14 Signs Someone Has Borderline Personality Disorder That Aren’t in the DSM

And signs you may be dealing with a narcissist masking or misdiagnosed as a borderline

People with BPD have a strong stigma associated with their disorder, so much so that the majority of people with BPD never get diagnosed, as they can’t recognize themselves in the vitriol written about BPD that evokes the textbook narcissistic behaviors of their abusers.

Many stay in denial lifelong, trauma bonding with toxic enmeshments until it kills them in a tragic way. Our average life expectancy is 39, and that’s not from our suicidal tendencies: it’s from the physical health issues associated with stress.

Even the DSM’s lack of context paints a picture of BPD that feels warped.

We’re called paranoid, without an understanding that our paranoia comes from real lived experiences: the borderlines I know discuss the ways their narcissistic parents, friends, or partners stalked them, read their journals, snooped their things, and even went to extreme lengths to watch and control them.

We’re said to have unstable and dramatic relationships, without the context of understanding grief and trauma bonding to narcissists as a part of our childhood trauma.

We’re said to self harm for no reason, without the context of the extreme traumas and abuses we’ve endured and witnessed.

We’re said to have explosive anger, without the context that this comes from internalizing and self blaming for abuses until it nearly threatens our lives and collapses our mental health.

Things such as our overactive empathy, even for the most abusive people, are ignored entirely, because those without empathy simply can’t understand the brain process of being able to feel the feelings of another or experience true compassion.

When we express these things, we’re simply gaslit that we’re crazy or deluded (narcissist projection), while they then go on to mirror and mask as us and pretend to be empathetic people while stomping all over others without any guilt.

The brain effects of constant and continual narcissistic abuse are regularly ignored with BPD, and it’s often discussed as if BPD has no known cause and is just a mysterious manifestation of behavior.

Many therapists have NPD or sociopathy — as they think their brains are superior and seek careers with access to vulnerable people that make them look loving — and when presented with a person with BPD, they become as triggered by us as they do by the scapegoats in their family who they envy, abuse, copy, and compete with.

Many pwBPD, including myself, have been given heavy medications or abusive treatment at the hands of medical professionals we turned to for help and trusted.

It should be no surprise that it still happens today: a look at the history of psychology reveals horrific sociopathic practices such as straight jackets, ice baths, electric shock treatments, lobotomies, isolation, and neglect should make it very clear that there’s always been a problem of a lack of empathy in the field. The problem has a root: narcissism.

Here are some subtle signs I use to identify if I’m interacting with a genuine borderline, who may not even be aware of their disorder.

These are also traits that narcissists pick up on in borderlines to know that they can abuse them — it’s the blood in the water that sharks smell.

Therefore, if a borderline is going to heal, these are the things they must address within themselves as they learn real self love and develop a more positive and true self image.

1. Constant Apologizing

This is usually my first clue.

BPDs have been instilled with a deep and pervasive guilt over their own existence. Because we were raised by people who lacked empathy as the scapegoat child, we were always made to feel that our emotions were a burden to those we loved.

We were always gaslit that our sense of reality wasn’t accurate.

We were always belittled about our accomplishments or dreams.

We were instilled with a sense that we are dumb, ugly, and “all bad,” no matter what we do.

So, by a young age, before we even have long-term memory, we’re in the habit of profusive apologizing or offering disclaimers before we say anything, such as “This may be all wrong, but…”

The other day, I had a very lovely and moving coaching session with a borderline, who emailed me after saying, “I’m so sorry if I offended you over anything.”

I had no idea what she could have possibly offended me on.

A good friend of mine who is a borderline will often say, “I’m sorry if I’m making this all about me. I’m sorry if my messages are too long.”

We try to hold each other accountable by pointing out when we are apologizing.

Apologizing is a knee-jerk response for borderlines.

We’re raised to take accountability and blame for the things our abusers did to us.

2. Inability to Take Compliments

When met with a compliment, a borderline will almost always follow that with belittling themselves.

