This idea has been brewing in the back of my mind for a long time now, but it really solidified today after I dealt with CPS and police, who treated me like a crazy person and then called my abusive ex a “nice guy” while I cried about being forced to return my children to his custody.

I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety since my early childhood, and over about 15 years of visits with half a dozen various mental health providers, those were the only diagnoses I ever received. Then, two years ago, while my relationship with the above ex was imploding, I was suddenly told I had BPD.

Most of us are aware that going to therapy with an abuser will only bring you pain, but I was deeply in denial at the time and I couldn’t label the relationship as abusive despite that it clearly was.

This diagnosis has haunted me since, and is constantly brought up to discredit me and my very valid concerns about the safety of my kids when they are with their father. I no longer fit the criteria for BPD, if I ever even legitimately did, and even my depression is in surprising remission, but as soon as those three letters are said I am suddenly considered completely unreliable.

Being treated this way puts me right back into the misery that brought about the BPD-like symptoms in the first place, which furthers the idea that I’m unstable and untrustworthy.

My experience mirrors many others I’ve heard regarding BPD, specifically that once they removed toxic and abusive people from their lives, they quickly found a massive amount of mental clarity and stability. I’m curious to hear what you ladies think.

edit: sorry I’ve kind of abandoned the post guys, as you might correctly guess I have some Really Serious ShitTM to deal with right now, so I’m very distracted. Thanks for all your contributions so far!

I want to clarify something, because I think I didn’t phrase the title as well as I could have. I don’t mean to imply that BPD doesn’t actually exist, or that battered woman syndrome is not a legitimate diagnosis of its own. Rather, I meant to express that the behavior we see that results in a BPD diagnosis is most frequently the result of being abused; that people who have been diagnosed with BPD could be better served if their behavior was attributed directly to the abuse instead of being attributed to their personality, which places the blame on the victim and says “this is just who you are.”

If the term battered woman syndrome was not already taken, and providers were better able to differentiate between true BPD and what is frequently diagnosed as BPD, then battered woman syndrome would seem to be the perfect diagnosis for those false BPD patients and calling it by that name could effect better, more sympathetic outcomes. Idk if that makes my thought process any clearer, but brain is pretty fried right now.

edit 2: our lovely queen u/ScalesHaveFallen recommended the youtube channel Crappy Childhood Fairy and I’ve been bingeing since. If anything in the post or comments resonates with you, or if you’re just curious about the topic of mental health and domestic abuse, I think you’ll find a lot to like in her