 lying on my bed at night great by apprehension and anxiety not to say terror I contemplate the eternal question is my mini my long-suffering mini a psychopathic borderline or just a classic borderline and if anyone has any doubt mini is black but after the umber-herd trial borderline is the new black borderline is the new black print it out on your t-shirts meme it and spread it on all the social networks and social media because that's what the world is coming to a division between narcissists and borderline and let the war begin the depth her trial was only the opening shot in a cataclysmic collision between these two types of pathologies now jokes aside my name is Sam Vaknin actually still in the joking part my name is Sam Vaknin and the author of Malignan self-love narcissism revisited and silver fox professor of psychology yes you've heard it here the first time today we are going to discuss covert borderlines as opposed to psychopathic or anti-social borderlines now as usual there are two or three videos I think two videos which I have dedicated to the topic of or to the new diagnosis which I'm proposing and diagnosis of covert borderline one of these videos clarifies the distinction between covert borderline and classic borderline the regular diagnosis that is fine found in the diagnostic and statistical manual but this video is going in this lecture I'm going to focus on other differences and distinctions at your request actually I'm responding to numerous queries that I have received from you I've received more queries than views if that's at all possible okay shoshaneem onwards Jewish soldiers to borderline land now you talk to any borderline and you talk to anyone who has the misfortune of being with a borderline or the fortune of being with a borderline depending on one's predilections and they will tell you that borderlines switch they suddenly change on a dime they disappear as one personality and they reappear a microsecond later as another personality and the two personalities have very little in common they are mutually exclusive almost and this is what I call self-states now I've developed a whole theory of self-states and in my theory everyone has self-states healthy people also have self-states self-states is an organizational principle which I propose should replace the antiquated concept of self or unitary self but borderlines have very pronounced self-states which appear to have nothing in common actually many borderlines go to the point of naming the self-states giving them names and and identifying each self-state almost as a separate person with features and attributes and traits and behaviors and proclivities and tendencies and interests and beliefs and emotions and cognitions you talk to any borderline and she will be able to identify several such self-states and as I said many of them have names separate names borderlines claim that they switch from one self-state to another many borderlines will will say that they go on autopilot they are suddenly no longer there a process known as depersonalization depersonalization is of course a form of dissociation together with the ensuing amnesia for getting what had happened so many borderlines would tell you for example when they cheat or when they have casual sex a promiscuous incident they would tell you that they went on autopilot and then they forgot most of what had happened this is actually a form of switching from one self-state to another now the self-states in borderline don't share all the memories they don't share everything so there is what we call permeable dissociative walls or partitions between the self-states and consequently the borderline has something known as identity disturbance she doesn't have a coherent unitary identity but she has multiple states of fragments of identity which she has great difficulties to put together and if this is reminiscent of multiple personality disorder dissociative identity disorder it's because it is actually giants like Otto Kahnberg had suggested that borderline is on the verge of psychosis another typical claim by a borderline it wasn't me or it wasn't like me or i don't recognize myself or i can't place myself in the same state of mind as when i had done it i don't understand myself i don't know why i've done it etc etc these are very common claims among borderlines these are all strong indications that borderlines are fragmented and fractured when it comes to core identity and that instead of self should it exist at all what they do have is an is an assemblage of pseudo identity sub personalities which come to the fore according or in reaction to environmental cues and stimuli on the self-states of the borderline are not the same as millen's types of borderline millen and others by the way had suggested a typology of borderlines a taxonomy of borderlines this borderline with this way and a borderline with that way and a borderline with emphasis on this kind of behavior and a borderline with emphasis on another kind of conduct this is not what i'm talking about i'm not talking about a phenomenology of borderline i'm talking about types of borderline which are structural structural types i'm talking about differences which could almost lead to separate diagnosis so let's start with the classic dissociative borderline the majority of borderlines actually classic dissociative