Borderline, Unresolved Trauma, And The Nervous System; Rewiring Stigma and Rewriting The Story

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
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(00:22):
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(00:44):
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(01:06):
guys and with the listeners. This is a lot in my body, this
conversation for some reason more than most other conversations
we've had on the podcast. And that's interesting because we take on some pretty
big topics and I think it's a mix of
my own personal history. You know, like I was, I've had psychiatric
holds, I was diagnosed a lot as a

(01:28):
kiddo and adolescent and so that like
paradigm and then the deep fear of like I'm crazy. I've
worked through it a lot but I think there's fear that comes in
going up against that. And then I also have some fear
around making sure that I'm not
alienating people who are in the mental health space

(01:49):
practitioners because I do deeply believe
that we're all out here doing the best that we can. And you know,
there's so many of our listeners and people in NSI and in brain based that
are mental health licensed mental health professionals. And I want to also
be sure that I'm respectful and honoring that and keeping in an open
space for all kinds of perspectives. That makes perfect sense, you know,

(02:11):
and yeah, all valid. The way I approach it is I
critique the systems, not the people. Totally. And
I had to cross these rivers many moons ago
with, with my content when I hard pivoted and I
just really doubled down on this critique. And I was
so overwhelmingly

(02:34):
surprised by the flood of
anonymous emails I received mostly from
mental health professionals saying thank you for saying what we can't say.
We feel trapped by these systems and by these labels and,
and the issue that we will hear in the episode because I have a lot
to say, as you both know, about these things. And I take

(02:57):
issue with the systems, not the people. Yes, there are people holding up
these systems, but we have to be able to critique these things in
order. If we all really do want to find healing, we
have to lean into these conversations and ask ourselves,
why does that make me so uncomfortable? Right. Why am I scared to say
the thing and then maybe say the thing? Yeah,

(03:19):
absolutely. As we were having like the prep conversation for this,
I was really like, I had to do a lot of
the physical body processing of the
fear so that I could move through it. Because I know
that it's not. It's a pattern, it's a
response that I want to break through so that we can have this conversation

(03:41):
and be really present for it. Yeah, that's a beautiful way to open it up
too, because I think a lot of people feel that same way and a lot
of mental health professionals feel that same way. What if everything
you've been told about personality disorders is incomplete
or maybe even wrong? We're often told that conditions like
borderline personality are lifelong, unchangeable

(04:03):
diagnoses. But what if these disorders aren't
personality traits at all, but actually adaptations
to trauma and nervous system dysregulation? Here's
the 75% of individuals diagnosed
with BPD report severe childhood trauma, with
chronic attachment stress being one of the most consistent predictors.

(04:25):
People diagnosed with BPD are five times more likely to
have experienced childhood neglect or abuse.
Today, we are diving into exploring the intersection of
complex trauma and personality disorders, specifically
borderline. Just a little teaser. You've probably heard us say
before. We don't believe in fixed personalities, just frequently

(04:47):
occurring reactions. With that in mind, we are going to question
in a pretty big way the idea of personality disorders as
meaningful diagnostic categories with distinct neurobiological
patterns. This is a big conversation. It's part of a
big season where we have been redefining mental health
from a neurosomatic perspective, looking at the underpinnings of nervous system

(05:09):
health, trauma, and structural forces on many types
of quote unquote diagnoses. So before we dive in, I want
to encourage you to listen with an open mind and also to trust yourself.
You know what's best for you. Sometimes medical intervention is
necessary and helpful. It has its place in the healing journey.
Diagnosis has its place in the healing journey, and there's nothing wrong with

(05:31):
that. This is an exploratory season and we're presenting you with a
compilation of research showing many different perspectives, interviewing
a range of experts on different topics. Nothing is
definitive. We want to show you what all is out there and contribute our own
understanding of the brain and nervous system, how it impacts each of
these topics, and share our experiences along the way. Think

(05:53):
of these episodes as audio essays, presenting you with a
big picture of things to consider in all of these issues. We're
not giving medical advice or saying anyone's perspective is the
right way to approach this, but broadening our collective
perspective on what mental health really means.

(06:15):
Welcome to Trauma Rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous
system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. I'm
your co host Elizabeth Kristof, founder of Brainbase.com, an online
community where we use applied neurology, somatics and stress
processing tools for nervous system health regulation and
resilience. And I'm also the founder of the Neurosomatic Intelligence

(06:36):
Coaching Certification, an ICF accredited course for
therapists, coaches, practitioners to bring the nervous
system and practical nervous system healing tools into all of the good
work you do. And I'm your co host Jennifer Wallace. I'm a neurosomatic
psychedelic preparation and integration guide and I bring your nervous
system training and regulation into peak somatic

(06:57):
experiences so that you can fully embody and live a life
from the messages that you receive and the life that you really desire.
I'm also one of the educators at the NSI Coaching Certification
and I'm so excited to introduce Molly Adler, a
podcaster, a writer, a creative, an existential thinker,
obsessive researcher, and fellow messy human trying

(07:20):
to find meaning in a society and culture that seems to be devoid of
it. And we couldn't think of anyone better to have this conversation with.
Molly is the podcast host of Back from the
Borderline. So Molly, welcome to Trauma Rewired. We're so
excited to host you. Would you please share with our listeners the relevant
parts of your story that bring us here together today?

(07:41):
Absolutely. I just want to thank both of you, Jen
and Elizabeth, for having me. I've obviously been a huge fan of
your work for a while and I love how you both create
space for these deep conversations about the brain body connection and
how it intersects with trauma. And obviously this is a
very personal topic for me because like so

(08:04):
many others, I have lived it and my
journey into this work began in around
2021 and like countless people, I found
myself at the altar of Google searching for answers
about why I felt the way I did. Why did I
feel so empty why did I feel so broken? And I

(08:25):
stumbled across the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder,
or bpd, and had that moment that so
many experience. That's so me. This explains
everything about me. Tick, tick, tick. Every symptom. And like
so many others, I felt relief at first. I
had finally found a name for my suffering, a

(08:48):
sense of direction. And what I felt
at that time was an answer. And
shortly after that, I started my podcast, where I initially
focused entirely on BPD recovery. I joined the
online VPD community, connected with others who
identified with that label, and I myself

(09:10):
began to build my identity as a person and a
content creator around it. But over time, I started
noticing something. The deeper that I got into these
spaces, the more I saw people revolving their
entire sense of self around this diagnosis.
But the thing was, very few of these people

(09:32):
seemed to be truly healing. I'm not claiming to be an
arbiter of what is healed, but it didn't look like healing
to me. It looked like what I describe on my podcast as a
circle jerk of sadness. Right. I myself was participating in that
as well. Right. I was just as involved in all of this.
But at the same time, I started

(09:54):
coming across the work of investigative journalists and
other individuals within the critical psychiatry community who
are exposing the cracks in psychiatric
frameworks. And it made me take a step back and ask some really big
questions. Who decided that these labels should
exist? What are they actually based on? Are they

(10:16):
helping people, or are they keeping them stuck? And for me,
these questions were the ones I really wanted answers to. Because when
I finally found myself sitting across from a psychiatrist for the first
time, convinced I had bpd, I was told I was
too high functioning for the diagnosis and was told that he would
treat me for bipolar 2 because he told me BPD was

(10:38):
considered incurable. And I quote, right. And in
retrospect, that moment, which I know we'll dive into more
later, that was a huge turning point for me. Because looking back
on that initial conversation where I put so much trust
in that provider, looking for answers about what was wrong with
me made me realize that these categories were

(11:00):
far more subjective and arbitrary than we're led to believe.
So, realizing all of this, I took a risk. It was really
scary, but it was the only thing that at that time, felt aligned with my
integrity and the direction that my healing was taking.
I shifted my podcast completely away from focusing on
BPD and instead started exploring the broader picture.

