Do you ever experience a kind of imposter syndrome regarding your bpd?
I often doubt it in myself even though logically I know I have bpd and I recognise my symptoms and their severity, sometimes I still get into these moods where I think I'm somehow faking it or making it out to be worse than it actually is
Hi anon,
I do, definitely. Sometimes I'll compare myself to others and think "I'm not as bad as THEY are" or "My symptoms were worse a few months/years ago, so I guess I'm cured now??"
But then something will happen and I'll be reminded that yeah, it's real, I still have it, I'm not cured.
To be honest, that happens with most of my mental illnesses. I'm not sure how prominent it is for others, but sometimes I'll even start to doubt that I'm even that depressed, but then I remember that I'm taking a ton of antidepressants, and that's the reason why I'm not feeling as awful as I used to.
Impostor syndrome is very real, and it affects everyone a little differently, but I really do think that a lot of people who suffer with mental illnesses tend to downplay their severity (and/or they feel like they're faking how bad their symptoms can get), simply because it's impossible to measure exactly how you feel, compared to someone else.
Something that's helped me a lot with impostor syndrome is to catch myself when I try to compare myself to others, and to remind myself that it doesn't really matter what others think. I know what my diagnoses are, I know how I feel, and just because someone else might be "worse" than I am, that doesn't mean that I suddenly don't have my diagnosis anymore.
You're valid, anon. No matter where on the mental health spectrum you are, you're valid.
-Mod Hawk
