It’s deeply unfortunate (I think) that one of the most easily mischaracterized, most difficult to fully understand forms of mental illness also has the most extraordinarily unhelpful name.
Borderline personality disorder. It’s just awful - like, don’t we all have some kinds of disorder having to do with our personalities? And what’s so borderline about it? Is there such a thing as full-fledged, balls-to-the-wall personality disorder? Raging personality disorder? No. There are just the personality disorder which exists on the borderline, or the personality disorder - paranoid, histrionic - that has another, more specific modifier.
The awareness and diagnosis of borderline is further muddled by the fact that so many of the symptoms and identifying behaviors are easily waved off as any number of other quirks or annoyances. They include (according to the Mayo Clinic; this is quoted from their website):
An intense fear of abandonment, even going to extreme measures to avoid real or imagined separation or rejection
A pattern of unstable intense relationships, such as idealizing someone one moment and then suddenly believing the person doesn't care enough or is cruel
Rapid changes in self-identity and self-image that include shifting goals and values, and seeing yourself as bad or as if you don't exist at all
Impulsive and risky behavior, such as gambling, reckless driving, unsafe sex, spending sprees, binge eating or drug abuse, or sabotaging success by suddenly quitting a good job or ending a positive relationship
Wide mood swings lasting from a few hours to a few days, which can include intense happiness, irritability, shame or anxiety
Ongoing feelings of emptiness
Inappropriate, intense anger, such as frequently losing your temper, being sarcastic or bitter, or having physical fights
Oof! Most of us can see ourselves in these descriptions, if not now then maybe when we were in our 20s or during periods of growth or grief. And if “ongoing feelings of emptiness” is a symptom then my entire generation should see a doctor.
No really, we should. But we can’t because we live in a failed state and the efforts of the last 30 years to try to reform our healthcare system have been thwarted by the interests of the wealthy.
ANYWAY.
At its core, BPD is about regulating emotions and attachments. And for the people who live with it, these challenges are very real and can be very challenging to manage.
The interesting thing is that these exact BPD symptoms are also the exact sorts of personality traits that writers will incorporate in works of fiction, especially when creating a moral structure for their characters. Depression is a frequent motivator, as are risky behavior, unstable relationships, and self-sabotage. I don’t think that fiction writers are often realizing how many of their characters in books and films and TV shows present these symptoms as though they’re just part of everyday life - and without regard for what it would be like to meet this person in person.
In thinking about the history of mental health and how we find ourselves in a greater context, I like to do a little armchair diagnosis for fictional characters. Of course, they’re fictional so they don’t actually live with any specific disorder - but using their behaviors and patterns as a framework is a sort of safe way to identify what these traits might look like in practice, or in like, life.
And the one that I think perhaps most exemplifies BPD - and again, this is in my non-expert opinion - is Carrie Bradshaw.
Sex and the Shitty Boundaries
The first time I watched Sex and the City, I was a freshman in college and I found it glamorous and aspirational. These people spent $400 on a pair of shoes, they lived in New York, they drank cranberry-colored drinks out of saucers perched on stems. I was a ragamuffin who didn’t even know anyone who’d ever been to New York and didn’t realize shoes could cost that much. What glamor! What careers! Could I, too, be a person who “was in PR,” a job which seemed to entail yelling at people, throwing parties, and wearing power suits the color of sherbet and Chanel jewelry that looked like it could double as the doorknocker to the gates of Hell? Or maybe I could be a writer who seemed to turn in one column every once in a while, evidently was never edited in any salient way, and, because she just “didn’t do email,” ostensibly sent her finished masterpieces by carrier pigeon?
The second time I watched Sex and the City, I was a writer already and holy god that show is really extremely shitty. The writing of the columns was shitty - so much passive voice. Like so much. - the apartments were absurd, the hours in the day seemed not to adhere to any conventions of time or space, and perhaps most outrageously, the 1990s/early 2000s economy was so far gone that it was literally impossible to aspire to any single aspect of the show.
But the biggest standout, for me, was what an unbelievably awful friend and person Carrie was written to be. How could I never notice that before? And how was it possible for one character to be so consistently inconsistent that she even had long-term friendships at all?
It was on the second watch when, because I was pretty regularly in therapy at the time, I noticed Carrie’s suspiciously unkind and reckless behavior. And then I couldn’t unnotice it. And I am not alone!
In a 2008 story for NPR, Elizabeth Blair (a name that honestly sounds like a character from the SATC on its own) wrote about how Carrie’s narcissism was “part of the charm.” She went on to detail where this self-centeredness comes from.
I wouldn't say she's malignantly narcissistic. I would say that she has lived a single life for a long time, no children, no husband. She's responsible to and wonderfully burdened by her friendships, but that's very different than having children and a family, and so she has really been able to take care of only herself for a long time.
It doesn't mean she's not interested in the world and she wouldn't help somebody, but I think it has bred a certain narcissism in her, which is - you know, it is what it is.
