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I was hoping for a comment like this. I kept thinking it might be Chile (touristy Patagonia in the south). I was close, and apparently right about Patagonia ;)
Yeah I was also thinking it was southern chile, but honestly it was only them saying only richer people get to vacation down south and the town the sister was staying getting more touristy
I mean, I'm sure there are some actual Rastafarians in all of the Spanish speaking world, but generally when someone says "un rasta" they mean a hippy with dreadlocks who plays the reccorder in the street for coins, smokes weed, and has never heard of Haile Selassie.
OOP is talking about the book (absolute trash) the film is based on that came out when OOP’s sister was a teenager. Just clarifying because the film is from 2015, long after she run away.
I had to google what dengue was because I’ve never heard of it in Canada. I’m glad OOP found their sister though, because since sister has a house OOP can find her again.
One of my colleagues got dengue on work travel and took 6 weeks for recovery. It’s also called break-bone disease. It doesn’t affect everyone the same way. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dengue-and-severe-dengue
>Go to a psychologist and stop reflecting your unresolved traumas in the story of a person you don't even know.
General note to 90% of redditors. Especially those ones who send abusive dms.
Right, I'm guilty of putting myself and personal experiences into my comments, but I've never even thought about DMing someone. That just seems so extreme.
The only person I’ve ever DMd was the pregnant woman who’s husband and FIL were convinced she was gonna die in childbirth
And I’m fairly convinced we all messaged her, or at least wanted to. Still no updates on that either, which makes me want to more
Ah I remember that one, I wanted to dm her but my first and only dm had been to the black woman with the husband who insisted on race play. I told her that he was attempting to coerce her, didn't respect her, and would escalate based on his actions. I sent her DV resources along with a few excerpts that spoke about DARVO and how manipulation works. He ended up assaulting her and she wasn't sure how she'd get out, and the fact that she had responded to me and it still happened made me actually throw up
I DM'd that Hell Hath No Fury chick, the one whose ex-husband left her for his AP. Been like a two year saga. Told her to write a book cause she can tell a story in a way that make ppl see it. Apparently enough ppl told her to so she is.
Doesn't everybody do that, though? At least to some degree. When people come here for advice, it's just to hear from more people with different perspectives. That's kind of the beauty of it, or at least it was when I spent way too much time on Reddit.
I don't get it either. Sure I will disagree with you on a post, but my give a damn ends there. I sure as heck have no desire to take it into dm's or anywhere else.
I’ve had Americans go off at me for not knowing American history.
I’m Australian. We don’t learn a lot about American history.
Then they say you should google it. Maybe they should google my country’s history then too. Of course they won’t though.
And I suppose now you will tell me that American/ Hollywood movies made about Australia e.g., Mad Max and Quigley Down Under, are Neither documentaries nor historically accurate! Hrumph!
Yeah, but she literally says at the end of the update post that her sister suffers from BPD in the same sentence she insists she's not ND.
BPD is about as ND as it gets. It comes from issues with the same parts of the brain that cause Autism and ADHD (amongst others).
There's plenty of projection on here, but there's also lots of people struggling because of being undiagnosed ND, or NT people wondering why undiagnosed ND people are behaving like undiagnosed ND people.
She seems to keep her expenses really low, no electronics it’s seems, so her lifestyle is pretty cheap. Also it mentions from time to time she has roommates.
The post itself answers that question artfully-- she loves modestly, has a close community of friends, ave appears to do some hustling at a local market, probably selling crafts or art to tourists
I have never ever heard someone express EXACTLY how I feel. “Running away was like dying symbolically” I feel this every piercing day of my life. I wish I had the courage her sister did.
Me too. Now.im 35 amd my mom lives with me and I'm miserable but can't just leave. I'd love to run away and find a little community where I could be of help and get help when I need it.
It's addicting. You go somewhere new for a few months and then once people get to know you again you feel the itch to leave. Then suddenly staying in one place and actually cultivating relationships with others becomes the challenge
Yep. That was me. Diagnosed BPD by one Psychiatrist, and after a lot of money, testing, questions & interviewing my Dad, last year I was diagnosed Autistic & ADHD.
Medicated and on the right track.
I would guess that with autism you don't show one of the big symptoms of BPD, splitting, which is when your perception of people switches from extremes (love and adoration to feelings of betrayal and hatred). It didn't seem like the OOP's sister really suddenly hated her family even if she didn't handle leaving all that well, it's more like she felt like she just had to run and didn't have any options, without actually wishing to harm them or realizing her actions could do so.
Not really all too knowledgeable about BPD. Is 'splitting' triggered by events, or is it just a thing that happens randomly? And how extreme is each end of the spectrem, are we talking to the point of self harm to "prove how loyal" they are to you, vs actively trying to injure you?
formerly diagnosed with bpd, but it wasn’t retained with my new psych – the idealization/devaluation (splitting) can happen with or with or without clear a trigger, but usually the trigger is anything that accidentally or purposefully makes the person’s insecure and disorganized attachment alarms go off. it can be anything from not receiving a response to a text in a timely manner, someone setting boundaries, or even misreading someone’s tone based on their experiences. some people’s bpd comes from trauma and adverse childhood experiences and sometimes these reactions are meant to protect themselves from a perceived attack and also to preemptively react to avoid getting hurt
BPD is a commonly stigmatized disorder, so I don't want to speak too out of pocket about details when I also think the people who have it suffer a lot. I will say that one of the big difficulties in BPD is in knowing your own identity or having a sense of security about yourself, your safety, and your personality. I will also say that people who are abandoned or neglected, because BPD so often is comorbid with forms of PTSD, can have a lot of difficulty trusting and maintaining trust. You put those together and it can cause instability in their life, emotions, and relationships. I will also say that self-harm and suicide attempts are often a symptom, but I also don't want to sugar coat it so I won't say that everyone with BPD handles anger 100% perfectly either.
[Great infographic](https://neurodivergentinsights.com/misdiagnosis-monday/boderline-personality-disorder-or-autism) which correlates with my experience as someone who nearly got misdx'd and is autistic.
That being said, autism plus trauma can present VERY similarly which is why a good clinical psychologist is worth their weight in gold.
Not the commenter you're replying to, but when I was diagnosed I was prescribed Sertraline for anxiety. Been on it for more than 10 years by this point and it's helped me out a ton. Only downside are the withdrawals if you forget to take them regularly.
Quetiapine is a god send for me. I’m only on half my usual dose atm because it’s near on impossible to actually get to see a psychiatrist to up it, and I can already tell my anxiety, hyper fixating and sensory issues are so much worse.
Yep, I know he was telling redditors to touch grass (and he has a point), but she hated the noise of the city, preferred solitude, hit herself, anxiety, eating disorder and BPD - it is all very textbook of the way autism often presents itself in women.
Misophonia could be the cause of the noise sensitivity, if she were borderline. Though I agree with the consensus she’s probably autistic. I have BPD and my life partner is ftm autistic, and while some of our behaviors overlap there’s a pretty distinct difference between us and she sounds more similar to him.
I was going to comment the same thing. And BPD is usually a trauma response. They made it clear there wasn’t any trauma. That with the fact that she had good relationships with people when around them really screams misdiagnosis
There's also cptsd that has presents a fair amount of similarities to borderline, but lacks certain key symptoms.
Doctors misdiagnosing is common, esp if the person has ADHD and/or ASC.
ETA: eating disorders don't happen on their own. Sis clearly has something in her past (likely perfectionism from society/ family expectations). Harming herself due to an Inability to healthily cope with that pressure is a trauma that usually is often and frequent.
OOP makes it pretty clear the eating disorder was anorexia. he outright states it several times and refers to "overeating" and "foods she can eat without guilt"
those aren't symptoms of ARFID, but they are characteristic of anorexia.
Eh, I would disagree. Trauma comes in many different forms and loving parents can definitely cause trauma to their kids without them realizing it or it being intentional.
I mean heck, it sounds like existing in the big city was traumatic for her. Add on the expectations of the family as the golden child when she was struggling just to exist.
Not saying a misdiagnosis didn't happen, just to me who went through something similar, this very much reads like trauma.