dissociative borderline is emotionally dysregulated it has separation in security also known colloquially as abandonment anxiety it has engulfment anxiety it tends to develop a relationship obsessive compulsive disorder philophobia fear of intimacy and love low self-monitoring typical borderline is not aware of her behavior and impaired transparency estimation inability to realize or to grasp how her behavior her words her choices decisions affect other people around her especially how her emotions or dysregulated emotions affect other people around so she doesn't monitor herself well and she cannot monitor other people well she is possessed however of empathy it's just the exercise of empathy is impeded or impaired by a variety of dysfunctions so this is a classic dissociative borderline then there is the pop purported or suggested shy or quiet borderline allegedly this borderline internalizes her struggles rather than externalize them she becomes the exclusive target of her own turmoil she doesn't act out she acts in now i am dead set against this suggested distinction or diagnosis because all borderlines go through phases of being shy or quiet or acting in or internalizing aggression that's why all borderlines are depressed or they have depression or mood disorders or not all but most because they are internalizing their aggression in various phases so all borderlines go through shy quiet phases and then through classic dissociative phases i'm willing to accept that borderlines have a shy or quiet phase but i'm not willing to accept that there is a borderline who is only shy and quiet that is rank nonsense and flies in the face of everything we know borderlines are intermittently aggressive externalizing and shy and quiet they oscillate they vacillate between these two conditions so i put this aside classic dissociative is the first structural type of borderline the next one is the psychopathic borderline the dark personality borderline it's a borderline that tends to be violent and aggressive more than usual i'm going to dwell on this borderline a bit later in this video i'm going to describe the most recent literature and research so psychopathic borderline then there is the antisocial borderline now robert here it made a distinction between factor one psychopathy and factor two psychopathy factor two psychopathy has to do with behaviors and factor two psychopathy presumably also has empathy and a modicum of emotion modicum of empathy and some emotions including positive emotions the borderline is a secondary psychopath she's a factor two psychopath and factor two psychopath is very very close to the antisocial personality disorder definition and diagnostic criteria in the dsm the antisocial personality disorder in the dsm is not factor one psychopathy which is why robert here had been fighting for decades to include factor one psychopathy as a separate diagnosis antisocial personality disorder is what robert here calls secondary or factor two psychopathy and borderlines are factor two psychopaths in one of their self states one of the self states or pseudo identities or sub personalities of a borderline is invariably a psychopath in the psychopathic borderline this self state is a primary psychopath in the classic borderline this self state is a secondary psychopath now the antisocial secondary psychopath borderline is socio sexually unrestricted she has low sexual disgust so she is very open to sleep with total strangers she engages in behaviors like compulsive sexting transactional sex and she's generally speaking promiscuous while the distinguishing or differential feature of the psychopathic borderline is aggression and violence the distinguishing or the differential feature of the antisocial borderline is unboundary dysregulated sexuality a form of non-autonomous in effect promiscuity i refer you now to my video titled borderline woman as dissociative secondary psychopath where you can learn a lot more of everything about everything i've just said generally to find videos on my channel go to the right head of the screen there's a magnifying glass symbol very unhelpfully click on the magnifying glass a search field opens type what you're looking for type psychopath secondary psychopath borderline type the word the keyword you're looking for and youtube will provide you with a list of all the videos on my channel that correspond to the keyword this process is called searching you should engage in it from time to time okay this is the psychopathic borderline the social borderline the classic borderline and i had suggested a few months ago a few years ago i had suggested a fourth structural category i called it the covert borderline covert borderline is actually a narcissistic borderline now both the classic borderline and the covert borderline act out they lose their defenses because they are subjected to stress the classic borderline is subjected to humiliation or to rejection or to anticipate humiliation and rejection and abandonment and so she loses it her defenses crumble and she begins to act out she begins to do crazy reckless things violent things aggressive things self sabotaging other harming behaviors the same goes as far as the covert the same applies to the covert borderline covert borderline also acts out but it acts out in a very different way i had constructed a schematic uh based on the