What Is Borderline Personality Disorder?

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People suffering aren't broken, untreatable, or being difficult.

Validation acknowledges painful emotions without endorsing harmful behavior.

Two things can be true: I am doing the best I can, and I can do better.

Back in the early 1990s, I did my undergrad psychology degree. My first-year psychology textbook had a whole chapter on personality disorders. It basically described personality disorders as unchanging, difficult ways of being; this was even how they were classified in the DSM-IV. The textbook didn’t say it directly, but the implication was that if patients didn’t get better as quickly as the psychiatrist wanted them to or didn’t follow the clinician’s instructions, then it was clearly the patient’s fault and they should be labelled as having borderline personality disorder. Patients were considered to be difficult, untreatable, and neurotic. They blamed the patient, even though they also knew that the........

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