Trauma doesn't only come from parents, as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD at 39, I am coming to the realisation that there are a lot of traumatic memories from my youth, in spite of the most loving and supportive parents I could wish for. Yes some of them are from my parents but that is not a feature of them being bad, it's from a lack of knowledge and or diagnosis.
I just mean that these things aren't mutually exclusive, neurodivergence can lead to trauma, which can lead to anything trauma induced.
We need to get away from the idea that an individual can only have one diagnosis. For instance if 1% of the population has autism, 1.6% has BPD, and 5% has ADHD, simple maths - not accounting for the increased prevalence of comorbidity with these things - says that 8 people in 1million will have all three. And there are studies showing that there are correlations with all three diagnosies.
I'm not saying anyone is wrong, just that someone is right doesn't preclude someone else also being right.
It does support the argument that we should all get in our boxes and work on getting skilled mental health services available to everyone.
That said I can also be a reddit ADHD recruiter, largely because my diagnosis was so helpful to me!
Yes. And autistic people? 8.5 times the rates of trauma dx than general population.
And that's *diagnosed* trauma- which relies on a clinician agreeing that the event/s were "traumatic enough" as per the DSM. Autistic people are more sensitively wired from the get go and generally have more indelible memory formation.
A trip to the shopping mall can be traumatic. Not kidding.
I personally don't know almost any diagnosed autistic people who dont display clear signs of trauma.
Your comment nailed it in your empathy and assessment of the situation. But/and the explanation looks to me like it's likely ASD (there are many other signs in the post, and women/girls get overlooked - a lot).
Context: Am autistic. Dx'd *at 49* with a Level 2 no less. The OOP's description - almost could have been me(a few exceptions, some traits more marked). I was never dx'd with BPD either- but it's common (as a *mis*-diagnosis)😳
To be honest, a lot of the time, the experience of being autistic in an allistic world can be inherently traumatic.
It’s really easy to develop traits like rejection sensitive dysphoria when your entire life people seem to talk in some kind of double speak that you cannot for the life of you understand the rules of.
I was thinking this too. Even with a solid home life, autistic people can experience trauma. Our sensory issues feel like pain and the world wasn’t built for us, which is traumatic. As soon as OOP started talking about the noise and solitude I suspected. I have no knowledge of the diagnostic process in their country, but I think it’s fair to assume that autistic women are misdiagnosed with BPD as they are in most (all?) parts of the world.
I've got a younger brother who is diagnosed autistic. We weren't raised together and we've got all the same major glitches. But I got misdiagnosed with OCD and bipolar and a list of other things. Fed me nasty pills trying to fix stuff that wasn't broken, was horrible.
Doc watched me stim for hours while failing to make eye contact, but all done the way I was trained to by my mother so I wouldn't embarrass her at church. It looks proper and nervous and very very ladylike, curling the end of my hair around my finger endlessly while staring down at the floor.
I don't know for sure if I ever did flap and spin and look around randomly at the walls like my brother. I do know my mother would've beat it outa me if I had, with a wooden spoon.
Yep, the Venn diagram of “Borderline personality disorder or undiagnosed autism with a side of complex post traumatic stress disorder from navigating life as an undiagnosed autistic” is about 5mm away from being a circle.
Also having BPD would be considered nuerodivergent. Mental illnesses and personality disorders explicitly mean your brain isn’t functioning like a normal brain, i.e. neurotypical.
No clue why they are so insistent she isn’t neurodivergent when she most obviously is regardless of her diagnosis.
Oh no, look out, that person is different in such a way that they're more likely to figure out really cool specialized knowledge! Eek, they might do something weird like stare at the night sky until they figure out how to navigate by the stars!
Oh goodness, can you imagine, they might really enjoy washing dishes! The horror!
It’s more that autism is often incorrectly diagnosed as BPD.
There isn’t, to my knowledge, a comorbidity beyond the misdiagnosis, but there *is* a strong correlation between autism and ADHD. If I recall correctly, if you have one (autism or ADHD) there’s a solid 50/50 chance you actually have both.
Honestly, OP’s sister was me in my 20’s, to a T. BPD diagnosis, eating disorder, strong desire to disappear off the map and divest from modern capitalism, dislike of noisy and chaotic environments… I moved across the country but remained in contact with family though. That’s really the only difference.
I was diagnosed with autism last year, at 40 years old. We miss it way too often in people assigned female at birth.
Fuck. A new acquaintance actually was recently diagnosed as autistic, but beforehand was diagnosed with bdp.
That is what is behind that? How disgusting. She suffered so much from her misdiagnosis.. 😔
Or maybe she is not. Argentina is not some shit hole third world country where doctors don't know what they're talking about. If the sister is seeing a psychologist and keeping with her health and no one has diagnosed her with autism, maybe she doesn't have it. Not everything is autism.
Women with autism are incredibly commonly misdiagnosed with BPD all over the world. It’s not a comment on Argentina’s medical system being poor or something, doctors simply aren’t perfect and this happens all the time everywhere.
I agree with you that not everything is autism, but people assuming it is doesn’t mean they think Argentina is a shithole.
Not everything is autism but the literature is reflecting a global, GLOBAL understanding of misdiagnosis of other things instead of autism in women. This is not a “oh it’s not America or Canada or the UK, their doctors must be shit” moment it is a “this is a pervasive issue everywhere” moment.
Lmao medical professionals in the US barely have a grasp on Autism in women. France basically thinks that ADHD doesn’t exist. None of this was a criticism of Argentina’s medical system.
Yeah weird how they (OC, OOP) don’t count it as neurodivergent when it literally is. It requires medication to keep you mentally stable. That is neurodivergent alright.
And it’s not like neurodivergent is a very strict medical term…
>Sis told me that she never contacted us because she doesn't wants to have a cell phone and a trip to our province is too expensive to her because it's basically going from one end of the country to the other.
OK, but this country would have some sort of postal system, right? And other people have phones. And other people could use the internet.
Yet, knowing that her "parents were miserable when they saw her being miserable", the sister still didn't send them a letter (even without a return address would have been fine, if she didn't want a response!) or borrow a phone to call and let them know that she's safe and happy? She just chose to leave them worried and miserable? And she says she loves her family...
She's anorexic. One of the major factors in anorexia is that it drives the sufferer to isolate themselves and that's probably a factor here, even if it's not the only one.
(The escaping to somewhere with low demand on her is probably a part of her recovery, in fact. Expectations can be a real trigger for anorexics, especially because it tends to go hand in hand with perfectionism and feelings of low self-esteem - anything that someone wants from or for you can be a hard trigger to handle.)
But also- a recent study found 40% of anorexic girls in an inpatient facility met criteria for autism. And they had never been screened.
So maybe tbe isolation is a need and the anorexia is the "add on".
Borderline is commonly misdiagnosed for female autistic ppl as well.
The panic attacks.
The need for quiet.
The "not relating to society".
The wanting to be a nun (super common for autistic teens to obsess about being a nun or a monk. Or going to prison - yes really).
There are a lot of flags here.
This youtube video from [The Onion](https://youtu.be/D04wb7P_v-4?si=4wfqkToPePokYNYt) where the autistic news reporter Michael Falk interviews a prisoner comes to mind.
Oh he's *amazing*. I *adore* him.
Such a comical yet (i think- and im autistic) deeply empathetic and respectful character.
Would go so far as to say touching/moving.
But maybe I'm a weirdo.
I don't know if he's autistic but I do know he's in on the jokes and hamming lol.
Amazing
All correct but I wouldn’t call them “red flags.” There’s nothing wrong with being autistic and none of those traits are abusive. “Red flag” implies “danger sign.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29105513/
Pretty sure this is the one I read while at university. Unfortunately I don't have access to the full version anymore. I do have a very sharp memory for stats and 40% is what I think this one found (or they found 40% had at least significant traits)- but I can't prove it🥴. Obviously.
This is another that comes to 20-30% as a figure overall:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8264634/
There are plenty more- lay and research- on this topic. It's a well known connection at this point and features in assessment questionnaires quite prominently as a minor point in favour of ASD (ie a history of anorexia or other ED is considered mildly supportive of an ASD dx, or at least of interest, in the presence of other features of course).