Some real examples:

“You’re a good person and you deserve healing.”

“But I’m far from perfect.”

“You look beautiful today!”

“Oh thanks, I feel so fat.”

“Your artwork is really inspiring.”

“But look, I messed up here.”

“You didn’t deserve what they did to you.”

“But I was stupid and I stayed with him.”

This is an ingrained habit from a childhood with narcissistic parents. We always know our place is to be BENEATH the narcissist, or suffer EXTREME consequences of pain. We internalize our worthlessness, and we almost fear compliments.

In contrast, narcissists light up at praise like little kids. It’s supply.

It took me a long time to simply say, “Thank you.” It still feels wrong to me.

3. Unsure When They’re Abused

This one really boggles the mind of those who don’t have BPD. They constantly ask, “Why didn’t you leave?”

When I began understanding my diagnosis and reviewed my journals to re-examine my relationships and what happened, I was actually ASTOUNDED at how obvious the abuse was.

Once I learned to name abuse tactics in therapy — gaslighting, blame shifting, word salad, devaluation, bread crumbing, manipulative flattery, lovebombing, isolating, triangulating, lying, withholding affection, minimizing, defensive victimhood, lack of closure, and the like — I was sickened to see how much abuse I’d swallowed, internalized, and self blamed for.

Even in extreme abuses, I didn’t know it wasn’t my fault.

For example, my husband once anally raped me, even though I’d told him I wasn’t interested in having anal sex. When I told my therapist about the experience, he replied, “And when did you realize that you’d been raped?”

I froze.

“No, um, he was my husband.”

“But you didn’t consent. And you were traumatized.”

“But if you marry someone, isn’t consent implied for anything?”

“No, it’s not.”

It was only at that moment I realized I’d been raped. Then I had to grieve that pain that I’d buried and denied.

Even with physical violence, I was so used to forgiving physical violence in my childhood and feeling it came because it was deserved that I was eager to forgive pwASPD who were physically violent towards me in a rage.

As a teenager, my first love had ASPD and used to come to my window and peep at me. He’d say, “I saw you last night. You were wearing a big pink t-shirt and watching TV with your sister.”

I thought I should be flattered that he was coming to my windows to look at me. I didn’t realize I had a young stalker on my hands.

4. A Deep Love For Abusive People

Narcissists are angry people, even the most covert ones. When it comes to their exes or former supply, they say that they are ALL BAD. They fling words like psycho, idiot, bitch, evil at them. They will often say that their exes were narcissists or energy vampires or abusers, because narcissists project their self hate onto everyone else. And they OBSESS over and fantasize about revenge. They see all their revenge as JUSTIFIED.

When the narcissist enters devaluation, it’s a permanent split. They hate that person.

In contrast, where the narcissist stays stuck in devaluation, the borderline stays stuck in idealization.

We struggle to break the shared fantasy of the narcissist.

We often take a very long time to come to terms with our abuses and unmask our abusers as narcissists. We consistently go back to all the good traits in them or evidence that they are fundamentally loving people whose love we could earn if we could help them heal.

We fear the word narcissist because we were raised by people with split thinking: narcissist means ALL BAD.

But if narcissists were really all bad, then so many people wouldn’t be reading about it in agony trying to make sense of their cognitive dissonance.

Even when I began to break my denial and unmask my abusers, I still could never shake my compassion or love for them.

Even fully awakened, I feel defensive when people use deragatory terms about mental health. Inside, my heart breaks as I realize they are TALKING ABOUT MY SISTER.

When I talk to borderlines, we’re in a state of GRIEF over our love for abusers. We want to help them heal. We feel bad about their prison sentences, their loneliness, their inability to receive love. We constantly cling to traits in the mask, going back the the fantasy of them, thinking them benign.

5. Lucid Dreams and Predictions

We’re generally called deluded for this, but most the borderlines I know have the experience of having lucid and symbolic dreams that have come true or inner instincts that made them even question if they were psychic. It’s mentioned frequently in the scholarly literature.

