BPDFamily.com

I was talking on the phone yesterday with my aunt, my uBPD mom's sister. I have mentioned her here before, that she has validated my experiences with my mom, is sympathetic and "on my side."  She has also given me some new information about her experiences with my mom that have been eye-opening for me.

Yesterday my aunt told me, "You know she [my mom] is bipolar, right?" This was new information to me. She then went on to say that as far as she knows, it's not officially diagnosed. However, their grandma (my great-grandma) was diagnosed bipolar, and several family members, myself included, will say that my mom is "just like grandma." She has MANY similar traits, though she would never admit that. Anyway, that was my aunt's basis for saying that my mom is bipolar.

I haven't said anything to my aunt about BPD, but after she said that, I did venture to say, "I've done some research into some of the personality disorders, because a lot of it seems to fit."  She agreed with me that "she checks a lot of boxes."

Is bipolar commonly co-morbid with BPD?
I've just read the diagnostic criteria and not certain if my mom fits it or not. It's certainly possible - all of her mood swings and episodes are mostly combined into a big blur in my mind throughout my childhood/growing up, so it's hard to distinguish if they were manic/depressive etc.

I remember reading something to the effect that borderline was often misdiagnosed for bipolar.

My brother is diagnosed bipolar, and my mother, when she heard about what bipolar is, was convinced she was bipolar... Because of the mood swings.

However, it is my understanding that bipolar mood swings last longer than borderline mood swings. My mother can be completely angry and all of a sudden right as sunshine... My brother, on the other end, goes through weeks of manic episodes followed by weeks of down periods where we all get very scared...

My mother is borderline, but she also gets very depressed, however she doesn't get any of the manic phases my brother get into, or at least never as significantly. My brother becomes someone else entirely... Anyhow, she has often been diagnosed with depression by doctors, but they always missed the borderline behind it, because she holds it together very well in front of strangers.

It is possible that bipolar and BPD can be comorbid though, but I think it happens more often than not that they are mixed up? Someone else might have better insights.

I have read that if the mood swings are triggered by people/interpersonal interactions then you can be pretty sure it’s BPD. But I think it’s really anything that triggers feelings of shame.

One thing to consider is that the diagnosis of BPD is relatively recent compared to bipolar. It's possible with parent's and grandparent's generations that they were diagnosed as bipolar because it was the closest match to their behavior at the time.

I remember reading somewhere that 4 of the 9 criteria for BPD can be said to overlap with a bipolar dx.

It cannot be easy diagnosing BPD given the blunt instruments psychiatrists have at their disposal, but it seems like  many psychiatrists will err on the side of a dx that can be medicated.

That seems to make bipolar more common than BPD, altho perhaps bipolar meds can help with some of the emotion regulation, idk. One of the things I also remember reading about BPD symptoms is that they must be extraordinary and persistent. I'm curious how a psychiatrist would evaluate that, or how a pwBPD would declare whether something was persistent.

Plus, there is also still so much stigma about BPD. The woman with BPD who wrote the memoir Buddha and the Borderline requested psychiatric records from when she was a teen and discovered more than a decade after her hospitalization that she had been diagnosed with BPD.

Imagine being diagnosed with what some people consider a fatal disease (given the high rate of suicidal ideation and self-harm among pwBPD) and not being told.  :(

It's one of the reasons Gunderson's work was interesting -- he believed BPD should have levels like autism now has. The DSM-V criteria for BPD as listed are not helpful for communicating severity. I imagine that more acute cases are more diagnosed, and only the more specialized psychiatrists diagnose cases that would otherwise slip by as bipolar.

When SD25 was dx'd bipolar, everyone was like, Ok. But bringing up the possibility she was BPD? Omg no. Too awful to think she might have the same thing her mom has  :(

There is also probably so much stigma, which is too bad. The same doesn't seem to apply to other mental illnesses, but for some reason "walking on eggshells" seems to apply even to diagnoses.