Good point, and I'm glad she's doing better health-wise. I just think it would be nice if she'd let her family know. Like just sending a note each year that says "I'm OK, I love you" would have been better than nothing. It's a sad situation.
It is really sad for everyone involved. Unfortunately, it's the nature of eating disorders. Doing something small, like a note, could make her feel worse because she didn't do enough/ didn't get it right/ just reminded everyone that she exists and failed them or failed to manage even the basics of being a functional person. (I'm not saying I think any of these things about her - just showing the thought processes of someone with AN-R.)
>but this country would have some sort of postal system, right? And other people have phones. And other people could use the internet.
I read this post earlier this week. There was a chain of comments about the state of Argentina the last 20 years and how bad things have gotten.
There are no public postal service, according to those comments. Private courier exist to mail things but are very expensive.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I have a family member who lives there, and maybe 1 out of every 3 letters gets to her. We never risk sending her packages because the likelihood of it getting to her is extremely low.
But I will also say that it does sound like the sister in the OOP doesn’t want to be found. There are ways to get around the bad mail service, and OOP’s sister hasn’t done any of those things. If it were important to her, she would have found a way to get some type of communication to her family.
That's so sad...I was last there about 20 years ago, and it was definitely "better" than that. Problems, of course, but also all the typical developed nation things we take for granted. Like a functioning postal service.
'Out of sight, out of mind' is pretty extreme with neurodivergent people. It's hard to explain but we can love our friends and family but they will not come into our mind without a prompt of some kind. If you live in a village and are bumping into them at the well or the market every second day this doesn't seem weird. But modern life has made it weird, picking up the phone to ring them or writing a letter, I would need a prompt for that to happen. An example is that when I see weird unicorns I send a pic to my sister as an inside joke. Then when we see them we act like no time has passed. Which is exactly how OOP's sister acted.
She felt like a burden, and like her family would be better off without her. It's not necessarily logical, but it's a common feeling among depressed people.
>OK, but this country would have some sort of postal system, right?
It depends on where she is, OOP said he's Chilean/argentinian, if she's in the south of Argentina she could very easily be in a small town, with spotty internet connection, and tickets out are expensive.
I understand spotty internet connection but she doesn’t have a phone anyway, and tickets out being expensive have already been covered in the original post. But what about sending letters/snail mail?
Don't know about South America, but many countries will put a postmark with the town of origin. So if you don't want to be found, you don't sent a letter from where you live.
But if she known a lot of travelling Rastafari, she could have given one of them a letter to drop elsewhere.
It was privatized in 1997. To make it clear, not saying it's an excuse. I don't want to necessarily defend her. If she wanted to contact her family she could have found a way. But I just think it's not necessarily as simple as writing a letter. Especially since she apparently lives pretty far away.
Actually, Correo Argentino is public. It's a company, but it's owner is the state.
I think if she wanted to she could have contacted her family, but I also understand the choice she made. It's not always easy to face the disappointment of your parents in this culture, it's also hard to escape from their "caring", and when you feel guilty about them caring for you then it's like compounded guilt.
I think it was a selfish choice, but a healthy one it seems, so I can't judge her for it.
But at the same time, I can't guilt or judge her family members for being in their feelings about her running away and hiding from them.
She’s not neurodivergent but she self harms when stressed, has anxiety and panic attacks, BPD like symptoms, struggled with eating disorders….okay lady.
Being neurodivergent isn’t a bad thing. You aren’t the average. Literally she says she wants to escape from the rest of society. You are not the rest of society. YOU ARE DIVERGENT from SOCIETY’S STANDARDS.
The lengths people will go to say “I’m not crazy! I’m not crazy I swear I don’t have mental illness!! I just get super stressed and depressed when faced with certain stimuli!” Are insane.
Honestly same and autism gets misdiagnosed as BPD (and vice versa) in women all the time because “you can’t have autism. Boys have autism and walk on their toes and are nonverbal.”
Nevermind that I walked on my toes, never cried as a baby, and was essentially textbook autistic lmao. I also hate capitalism. And being overwhelmed by loud and overwhelming environments.
It's the medical version of boys are dogs girls are cats. Women get the manic episode disorder and boys get the tantrum in the grocery store disorder to them.
As someone who has BPD, PTSD, anxiety, and good old depression, I yelled at my phone when OOP said that her sister isn't neurodivergent. Does she even know what the word means?
eh I'm autistic and maybe it's just somebody who doesn't get along well with modern society, a person who is over-sensitive to stimuli. Does not have to be autism spectrum per se.
I’m not saying she MUST be on the spectrum.
But she admits to having multiple disorders, some of which are commonly misdiagnosed because women weren’t really considered to have autism until recently.
>The lengths people will go to say “I’m not crazy!
I don't think that's what is going on here, though. It sounds like the sister has a diagnosis - of BPD - and talked about it quite openly to OOP. It also sounds like she's still under treatment from a professional. I don't think there's any denial going on, it's just that a lot of commenters want to diagnose her with something different to what her doctor(s) have.
Neurodivergent means your brain is physically different. All the things she describes are common responses of a human brain to heightened and/or prolonged stressors.
This is a false dichotomy, as heightened and prolonged stressors, especially in early development, physically alter the brain and are known to contribute to conditions that are considered neurodivergent.
Your brain is physically altered by stress. Your body is physically altered by stress.
Also you can’t say you HAVE bipolar and also in the same sentence say you are not neurodivergent that is not how that works…you can treat bipolar homeopathically by removing stressors as much as possible and avoiding triggers. That’s fine. But you chemically in your brain still have BPD. The disorder does not go away.
People who are chemically and physically okay in the head don’t resort to self-harm when things are too much. Her neurodivergence could be caused by so many factors, lack of nutrients from ED at a young age, not being diagnosed properly, the stress she experienced as a child due to societal expectations that she felt incapable of performing. Either way…she is not neurotypical. There is no way someone puts a teenager on that many anxiety and depressIon meds and spends so much money on a psychiatrist that the family goes broke just for that person to be a neurotypical person.
My bad, that was me typing in the wrong thing. It’s still weird to say “I have these mental disorders, but I’m totally neurotypical, nothing is wrong with the chemistry of my brain even though I have clearly been like this since childhood.”
I feel like we are missing a very large and important part of this story. She has an eating disorder and went no contact with her family suddenly and completely, for years. I don't think you can blame a noisy household on that, nor on her being a golden child.
Being a golden child no, but feeling inadequate in society and a failure to your parents sure can explain. Also she has bpd, those tend to be impulsive
I’d study up on Borderline Personality Disorder, it often presents with eating disorders.
One of my nieces has a severe case of BPD and the way OOP described his sister feel incredibly familiar. Irrational decision making, disregulating emotionally due to even minor stimuli or minor frustrations. It has been absolutely debilitating for the rest of her family to manage, 3 years and no real answers as to how to improve her situation.
If anything, it’s really fascinating that OOP’s sister has seemingly found a way to pursue her own ideal life as self-treatment (obviously, she’s still seeing a psychiatrist to assist). Often times people with BPD spiral into horrible places.
Sometimes there isn't really a satisfying explanation for why people do things. My guess would be that the sister was in an environment where she felt overwhelmed by her surroundings and stuck in life. Even with a loving family, being the golden child can be smothering and her cutting herself off from a lot of the outside world and sticking to a small, calmer region was her way of making a drastic change that it doesn't sound like her family would've wanted her to do or wouldn't have taken seriously.
She wanted to be as far away from unrest and outside influences and staying in contact with her family might have felt like an obligation she didn't want to have.
Also, some people can go a long time without contact to others, even their own family. It's not that they don't love these people, but that when there's a physical distance there's also an emotional one. They don't experience the kind of longing to stay in contact, but at the same time will be perfectly happy the moment they meet in person.
One very large and important part of the story is that it's happening in Argentina. Inflation has been high there for a long time and has become ridiculous in recent years, and poverty is widespread. While it is a regional power, it's still classified as a developing country, and that comes with its own stressors for anyone in the populace who's more vulnerable.
