A Real Affliction: BPD, Culture, and Stigma is an interview podcast that explores how we live with, treat, advocate for, write about, and conceptualize borderline personality disorder, as well as common co-occurring challenges like complex PTSD, eating disorders, and substance use disorder, all of which I’ve experienced. My guests and I will also discuss how literature, film, television, photography, dance, philosophy, the history of medicine, feminist and disability studies, nature, and bioethics reflect, illuminate, and impact the experience and cultural perceptions of BPD. The podcast’s goal is to increase access to effective, compassionate care.
Euphoria’s Cassie: Portraying women with borderline personality disorder traits
What responsibility does a writer/director have when presenting a female character who appears to have BPD traits? Following the series finale of Euphoria, Sam Levinson’s controversial television drama, I discuss the dramatic shift in his writing for Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney, in the third and final season.
1 Sept 2025
Communication strategies for people with BPD and their treatment providers
How can people with BPD and their clinicians communicate more effectively and compassionately with each other? In this solo episode, I draw on my personal experiences and my study of narrative medicine to offer tips for people on both sides of the doctor-patient encounter, especially during the initial visit and collection of the patient’s history. I explain why self-advocacy is so important, particularly for those who identify as women.
Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness
Maya Dusenbery, Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick
Edvard Munch, The Scream
Columbia University narrative medicine program
University of Toronto narrative-based medicine program
28 Aug 2025
“You can't necessarily compare your trauma to someone else's”: Social worker Samantha Dellosso
How does the health care system condition how we see our mental health treatment and diagnoses? In this interview—an excerpt from a much longer conversation—I talk with Samantha Dellosso, a social worker, health administrator, and friend of forty years. She and I discuss Medicaid in the U.S., viewing personality disorders along a spectrum, and how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) don’t necessarily determine who we turn out to be.
Alexander Kriss, Borderline: The Biography of a Personality Disorder
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
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