How TV representation helped me come to terms with being a woman with a highly stigmatised mental illness

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend *sounds* like it should be a show that uses a tired stereotype about women for cheap laughs. It also *sounds* like it should be a show that diminishes the serious nature of mental illness and the struggles of living with one. It is, in fact, the complete opposite. When I first started researching into the representation of women with mental illnesses on the small screen for my undergrad dissertation I had only seen the first two seasons of the show and less than half of the third, but had already fallen in love with it.

Rachel Bloom’s character of Rebecca Bunch was obviously mentally ill, but oh-so endearing in her attempts to feel better about herself and her life. Yes, she follows a man to some dump in California, but it is made very clear early on that this is because she hadn’t yet been shown a way to love herself, so she strove to be loved by a man who rejected her when she was in her teens. And Rebecca is not the only character who has issues; almost all of the characters in the show have one problem or another - men included - and they all make mistakes. Terrible, cringe-worthy mistakes. The title takes a throwaway comment made by some men when referring to an ex-girlfriend and adds a human face to it. A human face who is an excellent singer, by the way.

I started to do research into the representation of mental illness in women in TV shows and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was one of the shows I had considered looking into. I told a friend about this who also watched the show, and she insisted that I catch up and watch the remainder of the third season which she had already watched. Dismissively I thought ‘yeah, yeah I’ll get around to it’, but first I wanted to get a chunk of this research out of the way, so I googled Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and mental illness in conjuncture knowing that I would get plenty of results. Some of the results, however, were ones which I did not expect to get. (Spoiler alert if you have yet to reach episode 6 of season 3.)

There were dozens of articles written about how Rebecca Bunch was finally given a diagnosis, and it was that of Borderline Personality Disorder. I had to go and sit out on my balcony and cry for a bit, and it wasn’t a sad crying at that. It was rather crying with unexplainable relief, because a couple days earlier I had been diagnosed with BPD myself. Then, after about ten minutes of smile-crying, I went indoors and watched the episode in which she gets her diagnosis. I cried a whole lot more during that episode, especially when she sang that absolutely fantastic song ‘A Diagnosis’, which perfectly encapsulated what it felt like to finally be told by a psychiatrist that I had BPD (or as it is also known EUPD - Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder).

In the show Rebecca initially didn’t take the news as well as I did, and for good reason. BPD is a highly stigmatised mental illness which tends to be sensationalised, and portrayals of anyone with it in the media - especially portrayals of women - are horrific. Ever seen Fatal Attraction? That tends to be what women with BPD are seen as being like. A literal crazy ex-girlfriend who will boil your bunny and try to stab you. Shows like Criminal Minds have had serial killers with BPD, and before too long ago if you looked into BPD online you’d be overwhelmed with results detailing how awful people with it are, how you should avoid relationships with them at all costs, how even psychiatrists avoid taking on patients who are Borderline. Comforting, right? So when Rebecca googles her disorder she freaks out, and demands a new diagnosis. All of her happiness and relief disappears when she realises that the attitude towards BPD is overwhelmingly negative. Unlike Rebecca I had been through that phase long before I was ever told by a psychiatrist what was wrong with me, because I’d known for almost a year beforehand. I am definitely not encouraging self-diagnosis because in general it is a terrible idea, but after reading a book by a woman who has BPD, with a main character who also has BPD (Borderline: The Arcadia Project by Mishell Baker if anyone is interested) I thought ‘wait a second, this sounds like me’. I did do a lot of research afterwards and consulted a doctor who couldn’t diagnose me but agreed wholeheartedly that my behaviour fitted the profile.

I’d been kind of at peace with what I had long before I was ever officially told, and it really did take a long time to be told; the first time I saw a psychiatrist hoping for a diagnosis they told me that I had the traits of a Borderline, but they did not want to say it officially due to the stigma that surrounded it. I felt utterly misunderstood and out of place, and weirdly getting a diagnosis meant everything to me. I was aware that as a woman I could easily be dubbed as crazy, overly emotional or ‘on my period’, but despite the ignorance that I knew I would face it was far more important for me to know that I was not alone. Other people suffered from this too. So, when I got my diagnosis I was elated, and I was even more elated a couple of days later when I saw that Rebecca Bunch was also a Borderline. She was loveable, funny, talented and after she came to term with her disorder her life didn’t revolve around it. She got into shenanigans which had nothing to do with the fact that she was mentally ill, but rather had to do with the fact that she was human and made mistakes. Suddenly she realised that the man she thought would fix all of her problems did not matter. She had to learn to love herself and look after herself first, and it made me realise that just having the diagnosis wasn’t enough, I had to do the same in order to move on with my life.

But what did having BPD mean for me as a woman? According to statistics women were more likely than men to be diagnosed with the disorder, so did it mean that I was just more prone to it due to my gender? Would I be taken even less seriously now that I was - by definition - ‘emotionally unstable’? I’d spent years of my youth as one of the most openly feminist kids in my school, building up an emotional wall as I was battered with ignorance and mockery by teenage boys who were yet to even develop chest hair, earning respect slowly but surely. I was terrified that I would suddenly be labelled as ‘crazy’ and never listened to again.

The fact is that BPD is more commonly seen as a ‘woman’s disease’, according the the book I Hate You Don’t Leave Me by Hal Straus and Jerold Jay Kreisman, due to the fact that the impulsivity and identity issues which come hand in hand with BPD are often seen as simply male traits. Often men might be told they are alcoholics or have anger issues and go their entire lives without a diagnosis. Even being ‘promiscuous’ is considered a symptom of BPD for women. Susanna Kaysen - author of Girl, Interrupted - said it best; “How many girls do you think a seventeen-year- old boy would have to screw to earn the label "compulsively promiscuous”? [...] Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess—if they ever put that label on boys, which I don't recall their doing”.

All of these things, alongside the actual complexities of living with a mental illness like BPD, can make it a terrifying experience. The stigmatisation that comes along with the label is one of the worst things about it, and one of the things that kept me quiet about my diagnosis for so long. Only my closest friends even knew I had any problems. And then, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend happened, and it opened up a whole lot of conversation, with countless articles being written by people who said “hey, I have that too!” Suddenly I felt a little less worried about my diagnosis and what people would think of me because having this type of representation put a little crack in the door that is understanding BPD. I’m not ashamed of my diagnosis, I’m not ashamed of having to take pills and go to therapy, and I’m not ashamed of who I am becoming. It feels nice, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend made it just that little bit easier for me.