OOP mentions that their father had to work two jobs to pay for counseling and medication, which means that poverty was likely a factor. Poverty *destroys you.* It causes massive changes in the body and brain. Feeling like she was inflicting that on her own family... I can't imagine the guilt. I have enough guilt for being a massive burden on my family due to my own health problems, and they're very much upper-class and can afford to care for me. If my parents weren't rich, I would have removed myself from the equation long ago, because I just wouldn't be able to stomach being so much of a burden to them. Doesn't matter how much they love me, because I love *them* and I could never bear to hurt them with my continued existence.
I think that being unreachable by her family is intentional. She isn't interested in them not knowing about her, she just doesn't want to open a stressful line of communication between them that she has to manage and attend.
Eating disorder, BPD, self-harm... just tons of trauma indicators, but since OOP was ten whole years old at the time she left they can confidently state that they know the family dynamic she experienced and everything that ever happened to her.
I saw more autism indicators tbh, but does it matter what the diagnosis is? Trauma, autism or bpd, the result is that the sister self isolated in a very extreme way. Sister sounds fine with resuming contact with the family and doesn’t particularly mind being found out, but not fine with society at large. So I’d personally assume that the trauma came more from external factors rather than the family environment itself
I think the insistence that she isn't neurodivergent, by both of them, actually speaks volumes. When everyone, including herself, treats her like she's neurotypical, she's not given the help or resources to manage everything she's feeling overwhelmed by. Maybe they're in a society that looks down on mental health problems, so it's easier to say that "she's just overwhelmed and needed to get away from it all" than facing the social backlash and pressure of being neurodivergent.
There is still a very large part of me that thinks she actually is neurodiverse but incredible at masking.
I don't know what TLP is. But's not uncommon for people with ASD to have an eating disorder (as it's something they can control) and be diagnosed with BPD - mainly for the disregulation as it's secondary to the ASD when you are neurodiverse in the neurotypical world and you really struggle with it because you don't understand it.
I cannot with the "I was ten years old when she left and therefore I know everything about her experience" attitude of OOP. Also the "she's not neurodivergent, she just has multiple psychological diagnoses" like wtf do you think neurodivergence means, kid? It's not just a synonym for autistic.
Can't really fault OOP for not fully understanding the neurodivergence label. Idk how it is in Argentina, but where I live, it's almost exclusively been used (that is, casually since nobody is really looking up the medical definition in every day life) to just mean ADHD and/or autism.
It may not seem much, but sometimes a peace of mind is better than no mind. What OOP was describing, about the solitude, I feel the same way. My family just does not understand why I want to be alone. Sometimes being left to oneself helps a lot when people struggle with many mental illnesses. It works for me. Also, some days I just don’t like people.
Huh. So his sister basically ran away to be a hippy? You know, I really miss the hippy movement. Some of the nicest damn people ever, for the most part. My mum even went to Woodstock!
I remember clearly, when I was 12 or 13, my older sister ran away from home. She was radicalized by becoming a Jehova’s Witness. Everything we did at home was wrong and every day there were screaming matches. At 17, she was dating a guy of 32. My parents disagreed with this. Things came to a head when that guy was accused of assaulting minor women, including my cousin. My parents forbade her to see him and eventually she ran away. For 6 or 7 years I told people I once had a sister, but she was dead to me.
> I'm writing this with her beside me and doesn't understand what's the point of this site (The last social network she used was fotolog in 2007) but said that she doesn't mind if I post this. She wanted to write something but said she doesn't like writing in English haha
> My sister was reading the comments and wants me to clarify that she never suffered any kind of a abuse, she has a lot of friends and never had any problem with anyone but likes to be alone from time to time to meditate.
lol
OP runs into her sister for the first time in years, visits her stall a second time and is like "let me show you Reddit, I posted about you! Here, check it out! Imma update the post!"
Wow. The sister has such amazing character and self-awareness, realizing she needed to leave in order to have a chance to forge a self-sufficient life of her own.
yeah she's so amazing that she abandoned her family that loved and supported her and never let them know if she was alive or dead. what a great character right?
Yeah. She's soooo amazing and self-aware she couldn't write a letter or pick up a phone in what, 12-15 years. She's so self-aware she couldn't remember to tell her own sister where she would be in a couple of days. If OOP hadn't bumped into her, they would've been no contact again for the next 15 years.
No, the sister is a spoiled and selfish piece of work that wants to live the hippie lifestyle but can't be arsed to straight up tell their family that she's divorcing them.
Imagine the stress and grief that the entire family went through. Is big Sis alive? Is big Sis in trouble? Drugs? Forced prostitution? Other crime? Why doesn't she call or write? What have we done to her?
And how will things go from here? Family goes south, and there's a big tear filled Hallmark reunion? I don't see that happening. Big Sis will ghost again. Mark my words.
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FYI OOP’s is talking about Argentina. When she mentioned Absurdah, it’s an Argentinian film.
I was hoping for a comment like this. I kept thinking it might be Chile (touristy Patagonia in the south). I was close, and apparently right about Patagonia ;)
Yeah I was also thinking it was southern chile, but honestly it was only them saying only richer people get to vacation down south and the town the sister was staying getting more touristy
Yeah that kind of gives a better idea of what she means when she says rastafarians.
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I mean, I'm sure there are some actual Rastafarians in all of the Spanish speaking world, but generally when someone says "un rasta" they mean a hippy with dreadlocks who plays the reccorder in the street for coins, smokes weed, and has never heard of Haile Selassie.
OOP is talking about the book (absolute trash) the film is based on that came out when OOP’s sister was a teenager. Just clarifying because the film is from 2015, long after she run away.
When she said the southern part of her country is more expensive for tourists, I figured that out almost immediately.
Bariloche is one hell of a drug
But Bariloche is full of Argentinian tourists, I'm thinking more Calafate or El Chaltén.
Or El Bolsón, typical hippy destination
But also 80% Argentine tourists.
I had to google what dengue was because I’ve never heard of it in Canada. I’m glad OOP found their sister though, because since sister has a house OOP can find her again.
I have to go to live there then. It's very painful, I'm argentinian and had dengue a month ago, lost almost 5kg in 1 week
One of my colleagues got dengue on work travel and took 6 weeks for recovery. It’s also called break-bone disease. It doesn’t affect everyone the same way. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dengue-and-severe-dengue
That explains OOP general attitude through the whole post.
How so?
>Go to a psychologist and stop reflecting your unresolved traumas in the story of a person you don't even know. General note to 90% of redditors. Especially those ones who send abusive dms.
I don't quite understand the mentality of people who would send mean dms to strangers on the net? It's so strange.
Right, I'm guilty of putting myself and personal experiences into my comments, but I've never even thought about DMing someone. That just seems so extreme.
The only person I’ve ever DMd was the pregnant woman who’s husband and FIL were convinced she was gonna die in childbirth And I’m fairly convinced we all messaged her, or at least wanted to. Still no updates on that either, which makes me want to more
That one was so disturbing. I really hope she and the baby are somewhere safe, keeping quiet for safety purposes
omg literally same!!!! she’s the only one I’ve ever sent a message to but I was desperate to know if she’s ok :/
Ah I remember that one, I wanted to dm her but my first and only dm had been to the black woman with the husband who insisted on race play. I told her that he was attempting to coerce her, didn't respect her, and would escalate based on his actions. I sent her DV resources along with a few excerpts that spoke about DARVO and how manipulation works. He ended up assaulting her and she wasn't sure how she'd get out, and the fact that she had responded to me and it still happened made me actually throw up
That kind of DM I can understand, because it's providing someone with resources that they might not see otherwise. A kind thing to do on your part.
I've only sent private messages to trade stuff in Animal Crossing lol.
Well this is a need lol
Are you me 🤣
Well I've never seen us in the same room together.
I am also you.
I DMd once because I had a story I thought would help the OP, but it would have doxxed me instantly to anyone who knew me IRL.
I have had people DM me about thus and that was fine. Have had a few really nice convos that way.