work of anold and cooper and actar salmon actar in 1989 1989 they came up with a table comparing covert narcissists and overt narcissists and i came up with a table comparing covert borderline and and overt borderline or classic dysregulated borderline and again i refer you to i refer you to my videos about covert borderline where i go through this table at length and explain each feature but right now what i want to do is a brief recap just very fast before we before we go to the second part of this video which will be a literature review the recent studies and what we can learn from these studies so let's start with the so now i'm talking about the covert borderline and defining for you the covert borderline let's start with self-concept and emotional regulation the covert borderline has a false self and his grandiose he is preoccupied with fantasies of outstanding love undue he has an undue sense of uniqueness feelings of entitlement and alloplastic defenses he accuses other people for his defeats and failures this is very similar to the narcissist that's why the covert borderline can also be called easily the narcissistic borderline the covert borderline however has an internal locus of control and seeming self-sufficiency he has modulability like the classic borderline he has emotional dysregulation and rationalization of reactance defiance and consumatiousness in this sense he has elements of the classic borderline the dysregulation and elements of the psychopathic borderline is defiant he's reactant he's reckless and he hates or rejects authority his consumatious the covert borderline has a low threshold for boredom low tolerance for boredom he can't tolerate boredom and when he's very very bored he does crazy things he is he tends to externalize his impulses his urges is for example his aggression and then internalize it so first he externalizes it he has no suicidal ideation unlike the borderline and his aggression is other directed as i said externalized there's no self-mutilation as distinct from the classic borderline there is however hypochondriasis and addictive behaviors the covert borderline exactly like the classic borderline has dissociative self-states mainly selective attention confabulation repression or denial and primary a primary psychopathic protector this is very similar to the classic borderline what about interpersonal relationships in interpersonal relationships the covert borderline is his paranoid ideation is very suspicious is very jealous is very possessive he tends to have numerous but shallow relationships because usually he has an insecure attachment style insecure avoidant attachment style he has an intense need for love from others though he needs love from others he craves intimacy and in this sense is a people pleaser but when he gets to the goal when he acquires an intimate partner he tends to walk away and he tends to develop jealousy and paranoia there is he has a lack of real empathy when the covert borderline isn't an narcissistic or primary psychopathic phase when he switches to this self-state he has no real empathy he has no empathy this is not true of the classic borderline it's the classic borderline when she switches to secondary psychopathy maintains her empathy and her emotions that's why afterwards after the secondary psychopathic phase or self-state she feels regret and shame what differentiates the psychopath from the borderline is the ability to experience remorse and shame and so this psychopathic borderline is very conflicted in this sense because she has a dominant factor one psychopathic self-state and a dominant borderline state one of them has no empathy one of them is has empathy one of them is no emotions one of them is too many emotions who are which are too intense and overpowering overwhelming dysregulating emotions and so the two entities the two self-states in the psychopathic borderline are incompatible they're constantly fighting we'll come to it a bit later covert borderlines value children over spouse in family life possibly because children constitute narcissistic sources of narcissistic supply but i'm not sure covert borderlines are unable to genuinely participate in group activities they're passive aggressive they're sullen the surly they're self-denying their behaviors are cunning and sometimes they have premeditated malevolence this in this sense they're very reminiscent of covert narcissists which is the reason i chose the epithet covert borderline covert borderlines engage in intermittent reinforcement hot and cold it's a form of bullying and conditioning hot and cold i love you i hate you i'm here i'm gone they have scorned for others often masked by pseudo humility false modesty again very similar to the covert narcissists the covert borderline as distinct from the covert narcissists but similar to the borderline to the classic borderline is histrionic is attention seeking usually by displaying dysregulated or for dysregulated fake dysregulated emotions imitating or simulating the emotional dysregulation because the covert borderline is not emotionally not fully emotionally dysregulated as the classic borderline but he can imitate the condition well for histrionic purposes for gunnery gunnery attention the covert borderline is reckless and his recklessness is aimed at hurting or affecting other people it's directed recklessness