I have these all the time.

They always come true.

To the point that I absolutely hate this trait and sometimes wish I didn’t dream.

It seems as if the things we deny to stay in idealization get buried in our subconscious and come out in dreams.

I was once dating a guy who I thought was THE ONE. He was so beloved by all who knew him, and most of all by me, and I thought he treated me wonderfully, even though he ghosted sometimes and whatnot.

I had a dream that he had sex with a mutual friend of ours, who was not even straight and was in a relationship.

I thought the dream absurd, but the ANGER in my belly boiled like tar. I felt absolutely crazy. I picked up my phone and texted him, “I know about you and Lisa.”

He immediately responded, “That only happened once, I swear.”

(It had happened for several months, many times).

I threw my phone in UTTER SHOCK.

6. People Pleasing Behavior and Lack of Boundaries

Placing boundaries still feels traumatic for me, because once I started doing it at the suggestion of my therapist, I either started to lose people I loved or got worse abuses.

Narcissists who date borderlines will often do boundary testing to see how much you’ll give, forgive, and endure.

Borderlines are in the habit of giving ANYTHING to make people happy, especially at their own expense. Saying no is very painful and hard.

Example of boundary testing that happened with a narcissist:

“Hey, I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I feel really sick. Maybe tomorrow?”

“No worries! I’m SO sorry to hear your sick! Do you need anything? I can bring it to you if you do.”

“Maybe some chicken soup.”

“I actually have some on hand — I’ll bring it to you.”

“Actually, I hate company when I’m sick. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Okay, no worries! Get some rest.”

An hour later…

“Do you have tomato soup and crackers?”

“No but I can get some.”

“Never mind.”

Another hour…

“I’m feeling better. Do you still want to hang?”

“My friend just got here. We’re going to watch The Bachelor. Can we still do tomorrow?”

“Today is best for me.”

“But you said we had plans tomorrow?”

“I’m sitting here sick and alone and this is how you treat me? Seriously fuck you. Forget about today or tomorrow.”

Most likely, an unhealed borderline is going to drop everything for the narcissist to appease them. It’s what I did.

Because my fears of abandonment and worthlessness were triggered by this boundary testing.

7. Ability to Speak of Shames Openly

Narcissist cannot speak of most of their worst shames: and they are even silent on most of the most severe traumas they endure in life, such as being raped (because they become rapists after that to remedy their grief by recreating their trauma as the one in control).

It’s almost like there is a curse on their tongue that prevents them from even mentioning them. They can only speak of themselves as victims or perfect.

A major way I identify if a creator in narcissistic abuse recovery spaces is if they ignore the child abuse, animal abuse, domestic violence, abuses of power, and rape that comes with NPD and ASPD and only frame it as compulsive cheaters in consensual adult romantic relationships.

The borderline, in contrast, is DESPERATE to speak. We’ve been routinely silenced about our traumas.

Even at four years old, my friend who is a borderline was told by adults that she brought on her own child molestation when she told adults what happened.

Borderlines speak openly about shame, and we’re able to address our imperfections and mistakes, because being imperfect is so fundamental to our sense of identity. It’s the loudest part of our internal landscape.

8. Warped Negative Self Image

Borderlines usually can’t see their positive traits, like…AT ALL.

I used to think I was dumb, for example, despite getting straight As and having many accolades for my writing as well as glowing teaching evaluations.

I now genuinely believe I’m intelligent and was a talented teacher, and I recognize that people tried to belittle me because they saw my positive traits as a threat to their grandiosity.

However, some things REALLY persist.

I had a narcissist favorite person once who I asked why he loved me, and he said, “Because you’re so beautiful, but you don’t even know it.”

It’s the “You don’t even know it” that attracts narcissists to borderlines.

I don’t see pretty when I look in the mirror. I see obese, big nose, uneven eyebrows, in need of lots of makeup and upkeep to even be able to walk out into the world.

Body dysmorphia is a really wild thing, because I don’t really know if I have any idea what I look like.