(11:22):
Depth psychology, trauma, the nervous system,
generational patterns, and even spirituality. And how all of those
things intersect. And that's where I found real healing.
And when I say real healing, real healing for me, I felt change and
transformation and integration not in a diagnostic label, but
in zooming out and understanding my experience beyond a

(11:44):
disorder. And that's why I'm here today and why I do
the work I do on my podcast. Because I believe we need to
rethink the way that we frame mental health. And it sounds like that's what you're
doing with this series, not as a set of fixed
disorders, but as a survival adaptation, as
messages from our nervous system, and as invitations to a deeper

(12:05):
self understanding rather than an incurable life sentence.
And I know this is a huge conversation and I'm really excited
to be here and discuss this sensitively as I can. I am
a I'm inherently pretty firm with this because I've seen too much and
I've read too much and you'll hear about that. But I really stoked to be
talking about this with both of you and have the immense honor

(12:28):
to share what I've learned along the way with your listeners.
Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And I relate
so much to many parts of your story. You know, I'm
someone who was I was diagnosed with many
things as an adolescent, including borderline personality disorder,
including bipolar 2, including lots of anxiety

(12:50):
disorders. And I've talked about this on the podcast before, but as
an adolescent and through my early 20s, I was living my
life flailing around just seeking
relief like that might come through self harm or
substance abuse or compulsive exercise
eating disorder. I was just in so much pain and

(13:12):
reaching, reaching, reaching for everything. And through that whole
time was being constantly connected to this
identity of diagnosis and a very deep
belief that I am broken, I'm
crazy, and that I ruin everything, that I'm a ruiner.
And being so entrenched in

(13:33):
all of these diagnoses really solidified
those beliefs for me. And there was so much shame. And all of that
got turned inward. And it was really as I began to learn about
the nervous system and to learn about trauma and to start to
connect some dots to see these are
not abnormal reactions given the

(13:55):
experiences that my little body and developing
brain and nervous system went through. There's nothing disordered
about the way that I'm acting. It is a result of the
experiences. And so as we've
continued this work, Jen and I on the podcast,
more and more we really challenge this idea that

(14:16):
anything is fixed, right? We're neuroplastic beings. We're
constantly adapting and all of our behaviors
are outputs of our nervous system doing the best that it can to keep
us safe. And so I'm really excited to dive into
this topic. I do want to, just for people who are listening and not
familiar with what personality disorders are, its

(14:38):
traditional definition is that it's an enduring pattern of an inner
experience and behavior that deviates significantly from
cultural expectations. Right. Like, whose expectations are these?
And are pervasive, inflexible. Like, we know we're not
inflexible. We're dynamic beings beginning in adolescence or early
adulthood. I believe it goes far back to

(15:00):
ancestral generational experiences are stable over
time and cause distress and impairment. So we're really looking
at this concept of frequently occurring reactions driven by
dysregulated nervous system, chronic stress over time and
developmental trauma. So, Molly, would you want to share a little
bit more deeply into that story of your bipolar 2

(15:22):
diagnosis and being classified as too high functioning and
how that led you down this path? Absolutely. I already
shared a little bit about that initial experience with
psychiatrists. But what really made me
start questioning the entire diagnostic framework was
just how subjective and honestly, inconsistent it

(15:44):
all was. The first psychiatrist I ever saw
met me for maybe 15 minutes. And anyone who's seen
a psychiatrist, those appointments are not long, they're quick,
it's in and out. And, and I'm not speaking for all,
by the way, the majority of people I hear from. And I am not just
speaking from my own experience, I get hundreds of emails about

(16:06):
this all the time. And so I know for a fact, because I've spoken to
a few amazing psychiatrists. I had Judy Safrier on my
podcast a while back, who is a psychiatrist who
works with medications, but she's also critical of her profession
and informs herself about the mind, body, brain
connection. And so I want to start all of this off by saying

(16:27):
not all mental health professionals, not all psychiatrists. So I'm
critiquing systems. That's what I do. But
I went into this psychiatrist office fully convinced
I had bpd. And for your listeners that are listening on audio, it's
big air quotes. You can definitely hear my air quotes on the audio when I
say these things. But I had researched exhaustively every

(16:49):
symptom, checked every box, and I was sure that
was the answer. But he dismissed me almost
immediately. And he said, trust me, you don't want
bpd. It's incurable, and besides, you're too
high functioning. And instead he said he'd treat me for traits
I never even really got a formal diagnosis of. Anything. He

(17:11):
said he wanted to treat me for traits of bipolar, too, because
according to him, that was more manageable with
medication. And at the time, I trusted him completely.
I hadn't gone down any of these rabbit holes. This was Molly before the podcast.
I'm just like, please, oh, amazing psychiatrist, tell me
what's wrong with me. Give me the answers. I went in willingly, which I think

(17:33):
is interesting, Elizabeth, like, different to your story. Like someone who is
being put in against their will into a psychiatric hold.
I went in wanting answers with my little home worksheet saying, here's
what I've got, Doctor. Just tell me. And I walked out of
that office with a prescription for Lamictal, which, for listeners who aren't aware,
is a mood stabilizer and Xanax, thinking I had some

(17:56):
kind of chemical imbalance that could be fixed with the right prescription.
And most importantly, I felt relieved because I had been told
that I didn't have bpd, which in my mind now meant that I was broken
beyond repair. But something didn't sit right with
me. I had resonated with every single
symptom of bpd. So why was I being told that I didn't have

(18:18):
it? Just because I presented as high functioning? Is it
because I had my makeup done? Is it because I was articulate?
I was deeply suicidal at the time. I barely left my
bed. I had a jar of almond butter next to my bed that I was
eating because I didn't want to leave my room. So what
exactly was high functioning supposed to mean? And then it

(18:40):
happened again. I saw two more psychiatrists after that. They
all had different opinions on what was wrong with me, but the
one thing that they'd agreed on was that they told me in no
uncertain terms, stop pushing for this BPD
diagnosis. And at one point, I actually
confronted one of the doctors, or

(19:02):
psychiatrists, rather, and said, like, I don't get it right. I meet all of
the diagnostic criteria, so why won't you just give me the
diagnosis? And I think a lot of people feel this way, right? It's like, give
me the diagnosis. It's almost like when you get your blood work done, it's not
that you want something to be wrong, but you feel like crap. And so you're
like, tell there's got to be something wrong. And they say, no, your blood work
is fine and you're going, but there has to be something. You want the doctor

(19:25):
to give you the diagnosis as if it would actually fix it.
And I spoke to his receptionist afterward to book my
next appointment. And she said, molly, in confidence,
he is doing you a favor. If you get this diagnosis of bpd,
it's going to follow you. It could impact your ability to get life insurance. It
could affect your chances in a custody battle of a future child or children

(19:48):
one day. Just let it go. And that was a huge
wake up call for me, because if I was being warned away from
this label, then who exactly does deserve
to carry this label? Who gets slapped with a diagnosis that
could literally affect their legal rights? It made me realize
that psychiatric labels don't just describe symptoms. They