as distinct from the classic borderline whose recklessness is the outcome of disintegration dysregulation decompensation she just falls apart when she falls apart she becomes reckless and then she dissociates it she forgets about it and she doesn't feel that she's fully present in her leg reckless pursuits she is depersonalized the covert borderline is sadistic punitive and he engages in goal-oriented triangulations we are beginning to see that the covert borderline has many elements of psychopathy and many elements of narcissism so it's a pretty toxic mixture of all cluster b personality disorders the covert borderline in the future if the diagnostic and statistical manual decides to emulate the icd the international classification of diseases edition 11 if the dsm eliminates all personality disorders and replaces them with a single diagnosis covert borderline could be a candidate because it embodies and reifies and includes and contains elements from almost all personality disorders the covert borderline also suffers from object inconstancy he is unable to create an inner representation avatar an introject of a loved one or an intimate partner or a significant other or even an important role model he is unable to create an inner representation that is stable over time and also that is stable when the other person is absent and so he has no object constancy and consequently exactly like the narcissist the covert borderline idealizes devalues and then discards and then reverts hoovers or replaces uh narcissistic behavior what about social function social adaptation covert borderline exactly like the narcissist is socially charming is charismatic he is a hard worker and his consistent hard work is done mainly to seek admiration and attention we call this process pseudo sublimation he has intense ambition and he's often successful he has a preoccupation with appearances his ethics his standards and his ideals they are idiosyncratically and unevenly moral it's a form of caricature and modesty his activism and his apparent enthusiasm for social political affairs is affected and is goal oriented he seeks power or he seeks narcissistic supply it's it's it's virtual signaling rigid virtual signaling recent studies conducted in british columbia in canada in israel gabai and others recent studies show that victimhood movements tend to be taken over by psychopaths and narcissists and i think they mostly tend to be taken over by covert borderlines which in this diagnosis this new diagnosis i'm proposing includes strong elements of psychopathy and narcissism coupled with dysregulation other features of borderline the covert borderline has an inordinate ethnic and moral relativism he would usually be a kind of racist he has pretended contempt for money in real life uh while he actually adores money he's addicted to money but he would he would feign contempt it's i don't need money i hate money i don't you know he similarly he can feign or fake spirituality and he would very much want to attain a guru status he has an irreverence towards authority he disrespects authority he flaunts morays and rules and laws he is a law unto his own what about the love and sexual life of a covert borderline he's he has an island of stability very much like the narcissists but his island of stability tends to be in the vast majority of cases his marriage his family so covert borderlines are characterized by marital stability with the long suffering spours is he has called and greedy seductiveness and he has many extramarital affairs and promiscuity he has an uninhibited sexual life so it's a combination of being married which is a which is an appearance it's for the sake of appearance while actually he hollows out the union he hollows out the committed relationship and engages in behaviors which undermine intimacy and true love because he's incapable of either his cognitive style involves dichotomous thinking splitting exactly like the borderline he is impressively impressively knowledgeable he has an egocentric perception of reality fondness for shortcuts to acquisition of knowledge but he's decisive and opinionated he loves language he is frequently strikingly articulate okay that's a covert borderline so by now we have an enumerated the dissociative classic borderline the psychopathic borderline factor one psychopath borderline the factor two psychopath which is the anti-social factor two psychopath borderline which is the anti-social borderline and the covert borderline which is a portmanteur it's a basket the basket diagnosis which includes elements from borderline from narcissism and from psychopathy but as many of you have written to me covert borderline is much more widespread much more common than given credit i think actually covert borderline is as prevalent as classic borderline i also think these are all speculations these days there's a research agenda being set up but it's all speculation i also think that because of the narcissistic and psychopathic elements of the covert borderline it this diagnosis would tend to be more common among men than among women exactly as classic borderline until until about 10 years ago was more common or more commonly diagnosed among women now we know that borderline personality disorder is equally represented among men and among women so we got rid of the gender culture bound gender bias