Why It’s Harmful to Call Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder ‘Manipulative’

As a mental health professional who also has borderline personality disorder (BPD), I am frequently faced with the stigma surrounding the disorder. I’ve seen firsthand how it affects those with BPD, including our access to treatment, our self-image, and our symptoms.

Borderline personality disorder is one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses, and this has a lot to do with the lack of education mental health professionals receive on the disorder. 

For example, when I was getting my master’s degree in social work, my focus was on mental health. Throughout my courses, we only learned about borderline personality disorder (BPD) and other Cluster B Disorders - such as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and antisocial personality disorder (APD) - for one day out of my entire education. We didn’t focus on each disorder individually.

All of the personality disorders in that section of the DSM-5-TR were briefly touched on for that one day before my professors moved onto other disorders.

It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with BPD that I began to dive deep into researching the disorder so that I could understand it - and myself - better.

Before I was diagnosed, my main source of information on BPD came from the professionals around me, and the majority of what I was told about individuals with BPD is that they were “manipulative” and “violent.” 

I was even told by many professionals that they refuse to work with individuals who have BPD because they considered them “abusive” and “untreatable.” Sometimes they even equated BPD to narcissism or sociopathy.

Before my diagnosis, I was guilty of stereotyping individuals with BPD due to what I had heard from those I was interning under as well as my professors. I can honestly admit that I became afraid of those with the disorder before I was diagnosed because of the negative information I absorbed.

But what many people don’t understand is that the actions of those with BPD stem from the extreme emotional pain we experience.

Manipulation requires planning and intent, while the behaviors of those of us with BPD are frantic efforts to escape our emotional pain and turmoil.

I am often haunted by my past actions because I fear that they were perceived as me being manipulative - or I have been told point blank that I was manipulative. However, my actions stemmed from my being in such a painful emotional state that I didn’t have the ability to think rationally through my actions.

One of the hallmarks of borderline personality disorder is a fear of abandonment, and this is a symptom I experience often.  When individuals with BPD feel as though we are being abandoned, we will go to great lengths to try and ensure that we don’t end up alone or we will push others away before they can hurt us.

Many of us with the disorder also have reoccurring suicidal and/or self-harm behaviors.

These actions are often perceived by others as us being manipulative - but our actions are a desperate attempt to escape emotions that are so strong and painful that they can become physically and mentally torturous.

By calling individuals with BPD manipulative, you are discrediting our experiences and vilifying a mental illness which leads to further stigmatization and allows for individuals to fall through the cracks of the mental health system.

This vilification leads to providers refusing to work with individuals who have BPD and greatly minimizes accessibility to care. I have even lost professional opportunities when I disclosed that I have BPD.

Only when we understand the behaviors of those with BPD for what they are — reactions to debilitating emotional pain — can we build empathy, understanding and increase recovery through further access to diagnosis, care, and understanding.

*Originally published on The Mighty on March 7, 2021