But like, does she take care of herself? Actually? It feels more as though the world takes care of her; a book deal falls into her lap. She is improbably successful as a writer which very, very little writing. And is this really about “not having a family”? Would having a husband have kept her from the kind of self-centered and pathologically clingy patterns as we see throughout the show?
It seems unlikely! Because childbirth does not cure BPD!
Reader, I, too, lived alone and single. I, too, have no husband and no children. I, too, "have “been able to take care of only” myself. That does not mean that I would do the following things that Carrie actually does in the show:
Her boyfriend, who has given her conservatively one million signals that he is not serious about the relationship, returns from France. She shows up at his house with a bag of McDonald’s and a beret - SHE IS WEARING A BERET. WHERE DID SHE GET A BERET - and immediately accosts the man, demanding to have a place in his life. When he can’t give her the answer she wants, she melts down, throws a Filet O’ Fish at his wall-mounted kitchen TV, and flails out of the house.
When that same boyfriend tells her that he takes his mother to church on Sundays and makes it very clear that it’s their special time together, she goes to that same church and attends and is very weird and awkward when he doesn’t introduce her to his mother. You know, the mother he wasn’t ready for her to meet yet.
A different boyfriend picks her up on his motorcycle on their way to her friend’s theater thing in Brooklyn - already an affront of the highest order - and has an absolute fit over the experience, failing to notice that he is currently having a personal crisis of career.
She has a prolonged affair with a man who remains unavailable to her and then she feels the needs to confess it on the morning of her best friend’s wedding and proceeds to cry during the photos at the church because she couldn’t have just kept it to herself for one more day.
She misses deadlines, fails to show up for professional events and engagements, and generally can’t seem to be anywhere she needs to be, often because her impulsive night-before decisions. For example, she stays out all night drinking and dancing with her friends knowing full well that the next day, she’s having her photo taken for a magazine. She proceeds to fall asleep when she gets home, show up late, look a mess, and then end up on the cover of the magazine in a truly haggard state. She blames everyone else.
Her finances are a complete disaster and her reckless spending nearly torpedos her life on a number of occasions. She continues to buy not just designer clothing, but a lot of very high-end designer clothing. She later relies on her friends and good luck to bail her out.
And those are just a handful of examples!
Carrie’s constant mess is one of the driving forces in the show - a show that has lasted as a fan favorite for decades, spawned numerous films, and has recently been rebooted. Her plot lines are at least kind of relatable to most people - and if they’re not, then the other plot lines are. But the volume of her issues - and the volatility of her personality - are where she goes from Fictional Character Who Feels Deeply to Fictional Character Who Maybe Really Could’ve Used Some More Therapy.
“I can’t believe this is happening to me! Again!”
Carrie’s entire existence is erratic - but there’s a pattern to the erraticism because it keeps happening.
She is terrified of rejection and being alone, but she does very little to actually build sustainable bonds with the people around her. She has no family to speak out - not even a weird cousin. Her moods swing from fury to lust, her friendships (outside of the core three besties, later reduced to two besties) are extremely passionate and close for about ten minutes before she decides she actually does not like or need that person, and she is forever excusing her disastrous finances, apartment, and life with a cute shrug and an “ain’t I a stinker?” wink.
She has some of the most clear hallmarks of BPD. Throughout the show, both the characters and the storylines repeat the refrain that Carrie’s dating life is chaotic because she is always “choosing unavailable men.” However, a.) she does also date several available men and doesn’t make that work either, and b.) she, herself, is unavailable, except when the men she dates are unavailable, at which point she becomes completely obsessed with keeping them close to her.
And yet, people still view her as just sort of a flighty fictional character with nothing to teach us at all. And I think that’s not true! I think that Carrie Bradshaw is a cautionary tale - and not because she never had kids. But because she never had consequences. Which is the difference between a fictional character with BPD and an actual human who lives with ot.
In a HuffPo piece in 2017 - entitled Carrie Bradshaw Ruined My Life And NOBODY Hates Her More Than I Do - Katy Moore writes that Carrie’s “made me believe you could sit in your apartment downing wine, smoking ciggies and eating takeaway (on the rare occasion she wasn't at a fancy restaurant) without setting foot inside a gym, coughing like you were 90, or becoming an alcoholic.”
And while she’s exaggerating a bit (I assume?), it’s also not an exaggeration - we see Carrie taking risks, being unsafe, and regularly making poor decisions. What we don’t see is the impact of those things.
Meanwhile, people with BPD are struggling with disorder. One 2014 study noted that “about 78% of adults with BPD also develop a substance-related disorder or addiction at some time in their lives,” while other research has found high correlation with poverty, self-hard, and even suicide.
BPD is hard to diagnose for a lot of reasons - including the fact that it’s really hard to get mental health treatment in the United States - and it’s still pretty poorly understood in medical settings. So when you see a character displaying some of the symptoms, it can be useful to point it out. Not to like, diagnose a fictional entity, but to help see that it might look like in yourself or someone else.
Do I think that whichever of your friends calls herself “such a Carrie” is living with BPD? Probably not but….it’s definitely at least a peach-colored flag.