Where do you go when you have an illness that medical professionals and counselors don’t want to deal with—treated like an untouchable in a modern world? Have you ever thought what that would feel like? It’s happening all the time to people with BPD.

In their book Beyond Borderline: True Stories of Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, John G. Gunderson MD and Perry D. Hoffman PhD, explain:

“Seldom does an illness, medical or psychiatric, carry such intense stigma and deep shame that its name is whispered, or a euphemism coined, and its sufferers despised and even feared. Perhaps leprosy or syphilis or AIDS fits this category.

“Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is such an illness. In fact, it has been called “the leprosy of mental illnesses” and the disorder with “surplus stigma.” It may actually be the most misunderstood psychiatric disorder of our age.”

People with BPD are in every way today’s outcasts. And I think of Jesus and the many stories in the Bible of those he befriended, cared for, and healed. Where is Jesus today? Where is the acceptance we need? The love? The care?

marja