a psychologist or any sort of MH professional so I don't know if I'm right, but this is what I have come to think about my own life.
A lot of people think that BPD is caused by trauma in the early part of childhood. I would never say that I suffered trauma...it wouldn't be fair to those who actually have. But I feel I've been damaged by my Asperger's. It caused the adults around me to try and sweep my issues under the carpet (my mum reckoned she knew since that I had autism since the age of 18 months, and yet did nothing to try and help, even though she supposedly loves me. I was just allowed to go around suffering, with no one doing anything to support me). At school, other children constantly abused me, pretty much from the day I started school. I was rejected, isolated and excluded. I was physically hit, kicked, pushed etc on many occasions throughout my school career, but there were. When I was very young, I was at a birthday party (I used to spend birthday parties crying because I felt so frightened and alone, and like my parents had abandoned me there; I also felt abandoned every day when I was dropped at school from my first day at playgroup when I was 3) and a little girl from my class got frustrated with me, agressively snatched off the sticky label I was wearing with my name on it, and tore it up and threw it on the floor in front of me. When I told my mum about this, she said, "It's because (this little girl) wants to be your friend, and you don't play with her when she wants to play with you." I took this to mean: "It's your fault she went for you." There were quite a few other incidents like that. This is how I know that I've deserved the abuse I've had over the years.
When I got to secondary school, I was very overweight and ugly as well as a defective freak. To mock me, boys would make crude comments, shove me against walls or collect around me in big gangs. They would touch me when I didn't want to be touched, sometimes hit or kick me, I was once spat on, I was once hounded into a room and had food repeatedly thrown at me, and, on all of these occasions, I would scream and cry for them to stop. It feels like this happened all the time throughout my secondary school career, however, I never once school refused because for me, that was not an option. Sometimes when I close my eyes at night I still think about school and how hated I was for being less than what other children wanted. Even the kinder children were sharp and cold with me, When I try to talk to people about it, I get told to "move on." I feel invalidated, which apparently makes BPD symptoms worse. I ended up with an eating disorder, but because I was overweight when the restrictive eating started, my mum's friends would say things to me like, "You look amazing; a touch of anorexia never hurt anyone." They'd think they were joking or being complimentary but, as you can imagine, that sort of thing made the problem worse. Then my actual diagnosis happened which was a total nightmare and it was the "straw that broke the camel's back" - I knew I would hate myself forever and ever. Nobody ever acknowledged how much it hurt me.
I can't even begin to write everything that happened, and I'm too tired to try; I'm also kind of physically unwell today with this cold that's been going round. I know I deserved everything I got at school, but still, being different is painful. What I don't understand is why nobody agrees that it's potentially damaging. A friend of our family who is an autism specialist has told me that "growing up with autism is difficult, but it doesn't count as a proper trauma" - a) I never said it was and b) her saying that just felt like more invalidation. I've always struggled with my mental health but over the last year it has deteriorated significantly. I now can't get through a day without becoming very upset, or harming myself in some way. I lose control and have to resort to anti-psychotic medication to calm me down. Obviously being Aspie I find it hard to make relationships anyway, but the ones I have feel insecure and chaotic. I do not know what or who I am, apart from that it's bad. I have been told, and from what I have read believe, that I meet criteria for BPD. The actual term is problematic for some people, but I don't find it so: I found being labelled Asperger's far more humiliating. If Asperger's was a person, I'd love to hurt it. I am broken. I think it has caused my "BPD symptoms".
Does anyone else think this could be true? Not just for me, but for them?
No, Asperger's doesn't cause BPD symptoms, abuse causes BPD, and just like you, I also have BPD and autism as well, but I had a bad reputation for retaliating and plotting revenge against people who wronged me. I would go to great lengths to ensure the bullies were brought to justice. In addition to being autistic, and having Trauma induced BPD and C-PTSD, I am also queer, and lately, I began getting very angry and distrustful of everyone around, and expecting the only people who are being the nicest to me to turn their backs away from, and the only people who will surround me will be the people who make me miserable.
to avoid that outcome, I went to great lengths to avoid being rejected/abandoned (I was never abandoned as a kid, but verbal/physical abuse was a constant for me, both at home and in school) But the abuse I endured growing up was so common, that I perseverated on catastrophic scenarios that I had feelings would come true, and then I went spend all day on perseverating on how to avoid the outcome, with it usually being abused at home, or being bullied at school and then punished by my ableist inclusion program director in NYC. And I was almost 100% right on my catastrophic predictions coming true, and when it did come true, if it was at home and one of my relatives hit me (Uncle/grandpa) I would have giant meltdowns and destroy stuff around the house to make it perfectly clear that for every time they put their hands on me, I was going to destroy property, or physically retaliate. They eventually began to fear my outbursts, and I felt safer as they no longer physically abused me, and my "behaviors" seemingly went away. I only acted out in self defence, or anger during the moment of the abuse, or what you would call, heat of the moment instances, but some of it was deliberate, as I wanted to make a point that if you abuse me, I will defend myself, and make it hell for you.
Also, I continued living my life constantly expecting people to wrong me and punish me for no reason, and I became so used to it, that I developed quite a knack for very accurately anticipating/predicting rejection/hostility from another person, way before they exhibit any signs of it. For example, I recently began recording my family at the dinner table, as I anticipated they were going to start verbally abusing me, and because my pessimistic thinking was so strong, I decided to start recording and I quietly said into the phone, "you will now see how much of assholes my abelist, trump supporting family is."
It went exactly as planned and my family did exactly what I expected them to do, and it was to 1. for my sisters to make fun of my autism, then for my stepfather to yell at me for berate me even more for ignoring my abusive sisters, and then my mom going after me for calling my stepfather an autism hater. I then put that video to a support group where I proved I could predict bad things before they happened.
Right now, I am 28 years old, and I have never been in a relationship, and several years back I made a bunch of negative predictions that every girl I date will reject me because of my autism. I ended up being right. The society where I live is so disgusting, abelist and backward, that literally every pessimistic prediction I have made for rejection scenarios have all come true verbatim, and many of these instances I did everything to prevent them from happening.
Hm. Holding a grudge and making sure revenge is dispatched.. something I do and not really thought about it as as autistic trait.
Well, when you are constantly treated like less than a person for years like I've been, you probably will to want with a burning passion seeing ableist scumbags put in their disgusting place.
True. But opportunities do present themselves occasionally to help karma out. If you do it right and above board u can execute karma without the nasty person ever knowing it was you and feel good knowing you did it correctly and not in a horrible fashion. It’s rare. But patience is a virtue. I had a school bully start working where I worked and he started carrying on bullying me. I picked up he wasn’t doing his job properly as was trying to out do me. May have stopped by office and reported his truck number suggesting an accuracy check on his work may be in order. Got disciplinary for failure to carry out his job correctly..