(20:10):
are categorizing people in ways that have real
world consequences. And we see this play out all the time. Think about the
way personality disorder diagnoses, especially bpd,
are weaponized, especially against women. A really public
example of this happened during the Depp versus Herd trial.
A psychiatrist that was hired by Johnny Depp's legal team

(20:32):
diagnosed, literally, armchair diagnosed Amber Heard with
BPD and histrionic personality disorder. And overnight,
that became the entire narrative around this person.
Now, regardless of what anyone thinks about
Amber Heard or that trial, I'm not even going there because I'm
not even deeply informed about that. But the way that the

(20:54):
label was used in that trial is undeniable.
It wasn't a neutral thing. It was meant to discredit her, to
make her seem manipulative, unstable, and fundamentally untrustworthy. Whether her
actual actions prove that out are neither here nor there. But the
label was used in that way. And that's exactly what happens to
everyday people who get these labels, too. And it goes

(21:16):
beyond public perception, because when I first started digging into
this, I came across something that completely floored me.
There was a time when in California, people in
prison could apply to have their sentences commuted, but
if you had a diagnosis of bpd, you weren't
eligible. And the same went for narcissistic personality

(21:38):
disorder and get this for convicted sex
offenders. So think about what that says. It means that,
legally speaking, people with a personality disorder
diagnosis were placed in the same category as
convicted pedophiles. Let that sink in
for a second. What does that tell us about the stigma attached to

(21:59):
these labels, about how society views people with these
diagnoses? And that's when I realized I wasn't
just questioning this diagnosis anymore. I was questioning the
entire framework that creates and enforces these
labels. Because if a psychiatrist tells me, no,
no, no, no, you don't want this label, it's going to ruin your life,

(22:20):
then maybe the real question is, should anyone
have this label? Should we really Be labeling people in ways that
can be used against them in a courtroom? Should we be diagnosing
people with something that could impact their ability to get housing?
Should we be diagnosing people with something that could
impact their ability to get insurance, life insurance, legal

(22:42):
protections? That's when I knew I had to start questioning not just
my own diagnosis or lack thereof according to these
psychiatrists, but the entire framework that
created these labels in the first place. Thank you so much, Molly.
Thank you to both of you just for your willingness to be so open and
share your experience with this diagnosis and what you have been through. I think

(23:05):
it's really beautiful to, you know,
hear. And I found my body responding
so much to the things that you were saying, Molly, just around, I mean,
there's just so much about this conversation that when I think about,
like the gaslighting of women and there's gonna be a
lot to explore here in this conversation. And many of what we

(23:27):
call personality disorders, they share a set of core characteristics
that contribute to long term emotional and relational
instability. And so while
personality disorders present with unique features, many
traditionally exhibit intense emotional reactivity,
fear of abandonment, and relational volatility. And then of

(23:49):
course, chronic dysregulation. And so with like intense emotional
reactivity. We talk about it a lot here on the podcast. But many
individuals with a personality disorder experience emotions that are
quick to escalate and often very difficult to
regulate. Emotional responses are often disproportionate
to the triggering event, making it challenging to maintain

(24:10):
stability in relationships and in daily life, the
fear of abandonment is often very deep rooted. That
fear of being rejected is a hallmark of many personality
disorders, especially those with attachment based difficulties.
And this fear, this could look like behaviors like around
clinginess, efforts to maintain relationships,

(24:33):
or like a more of a frantic effort, efforts to maintain
relationships, preemptive distancing to avoid perceived
rejection. And, you know, individuals with
BPD may go to really extreme lengths to prevent
abandonment, even if that abandonment is imagined.
And dependent personality disorder is another one.

(24:55):
There may be a persistent need for reassurance and difficulty making
decisions independently to avoid potential rejection. And then
we have relational volatility and we talk about,
we spent a whole season on trauma rewired, right? Talking about
relationships or a complex trauma is an attachment wound.
Because emotions and fears are so intense, relationships

(25:17):
tend to be unstable and marked by cycles of maybe
idealization and evaluation. Someone with BPD may
alternate between idealizing a partner, like seeing them as
perfect and devaluing them and viewing them and
maybe as entirely bad and so, and it's based on
minor perceived shifts. And so while

(25:38):
personality disorders are diverse, these traditional characteristics
often overlap and they lead to patterns of emotional
instability. They're going to lead to interpersonal struggles and
difficulties in self regulation. And you know, like I said, we spent
a whole season talking about complex trauma and attachment. And we know that early
attachment experiences play a critical role in shaping the

(26:00):
brain's threat response system. When caregiving is
inconsistent, neglectful or traumatic, the developing brain
adapts by becoming hyper attuned to threat, often at the expense
of emotional regulation and relational security. And
these adaptations involve the limbic system, the
ans, the autonomic nervous system, and stress related

(26:21):
neurotransmitters. This leads to long term patterns of
hypervigilance, emotional instability, and maladaptive survival
responses like chronic fight, flight, freeze patterns.
And so this could look like limbic system overreactivity,
that hypervigilance and emotional reactivity. The dysregulated
ANS is going to be looking like chronic

(26:43):
attachment stress sensitizes the ans, right? Leading
to that chronic fight, flight, freeze states. The sympathetic nervous
system responsible for fight or flight may be overreactive, resulting in
chronic anxiety, agitation and impulsivity.
Conversely, the parasympathetic nervous system could be in
a more dorsal vagal response response, right, that freeze, that flop,

(27:05):
leading to responses that are led by dissociation, by
shutdown, and that emotional numbness. So over
time, all of this dysregulation, it contributes to chronic emotional
instability once again and difficulty for calming
down after experiencing distressing situations.
And so we know that early attachment trauma fundamentally

(27:28):
alters brain architecture and nervous system functioning.
And many individuals, and I think as y'all
are describing, disorders, live in a constant state of
nervous system dysregulation, cycling between hyperarousal
and hypoarousal. Hmm. It's a lot to carry. It's
even a lot to hear, maybe for your nervous systems and for the nervous systems

(27:50):
that are listening to this. Yeah, what you just
emotional reactivity, the fear of
abandonment, the relational struggles, the
difficulty regulating emotions. You know, this is a
lived experience of so many people who end up receiving
these personality disorder diagnoses. And the

(28:12):
way traditional psychiatry frames it, these are
signs of something being wrong with you, that you're
somehow wired incorrectly, or worse, that your
personality itself is fundamentally disordered.
But if we step back for a second,
what if these aren't signs of pathology at all? What if they are signs

(28:35):
of, as you described, there are signs of adaptation. And that's what
I talk a lot about on my podcast. These behaviors and emotional
responses aren't random. They are hardwired into
us through experience. When we're children, our
nervous system is constantly taking in information, adapting to our
environment, and teaching us how to survive that particular

(28:57):
environment with our particular nervous system. You both talk
beautifully about this all the time. I was a listener and fan of your podcast
before I became, you know, friends of both of you. And if we
grow up in instability, if our caregivers are
inconsistent, neglectful, or even outright abusive,
our system learns to expect that love is

(29:18):
unpredictable, that connection can be dangerous, that
emotions get you punished or abandoned. And so we
adapt. And a child who grows up in emotional
chaos learns to become hyper vigilant because
predicting danger means you are safe. And a child
who experiences chronic invalidation learns to suppress their

(29:41):
emotions because expressing them leads to
rejection or worse. And a child who grows up with
instability is likely going to cling to relationships in
adulthood, fearing abandonment at all cost, because
losing connection once when they were little, meant losing
everything. And these are not disordered reactions. These

(30:02):
are perfectly logical survival responses. And the
problem isn't just that psychiatry fails to recognize this. It's
that psychiatry actively reinforces
the idea that these patterns are who you
are, that you were somehow born like this. But
we now know, thanks to research in neuroplasticity,

(30:25):
trauma, nervous system healing, that nothing about us is fixed. As
you've already said here, Elizabeth brought that up as well. People heal,
brains rewire, trauma can be processed.
The idea that a personality could be incurably disordered
is actually laughable now. Now that we know that people
recover from catastrophic brain injuries, for God's sake.

