Bashing Borderlines: Discrimination in the “Helping” Profession

I’m super angry right now so I’m going to distract myself with something else that makes me angry.

Borderline Personality Journal posted recently about a therapist named Shari Schreiber who seems to have discriminating against individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder down to a disgusting art. She has a BA in Human Behavior Psychology and a Master of Arts in Counseling Psych. She is what we would call a “helping professional”

Her website comes off as positive at first until you start clicking on links, reading articles and hearing her answers to questions from the public.

Her bio includes the following messages of hope:

I am passionately dedicated to your empowerment, expansion and success…My methods are transformative…a comprehensive approach to Healing, and helping you surmount obstacles that inhibit your joy and contentment. As I hold myself to the highest standards of care and confidentiality, your privacy is always respected and stringently guarded. 

Schreiber appears to work with those who have had relationships (intimate or otherwise) with women (and some men) who had BPD. As someone who identifies with this disorder I am not blind to the pain I have caused and do cause my past and current partners so I do agree that non-BPD individuals need support. Schreiber goes about this support by demonizing the individual with BPD.

Examples:

BLACKMAILED INTO FATHERHOOD; Borderline women, and men who love them.

An article which talks about how Borderline women manipulate men into having children with them so the men can never fully sever ties.

AT ANY COST: Saving your Life after Loving a Borderline.

An article about, again, how Borderline women manipulate men into staying in relationships.

BREAKING UP WITH A BORDERLINE: There must be 50 Ways to leave your Lover.

An article that looks at how to effectively break with someone who has BPD and is done so in a degrading way.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR BORDERLINE: Crucial Strategies for Living with a BPD Partner

Another article about those damn manipulative Borderlines (sarcasm).

Please read these articles (clicking on her name above takes you to her website) to fully understand what I’m saying.

It seems to me that Schreiber has ZERO understanding of who a Borderline truly is or what a Borderline may understand about themselves. She makes it sound, in all her articles, as if we are inherently shitty people! The real case is that we developed this way because of trauma’s in our lives! I do not want this to excuse our poor behaviour but we should not be demonized this way!

It is because of people like Schreiber that professionals do not want to work with individuals with BPD, the reason why we are viewed so poorly and the reason why we view ourselves so poorly.

I couldn’t understand when a man called a “pain in the ass” when I told him I identified as BPD but now I do. Why didn’t I understand before? Because I’m not a pain the ass. I’m a great person who also carries a great pain.

How does reading all these articles by this woman make me feel? Well, I feel pretty sad when I read about how people should escape me. I know I have done some of the things she talks about. I have been extremely manipulative before, I have hurt people in my rages and at times I have not been a nice person. But she makes us sound hopeless,that we need to be “survived” and I know from my own lived experience and from some of you who I follow who identify as BPD that we are not hopeless.

From her Forum section:

Q. Dear Shari, do you have any advice for dating a Borderline?

A. Don’t.

Fuck you Shari!

- From the Bitchy Borderline who has been in a loving, always improving, relationship for 4 years with a man who sees her for who she really is and won’t give up on her and won’t let her give up on herself!

 

 

 

 

A Problem is a Problem

I want to go over my position.

In light of certain crappy events I’ve realized that I may have screwed myself over.

I have been finding my position on mental health has led some to believe that I’m 100% against diagnosis and treatment which is leading my struggles to be minimized and people being very confused.

So for the record:

I believe people experience at times severe emotional and psychological issues. I really don’t like thinking about it as an illness because I don’t want to be sick but I understand the term and what it does for people, what it has done for me.

I know that I have experienced emotions that were almost the death of me and there is something wrong with that. I don’t want to be feeling things to the extreme that I don’t care about my life anymore because I’m in that much pain.

Overall I guess you could say that I believe in the severity but I’m very skeptical and critical of the frequency and types of “illnesses”.

This is how I feel...

So how did all of this screw me over? Because when I need help I don’t always get it. My views have downplayed my horrible moments which as of late are getting more frequent and more severe. I am doing my best to continue using the skills I have picked up over the years but I guess I’m just going into a phase where things might be a bit harder.

All I keep hearing though is, “don’t worry it will leave.” Thanks, I know but if I’m in a moment of desperation I can’t think about how it will go away like I could do right now. When I reach for help during these moments by being very upfront, in an attempt to explain that this is a serious issue, I am accused of manipulation (a disgusting stereotype).

I have something to say about this whole manipulation idea, aside from fuck you. If you think I’m telling you I want to cut, or I do cut, feel like dying, want to die, want to go to the hospital etc because I want your attention, THAT IS STILL A PROBLEM!!! If I feel I need to create extreme situations then I’m clearly feeling something that needs to be addressed. Causing the actual damage isn’t the only sign of a problem!

I have better things to do than manipulate people. Trying to keep myself alive and functioning during a rough patch is higher on my list. I need help sometimes too and I need good people around me to help with that.

Regardless of whether I want to say I have an illness I will say that I experience extreme emotions that can be very harmful and destructive. I can’t escape this fact. This shouldn’t mean that I have an illness but it definitively SHOULD NEVER MEAN THAT I DO NOT GET SUPPORT!