Because what people say I look like is not what I see. So I wonder if when I look at a photo or in the mirror, I’m hallucinating.

I do know cognitively now that I’m not as repulsive or offensive as I once thought, but I genuinely believed, for many years, that my fat and my crooked teeth were why no one ever loved me or stayed faithful.

And after I got braces, everybody said: “We never even noticed you needed them.”

9. Genuine Empathy That Extends to All

Those with BPD were raised to cater to the needs of emotionally unavailable people, so most of our intimate lives are with people who society would shun if they knew their truths: liars, cheaters, frauds, criminals, rapists, pedophiles, even murderers.

Our empathy isn’t selective, and it doesn’t shut off for abusers.

Emotional empathy is somewhat rare in our world due to child trauma that stunts emotional development, and people don’t understand what it is. They think it’s just kindness or cognitive decisions to follow rules or act in moral ways.

If you have emotional empathy, when you see war, you should FEEL bottomless grief. You should feel the feelings of the victims you see.

If you have emotional empathy, when someone cries to you, you should begin to feel like you’re going to cry too.

If you have emotional empathy, the very idea of doing something horrific to another person should make you physically sick: then, if you do something bad to someone, you should experience guilt that is so terrible you want to die.

That’s how empathy works as a species survival trait.

If that doesn’t happen, then your empathy is imparied and you have an emotional disability.

When people who lack empathy meet someone who has it, they love the empathy because they want it for themselves, but they also simply start denying that your empathy is real and they begin to obsess, stalk, and try to discover you as a fraud.

They also gaslight you and tell you that you are crazy or empathy isn’t what you think it is or it doesn’t exist. They also try to tell you that you are too sensitive and emotional, and they’re stronger than you because they’re logical and not emotional.

But logic doesn’t operate without empathy.

And that’s why our world is so messed up.

While I have a real revulsion for the behaviors of people with NPD or ASPD, and I feel for their victims deeply, because I am one, I also have always been one to ask the question: “Why are they this way? What’s the root? And if we find it, can we make changes to help?”

Despite being a rape victim multiple times, despite having a pedophile father, despite being even drugged and held hostage by a sociopath, I’m still a prison abolitionist. I’m still anti-war. I still don’t believe in the cycle of vengeance.

I feel more badly for people with NPD and ASPD than I do for ANYONE. I think it seems to be such a horrible, torturous life. I even feel guilty that I was the scapegoat and I escaped its fate and can access healing.

I want to save my family.

I would penpal with people on death row. (And I have no regrets — I learned a lot from people who were facing death that way, and I wish the world would listen to their wisdom and pain).

My reason for doing so was because I hated the idea of people who had experienced childhood traumas like mine who didn’t get help being cast off as if they are forgettable and unlovable.

It’s how I felt as a child locked in my room for months.

I just wanted to provide a little human comfort, a little relief.

Everyone told me that was crazy.

But sociopaths need to project ALL TRAUMAS that happen to them, so whatever happens to them in prison, they get out and need to re-enact onto others to resolve it, so our brutal system doesn’t protect us: it creates more victims. It’s why our recidivism rate is so high. And there are many innocent people in prison too.

I still don’t think that’s crazy. I think not having empathy or even a cognitive understanding of that is tragic.

10. Perfectionist

People with BPD were raised to think that love could be earned, if only they were “good enough.”

We’re given the rules for what “good enough” means, but every time we follow them, the goal posts keep changing.

This gave me a vicious anxiety that everything I did needed to be PERFECT. I was always aiming for a perfection that would save me from abuse and win love.

Doing something poorly or imperfectly deeply troubles me still, even though I now know that my efforts will not be rewarded by narcissists and there’s no such thing as perfection.

I can feel debilitating shame even when I catch a typo.

11. History of Sexual Trauma and Hypersexuality

I had a young borderline student who asked me: “I know this is a personal question, but…how many times have you been raped?”

She had just been raped for the second time in a year. First by her stepfather, and then by a group of boys at a party.