(30:48):
That people survive profound trauma and come out on the
other side completely transformed, that we change through
insight, relationships, and experience. For example, if
Elizabeth presented in front of a psychiatrist and told them today that she had
bpd, the Incurable Personality disorder, no one would
believe her, right? So she'd be gaslit again. So given

(31:10):
everything that we now understand about the brain's ability
to heal and rewire, I have to ask, right?
How archaic is it to suggest that a person's
entire identity can be permanently disordered? And then that.
That leads us to the bigger question. Who decided that
these disorders exist in the first place? Right? That's the

(31:32):
real question that we're here to talk about. And this is where we start getting
into the real cracks in the system and where I do a lot of my
research on my work. Because these diagnoses weren't
discovered, right? They were created that's an
important distinction, right? For example, cancer was discovered. That
we discover these illnesses that can be treated and hopefully

(31:53):
eradicated. Sometimes not. But these diagnoses are not science
scientific. They were created the dsm, which is the bible
of psychiatry. It wasn't written by some team of
brilliant neuroscientists uncovering biological truths about the human
brain. It was put together by committees of psychiatrists,
primarily men, who literally voted

(32:15):
on what should be considered a disorder. They didn't run brain
scans, they didn't do genetic testing. They didn't uncover
biomarkers in the blood. They sat in a room and
debated it. That's how psychiatric disorders came to
exist. Something we don't spend nearly enough time talking
about is that every time a new edition of the DSM comes

(32:37):
out, new disorders magically appear. The reason for that
is because the more disorders there are, the more treatments can be
prescribed, the more insurance companies can bill, and the more pharmaceutical
companies can push for new medications. And this is where we need to think very
critically. You know what they say? Follow the money. So what
happens when we follow the money? Do you know how much money the

(32:59):
American Psychiatric association makes every time they release a new
dsm? Millions. Psychiatrists and
institutions have to buy new copies. Insurance companies adjust their billing
codes. Drug companies develop new marketing campaigns around the
disorders. Air quotes in this new edition.
This is not mental health care. It's an industry. And

(33:21):
industries aren't designed to heal you. They're designed to keep you in the
system. There's a saying that rings very true here. A
patient cured is a customer lost. And so this is where I had
my final aha moment. You need a
diagnosis to get mental health treatment. And
if you want insurance to cover your therapy, you have to be labeled

(33:44):
with something. Therapists out there listening will know this. I speak to them all the
time. I get emails from them. Therapists who reject this
framework. And there are many of them out there who in their minds reject it
and wish they don't, or they actively do. They don't want
to slap labels on people or participate in the system. They're often
forced to work outside the insurance systems entirely. That's why you find

(34:05):
therapists who say, I don't take insurance. And I was one of those
people saying, oh, greedy therapists. You know, when I was looking, how could they
not? Now I understand why, right? It they're doing this because of
usually for their own integrity or their type of treatment modality
that they offer. Maybe the kind of treatment Jennifer offers, even a Jungian Depth
psychologist. They're not covered by insurance because their things can't be

(34:28):
measured in these tight little packages that insurance companies want. So
the very structure of mental health care is designed to keep you
in the diagnostic system. You must be disordered to receive care.
And if you really think about it, it's pretty twisted. And the next
logical conclusion is, if these diagnoses aren't real
diseases, if they are just labels created by

(34:50):
committees, then why are we being taught to believe that the
problem exists inside of us? Why are we being told that
we have disordered personalities, broken brain chemistry,
instead of looking at the environments, the systems, and the
power structures that benefit from us
believing all of this? Yeah, I think what you

(35:12):
were mentioning a second ago about the
subjectivity of these diagnoses was
from the definition that it is an experience or
behavior that deviates significantly from cultural
expectations. And what are those cultural
expectations? And as Jennifer was

(35:33):
listing out kind of the traditional characteristics. Again, air
quotes. Traditional characteristics of these personality disorders.
I just have to think of that. They are. They
don't just reflect the outputs that we see with
CPTs. They are the same. Right. When we talk about
all of season three as complex trauma being a relational

(35:55):
wound and the relational volatility, the
maybe feeling like you have to be very attached to someone and at the same
time pushing them away or being critical, of course, that is an
outcome if relationships are inherently threatening.
Right. If you both need attachment for your survival and
there's a huge stress load that comes with that

(36:17):
attachment, and then you have those competing needs of I need
the attachment for my safety and survival that was imprinted very
early on. And there's an extreme load of stress
and dysregulation that comes with trying to maintain that attachment.
So of course you would be hypervigilant,
hypersensitized to maintaining the attachment in adulthood. Right.

(36:39):
These patterns persist. And at the same time, as a defensive
mechanism from all of that stress, there's a part of you that is
protecting you from that connection by also looking
at how you're going to be hurt by this person being critical of them, pushing
them away, keeping a wallop. And those things are competing all of
the time. And it comes from the relational patterning of our

(37:01):
past experiences. Not because there's something that was
inherently wrong with our brain. It is the
adaptation that you spoke to Molly. It's how we are as
human beings. Little developing brains and
nervous systems, constantly looking for what behavior can I
produce, what physiological response can I produce

(37:22):
inside to keep me alive in the world?
Socially Emotionally and physically
safe, right? And those responses become
our neural patterning and they
persist, but we're always continuing to
adapt. And so as you were also saying,

(37:43):
Molly, like if I presented myself to someone today, this is not
an incurable condition. It's a well
worn response, right? It's a well myelinated path.
But as I move through my life and I cultivate new
relationships and I create regulation and safety
inside of my nervous system, I re

(38:05):
mobilize my diaphragm and my vocals and
work with my body to be able to express and emote and
regulate around that. The patterns change
and then I change, right? I would no longer
meet that diagnostic criteria because the same
responses are, aren't occurring because I've adapted

(38:27):
differently, because I understood how my nervous system
works and I understood the trauma patterns. And so that gave me
some agency to work with it. But it's nothing
that's fixed. And so these are all
outputs like we talk about here all of the time. The
emotional volatility, the relational or the emotional reactivity, the

(38:49):
relational volatility, the fear of abandonment, the chronic
dysregulation. These are, are the outputs. What are the
inputs that have come in to create those outputs?
What are the inputs? How does my brain interpret those inputs? And then what
output does that create? And when I understand that input,
interpretation output, I can begin to work with my system to

(39:10):
start to create some change. And that gives me a lot
of agency in my life rather than
having to stay in the
paradigm of a system that I don't believe in. You know,
I've joked on this podcast a couple of times that I mean, I have not
ever been officially diagnosed with a personality disorder,

(39:31):
BPD or borderline. And it's only I think
really because of the misattunement. Had my primaries been more
attuned, I think they would have seen that. I mean, there's just no way. My
pendulum was swinging so hard all the time.
And when I think about my 18 to
25, maybe even 30, I mean those were

(39:53):
just wild, reckless times. On top of all
this lack of safety I was feeling in the world, my I have an
A score for. I was self medicating
in several different ways. I was sexually fawning.
I mean the emotional neglect that I had experienced, I
mean, I relate so much. When I was doing the research, it was like,

(40:15):
oh yes, it's always been a yes for me in my body that I
do have or did at one time have what would
have been diagnosed as BPD
100%. I wonder how many
other women out there listening to this conversation with an
average to high ACE score have not had all of these

(40:37):
same experiences in their lives at one time or another?
And I was really trying to reflect on how did
this maybe naturally start to taper off,
right? Because I think after my 30s, then
there was like I was kidnapped for sex trafficking that obviously
contributed to its own level of stress. And then breast

(40:58):
cancer, and it must have been breast cancer that really started to
help taper some things out for me where I was really starting to just
maybe even seek more balance and
holistic health in my life. Quit the
alcohol and really stop, stop adding any of those,
like additional substances.