what about the recent literature let's start with an article from december 2020 in the frontiers of psychiatry article was titled executive dysfunction associated with the primary psychopathic features of borderline personality disorder so we are taught this article discusses a co-orbidity when psychopathy and borderline personality disorder diagnosed in the same person i remember what i said much earlier when we were all we were all much younger i said that psychopathy and borderline are mutually exclusive as far as empathy as far as emotions as far as this regulation they seem to be basically mutually exclusive and this would tend to create an enormous dissonance or even outright conflict civil war between the two self states each of them vying for dominance and of course when there is such a civil war this creates a lot of aggression some of this aggression is consumed in the inner conflict but most of it is externalized so here is what the article says it was authored by so the results were borderline personality patients showed significantly higher scores on both primary factor one and secondary factor two global rates of psychopathy than control the results for these patients also showed a statistically significant association between high scores in primary psychopathy and deficits in executive functions however no associations were found between the scores of secondary psychopathy and executive dysfunction conclusion primary psychopathic features presenting patients with borderline personality disorders and so what they're saying actually that this comorbidity exists actually it's pretty common so primary psychopathic features presenting patients with borderline personality disorder and they are associated with patterns of executive dysfunction it would therefore be interesting to investigate the role of cognitive rehabilitation in the empathy dysfunctions within this disorder disorders of course this is exactly what i'm saying the impairment in executive dysfunctions is owing to the internal conflict between two these mutually exclusive and incompatible self states let's proceed apa psych articles borderline personality disorder is a female phenotypic expression of psychopathy question mark it was authored by sprague javdani sade and others and i quote i refer to this article extensively in in my work and sprague had written a similar earlier article in in uh this article is from 2012 sprague has written another article in 2013 i'm sorry later article in 2013 and the this article says evidence suggests that the combination of the interpersonal effective factor one and impulsive antisocial factor two features of psychopathy may be associated with borderline personality disorder specifically among women and she refers they refer to a series of studies by coin 1993 hicks by danathan and patrick in 2010 and so on however continues the article empirical research explicitly examining gendered relationships between borderline and psychopathy factors is lacking was lacking in 2012 is no longer lacking some major field of study to further and further inform this area of research we investigated the hypothesis that the interplay between the two psychopathy factors is associated with borderline among women across two studies so they conducted two two studies and let me scroll down they describe the studies and then they come to the results across two independent samples results indicated that the interaction of high factor one and factor two psychopathy scores was associated with borderline women i repeat this it's a critical sentence for all of you who keep writing to me that borderline and psychopathy are totally incompatible and that i'm completely wrong that includes self-styled experts online with academic degrees but with no relevant knowledge of cluster b personality disorders i'm repeating this sentence across two independent samples results indicated that the interaction of high factor one and factor two psychopathy scores was associated with borderline in women this association was found to be specific to women in study one these results suggest that borderline and psychopathy at least as they are measured by current instruments overlap in women and accordingly may reflect gender differentiated phenotypic expressions of similar dispositional vulnerabilities let's proceed to a bit more to a more recent article titled psychopathy and associated personality disorders searching for a particular effect of the borderline personality disorder was written by Niosch farm du gros debaupre debaupere etc the article says borderline personality was associated with both the total score of psychopathy and the score of factor two psychopathy recent clinical and empirical works are based on cleckley's clinical observations in which psychopathy is viewed as a personality disorder characterized by a lack of emotions callousness unreliability and superficiality here operation operationalize cleckley's concept of psychopathy by developing the psychopathy check checklist revise composed of 20 items that load on two factors in majority factor one personality aspects of psychopathy and factor two behavioral manifestations like impulsivity factor two is close to the antisocial personality disorder dsm4 criteria here's the clinching clinching argument the sentence the result of this study comorbidity is strong with antisocial