I first heard about borderline personality disorder 20 years ago in psychopathology class.

I was 24. I had never heard of borderline personality disorder before. I had never even heard

of personality disorders before. I had never even heard of personality disorders before. I remember the instructor telling

us that personality disorders were the only disorders in the DSM that required six months of

client data before you could diagnose someone with it.

I thought to myself, six months, that's a long time.

Why does it take so long?

Contrary to this, he also told us, that we could diagnose depression and anxiety within a short five minute interview with a client.

And borderline personality disorder takes six months. That's weird, huh? And the symptom list was weird to me too. I'd never heard of personality

disorders. They seemed so strange to me. I'd heard of depressed people before and I had experienced anxiety myself by then but personality

disorders sounded completely foreign to me and I was sort of scared of them to be

honest. Then a year later at my internship I had a very difficult client. She would

alternate between making me feel like the best therapist in the world and making me feel like

a worthless person. And I remembered that this was a red flag for borderline in that

borderline clients often make therapists feel this way so I began assessing for

borderline with this client and sure sure enough, after several months and

after consulting with experts on borderline, it seemed I had my first borderline

client. And then people told me to refer her to someone else because these

clients are no fun to work with.

But I found that I actually enjoyed the struggle with this client.

It felt like real therapy to me.

It involved all the things I enjoyed about being a therapist, things like

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