(41:20):
I cleared out a lot of toxic products in general, not just drugs and
alcohol, like toxic products throughout my life. And I think that
really played a big deal in helping to sort
of settle things down for me. And then of course, I've experienced a huge shift
since I came into nsi. And now I really do have tools
to regulate and just work in, in my brain and

(41:42):
body. But I hope to hear from some of our listeners
today through this conversation about how relatable
this is for people. And the way that you're both describing this. I
agree. What woman out there that's listening that is
definitely tuned into this podcast and mine hasn't felt
this way, hasn't felt like they are screaming out for

(42:04):
recognition and they don't know how. You know, I felt like that
was the description of my childhood upbringing because I didn't
experience out right abuse, but it was this chronic
drip feed of childhood emotional neglect where I felt like
I wasn't seen. I called myself like an emotional feral
child where I felt like I had to raise myself. No one told me

(42:27):
about morals or what I should do. I also felt like I was
always wanting the attention of my parents in some way.
And that translated. And my adolescence
converged perfectly with the advent of social media and MySpace, which was
a hotbed of men that were predators
preying on girls just like me, wanting

(42:49):
to abuse and groom me, which that's what happened and that's how it
led to my experience of sexual assault that I felt like I
was participating in total gaslighting. And I could only
unpack it years and years later. But just like Jennifer described
total sexual fawning, totally wrapping myself
up in what I called the hot girl box on the podcast, I was presenting

(43:11):
myself in any way to get validation and love,
and it just did not trans. And obviously I was inadvertently
attracting like moths to a flame, the worst possible
men because of this. And so then it further reiterated
into my brain that men bad, men scary,
men abusive. You bad. Something's wrong. Why are all these

(43:32):
people around me finding these healthy relationships? And yet. And yet.
And I also to your point, the I won't go further down that rabbit hole.
Same thing with you, Jen. I started getting rid of some of these toxic products
products. I found out that birth control really did not agree with
me. Again, might be different for I tried every kind and
it did horrible things to my ability

(43:54):
to find any kind of
psychological grounding and centered place. But
all of these things and then just never mind the environment we all grew
up in. Look at how the media spoke about women. We often find ourselves
blaming parents. It's not just parents. It goes so far. I talk
about zooming out on the podcast. So given all of these things,

(44:16):
of course we felt the way that we did. And now that we remove
ourselves, if we're lucky enough to do that, find ourselves listening to
content like this, you start to go, ah, it makes perfect
sense. Of course you're not disorder. It was a perfectly
understandable reaction to the system society. And it's
all designed to make you feel like something's wrong with you. You. I

(44:38):
think there's. It's so important to look at this
at that individual level and the structural level like you were
talking about, Molly. I think it's really important here today
for this conversation that we really talk about these big forces.
And one definitely we're looking at the trauma
underpinnings of this, that there is a huge

(45:00):
link between the way that our behavior and our.
Our personalities adapt, given our life experiences. You've
heard us say on here many times we take the d off of CPTSD
because there's really nothing disordered about that.
81% of participants in a study on the
American Journal of Psychiatry found that 81% of participants diagnosed

(45:22):
with BPD had significant childhood trauma, including physical
abuse, including sexual abuse, including witnessing
serious domestic violence. These things are the waters that we're
swimming and the way that we're developing and that is real in there.
But there's also this component of systemic trauma that you're talking about,
Molly. It's not just our personal trauma, right. When our society is

(45:44):
structured in a way that denies people
safety, belonging, social support, our
nervous systems start to reflect that when these
harms are put onto our body, onto our nervous
system, by the way people talk about women or the way people talk about
other marginalized identities. Right. That impacts

(46:06):
our nervous system and the way that we adapt
and our nervous systems are always reflecting these
structural forces as well. And that's why we see these same patterns
of dysregulation coming from a systemic and
structural level too. Right. In communities with generational
trauma, with people who have lived under systemic oppression. So

(46:27):
I want to keep. Keep broadening it out in that way too, because
I think we have to look at all the different forces
that are contributing to these diagnoses 100%.
I mean, our society has been
so damaging to women and
really bodies, just the idea of the ownership over other

(46:50):
people's bodies. The rape culture that
we particularly, we grew up in and rape
culture is a societal environment that normalizes
or minimizes sexual violence. And it's
contributed. Our rape culture is contributed to high
rates of bpd, particularly diagnosis in

(47:12):
women. And research strongly suggests that sexual trauma, chronic
invalidation and systemic misogyny play significant
roles in the development of a BPD
disorder. And I think sexual violence in general
is something that we have to bring into this conversation
around BPD and these diagnoses. I mean, when I think

(47:34):
about my own life and reflection,
a big piece of my dysregulation
is sexual in nature. So
I don't know how we want to open that conversation up. Do we want to
go there now into sexual histories
and diagnosis? I'm fine to

(47:56):
talk about that. I have more as we get deeper into the episode about
when we go down that pipeline of talking about hysteria and
the connections there, but I couldn't agree more.
I think that. And I will speak a bit to that, and I don't want
to get ahead of both of you, but it's so hard
to talk about something like BPD and not talk about,

(48:18):
about sexual violence, because the vast.
Actually, I'm not going to make bold claims. A lot of people that find
themselves slapped with these types of diagnoses are people
who make accusations and then are
gaslit or are told that they're imagining things
or that what were you wearing? Were you the manic

(48:40):
pixie dream girl? Right. We could talk all about these things.
And, and it is an absolute gaslighting of the
reality of sexual violence. And so it's, it's
certainly, it's almost impossible to discuss something like bpd,
Histrionic Personality Disorder, any of these ones that are weaponized against women
without talking about sexuality, because

(49:01):
many times I don't know if it's in the actual
criteria. So someone can absolutely fact check me on that.
But I do know that what is it? Sexual
promiscuity or the phrase I hate more than anything,
sexual acting out is another thing that's often associated
with something like bpd. And doesn't that sound like an old Victorian school

(49:23):
marm, like you're acting out sexually. Why?
Why? I love the phrase you use Jennifer. Sexual fawning.
Why is that happening? Right. These things don't happen in a
vacuum. I do want to dive into the history
of hysteria and all of that as well. But I just want to to chime
in a little bit on some of this with the history of sexual

(49:45):
abuse and sexual assault and all the
experiences that we have not just in our early childhood development but later through
life, right. And in our 20s and our 30s and whenever.
Because one many women diagnosed with BPD
have histories of body boundary violations, right. That can be
sexual abuse could even be like medical gaslighting, force

(50:07):
compliance, relational control. But big picture, all of this
at a deep level. Our body is,
especially if this happens in early childhood, we're learning that it's not
safe to set boundaries to stay in our own
body. Dissociation becomes a well worn pathway and that leads
to really complicated relational patterns where it

