Brain region associated with trust impaired in BPs - Baylor College of Med. findings

Okay. Thanks. I'm going to use a Mom as the BP just for the sake of this arguement. Here is my logic to the root cause of BPD as I know it. I usually do short posts and don't read long ones. I hope this one goes a long way to meeting our goal of help others.

Controlling Mom disallows self thought.
This may not be easy to explain but imagine if you were at a very young formative age, say 5 years old, and had a very overpowering mother. And this highest authority figure, your "One and Only MOTHER", was not only incapable of teaching you HOW to think but also forcefully told you WHAT to think. God help you if you tried to question anything or argue a point! You would be attacked with angry eyes and harsh verbal insults, condemmed for being disrespectful, and shamed for even thinking about challenging her. (get it? Fear, Obligation and Guilt ... in that order - FOG) I've seen this traumatic emotional abuse dished out to young children under the guise of "discipline"; especially in cases where the Mother is religiously obsessed.

Fear of self thought is deeply embeded.
At this very early stage of self development, basically when your brain is a blank hard drive and the operating system is being written to it, you are extremely vulnerable to recieving a deep rooted software virus. My exposure to someone with anxiety disorder has taught me about how phobias develop and how powerful they can be in forcing someone into irrational behavior. If a young mind is traumatized into being fearful about thinking for themself, they may develop a phobia about self thought. Phobias are based on some "cure" that heightens emotion and stimulates powerful avoidance behavior. Then the fight or flight emotions take over the logic processes of the brain and avoidance behaviors are learned as the solution. The phobia is never disabled because avoidance behavior becomes the solution of choice, even if illogical.

A good sense of self requires progressive thoughts about the self.
The next step of my theory is that the brain of someone who has been given a phobia about self-though is then rendered incapable of developing a good sense of self. When I say self-thought I mean: Thinking for themself about their self. A good and normal sense of self is attained through progressive itterations of evaluative feedback cycles. Basically "How am I doing?", "Oh. Not great. Okay, what if I try this next time?", "No, that was dumb too." and on-and-on until valid confidence is earned. Avoidance of self-thought results in randomly trying on new personas and discarding them with dissatisfaction while never progressing to higher develpment because the the feedback loop of performance assessment is not operating. They use splitting (good idea - bad idea) to assess their self performance without being capable of walking through a thorough reasoning process. They have a phobia that results in advoidance of self-thought. The can't think for themselve so they just jump to the next example of self they are envious of. Maybe it's a sister or a friend that seems to be happy. So the BP just trys to emulate that next self image they wish they had.

From this root cause, the rest gets messy.
There is a lot of dicussion about the variability of BP manifestations. Everyone is unique and each situation is different. Non BPs respond to BPs in various ways too. Other mental and personality disorders evolve from this root cause and can mask the true problem. Different BPs prefer different emotional solutions to this root cause of malfunctioning self-thought and some even develop suitable logical solutions (as I believe is the case in high functioning BPs to some degree).

Seeking a root cause is a tedious task.
To really get to a root cause of something, the proposed cause has to valid in all cases (otherwise it is not a root cause). Using best guesses, persistance, and trial and error, a reasonable theory is proposed and then tested for validity. Skilled scientific methodology is what I like to call it. This root cause theory of mine appears to be valid within the realm of knowledge and experience I have with BPD. At least for me. Others may have differeing exposure to BPD and might be able add or subtract logic to this.

Understanding a problem is only half the solution.
I am grateful for all the knowledge I have already been able to attain regarding BPD. It is truely awesome how helpful is has been. We have incredible resources here to help so many in so many ways. If we can nail the root cause if this, the rest of the job still needs to be defined regarding traeatment and prevention.

Conclusion - Helping the kids using my theory.
I've become very proactive in helping my kids think for themself. I tell them they have free run to make decisions for themselves but first they have to hear me out. That is my only condition. I have seem them develope a better sense of self by getting them to think for themselves and letting them decide to fall on their own. Really just like the old saying about letting them fall as they learn to walk. My theory stresses the heightened sensitivity to developing BPD very early in development. It implies that very proactive parrental training is essential for its prevention and also implies that treatment for those that have developed BPD must go very deep into their processes of self thought.