Chicken and egg: your thoughts

[inkling16]

Since our daughter was diagnosed last year, I have done a lot of reading and research as well as investigation into my family tree, where I have found hints of personality disorders in several branches. (It's all inference at this point, but there's a suspiciously large number of dead-ends--people who never married or only had one child, broken marriages long before it was the norm, a couple of suicides, etc.) I have also read frequently that people with BPD are more likely to have been abused as children.

The implication is that being abused "causes" BPD, or at least sets it off in people who are pre-disposed. However, our daughter has shown emotional hypersensitivity almost from the beginning, and at many times during her childhood it has taken the patience of a saint to parent her without resorting to yelling or hitting. Since I am not a saint, I cop to yelling from time to time, though not since the diagnosis, but I'm not a hitter. If I were, I'm really not sure what would have happened, but it wouldn't have been good.

So I've been wondering lately, is it possible that instead of abuse causing or setting off BPD, kids with BPD tendencies are just more likely to behave in a way that elicits abusive behavior in adults who are capable of it, and they'd be BPD with or without abuse? My dad told me that his mother (who almost certainly had BPD) had an unhappy childhood because her stepmother didn't like her, and I'm wondering if she was just a hard person to like, even then. (We never met because she passed away before I was born.) Some of the things he told me about her suggest that she abused him, though he didn't see it that way, but he didn't have BPD.

I'm thinking about this because so many parents on this board have BPD kids who were demonstrably not abused. And a good friend of mine was severely abused by his BPD mom, but he does not have BPD. PTSD for sure, but not BPD.

Thoughts, anyone?

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Eclaire5]

Well, I am not sure if their behavior is what causes them to be abused, but since they are already inherently hypersensitive, I am pretty sure that any abuse would exacerbate their BPD tendencies. My daughter is what you would consider a fairly mild BPD, but I am sure if she had grown up in an abusive or chaotic environment she would be a raging borderline, just like her biological father was. I think in most of our cases in this board, our children were already born with this horrible disease due to their genetic make-up. I truly believe that the in the “BPD” cases where there is a prominent history of trauma, the patients suffer from what some therapist call Chronic Post-Traumatic Syndrome (which is different from just regular PTSD), and this disorder can be easily mistaken for BPD or Dissociative Personality Disorder. Not that those people were already prone to have a personality disorder, but the severe abuse caused such severe psychological damage that they end up having very similar symptoms to BPD.

[pessim-optimist]

Hi again inkling16,

Ultimately, there's the combination of genetic pre-disposition, and environmental factors. That explains why someone can be outright abused and not develop BPD, and someone develops BPD with no abuse present.

Of course, there are many families here who have children that have gone through trauma such as being adopted, or experiencing divorce or death of a parent (that again for a genetically pre-disposed child may be a contributing factor in development of BPD)

I did read somewhere that the baby's personality, sensitivity, extreme colickyness etc. has an effect on their caregivers, and CAN elicit negative emotions, and even negative treatment (less attention, less positive attention, in extreme cases - abuse). There are definitely interpersonal dynamics involved.

What I found interesting is what some books call "goodness of fit". For example parents and child who are similar in their emotional sensitivity. If they are very different, parents may not know how to properly validate their child's experience and how to teach him/her to deal with the strong emotions he/she may have. The result: an INVALIDATING ENVIRONMENT for the child. That does not require any abuse, but a child with BPD pre-disposition may develop BPD.

From my experience and that of people here on this board, I came to the conclusion, that there may have been many of us who simply did not know the hows and whys that made our children tick. Does that amount to abuse? NO! Could that have CONTRIBUTED to them developing BPD? YES... .  Could that have CAUSED them to develop BPD? NO. Should we beat ourselves up about it? NO.

For example: my sd32 - if her mother did not happen to have BPD, and if her parents did not divorce, she may have not developed BPD. But then again, she may have developed it anyway... .  

For whatever reason, our loved ones DID develop BPD. That's the bad news. The good news is, now that we know about it, we can learn to validate their experience and help them help themselves to heal and "grow' emotionally, to become whole and healthy... .  

[vivekananda]

yep, the wise ones got here first   pessi-O and éclair both have words of wisdom.

here's how I see it:

BPD can be genetic and is environmental. Environmental can be the family (usually is), the community, the culture (most definitely is).

genetic: like you I have the traits all through my family and I believe dh (dear husband's) family too. But speaking of my experience only, I had  . You know, if you sleep with dogs you wake up with fleas. Well there are many in my family who are not BPD but who are very emotionally immature etc... .  it's the fleas... .  I look at myself as a young mum, in the circumstances I had my dd, and I see my fleas aplenty. I struggled to cope with a very difficult baby who was oversensitive and more.

family: I learnt about validation and more since I joined the site here. Someone with a BPD predisposition needs an environment that is constantly validating. I don't think that would have described our family. We would have seen ourselves as validating (but I know now that wasn't quite so), as positive thinkers, as kind and gentle, but for our dd, this translated as invalidating. And then there were life circumstances that were most unhelpful and distressing at the key age of 18.

community: our community wasn't probably the best. We were the odd ones out in a rural environment - we weren't conservative, church going or famers and we were from out of town. We were very isolated from any supports.

culture: ours has to be the sort of culture that is most invalidating. Our materialistic, consumerist, individualist culture does not value sensitive souls overmuch. Popular culture is most unhelpful.

It's a potent mix. I am no longer lost in the FOG (fear obligation and guilt), I was the best mum possible and I know if my dd wasn't predisposed, we could have had a 'normal' family. But we are what we are and it was what it was. Today I am working on developing the best relationship I can with my dd and working hard to change myself to be the type of validating person that I want to be.

Cheers,

Vivek