(50:30):
is life threatening inside that
physiological response. Whenever I try to set a boundary,
whether that's in a work relationship but or in a sexual
fawning situation, right. I find myself in these situations.
I do not have the skills setting a boundary, using my voice,
staying present in my body, knowing what I really want. These are not

(50:51):
skills that my nervous system has developed. And what has
been patterned over time is
repression of my emotions and my needs,
dissociation and abandonment of self, placating the
predator for my survival. And this is the way that
I move through the world and then that trauma compounds and we

(51:13):
also learn to suppress a lot of our
emotions, suppress or repress at a really reflexive level. And
so when you get to that emotional reactivity, there's going to
be rage and anger from these body boundary
violations. But also I have been
trained, conditioned, learned, developed, adapted, where

(51:35):
expression of my anger is not safe. So I, I have all of this rage,
I have all of this anger and I'm holding it all
inside and it's going to erupt at times. It's going to come out
in my relationships in ways that I don't want it to. It's going to come
out on myself and self harm, it's going to come out and
manifest as autoimmune and inflammation

(51:57):
and disease in my body. And so this history
of sexual abuse definitely plays
into the way that these behaviors that are
diagnosed are formed and. The repression of
sexual abuse just by. We don't talk about it. We have
learned generationally through our ancestors that we

(52:18):
don't go to talk to the authorities about the sexual violence
that we encounter. It's just easier somehow
that we're just supposed to metabolize the body.
Boundary violation, the rage, the anger. I mean
there's so much resentment, I think, of women to
the system. There's so much violation that

(52:40):
comes through the system. And just I think here
in Texas, women were still paying for their rape kits up until
almost the 1970s. What
are we talking about? None of us have been raised in a system
that protects us. And throughout, throughout history,
women who have exhibited any emotional distress due to

(53:02):
trauma were frequently labeled as, as hysterical,
unstable, overly emotional. It's led to
forced institutionalizations, forced treatments,
medical gaslighting, which we've talked about so much today already. And like
in its versus real genuine support, even just an
ear of understanding is, is

(53:24):
so powerful. But societal
structures that have normalized gender based violence,
silence survivors and limited female autonomy further
compound psychological harm. And it makes healing really
difficult. And the legacy of historical mistreatment
persists today as women with complex trauma are still more likely to

(53:46):
be misdiagnosed, over medicated or blamed for their
symptoms rather than offered real trauma informed
care. And there are really deep rooted connections
between being a woman, trauma and mental health
stigma. And it's crucial for us in this conversation
to help shift this toward more compassionate, evidence based

(54:08):
approaches that validate and empower women and
survivors of the system. If you're comfortable going
in the hysteria direction, are you both comfortable going there? Because it's the
perfect segue really. Because to Jen's point, for
centuries, instead of asking what happened to
her, the system responded by saying what's wrong with

(54:30):
her? And that's I think, part of the reason why so many of us
and our four sisters have decided to say
screw it. I'm not gonna even go forward because I see what
happened to her and I don't want that happening to me. This is enough
to deal with as it is without being told I'm attention
seeking, that I am the crazy one. What were you wearing? Were

(54:52):
you asking for it? Were you hypersexual? All of these
horrible things. I mean, just look at how people like Britney Spears were treated in
the media. It's just, it's really wild. But
this isn't new. And I did, this is where I did a lot of my
research to make sure I could bring some really interesting stuff for, for Your
listeners, because it's an open secret, really, that

(55:14):
psychiatry has always had a problem with women's emotions.
And if we want to understand how we got here, having discussion,
how BPD became one of the most weaponized diagnoses
for women, we have to look at where it all began. And that was with
something called hysteria. And the history of
hysteria is absolutely insane when you really look at it. The

(55:37):
ancient Greeks believed actually
that if a woman was acting out. There's that word again. Moody,
emotional, unpredictable, what have you. It was because her womb,
womb was literally wandering around her
body, causing mental instability. That was the
science of the time. They called it hysteria. And the treatments

(55:59):
were just as crazy. Some doctors thought sex would
cure it. Others used bloodletting. And if your listeners don't know what that is, right.
It's like you imagine the leeches or cutting and like, letting out extra blood
or even surgery. And I found out that this is actually where
hysterectomy actually gets its name. Women were literally having their
uteruses removed as a treatment for

(56:21):
manifestations of this psychological suffering for listeners
on audio. Jen is just shaking her head. We are all doing it because this
is. This was actually happening. So fast forward to the
1800s in early psychiatry, right?
Nothing changed. Except now, instead of saying your womb
was wandering, they said that you were hysterical. And if you were

(56:43):
too sad, too anxious, too angry, or God forbid, accusing
powerful man of sexual assault, you were locked away in an
asylum, drugged, subjected to. To treatments. Air
quotes like forced sedation, lobotomy, hydrotherapy,
electroshock therapy. Women weren't being helped. They were
being silenced. And they're still being silenced today. If you're too

(57:05):
emotional, too intense, too much, you get sedated,
institutionalized, or diagnosed with something that invalidates
your very real and understandable suffering. And this brings us
to one of my favorite topics, which is Freud, the daddy
of psychiatry. Because he had a moment where he
almost told the truth, he started noticing a

(57:27):
pattern. So many of his female patients were describing eerily
similar experiences of sexual abuse at the
hands of men in power, some of them being in their own family. And
he was this close to saying, wait a minute, I think I found the
real issue. But instead of standing up and saying, women
are being sexually abused, he folded, he chickened

(57:49):
out. And he created theories like the Electra complex saying
women aren't actually traumatized, they're just acting out. There it is
again, unresolved subconscious sexual material or
fantasies. He turned their trauma back
around onto them into a psychological flaw.
And that moment moment, that cowardice, that decision

(58:12):
to protect the system instead of the women suffering
underneath, it shaped psychiatry as we know it
today. Hysteria never went away. It got
rebranded, repackaged. The hysterical woman of
the 1800s is now the borderline
of today. The symptoms, almost identical. Mood

(58:34):
swings, emotional outbursts, self harm, unstable relationships,
sexual acting out. And who gets diagnosed with bpd?
Predominantly women. Right. And
psychiatry may have dropped that unattractive
label. Hysteria. Let's just rebrand it. This has bad branding, bad
marketing. Right? But the function of the diagnosis is the same,

(58:56):
to dismiss and discredit women's suffering instead of addressing the
root causes. And the part that really gets me, that I talk
about all the time on the podcast, is we are told that we are living
in this advanced, progressive society, that psychiatry
is more modern now, that we don't believe in wandering wombs
and hysteria anymore. But have we really come that

(59:18):
far? When a woman is deeply and understandably
distressed today, we don't like to look at history. That's why history keeps
repeating. And not when you understand that the moment a
woman is given that label, her credibility just evaporates
into thin air. What shred of credibility we have as just being women?
It's completely out the window when that label is being considered.