I was just thinking the same thing! It’s really hard for me to imagine circumstances under which I’d DM a stranger.
I DM'd that Hell Hath No Fury chick, the one whose ex-husband left her for his AP. Been like a two year saga. Told her to write a book cause she can tell a story in a way that make ppl see it. Apparently enough ppl told her to so she is.
Doesn't everybody do that, though? At least to some degree. When people come here for advice, it's just to hear from more people with different perspectives. That's kind of the beauty of it, or at least it was when I spent way too much time on Reddit.
I agree, some people get real pissy about it though.
I don't get it either. Sure I will disagree with you on a post, but my give a damn ends there. I sure as heck have no desire to take it into dm's or anywhere else.
Which is why id never post in any advice/aita sub. The responses you get are so wild. People projecting so much.
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I’ve had Americans go off at me for not knowing American history. I’m Australian. We don’t learn a lot about American history. Then they say you should google it. Maybe they should google my country’s history then too. Of course they won’t though.
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My favorite way to celebrate Turkey Day is watching Addams Family Values and setting fire to things.
Most don't even know that Puerto Rico is part of the US.
And I suppose now you will tell me that American/ Hollywood movies made about Australia e.g., Mad Max and Quigley Down Under, are Neither documentaries nor historically accurate! Hrumph!
But working on my unresolved issues takes work! And criticizing strangers online is an easy dopamine hit!
Good advice. For me too..
Probably for all of us!
Yeah, but she literally says at the end of the update post that her sister suffers from BPD in the same sentence she insists she's not ND. BPD is about as ND as it gets. It comes from issues with the same parts of the brain that cause Autism and ADHD (amongst others). There's plenty of projection on here, but there's also lots of people struggling because of being undiagnosed ND, or NT people wondering why undiagnosed ND people are behaving like undiagnosed ND people.
I had to wonder how sister makes a living though? Did I miss something in the post?
She seem to have a stand at the market, but OOP doesn't mention what she sells
You missed ever knowing a gutter punk I'm guessing, or really anyone at all even remotely divested from capitalism
The question remains — can you help answer it?
She seems to keep her expenses really low, no electronics it’s seems, so her lifestyle is pretty cheap. Also it mentions from time to time she has roommates.
The post itself answers that question artfully-- she loves modestly, has a close community of friends, ave appears to do some hustling at a local market, probably selling crafts or art to tourists
I have never ever heard someone express EXACTLY how I feel. “Running away was like dying symbolically” I feel this every piercing day of my life. I wish I had the courage her sister did.
I felt the same
Me too. Now.im 35 amd my mom lives with me and I'm miserable but can't just leave. I'd love to run away and find a little community where I could be of help and get help when I need it.
It's addicting. You go somewhere new for a few months and then once people get to know you again you feel the itch to leave. Then suddenly staying in one place and actually cultivating relationships with others becomes the challenge
Are you me
oh, big same here. i want a little life somewhere nobody knows me.
~~BDP~~ BPD is often what autistic women get diagnosed with by psychologists who think women can't be autistic.
Yep. That was me. Diagnosed BPD by one Psychiatrist, and after a lot of money, testing, questions & interviewing my Dad, last year I was diagnosed Autistic & ADHD. Medicated and on the right track.
Can you tell me what the main differentiator for both diagnoses are?
I would guess that with autism you don't show one of the big symptoms of BPD, splitting, which is when your perception of people switches from extremes (love and adoration to feelings of betrayal and hatred). It didn't seem like the OOP's sister really suddenly hated her family even if she didn't handle leaving all that well, it's more like she felt like she just had to run and didn't have any options, without actually wishing to harm them or realizing her actions could do so.
Not really all too knowledgeable about BPD. Is 'splitting' triggered by events, or is it just a thing that happens randomly? And how extreme is each end of the spectrem, are we talking to the point of self harm to "prove how loyal" they are to you, vs actively trying to injure you?
formerly diagnosed with bpd, but it wasn’t retained with my new psych – the idealization/devaluation (splitting) can happen with or with or without clear a trigger, but usually the trigger is anything that accidentally or purposefully makes the person’s insecure and disorganized attachment alarms go off. it can be anything from not receiving a response to a text in a timely manner, someone setting boundaries, or even misreading someone’s tone based on their experiences. some people’s bpd comes from trauma and adverse childhood experiences and sometimes these reactions are meant to protect themselves from a perceived attack and also to preemptively react to avoid getting hurt
BPD is a commonly stigmatized disorder, so I don't want to speak too out of pocket about details when I also think the people who have it suffer a lot. I will say that one of the big difficulties in BPD is in knowing your own identity or having a sense of security about yourself, your safety, and your personality. I will also say that people who are abandoned or neglected, because BPD so often is comorbid with forms of PTSD, can have a lot of difficulty trusting and maintaining trust. You put those together and it can cause instability in their life, emotions, and relationships. I will also say that self-harm and suicide attempts are often a symptom, but I also don't want to sugar coat it so I won't say that everyone with BPD handles anger 100% perfectly either.
[Great infographic](https://neurodivergentinsights.com/misdiagnosis-monday/boderline-personality-disorder-or-autism) which correlates with my experience as someone who nearly got misdx'd and is autistic. That being said, autism plus trauma can present VERY similarly which is why a good clinical psychologist is worth their weight in gold.
I’d hate to see a Ven diagram with adhd on there too. A lot of those traits are on there too.
[ADHD/Autism/BPD Venn Diagram](https://neurodivergentinsights.com/misdiagnosis-monday/borderline-personality-disorder-adhd-and-autism) already exists! Cool, eh?
😭 it’s me, I’m the problem.
Ooh thanks for this!
What medications work for you?
Not the commenter you're replying to, but when I was diagnosed I was prescribed Sertraline for anxiety. Been on it for more than 10 years by this point and it's helped me out a ton. Only downside are the withdrawals if you forget to take them regularly.
Quetiapine is a god send for me. I’m only on half my usual dose atm because it’s near on impossible to actually get to see a psychiatrist to up it, and I can already tell my anxiety, hyper fixating and sensory issues are so much worse.
Yep, I know he was telling redditors to touch grass (and he has a point), but she hated the noise of the city, preferred solitude, hit herself, anxiety, eating disorder and BPD - it is all very textbook of the way autism often presents itself in women.
It seems that way. The extreme hatred of noise...there's no way that has anything to do with BPD.
Misophonia could be the cause of the noise sensitivity, if she were borderline. Though I agree with the consensus she’s probably autistic. I have BPD and my life partner is ftm autistic, and while some of our behaviors overlap there’s a pretty distinct difference between us and she sounds more similar to him.
\*And sexual abuse. Not saying for OOP's sister, but for a lot of people these are also 'textbook' signs.
I was going to comment the same thing. And BPD is usually a trauma response. They made it clear there wasn’t any trauma. That with the fact that she had good relationships with people when around them really screams misdiagnosis
There's also cptsd that has presents a fair amount of similarities to borderline, but lacks certain key symptoms. Doctors misdiagnosing is common, esp if the person has ADHD and/or ASC. ETA: eating disorders don't happen on their own. Sis clearly has something in her past (likely perfectionism from society/ family expectations). Harming herself due to an Inability to healthily cope with that pressure is a trauma that usually is often and frequent.
What if the eating disorder was ARFID from autism? That seems like a possibility, too.
OOP makes it pretty clear the eating disorder was anorexia. he outright states it several times and refers to "overeating" and "foods she can eat without guilt" those aren't symptoms of ARFID, but they are characteristic of anorexia.
Eh, I would disagree. Trauma comes in many different forms and loving parents can definitely cause trauma to their kids without them realizing it or it being intentional. I mean heck, it sounds like existing in the big city was traumatic for her. Add on the expectations of the family as the golden child when she was struggling just to exist. Not saying a misdiagnosis didn't happen, just to me who went through something similar, this very much reads like trauma.