personality disorder but also with histrionic narcissistic and borderline disorders it seems that there is a coalescence and a coalition of cluster b personality disorders which i think these diagnoses are diverging converging i'm sorry and about to become one at any rate the the next article i would like to discuss was published in the journal of forensic psychiatry and psychology volume 25 2014 issue six it's titled antisocial personality disorder comorbid with borderline pathology and psychopathy is associated with severe violence in a forensic sample i repeat antisocial personality disorder comorbid with borderline pathology and psychopathy is associated with severe violence in a forensic sample the author zahort halifa and dagon and the conclusion of the of the article personality disordered patients with high psychopathy co-occurring with borderline and antisocial personality disorder show a criminal profile characterized by a high degree of serious violence so yes borderlines are capable of violence exactly like psychopaths why because they are psychopaths they have a psychopathic self-state many of them have a factor one self-state which competes with the with the borderline self-state and others have a factor two self-state which comes out only during the acting out phase onwards to 2017 personality and individual differences it's an academic journal volume 107 and the the article is titled students sex and psychopathy what a combination student sex and psychopathy borderline and psychopathy personality traits are different differently related to women and men's use of sexual coercion partner poaching and promiscuity the authors han and broer and others say primary psychopathy traits correlate with sexual coercion made poaching and lack of relationship exclusivity reflecting instrumental use of other people to fulfill personal desires these sexual behaviors can also be explained by sexual thrill seeking or impulsivity or by striving for relationship intimacy through fear of abandonment given that impulsive thrill seeking and rejection avoidance are related to secondary psychopathy and borderline personality disorder respectively this study is the first to consider the independent effects of psychopathic traits versus borderline personality disorder traits on sexual behaviors in a non-clinical mixed university student sample on to the results the results broadly support our sexual behavior dissociation hypothesis unique relationships were identified between primary psychopathy traits and use of nonviolent sexual coercive tactics for women reduce relationship exclusivity terms and increased likelihood of made poaching this is for the psychopathy whereas borderline personality disorder traits showed an independent relationship with increased likelihood of sexual coercion for men and having lost a partner through poaching these opposite experiences of made poaching along with the unique association between psychologically manipulative sexual coercion and primary psychopathy are considered here in terms of their feet with clinical equivalence so this is a differential study so study that tells us the differences between pure psychopathy and pure borderline and then a combination of psychopathy and borderline and their differences from facto to psychopathy even when it occurs with borderline in the academic journal personality and individual differences volume 57 january 2014 there's an article about alexithemia and borderline and psychopathy very interesting article research explaining the overlap between psychopathy and alexithemia is in its infancy a study by lander lutz zois ryan goodnight in 2012 revealed a significant positive correlation between secondary but not primary psychopathy and alexithemia however little is known about what accounts for this differential dissociation a association because both alexithemia and secondary psychopathy have been linked to borderline personality disorder the current studies sought to determine if emotional processing deficits characteristic of borderline could explain the link between secondary psychopathy and alexithemia alexithemia is inability to properly express or identify emotions the results supported the hypothesis that borderline personality disorder would mediate the association between secondary psychopathy and alexithemia so borderline is the bridge to link between secondary psychopathy and alexithemia implying that borderline is effectively a form of secondary psychopathy or includes includes the borderline personality disorder includes a dominant strain of secondary psychopathy dominant clinical diagnostic strain indeed we are beginning to see a convergence of borderline and psychopathy and many scholars are suggesting that borderline personality disorder is a form of female psychopathy in effect exactly like histrionic personality disorder histrionic personality disorder is a dying diagnosis because it's clear that is a form of psychopathy same is happening to borderline now this leads to a very interesting conundrum most borderlines including the covert borderline are emotionally dysregulated psychopaths are actually also emotionally dysregulated but in a very different way the dysregulation expresses itself differently and the psychopath is not aware of his own emotions as distinct from the borderline so how can we unify how can we say that