(59:40):
Because if we actually look at a woman's distress seriously, we wouldn't be
asking what's wrong with her, we would be asking what has she
had to survive to get to this point? Some powerful
shit, Molly. As I'm listening
to you, Molly, talk about the
diagnosis and the stigma that comes with these

(01:00:02):
disorders and the natural expression
of what our body and our nervous system need
to be able to process the traumatic experiences that have
happened to us. Right? Like in order to, I don't
even want to say heal, but in order to maintain our health and
to create regulation, we have to be able to

(01:00:25):
mobilize those emotions. And with these big experiences, there's a big
emotional charge and we're not able to
because of the Now I'm going to be labeled
this way. I'm going to be shut down. I'm going to
be labeled as crazy. That label will become
internalized. It will affect my relationships, my job

(01:00:46):
opportunities, my legal rights, all the things that we talked about in the beginning of
the episode. It becomes coupled with so much
shame, which is an immobilizing emotion
that keeps us from being able to process and
move beyond these experiences and so that
all of that emotional energy stays in our

(01:01:08):
body. It creates pain, it creates illness, it creates
constant states of dysregulation. And shame
is. Is. We've talked about it here many times. It's ultimately a
protective emotion, right? It's protecting us from
severing attachment, and that includes attachment to society at
large. And so if we have these

(01:01:29):
structures that are going to punish us for the expression of our
emotions and for speaking the truth about our experiences
and acknowledging what happened
underneath the behavior, shame becomes this
natural emotional response to keep us socially safe, to
keep us connected, attached to one another, and safe in our society. Like,

(01:01:51):
I'm staying within the social norms by continuing to repress this.
And so we have this now shame response that
becomes very, very
hardwired and very reactive. And we have to remember, too, that not
only is it a protective emotion, but it is a
neurophysiological response in our body that

(01:02:12):
is immobilizing us, that's moving us into a free state that is
creating inflammation in our body that has all of
these physical consequences on our health as
well as on our behavior. And so
now we begin to lose skills of emotional
processing. We get sick, and that shame

(01:02:34):
keeps spiraling on itself, right? Then we have the sickness, we have
more dysregulation, and then there's more shame about that.
Yeah. Shame is so layered, and it comes into
the experience so layered, too. Like, you know, we've talked a
little bit about sexual Fawn, but, you know, shame
was really coupled for me in my

(01:02:57):
identity through pleasure, through, like, the
confusion of pleasure and shame. Because I'd had so many
different body boundary violations, really, throughout the course of
my. My life, really, up until, I guess, probably,
like, I mean, it's. It's crazy, right? I don't even know. Probably up until,
like, yesterday, right? When hasn't someone

(01:03:18):
crossed the boundary, you know, and when I think about,
like, shame and pleasure and that over
coupling and body boundary violations and, like, how
I acted out sexually,
right. Air quotes, acted out. I was objectifying
myself. I was so confused. The emotional

(01:03:40):
neglect was so harmful
and really overbearing that.
That I think really drove an emotional experience
into sexual pleasure. But often, always
just like, harming myself and living in so many cycles of
shame. And you know, that shame response is cognitive. It's a full

(01:04:02):
physiological response in the body. And I didn't understand
emotional processing. I. I mean, had any of us understood
emotional processing, would there be a bipolar disorder?
Right. I mean, would that even exist if we
understood emotions as a society and as women?
Like, for me, so much of this comes down to emotions

(01:04:24):
and, like, acceptance, societal
acceptance. And like. Molly, you said something earlier about like,
what were you wearing? Did you deserve it? And like the hypersexuality
and, and it's so confusing to be a
female in this world when you're supposed to be all of these things over
here but not be any of these things over here. And all

(01:04:46):
of these things are like interwoven together. And
then once again, more shame. Shame for the
things I am, shame for the things that I'm not. And
this, it really shuts down shame. It really shuts down
connection. It suppresses our voices, our authentic
full self expressions, our power. And it protects as

(01:05:09):
a protective response. It's protecting all of the other emotions so we're
not experiencing our joy, our rage, which is
so valid, right? The grief and the fear and
everything that it's okay to experience as a woman in the
society that we are moving through today. If people could
hear just what you shared. Imagine if a young girl

(01:05:31):
who is on the brink of getting a diagnosis found, found herself instead
in front of Jen and heard what she just heard. Just the very act
of hearing that it's okay. It makes sense
why you're feeling this way. Yes. Let out your rage, feel your feelings. It's
not okay that you've been violated. There's nothing wrong with you.
It's society. And it's not going to go away. It's not going

(01:05:53):
to be fixed. There's no pre trauma purity that you're going to go back
to. I talk about this on my podcast all the time. There's no version of
yourself that you're going to get back to. That's a misconception, myth. But we're being
sold everything. But all people need to hear. All young girls, we're talking about
them now, need to hear is what Jen just said. And it's not that that
fixes you or cures you, but that's the medicine. That's the

(01:06:15):
medicine we need to hear. And it's so good that we're talking
about shame. But I want to even take it a step further because I don't
think it's just shame, it's toxic shame.
Because I think there's a big difference
between healthy shame and toxic shame. I don't think I know.
And, and healthy shame, right, is what keeps us in check.

(01:06:37):
It makes us reflect when we've maybe hurt someone, which we do
all the time. We do these mini ruptures in our life. Rupture
repair. Rupture repair. The reason why a lot of us end up disordered
patterns of behavior is there's rupture rupture, rupture, rupture, without any
meaningful repair in our relationship. But that healthy shame is what you
feel when there are those little ruptures in relationship. It's what helps us

(01:06:59):
align with our values. Right? It's a good thing. But
toxic shame is that voice that tells us,
I am bad, I am inherently
broken, I will never change. And if we're talking
about shame, that's why it's great that we're talking about that
in conjunction with the BPD label. Because what could

(01:07:21):
possibly create more toxic shame than being
told that you have a disordered personality? But
what I really want to touch on, which is a little uncomfortable for some people,
there are a lot of people out there who claim to be reclaiming their
BPD diagnosis, right? But at the end of the day,
that doesn't change how society sees it. It doesn't change the fact

(01:07:43):
that psychiatrists, doctors, and even therapists
see that diagnosis and automatically assume
the worst. And this is where I think a little bit of privilege comes in.
Because. Because it's one thing to do what I did, which was very privileged,
by the way. I went and sought out a BPD
diagnosis. Some people, you know, self diagnose themselves on

(01:08:05):
TikTok. They put it in their bio. They make content around it, like
me, self call out right here. That's privilege. But
that's not the reality for the most vulnerable people who get this
diagnosis, because for them, it's not a quirky identity. It's not
content fodder. It is a weapon that can and be will be
used against them. And I'm not. I'm calling myself out here because I'm using myself

(01:08:27):
as an example. I had all the best intentions. I was just a
victim of this kind of propaganda around all of this too. But it's
important to acknowledge the privilege inherent in this. It's the
woman in a custody battle who has it thrown in
her face in court. It's the person in the psychiatric ward who's
instantly labeled with it and put on the back foot before they even open

(01:08:49):
their mouth. And even the people who are reclaiming this label
on social media and out here trying to do good work, I. I don't doubt
that at all. I just don't think they fully realize how that
label could and might be used against them too. And it's not to scare you,
it's to empower you. Right? Because the moment you have this label in
your medical file, it follows you. You might not feel the consequences

(01:09:12):
immediately, but down the line when the doctor dismisses you, when a therapist
refuses to take you seriously or even take you on as a client, when you
realize that no matter how much work you've done, some people will
always see you as disordered, that's when the reality sets
in. And this isn't to shame anyone who has embraced a diagnosis.
I totally understand why people do it. It's a lifeline, and as I said, it's

(01:09:34):
training wheels sometimes to understand yourself. But it gives you an
answer to pain that you've spent years
trying to unravel. But I think we need to be aware of the system we're
participating in when we do this. When you are handed a
diagnosis that already puts you on that back foot. Foot. When you're told
that you have a fundamentally disordered personality, how

(01:09:57):
does that not result in toxic shame? How does that not
reinforce the exact cycles of suffering that got you into the
office of a psychiatrist in the first place? And when you already
feel broken, when you already feel like you can't change, and a mental health
professional confirms that for you and says, trust me, you don't want
bpd. It's incurable. Right? Where do we go

(01:10:18):
from there? How does that foster hope? How does that create any room
for healing? Because. Because to actually heal, all three of us
know we have to believe that we can change. That belief has to
be there for healing to occur, that our story isn't fixed, that
our patterns are not who we are. And that's why I
fundamentally reject the idea that being handed this label could ever be empowering.

