u/isa13bella

additional context: diagnosed Autism 15, as a child was monitored as showing symptoms of ASPD but was discharged undiagnosed, diagnosed OCD at 17. Suffered with depression consistently.

Therapist wanted to talk about bpd (eupd but I’m just going to say bpd) with me. It didn’t feel like my issue, from what I knew about the disorder but I was willing to be educated. I certainly match the diagnostic criteria and honestly I was never satisfied with the response I had been getting as a teenager, which was that my autism was the issue and not that I had an underlying mental illness. Anyway bpd seems to perfectly describe my patterns of OCD, depressive cycles with moments of unpredicted euphoria, boredom and emptiness, impulsivity etc. I can see why to a therapist this would sound like a great fit to me, as it can encompass my autistic traits with a named mental illness and it honestly seemed like it was like what I’d been wanting people to recognise in me all along.
My problem is that I lack empathy, I feel almost no emotion towards others and consequently I struggle forming relationships. I can have friends but they mean as much to me as a stranger. And so I don’t relate to the idolisation and intense ‘love’ often described in people with bpd. I just don’t understand this feeling and I have never felt it. The only comparable feeling I can think of is jealousy? Is this a viable expression of idolisation in bpd? I will be asking my therapist but this is the only emotion I can think of that replaces what others feel as intense love during a cycle. I definitely experience devaluation, I can easily hate someone within a matter of seconds and feel the urge to harm them or myself but never the other way round: it’s like everybody in the world is just ranked as 0. Going back to the jealousy, I have had specific targets I would obsess over, since a young child, people I want to become because i perceive myself to be evil and them pure and I should follow them etc etc. If I was physically close to those I would harm them emotionally or physically and if it was a parasocial relationship I would try to mould my personality into them: but I also often see their face where mine would be in the mirror.
I have many more questions about bpd but this is my biggest doubt about a potential diagnosis. Is this autism and bpd interacting? Or just autism?