Borderline Personality Disorder Misnomer

Trauma expert Janina Fisher says borderline personality disorder ties to childhood trauma. Research dates back to the 1980s on this. Fisher says a lot of therapists do not treat borderline personality disorder as a trauma related disorder. “They treat it as a a personality disorder and some go out of their way to avoid taking personality disordered clients,” says Fisher, a licensed clinical psychologist. “There is stigma attached to that diagnosis….it makes it demoralizing to the trauma survivors who get that diagnosis.” Fisher developed the Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) model now being taught around the world. Fisher trains up and coming psychologists and therapists to treat the “effects of traumatic events…as opposed to the event itself".”

TIST works for several mental health conditions, including complex PTSD, treatment resistant depression, binge eating, gambling addiction and narcissistic personality disorder.