I feel providers too often harm clients they label with, “Borderline Personality Disorder.”

They are quick to terminate them, often stabbing them in their deepest wounds.

They are cold toward them, often do not believe their pain, and make odd accusations that their suffering is just manipulation.

It’s not.

I write on this topic a lot because I’m truly saddened by how awful this population is treated by the general public and mental health providers.

In my opinion, these adults are just people with children inside who need to attach and be picked up and cared for gently because somewhere in early development, they got hurt.

I’m not the only one who was given this label and been hurt by mental health providers.

There are thousands of us on “Drop the disorder!” and in other groups.

Time and time again, I hear stories from women with severe histories of abuse being retraumatized by their therapist who abruptly terminated them.

It needs to stop.

Stop “referring out.”

You aren’t doing it for the individual.

You’re doing it because you’re stigmatizing them.

They aren’t difficult.

They are hurt.

They are people who do not feel well, and many times, it’s because of childhood trauma.

If you’re a mental health provider, please don’t treat these individuals this way anymore.

Don’t force them to “regulate” themselves.

Let them cry.

Hear their pain.

It’s real.

They aren’t overly emotional.

They are responding normally to abnormal situations.

Help them heal their inner child.

Talk lovingly to them.

Be there.

Try.

Don’t be cold.

They aren’t evil.

They are hurt.

You’re lucky if you don’t hurt this way.

Stop demonizing trauma survivors.

Read Janina Fisher.

Learn Hakomi, IFS, and Somatic Experience.

Don’t send us to DBT.

Play with us.

Call us sweetheart.

Laugh.

Be playful.

Let us kick and scream.

Let us cry.

Let us be just as we are.

We want to be loved not thrown away.

We aren’t trash.

We are hurt.

It’s called complex trauma.

We can heal, but it starts with compassion and not giving up on us.

It starts with recognizing the systems that shaped us and not seeing us as inherently flawed.

Our personalities are not disordered.

No, our personalities are just fine.

It’s our hearts that beat differently because of things that happened to us.

It’s our hearts that hurt more when you terminate and leave us to figure things out on our own.

It’s our hearts that have been hurting all this time that get hurt again because providers look through glasses they started wearing years ago in graduate school.

It’s time to change the narrative of people labeled with “Borderline Personality Disorder.”

It starts with truly hearing their narrative and not your own.

~