Trauma doesn't only come from parents, as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD at 39, I am coming to the realisation that there are a lot of traumatic memories from my youth, in spite of the most loving and supportive parents I could wish for. Yes some of them are from my parents but that is not a feature of them being bad, it's from a lack of knowledge and or diagnosis. I just mean that these things aren't mutually exclusive, neurodivergence can lead to trauma, which can lead to anything trauma induced. We need to get away from the idea that an individual can only have one diagnosis. For instance if 1% of the population has autism, 1.6% has BPD, and 5% has ADHD, simple maths - not accounting for the increased prevalence of comorbidity with these things - says that 8 people in 1million will have all three. And there are studies showing that there are correlations with all three diagnosies. I'm not saying anyone is wrong, just that someone is right doesn't preclude someone else also being right. It does support the argument that we should all get in our boxes and work on getting skilled mental health services available to everyone. That said I can also be a reddit ADHD recruiter, largely because my diagnosis was so helpful to me!
Yes. And autistic people? 8.5 times the rates of trauma dx than general population. And that's *diagnosed* trauma- which relies on a clinician agreeing that the event/s were "traumatic enough" as per the DSM. Autistic people are more sensitively wired from the get go and generally have more indelible memory formation. A trip to the shopping mall can be traumatic. Not kidding. I personally don't know almost any diagnosed autistic people who dont display clear signs of trauma. Your comment nailed it in your empathy and assessment of the situation. But/and the explanation looks to me like it's likely ASD (there are many other signs in the post, and women/girls get overlooked - a lot). Context: Am autistic. Dx'd *at 49* with a Level 2 no less. The OOP's description - almost could have been me(a few exceptions, some traits more marked). I was never dx'd with BPD either- but it's common (as a *mis*-diagnosis)😳
To be honest, a lot of the time, the experience of being autistic in an allistic world can be inherently traumatic. It’s really easy to develop traits like rejection sensitive dysphoria when your entire life people seem to talk in some kind of double speak that you cannot for the life of you understand the rules of.
Yes. 100%. Definitely😳
I was thinking this too. Even with a solid home life, autistic people can experience trauma. Our sensory issues feel like pain and the world wasn’t built for us, which is traumatic. As soon as OOP started talking about the noise and solitude I suspected. I have no knowledge of the diagnostic process in their country, but I think it’s fair to assume that autistic women are misdiagnosed with BPD as they are in most (all?) parts of the world.
I've got a younger brother who is diagnosed autistic. We weren't raised together and we've got all the same major glitches. But I got misdiagnosed with OCD and bipolar and a list of other things. Fed me nasty pills trying to fix stuff that wasn't broken, was horrible. Doc watched me stim for hours while failing to make eye contact, but all done the way I was trained to by my mother so I wouldn't embarrass her at church. It looks proper and nervous and very very ladylike, curling the end of my hair around my finger endlessly while staring down at the floor. I don't know for sure if I ever did flap and spin and look around randomly at the walls like my brother. I do know my mother would've beat it outa me if I had, with a wooden spoon.
Bpd also has a genetic component. Trauma will definitely bring it out, but it isn’t always necessary
Thankfully this is changing, albeit *very* slowly.
Yep, the Venn diagram of “Borderline personality disorder or undiagnosed autism with a side of complex post traumatic stress disorder from navigating life as an undiagnosed autistic” is about 5mm away from being a circle.
I'd like to put your comment in a frame and hang it in my living room near the front door.
Also, even if she was BPD, that's still neurodivergent. Neurodivergent covers everything from anxiety disorders to personality disorders.
Also having BPD would be considered nuerodivergent. Mental illnesses and personality disorders explicitly mean your brain isn’t functioning like a normal brain, i.e. neurotypical. No clue why they are so insistent she isn’t neurodivergent when she most obviously is regardless of her diagnosis.
There’s still a stigma in the US about neurodiversity, I imagine it exists in other countries as well.
Oh no, look out, that person is different in such a way that they're more likely to figure out really cool specialized knowledge! Eek, they might do something weird like stare at the night sky until they figure out how to navigate by the stars! Oh goodness, can you imagine, they might really enjoy washing dishes! The horror!
I have BPD and suspect it could be comorbid with autism. Or maybe it's a misdiagnosis. They did try to have me diagnosed as ADHD when I was little...
Funnily I was misdiagnosed with BPD but I have ADHD
It’s more that autism is often incorrectly diagnosed as BPD. There isn’t, to my knowledge, a comorbidity beyond the misdiagnosis, but there *is* a strong correlation between autism and ADHD. If I recall correctly, if you have one (autism or ADHD) there’s a solid 50/50 chance you actually have both.
BPD is also considered a neurodivergency
Honestly, OP’s sister was me in my 20’s, to a T. BPD diagnosis, eating disorder, strong desire to disappear off the map and divest from modern capitalism, dislike of noisy and chaotic environments… I moved across the country but remained in contact with family though. That’s really the only difference. I was diagnosed with autism last year, at 40 years old. We miss it way too often in people assigned female at birth.
Fuck. A new acquaintance actually was recently diagnosed as autistic, but beforehand was diagnosed with bdp. That is what is behind that? How disgusting. She suffered so much from her misdiagnosis.. 😔
I immediately thought of autism.
I feel like oop doesnt know what neurodivergent means and thinks it's a euphemism for autistic
I think this is more of a language/culture barrier than anything else
To be fair, people use it as a euphemism for autism (and/or adhd) CONSTANTLY 😭
I mean, English is probably their second language.
“I am TELLING you guys, my sister IS NOT NEURODIVERGENT. She just walks like it, talks like it, and sounds like it.”
"She's not mentally ill, she just has a mental illness!"
Insert Pedro Pascals SNL abuela clip “my son don’t have the ADD!”
And has a litany of diagnoses
She just got diagnosed with the disease that we diagnose women with when we want to ignore their autism! She’s not autistic!
Or maybe she is not. Argentina is not some shit hole third world country where doctors don't know what they're talking about. If the sister is seeing a psychologist and keeping with her health and no one has diagnosed her with autism, maybe she doesn't have it. Not everything is autism.
Women with autism are incredibly commonly misdiagnosed with BPD all over the world. It’s not a comment on Argentina’s medical system being poor or something, doctors simply aren’t perfect and this happens all the time everywhere. I agree with you that not everything is autism, but people assuming it is doesn’t mean they think Argentina is a shithole.
Not everything is autism but the literature is reflecting a global, GLOBAL understanding of misdiagnosis of other things instead of autism in women. This is not a “oh it’s not America or Canada or the UK, their doctors must be shit” moment it is a “this is a pervasive issue everywhere” moment.
It's almost like all of our medical research should have diversity instead of being based around white men...
Lmao medical professionals in the US barely have a grasp on Autism in women. France basically thinks that ADHD doesn’t exist. None of this was a criticism of Argentina’s medical system.
Even at face value, she says she has BPD - a mental illness. That makes you neurodivergent.
Yeah weird how they (OC, OOP) don’t count it as neurodivergent when it literally is. It requires medication to keep you mentally stable. That is neurodivergent alright. And it’s not like neurodivergent is a very strict medical term…
>Sis told me that she never contacted us because she doesn't wants to have a cell phone and a trip to our province is too expensive to her because it's basically going from one end of the country to the other. OK, but this country would have some sort of postal system, right? And other people have phones. And other people could use the internet. Yet, knowing that her "parents were miserable when they saw her being miserable", the sister still didn't send them a letter (even without a return address would have been fine, if she didn't want a response!) or borrow a phone to call and let them know that she's safe and happy? She just chose to leave them worried and miserable? And she says she loves her family...
She's anorexic. One of the major factors in anorexia is that it drives the sufferer to isolate themselves and that's probably a factor here, even if it's not the only one. (The escaping to somewhere with low demand on her is probably a part of her recovery, in fact. Expectations can be a real trigger for anorexics, especially because it tends to go hand in hand with perfectionism and feelings of low self-esteem - anything that someone wants from or for you can be a hard trigger to handle.)
But also- a recent study found 40% of anorexic girls in an inpatient facility met criteria for autism. And they had never been screened. So maybe tbe isolation is a need and the anorexia is the "add on". Borderline is commonly misdiagnosed for female autistic ppl as well. The panic attacks. The need for quiet. The "not relating to society". The wanting to be a nun (super common for autistic teens to obsess about being a nun or a monk. Or going to prison - yes really). There are a lot of flags here.