(01:10:41):
It might be in your mind at one point, but it's inherently
not empowering. And if transformation is the goal,
then we have to stop handing out labels that tell people from
the very beginning that they never can and never will change
or transform. You know, as you were talking about diagnosis, and
I too believe, like, sometimes diagnosis can be

(01:11:03):
helpful in that it connects us to a community, we feel
understood. You know, like, we can read the things and say, yes, that's my
experience, and we can have some kind of shared, shared experience
with other people. Absolutely. And when we're
talking about these kinds of diagnoses, this podcast, FYI,
is the first time I've ever said publicly that I have had that diagnosis.

(01:11:25):
Diagnosis. So, you know, we talked in the beginning about how this was, like, a
high threat for me. I had to do a lot of fear processing around
that. But for me, like, looking at these
diagnoses, yes, it can be
helpful in that way of connecting to community. And it's
still not getting for me to the root of

(01:11:45):
why it's there. Right? Like for me, the thing that
shifts everything and that reconnects me back to that space
of we are neuroplastic, we are
changing, there is transformation as possible, is going
deeper to the level below. Like, again, these are just the
outputs. So yes, I can find people that identify with these outputs. But

(01:12:07):
I bet if we all looked deeper, we would also find
experiences that connected us. The shared
trauma history, the societal structures that led to
these outputs. And when I can really start to see that
the, the why underneath, why was my nervous
system in my brain shaped the way that it did? Why did I adapt this

(01:12:29):
way? Then that lends itself to compassion
and altitude and understanding of my behavior in a very
different way, where I don't have to self abandon, where I don't get
catapulted into that toxic shame. Because that difference
there is really important, Molly, that you brought up of.
Yes, shame is just a healthy, normal human

(01:12:50):
emotion, quote, unquote. Normal. We don't like to use the word normal,
but when I have cpts, it is a hallmark
of cpts, toxic shame. And very
easily I can be pushed from that
calibrated amount of shame to help me repair my
ruptured relationships into a huge full

(01:13:12):
blown shame response. Because. Because that is how I
was wired during my development for that to be such a big
reaction, right? And so for me, the antidote to that is
to start to see underneath the diagnosis,
what's going on, what are the patterns that were created to
understand my nervous system, my operating system, and to begin

(01:13:34):
to work with it so that I maintain that
constant knowing that, that
these are just outputs, they're just reflections of my
experience. It's not who I am. Who I am is very
different from that diagnosis. And there's no part of
me that identifies with that
diagnosis as who I am at all

(01:13:58):
anymore. We were talking before we began the
episode about that this was. This was an activating episode for
me, more so than other episodes that we've done done for two big
reasons that I would be sharing some of my
personal history that does carry stigma and shame
and is something that I've had to work through a lot myself. And also because

(01:14:20):
we have many, many licensed medical health
professionals in our community and NSI as listeners on the podcast. And
I always want to make sure I'm really respectful of them because
I think that they're wonderful people doing good work. And so we talked
about really looking at it as the structures and the
systems, all of that Said like it was a big ask

(01:14:42):
of my nervous system, right? Like I did have to do a lot of
processing of that fear, fear that I didn't know that I still had
to come up against this, to look at this. And there was a
moment of really reconnecting to that version
of myself because I haven't identified with this diagnosis for a long
time, you know, since I'm 42 now, since I was 24 years. So it's been

(01:15:04):
like 20 years since I've thought about any of this
really. And I can feel detached
from her, from that 15 year old, 16 year old,
22 year old. And as I was processing that fear, I
reconnected to her in a big way the fear that she
had of talking about this. And I knew that that's

(01:15:27):
when I had to process the fear and we had
to have this conversation because it's for all those other
girls that think that they're crazy, you know,
and have been violated so many times. And
then it violates you in your mind, you know, your own
identity, your relationship to self. And you're

(01:15:49):
not, you know, you're not
disordered. And so I
did it for her and I did it for them
because I think it's really important. It's so,
it's so important for your
wholeness, for your wholeness and

(01:16:11):
how you live in the experience
of yourself, for those parts of you to not
feel alienated or wrong in any way,
or crazy. So thank you so much,
much that got me. All of us are crying. What really
hit me, Elizabeth, is when you said part of you felt

(01:16:34):
distant from her. And then it just made me realize how
many versions of myself I am still separated
from. And I tend to intellectualize everything.
Obviously it's come across in this episode I'm still
working on. I tend to channel my, my
anger and my, my frustration with what happened to me into

(01:16:56):
attacking these systems and picking them apart. But it
is so important for me, and it's something that I'm dealing with right now, is
figuring out how else can I also address what you just
brought up, which is, oh, I think that those versions of
myself want me to be with them, you know, and
if there is one thing I want listeners to take away from

(01:17:18):
this conversation, it's this. And it's too
little Elizabeth, too. Well, not little, but 24 year old Elizabeth
and you know, the versions of both, Jennifer, me, you
listening out there. Your suffering is
not a sign that something is fundamentally wrong with you. I'm going to try
to get through this without Crying. It is a response. It

(01:17:41):
is a survival mechanism. It is your body's
and your mind's way that it learned to
cope with the environment that you were placed in against
your will. And while those patterns might feel
hardwired, like they're never going away, like they are who you
are, they are not permanent. But it

(01:18:02):
can feel really comforting at first to have that label. But we have
to ask ourselves, does this diagnosis actually help
me heal? Or does it give me another reason to believe that
I'm broken? Because when I look at the history
of these diagnoses, when I see how these categories were created, which we talked
about, not discovered, created by committees of

(01:18:25):
men sitting in rooms making decisions that are more
about industry and social control than actual science, I
can't in good conscience believe that these are the answer,
because trauma does alter the way that we see and act in
the world. We're all examples of this. You sitting there listening to this podcast,
you know that that's why you're here. But the things that we've been through

(01:18:48):
shapes, our nervous system, our relationships, our emotions.
But those responses, those survival mechanisms,
they can't be mapped onto this diagnosis. That was
just created. Right. Rather than discovered through any
legitimate biological science. Right. It just doesn't stand up.
And I think that if we really want to heal, we just have to look

(01:19:10):
beyond those frameworks. Because. Because healing isn't about
finding the right disorder to define yourself by. It's about
zooming out. It's about doing what we just did today, questioning
the systems and society, culture, family,
all these different systems that told you you were broken in the first
place. It's about remembering that no matter what you've been through,

(01:19:32):
you are not a label. You're not a diagnosis. You are a
human being that has survived. And if survival was
possible because it was, because you're listening to this alive right now, even if
it's just barely, then healing is possible, too.

(01:19:53):
This podcast is for informational and educational purposes
only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice.
We often discuss lived experience through traumatic events
and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and
systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners.
This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical

(01:20:16):
advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know is
struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger, please call
911. For specific services relating to mental health, please
see the full disclaimer in the show. Notes.

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