I knew why she was asking: she wanted to know how many times this would happen, if there was something about her BPD that made it keep happening.

And yes, there is. It’s because we were raised scapegoat. And once you are deemed a scapegoat by your parents, it’s a curse they put on you for life. Rapists SMELL it.

Nearly all the borderlines I know have a history of persistent sexual trauma and hypersexuality as a trauma response to it.

I believe I may have been molested by my parents before I had long term memory or that I blacked it out, because I remember having chronic yeast infections when I was very young and my father is a narcissist ASPD pedophile who attacked the neighbors. Those yeast infections happened again when I was older after I was raped.

But my first conscious memory of molestation was by a neighbor child when I was four.

Then again I was raped at 15.

Again at 24.

Again at 31.

Again at 40. This time for three weeks straight.

And these don’t even account for the violations that happened in consensual relationships, which I never saw as rape.

Also, I became hyper sexual, obsessed with being seductive, and addicted to sex with narcissists.

Sex with narcissists is an unconscious way that borderlines self harm.

We have incredibly fraught relationships with our sexuality, and a deep desire to be touched by a narcissist, as the chemicals that flood our brain when we are seem to wipe away all the grief of our childhood like dust off of a music box.

I’m currently 7 years celibate.

12. Autistic Traits

In analyzing cluster b family trees, I noticed a pattern of autism throughout them.

I’ve also known quite a few narcissists to say they are autistic.

They aren’t lying. The truth is that nearly all cluster b’s have autistic traits. I was also diagnosed with high functioning autism.

As a child, my parents told me I was a retard. In 4th grade, I tested at the 12th grade reading level, so I was put in special education for English. My parents said I was like Rain Man.

I have some habits that track with autism, such as obsessions with things from my childhood — my whole family had this. For me, it was rocks.

I loved rocks, and had this skill of memorizing what all the rocks were. I still have rocks and minerals all over my home, and I can spout facts on them as if I studied geology. People ask me how I know so much about them, and I say, I just always loved them. People ask why I love them, and I can only say that I liked the feel of holding them or having them in my pocket.

I also have strict routines. If a routine is changed for me at the last minute, I feel as if the ground just dropped out from under me. I need to make plans with people in advance to prepare for socializing, even for things like phone calls. I want someone to make a date for a phone call, not call me unexpectedly.

I also have a photographic memory. To study for tests, I’d stare at a page in my notes for hours until I could pull it up in my head — I could even see the places I scribbled out. I felt guilty for this, because I felt I was cheating, but when I told people I had this ability, they told me I was imagining things.

Eventually, I learned that my brain just worked differently.

And really, all brains do. Most of us just want to live in denial of that, especially cluster b’s, because we’ve been taught split thinking that different is all bad: and we’re desperate to be normal. Plus, anyone’s lived experience FEELS very normal.

We tend to project our own brains onto the world and presume that everyone experiences things like we do and dismiss someone as flawed if they contradict that expectation.

But the borderline always feels alien.

13. Guilt and Taking Accountability For Things That Are Not Their Fault

Borderlines experience a feeling narcissists have never felt: chronic and persistent guilt.

We feel guilty even for things out of our control.

We feel guilty just for existing.

We feel guilty for things we couldn’t have changed.

We feel guilty for things that were done to us.

We feel guilty when good things happen to us.

We feel guilty for being happy.

We feel guilty. We feel guilty. We feel guilty.

14. Overly Generous to Those They Love

Being generous is a wonderful quality, but with the borderline, you’ll recognize that their giving doesn’t match with their receiving.

Like when my boyfriend gave me a card for my birthday and I gave him a new computer.

Or when my parents gave me a card that said, “Here are all the things you won’t get for your birthday,” with a picture of all the things I wanted, when I agonized over making her a handmade wire weaved necklace with an expensive and rare stone for my mom.

We’re always trying to earn love through showcasing how powerful our own love is for others, and it doesn’t work well.

