#bpd teens

i'm in my early-mid teens and i've been relating more and more to bpd things, but i've got other diagnosises and plus like hormones? maybe? anyway, do any of you or anyone you know remember being a teenager or "developing" bpd and is it something the develops? from what i've read, i can't tell if its commonly diagnosed in late teens- young adulthood bc it's more noticible but people have had bpd there whole life?

this is actually a fantastic question. keep in mind before I answer this that we are just a system with BPD and are not professionals, this comes from our own personal experience.

BPD is a personality disorder, therefore yes. you have BPD your whole life. it is something that develops, and i definitely believe symptoms may manifest differently in teens / adolescents than adults. We do actually remember being a teen with BPD and what thats like.

I would honestly say that a lot of teens with BPD also exhibit the very stereotypical signs of BPD. The issue with being in that age range, is doctors believe it to be hormone imbalances that cause the mood swings, splitting, etc, instead of a disorder. That's why most teens who suspect BPD are diagnosed as adults when Dr's believe their hormones have "settled" enough for these outbursts to be "abnormal". This is obviously fucked up but that's a whole different can of worms.

The major differences I think I noticed growing up is that the younger I was the less I was likely to split on people. Splitting is definitely something that developed over time, and the intensity of it all was alarming even in my teens. I also at some point switched from splitting on friends, to primarily splitting on romantic interests but that may vary from person to person. I knew what hormones looked like due to watching my peers drama, and the intense feelings I felt when splitting were definitely not #relatable at the slumber party. Which is another thing. The instability in relationships was very prominant to us in our teens because thats when we were interacting with peers every single day and attempting to consistently create and curate friendships. and we sucked at it. We caused a lot of fights, had a lot of friend drama. All things that normal teens do, but again- the intensity of everything was extremely abnormal. Teens may squabble among themselves, but if you find yourself spiralling out of control and wanting to do serious damage to yourself or do very wreckless out of character behaviour because your friend is talking to someone else.... definitely not normal.