This is a thread to discuss the role of epigenetics in all this. Is BPD just generations of messed up epigenetics from repeated trauma attached in the form of methylated genes? What's her dad like, her mum, her grandparents? If they have problems, this probably passed on to her, as well as affected how they treated her in childhood. And that's why she can't help it, and that's why you too are going to have damaged genes if you stick around to take the pain.
The trauma they put you through left you with depression and anxiety right? ___ed up your social life and your self esteem and left you feeling like something terribly wrong had happened to your sanity.
The theory of epigenetics, and I don't know enough about this, would suggest that she has left her cruel imprint on your brain and your genes in the form of her own early and likely inherited imprints.
A study on rats proved that the way the mother rat interacted with her kids vastly affected whether the kids would have anxiety problems and the like. The mother rat when inseminated by a male rat that had been bullied for 10 days produced babies that turned out to have the same heights of anxiety etc. that the stress of bullying had done to the father. Furhermore, these rats went on to create the same in their kids. Interestingly too, the mother rat was more likely to raise the kids badly when the bullied weak rat had sex with her and stayed to meet the kids (rather than artificially inseminated and not being around to help raise)
This is still a science in progress but it's got a lot of good evidence. Maybe your BPD has (obviously) picked up these highly damaging genetic attachments from childhood, and is why she passes them on to you. The danger is that because you are the bullied rat and it's ___ed you up, YOU are going to pass this stress on to your kids. She's ruining your genes.
This happens through methyl groups that attach to genes, and develop from behavioural experiences and other things (like drugs, alcohol, rape)- she has lots of bad experiences of things like this, and it's interesting to wonder how much of her behaviour is a result of epigenetics, and suggests that you need to get away from that if you don't want to pass on bad methylated genes to your kids.
Anyone know more about this and how epigenetics may apply to BPDs in general?
The study:
www.discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes
