When Autism Is Misdiagnosed As Borderline Personality Disorder; And Why It Matters

How psychiatry’s blind spots and gendered bias turn Autistic distress into “disordered personality”, and what needs to change.

A Dangerous Diagnostic Blind Spot

Despite decades of progress, Autistic people are still being misdiagnosed, and one of the most harmful errors remains Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), known in the UK as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD).

This isn’t a small clinical footnote. Misdiagnosis shapes how professionals treat us, how we view ourselves, and whether we survive contact with mental health services.

I’ve written about this across my work, but the conversation is more urgent than ever. Diagnostic systems that haven’t caught up with modern autism understanding continue to harm those of us who present in distress.

Why BPD and Autism Get Confused

At first glance, the NHS’s own description of personality disorder; “thinking, feeling, behaving or relating differently from the average person”, could be mistaken for autism itself. Our neurocognitive style is divergent.

But a crucial distinction gets lost: autism is a neurocognitive style; personality disorder is a label of pathology. People diagnosed BPD often experience institutional rejection and stigma, not support.

Autistic distress, especially when it involves burnout, self-harm, psychosis, or addiction, is too easily framed as “manipulative” or “unstable personality.” I’ve seen how that framing becomes weaponised. Clinicians who don’t understand autism’s sensory and relational differences may reach for BPD as an explanatory shortcut.

My Story, and Why It’s Not Rare

Before my autism diagnosis, I was labelled with BPD. My psychosis and substance use were read not as survival responses but as character flaws. Twice, I was detained in psychiatric hospitals where staff used the label to justify hostility and denial of care.

Even once correctly diagnosed autistic, it took a year to have BPD removed from my records. Some clinicians tried to reintroduce it, unwilling to see an Autistic adult who didn’t fit their stereotypes.

I wish this was unusual, but study after study shows it isn’t. Autistic adults routinely report trauma responses dismissed as attention seeking, and distress pathologised rather than understood. What we need is connection.

The Gender Trap: BPD as “New Hysteria”

BPD is profoundly gendered. Women and those assigned female at birth (AFAB) remain far more likely to receive it. Scholars have called it the new hysteria.

Autistic AFAB people, who may express anger, set boundaries, or simply seem intense, are especially vulnerable. Research shows how psychiatric norms have long coded male experience as the default and pathologised female difference.

If you are Autistic, AFAB, and struggling with relationships or emotional overwhelm, the odds rise that a clinician will see personality disorder rather than autism.

Trauma, Burnout and the Cost of Being Misread

Recent research echoes what many of us have lived; misdiagnosis invalidates trauma. When Autistic coping strategies, self-harm, withdrawal, substance use, are cast as manipulative rather than protective, care turns punitive.

This drives people away from medical services and deepens isolation. Suicide risk, already higher among Autistic adults, rises further when we are treated as broken rather than human.

As I’ve argued in my work on burnout, what psychiatry calls “personality instability” often signals a crisis of connection, a nervous system overwhelmed by environments it can’t survive in.

Breaking Free from Normative Psychiatry

It’s not enough to sharpen diagnostic tools. The deeper issue is normativity, psychiatry’s demand that minds conform to a single model of “healthy”. Until mental health practice becomes neurodivergent competent, built from lived experience and a real grasp of Autistic culture, we will keep getting harmed.

That means:

• Listening to Autistic adults about how autism shows up in real life.

• Recognising trauma and burnout as environmental injuries, not personality defects.

• Training clinicians beyond deficit models.

Communities are already building alternatives. Autistic-led wellbeing spaces, peer mentoring, and concepts like lilipadding, gentler ways of navigating overwhelm, point toward support that heals rather than shames.