borderline is both emotional dysregulation disorder and psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder how can we put these incompatibles these apples and oranges together and call them fruits it's because we we have been mischaracterizing psychopathy for a very long time for example we have the many many self-styled experts and and alleged experts and wannabe experts claim that psychopaths are fearless it's expressly untrue psychopaths don't experience fear but they're actually very anxious people they have pronounced anxiety disorder psychopaths are definitely emotionally dysregulated anyone who has ever come across a psychopath would tell you this they lose it they go crazy their aggression turns on a dime they're unpredictable the emotion is regularly they act out so there's a lot in the many commonalities between borderlines and and psychopaths many more than anyone online admits because it's politically incorrect to say this it's politically incorrect because most borderlines are victims of abuse including sexual abuse in early childhood it's not nice to say bad things about victims we are in the age of victimhood everyone and his dog is a victim of someone but the truth is that borderlines are psychopaths primary or secondary not all the time most of the time that they have a lot in common including and that's why i came up with a new diagnosis the covert borderline which is explicitly and openly a diagnosis of psychopathic narcissistic borderline not mincing words not beating around the bush anymore onto personality disorders it's a leading academic journal made to 2022 very recent do my emotions show or not problems with transparency estimation in women with borderline personality disorders features my thanks go to liora who had referred me to this article it was authored by the non-pronounceable selene then mule mewster benedict louis i keep telling you people become psychologists because they're traumatized by their family mates i found the main etiology of psychologists formation anyhow here's the abstract transparency estimation that is estimating the extent to which one's mental states are observable to others requires the simultaneous representation of the self and of others perspective on the self individuals with borderline personalities order have difficulty integrating multiple perspectives when mentalizing which may be reflected in impaired transparency estimation and so they conducted a study and so on and so forth let me see the results it's a long list here so it says individuals with high individuals high in borderline personality disorder features show the larger discrepancy between estimated and objective transparency than individuals low in borderline features showing that they both over and underestimate their transparency indeed estimated transparency positively predicted objective transparency in individuals low in borderline features but not in individuals high in borderline features moreover the ability to estimate intra individual variability in one's own objective transparency was moderated by self-reported arousal in the participants high in borderline features impairments in transparency estimation were correlated with self-report measures of borderline features attachment and mentalizing in conclusion we found that borderline features relate to a reduced capacity to estimate the extent to which one's own emotional states are observable to others although replication in clinical samples of bpd patients is needed the present study provides evidence for problems in mentalizing the embodied self from another person's perspective in bpd indeed i fully agree borderline personality disorder people are unable to identify their emotions properly they mislabel emotions actually i have a video how borderlines mislabel their emotions again search the channel they also have very heightened empathy which impairs their ability to understand people properly yes high empathy high empathy diminishes your ability to understand and to read people properly not the other way and they have problems with self-monitoring as i mentioned before they don't see themselves from the outside properly and finally they have problems with transparency estimation put all these together the borderline exactly like the autistic person exactly like the narcissists and to a very large extent like the covert borderline is unable to read to decipher social cues including body language and interpersonal cues and sexual cues which would explain for example promiscuity this inability to read cues properly to decode them and to then proportionate proportionately react to them there's a dysregulation renders everything disproportionate and dramatic this inability is at the core of cluster b disorders that's why cluster b personality disorders are called dramatic or erratic i think the main problem is actually impaired ability to read cues environmental social sexual linguistic body language everything this and and this is a bridge which leads to ADHD autism spectrum disorders and so we may need a more unified approach cross-discipline connecting multiple mental health issues as they have so much in common to ignore these commonalities in favor of a categorical approach to diagnosis favored by the insurance industry is both counterfactual and academically corrupt not to mention unethical to the patients