BPD and NPD are often conflated for a few reasons:

• due to the ways NPDs lie in treatment (because they lie to themselves to preserve their fantasy self)
• due to presenting to get help in a collapse state in which they are self harming the way borderlines are at baseline
• due to masking and mirroring their scapegoats due to envy and desiring to be seen as good people.
• due to frequent smear campaigns when we leave toxic enmeshments

But the above traits are almost all absent in a person with NPD (with the exception of autistic traits and hypersexuality).

And NPD and BPD cannot co-exist — they’re fundamentally opposite in key ways, though there are overlaps for all cluster b’s. We are FAMILY, after all. We spend our whole lives together.

BPDs can be abused to the point of collapse and rage in which they lash out in self defense and reactive abuse. In a collapse state, the NPD enters the borderline baseline and the BPD enters the narcissistic baseline.

We are Ying and Yang — two halves of a broken heart, broken in early childhood.

And while people with BPD are genuinely loving and empathetic, we’ll be the first to tell you that we aren’t perfect, we aren’t saints, and we aren’t pretending to be. A lifetime of trauma bonding to narcissists or sociopaths can lead to a life in some of the darkest, grimiest places of the human experience.

But I also want people to understand that the notion of perfection and sainthood is narcissistic fantasy and split thinking: nobody is perfect, and we should never be expected to be.

Often, what we get accused of most as a projection from narcissists is “thinking we are perfect” when we try to be loyal or loving to our partners.

So, it’s a knee jerk reaction for us to continually remind people that we aren’t. Narcissists, in contrast, can’t handle criticism at all.

I’ve seen many misdiagnosed narcissists parading as borderlines. They tend to reject both NPD and ASPD as their diagnosis, because their split thinking makes them think NPD is ALL BAD.

They’re much more likely to embrace a diagnosis with less stigma, such as high functioning autism or cPTSD or ADHD, which aren’t inaccurate, as they’re characteristics that fall under the umbrella of a cluster b diagnosis.

It’s more like the personality disorder is the trunk and all the byproducts of that disorder are various branches of suffering.

Its roots are childhood trauma and being raised by narcissistic parents.

A good example of a misdiagnosed person is Amber from Teen Mom. Amber shows all the traits of a narcissist, possibly someone with ASPD. She’s hostile, sensitive to criticism, lacking in empathy for others, combative and angry, grandiose, selfish, and has a history of addiction, domestic violence, and imprisonment.

She also has the mark of the golden child with two narcissist parents: her father is a Sr., and she shares the same middle name with her mother. (Narcissists only think one person in the world is perfect — themselves — so their golden children, the next generation narcissist, are always named after them in some way. Amber’s daughter also shares her middle name).

Amber is a pretty overt and obvious narcissist, yet the show has repeatedly said that her diagnosis is Borderline Personality Disorder.

I don’t mean this to say Amber is all bad — in fact, I tended to like her at times and I really wanted her to get clean and heal. I don’t have that kind of split thinking about NPD and I’ve genuinely loved the narcissists in my life. I know Amber is a woman who has suffered much trauma: you can feel her pain.

I only mean it to showcase a clear misdiagnosis.

Another one is Jeffrey Dahmer. His covert mask and self awareness led to a BPD diagnosis, but his actions reveal, clearly, that he is an ASPD with no emotional empathy. His middle name is his father’s first name, the mark of the golden child.

It’s a grave injustice and frustration to us as borderlines that not only do abusers mirror our personalities for their mask, but they misrepresent our diagnosis as well, making healing and self awareness very difficult, and causing us unfair judgment and strife.

It’s hard to find yourself and heal when the people abusing you wear masks designed after your face.

The life of a borderline scapegoat is one of frustration, confusion, and warped funny mirrors everywhere.

But with some education, you can learn to easily identify NPD vs. BPD, and examine yourself and your own trauma responses more closely for your own self awareness and healing.

For individual coaching or group healing sessions, visit https://am-champion.com

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A.M. Champion is the author of She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient.