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Just Borderline Mad


I’m not sure how to locate my own madness experiences in relation to this world, but I’m tired of feeling or being marginal (or ‘borderline’!). Within the psychiatric system, I was informally labelled as having borderline personality disorder, but today my private (trauma-informed) psychotherapist describes me as having “complex posttraumatic stress disorder” (a diagnosis not recognised by DSM 5). I don’t find either description adequate, although the latter is much less shaming! I understand my own experiences not in terms of a disorder of an individual, but in terms of relational embodiment.


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C-PTSD has primarily been theorised by trauma-specialists, not by Mad people, and so their words don’t feel like my words: it still locates mental health professionals as ‘the real experts’ on my most intimate experiences. Even the word ‘trauma’ has a place in my culture that is overly pre-determined, rather than offering space for individual meaning-making (as is offered by the Hearing Voices Network).


I ask people “How do YOU understand your experiences?” – especially when they have no obvious, culturally-recognised trauma: too many people with a BPD label describe feeling ashamed for not having “enough trauma to be this fucked up”. But I believe that when we listen carefully to relational context and meaning-making our responses always make sense.

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