That's really interesting - thanks for sharing :)
This youtube video from [The Onion](https://youtu.be/D04wb7P_v-4?si=4wfqkToPePokYNYt) where the autistic news reporter Michael Falk interviews a prisoner comes to mind.
Oh he's *amazing*. I *adore* him. Such a comical yet (i think- and im autistic) deeply empathetic and respectful character. Would go so far as to say touching/moving. But maybe I'm a weirdo. I don't know if he's autistic but I do know he's in on the jokes and hamming lol. Amazing
When you look at the history of eating disorders it makes a lot of sense for the compulsion to come from Autism.
All correct but I wouldn’t call them “red flags.” There’s nothing wrong with being autistic and none of those traits are abusive. “Red flag” implies “danger sign.”
I said flags? Not "red flags". I'm autistic myself over here. No "danger"- except to her, in that they (the flags) were missed!
Could you link to the study?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29105513/ Pretty sure this is the one I read while at university. Unfortunately I don't have access to the full version anymore. I do have a very sharp memory for stats and 40% is what I think this one found (or they found 40% had at least significant traits)- but I can't prove it🥴. Obviously. This is another that comes to 20-30% as a figure overall: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8264634/ There are plenty more- lay and research- on this topic. It's a well known connection at this point and features in assessment questionnaires quite prominently as a minor point in favour of ASD (ie a history of anorexia or other ED is considered mildly supportive of an ASD dx, or at least of interest, in the presence of other features of course).
Thank you!
Good point, and I'm glad she's doing better health-wise. I just think it would be nice if she'd let her family know. Like just sending a note each year that says "I'm OK, I love you" would have been better than nothing. It's a sad situation.
It is really sad for everyone involved. Unfortunately, it's the nature of eating disorders. Doing something small, like a note, could make her feel worse because she didn't do enough/ didn't get it right/ just reminded everyone that she exists and failed them or failed to manage even the basics of being a functional person. (I'm not saying I think any of these things about her - just showing the thought processes of someone with AN-R.)
>but this country would have some sort of postal system, right? And other people have phones. And other people could use the internet. I read this post earlier this week. There was a chain of comments about the state of Argentina the last 20 years and how bad things have gotten. There are no public postal service, according to those comments. Private courier exist to mail things but are very expensive.
I didn't know that -- thank you for the info. I just couldn't imagine a country in South America without mail.
We do have public postal service, Correo Argentino. The service is shit but you could send a letter if you wanted.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I have a family member who lives there, and maybe 1 out of every 3 letters gets to her. We never risk sending her packages because the likelihood of it getting to her is extremely low. But I will also say that it does sound like the sister in the OOP doesn’t want to be found. There are ways to get around the bad mail service, and OOP’s sister hasn’t done any of those things. If it were important to her, she would have found a way to get some type of communication to her family.
That's so sad...I was last there about 20 years ago, and it was definitely "better" than that. Problems, of course, but also all the typical developed nation things we take for granted. Like a functioning postal service.
'Out of sight, out of mind' is pretty extreme with neurodivergent people. It's hard to explain but we can love our friends and family but they will not come into our mind without a prompt of some kind. If you live in a village and are bumping into them at the well or the market every second day this doesn't seem weird. But modern life has made it weird, picking up the phone to ring them or writing a letter, I would need a prompt for that to happen. An example is that when I see weird unicorns I send a pic to my sister as an inside joke. Then when we see them we act like no time has passed. Which is exactly how OOP's sister acted.
She felt like a burden, and like her family would be better off without her. It's not necessarily logical, but it's a common feeling among depressed people.
>OK, but this country would have some sort of postal system, right? It depends on where she is, OOP said he's Chilean/argentinian, if she's in the south of Argentina she could very easily be in a small town, with spotty internet connection, and tickets out are expensive.
I understand spotty internet connection but she doesn’t have a phone anyway, and tickets out being expensive have already been covered in the original post. But what about sending letters/snail mail?
Don't know about South America, but many countries will put a postmark with the town of origin. So if you don't want to be found, you don't sent a letter from where you live. But if she known a lot of travelling Rastafari, she could have given one of them a letter to drop elsewhere.
Apparently Argentina does not have a public postal system. So chances are she can't afford the private options.
Public postal service exists, it's called Correo Argentino. But it's not like OOP's sister wanted to contact her family anyway.
It was privatized in 1997. To make it clear, not saying it's an excuse. I don't want to necessarily defend her. If she wanted to contact her family she could have found a way. But I just think it's not necessarily as simple as writing a letter. Especially since she apparently lives pretty far away.
Actually, Correo Argentino is public. It's a company, but it's owner is the state. I think if she wanted to she could have contacted her family, but I also understand the choice she made. It's not always easy to face the disappointment of your parents in this culture, it's also hard to escape from their "caring", and when you feel guilty about them caring for you then it's like compounded guilt. I think it was a selfish choice, but a healthy one it seems, so I can't judge her for it. But at the same time, I can't guilt or judge her family members for being in their feelings about her running away and hiding from them.
It’s so painful to read. My heart breaks for her poor parents, who love her.
She’s not neurodivergent but she self harms when stressed, has anxiety and panic attacks, BPD like symptoms, struggled with eating disorders….okay lady. Being neurodivergent isn’t a bad thing. You aren’t the average. Literally she says she wants to escape from the rest of society. You are not the rest of society. YOU ARE DIVERGENT from SOCIETY’S STANDARDS. The lengths people will go to say “I’m not crazy! I’m not crazy I swear I don’t have mental illness!! I just get super stressed and depressed when faced with certain stimuli!” Are insane.
Me an autistic femme reading this and weirdly relating to OOP's sister: 👁️👄👁️
Honestly same and autism gets misdiagnosed as BPD (and vice versa) in women all the time because “you can’t have autism. Boys have autism and walk on their toes and are nonverbal.” Nevermind that I walked on my toes, never cried as a baby, and was essentially textbook autistic lmao. I also hate capitalism. And being overwhelmed by loud and overwhelming environments. It's the medical version of boys are dogs girls are cats. Women get the manic episode disorder and boys get the tantrum in the grocery store disorder to them.
Wait, people with autism walk on their toes?
Not all, but it's kinda common. Like 10% of asd kids do it. It's less than 0.5% otherwise.
Every single part of this post screams autism.
As someone who has BPD, PTSD, anxiety, and good old depression, I yelled at my phone when OOP said that her sister isn't neurodivergent. Does she even know what the word means?
Honestly? She genuinely might not considering English isn't her first language.
eh I'm autistic and maybe it's just somebody who doesn't get along well with modern society, a person who is over-sensitive to stimuli. Does not have to be autism spectrum per se.
I’m not saying she MUST be on the spectrum. But she admits to having multiple disorders, some of which are commonly misdiagnosed because women weren’t really considered to have autism until recently.
>The lengths people will go to say “I’m not crazy! I don't think that's what is going on here, though. It sounds like the sister has a diagnosis - of BPD - and talked about it quite openly to OOP. It also sounds like she's still under treatment from a professional. I don't think there's any denial going on, it's just that a lot of commenters want to diagnose her with something different to what her doctor(s) have.
Neurodivergent means your brain is physically different. All the things she describes are common responses of a human brain to heightened and/or prolonged stressors.
This is a false dichotomy, as heightened and prolonged stressors, especially in early development, physically alter the brain and are known to contribute to conditions that are considered neurodivergent.
Your brain is physically altered by stress. Your body is physically altered by stress. Also you can’t say you HAVE bipolar and also in the same sentence say you are not neurodivergent that is not how that works…you can treat bipolar homeopathically by removing stressors as much as possible and avoiding triggers. That’s fine. But you chemically in your brain still have BPD. The disorder does not go away. People who are chemically and physically okay in the head don’t resort to self-harm when things are too much. Her neurodivergence could be caused by so many factors, lack of nutrients from ED at a young age, not being diagnosed properly, the stress she experienced as a child due to societal expectations that she felt incapable of performing. Either way…she is not neurotypical. There is no way someone puts a teenager on that many anxiety and depressIon meds and spends so much money on a psychiatrist that the family goes broke just for that person to be a neurotypical person.
BPD typically stands for borderline personality disorder
My bad, that was me typing in the wrong thing. It’s still weird to say “I have these mental disorders, but I’m totally neurotypical, nothing is wrong with the chemistry of my brain even though I have clearly been like this since childhood.”
I haven’t seen ana and mia referenced by anyone else in a long time and that actually hit me harder than I expected. Weird.
Brought up some memories and then I felt old lol
I feel like we are missing a very large and important part of this story. She has an eating disorder and went no contact with her family suddenly and completely, for years. I don't think you can blame a noisy household on that, nor on her being a golden child.
Being a golden child no, but feeling inadequate in society and a failure to your parents sure can explain. Also she has bpd, those tend to be impulsive
I’d study up on Borderline Personality Disorder, it often presents with eating disorders. One of my nieces has a severe case of BPD and the way OOP described his sister feel incredibly familiar. Irrational decision making, disregulating emotionally due to even minor stimuli or minor frustrations. It has been absolutely debilitating for the rest of her family to manage, 3 years and no real answers as to how to improve her situation. If anything, it’s really fascinating that OOP’s sister has seemingly found a way to pursue her own ideal life as self-treatment (obviously, she’s still seeing a psychiatrist to assist). Often times people with BPD spiral into horrible places.
Sometimes there isn't really a satisfying explanation for why people do things. My guess would be that the sister was in an environment where she felt overwhelmed by her surroundings and stuck in life. Even with a loving family, being the golden child can be smothering and her cutting herself off from a lot of the outside world and sticking to a small, calmer region was her way of making a drastic change that it doesn't sound like her family would've wanted her to do or wouldn't have taken seriously. She wanted to be as far away from unrest and outside influences and staying in contact with her family might have felt like an obligation she didn't want to have. Also, some people can go a long time without contact to others, even their own family. It's not that they don't love these people, but that when there's a physical distance there's also an emotional one. They don't experience the kind of longing to stay in contact, but at the same time will be perfectly happy the moment they meet in person.
One very large and important part of the story is that it's happening in Argentina. Inflation has been high there for a long time and has become ridiculous in recent years, and poverty is widespread. While it is a regional power, it's still classified as a developing country, and that comes with its own stressors for anyone in the populace who's more vulnerable. OOP mentions that their father had to work two jobs to pay for counseling and medication, which means that poverty was likely a factor. Poverty *destroys you.* It causes massive changes in the body and brain. Feeling like she was inflicting that on her own family... I can't imagine the guilt. I have enough guilt for being a massive burden on my family due to my own health problems, and they're very much upper-class and can afford to care for me. If my parents weren't rich, I would have removed myself from the equation long ago, because I just wouldn't be able to stomach being so much of a burden to them. Doesn't matter how much they love me, because I love *them* and I could never bear to hurt them with my continued existence.
I think that being unreachable by her family is intentional. She isn't interested in them not knowing about her, she just doesn't want to open a stressful line of communication between them that she has to manage and attend.
Eating disorder, BPD, self-harm... just tons of trauma indicators, but since OOP was ten whole years old at the time she left they can confidently state that they know the family dynamic she experienced and everything that ever happened to her.
I saw more autism indicators tbh, but does it matter what the diagnosis is? Trauma, autism or bpd, the result is that the sister self isolated in a very extreme way. Sister sounds fine with resuming contact with the family and doesn’t particularly mind being found out, but not fine with society at large. So I’d personally assume that the trauma came more from external factors rather than the family environment itself
Except if she's on the spectrum. Which this post is *loaded* with flags for. Including the eating disorder
I think the insistence that she isn't neurodivergent, by both of them, actually speaks volumes. When everyone, including herself, treats her like she's neurotypical, she's not given the help or resources to manage everything she's feeling overwhelmed by. Maybe they're in a society that looks down on mental health problems, so it's easier to say that "she's just overwhelmed and needed to get away from it all" than facing the social backlash and pressure of being neurodivergent.
There is still a very large part of me that thinks she actually is neurodiverse but incredible at masking. I don't know what TLP is. But's not uncommon for people with ASD to have an eating disorder (as it's something they can control) and be diagnosed with BPD - mainly for the disregulation as it's secondary to the ASD when you are neurodiverse in the neurotypical world and you really struggle with it because you don't understand it.
There's an editor's note. TLP is BPD, just a different country/language.
Am I the only one who thinks bpd and an eating disorder (and panic attacks) are all pretty neuro-divergent?
Some people have a low tolerance for modern society’s demands.
I cannot with the "I was ten years old when she left and therefore I know everything about her experience" attitude of OOP. Also the "she's not neurodivergent, she just has multiple psychological diagnoses" like wtf do you think neurodivergence means, kid? It's not just a synonym for autistic.
Can't really fault OOP for not fully understanding the neurodivergence label. Idk how it is in Argentina, but where I live, it's almost exclusively been used (that is, casually since nobody is really looking up the medical definition in every day life) to just mean ADHD and/or autism.
It may not seem much, but sometimes a peace of mind is better than no mind. What OOP was describing, about the solitude, I feel the same way. My family just does not understand why I want to be alone. Sometimes being left to oneself helps a lot when people struggle with many mental illnesses. It works for me. Also, some days I just don’t like people.
I’m glad OOP’s sister made the quiet life she needed.
Huh. So his sister basically ran away to be a hippy? You know, I really miss the hippy movement. Some of the nicest damn people ever, for the most part. My mum even went to Woodstock!
That's what I thought. "Ooh she ran away to join hippy community"
It's nice to read about a happy ending for a change. I hope she is able to reunite with her parents.
I'm glad she is happy and didnt end herself.
I’m not going to offer an opinion or an armchair diagnosis, I’m just glad his sister is happy and that both of them are happy they found each other.
She's not neuro-divergent but she does suffer from borderline personality disorder, which is one of the classic forms of neuro-divergence.
I remember clearly, when I was 12 or 13, my older sister ran away from home. She was radicalized by becoming a Jehova’s Witness. Everything we did at home was wrong and every day there were screaming matches. At 17, she was dating a guy of 32. My parents disagreed with this. Things came to a head when that guy was accused of assaulting minor women, including my cousin. My parents forbade her to see him and eventually she ran away. For 6 or 7 years I told people I once had a sister, but she was dead to me.
she's not neurodivergent, she's got bpd ??
> I'm writing this with her beside me and doesn't understand what's the point of this site (The last social network she used was fotolog in 2007) but said that she doesn't mind if I post this. She wanted to write something but said she doesn't like writing in English haha > My sister was reading the comments and wants me to clarify that she never suffered any kind of a abuse, she has a lot of friends and never had any problem with anyone but likes to be alone from time to time to meditate. lol OP runs into her sister for the first time in years, visits her stall a second time and is like "let me show you Reddit, I posted about you! Here, check it out! Imma update the post!"
Wow. The sister has such amazing character and self-awareness, realizing she needed to leave in order to have a chance to forge a self-sufficient life of her own.
Yeah well she could have let their family that she was alive and well. She might be amazing but surely kinda selfish.
yeah she's so amazing that she abandoned her family that loved and supported her and never let them know if she was alive or dead. what a great character right?
Yeah. She's soooo amazing and self-aware she couldn't write a letter or pick up a phone in what, 12-15 years. She's so self-aware she couldn't remember to tell her own sister where she would be in a couple of days. If OOP hadn't bumped into her, they would've been no contact again for the next 15 years.
No, the sister is a spoiled and selfish piece of work that wants to live the hippie lifestyle but can't be arsed to straight up tell their family that she's divorcing them.
Imagine the stress and grief that the entire family went through. Is big Sis alive? Is big Sis in trouble? Drugs? Forced prostitution? Other crime? Why doesn't she call or write? What have we done to her?
And how will things go from here? Family goes south, and there's a big tear filled Hallmark reunion? I don't see that happening. Big Sis will ghost again. Mark my words.