Development of BPD, thoughts?

[Our abuse recovery guide]

My mum and I are convinced that my sister has always displayed BPD behaviour, even as a very young child. For example, she displayed some behaviour that may have led to an interpretation of being autistic (according to my mum who worked in childcare for many years) and she learnt very quickly how to manipulate us in to doing what she wanted without the ability to empathise or take responsibility for her actions. She has always had a short fuse and displayed violent behaviour and I have scars from fights when we were little.

Her behaviour spiralled when she was 15 and that's when it became painfully obvious that she had mental health problems but wasn't formally diagnosed until she was 20. All the literature I have read suggests that BPD develops because of an early childhood trauma but apart from our parents splitting when we were 4 I can't think of anything that could have been traumatic enough to lead to the development of BPD and mental illness runs strongly in my mum's side of the family. I am curious to find out what your experiences are with BPD. Do you think it is purely down to experience or do you think people are born with it?

[Blondy90]

My mum and I are convinced that my sister has always displayed BPD behaviour, even as a very young child. For example, she displayed some behaviour that may have led to an interpretation of being autistic (according to my mum who worked in childcare for many years) and she learnt very quickly how to manipulate us in to doing what she wanted without the ability to empathise or take responsibility for her actions. She has always had a short fuse and displayed violent behaviour and I have scars from fights when we were little.

Her behaviour spiralled when she was 15 and that's when it became painfully obvious that she had mental health problems but wasn't formally diagnosed until she was 20. All the literature I have read suggests that BPD develops because of an early childhood trauma but apart from our parents splitting when we were 4 I can't think of anything that could have been traumatic enough to lead to the development of BPD and mental illness runs strongly in my mum's side of the family. I am curious to find out what your experiences are with BPD. Do you think it is purely down to experience or do you think people are born with it?

[Skip]

This may help. Does any of this sound like her experience?

This discussion is good, too.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=49127.0





Did I cause my child to have BPD? Am I at fault?

https://bpdfamily.com/parenting/01.htm

The research literature and training materials for mental health professionals make references to the purported incidence of abuse—intentional or inadvertent—occurring among people diagnosed with BPD. It is very hard to sit face to face with medical professionals and wonder what they are thinking about you or your family, just as it is hard for clinicians to face people who may well have contributed to distress in their patient. And this question often looms with family, co-workers, and friends as well.

In a study conducted by Marijn A Distel, PhD.of 5,496 twin siblings*, 42% of the people with BPD were reared in the same environment as siblings without the disorder. This suggests a genetic predisposition for BPD.

So is it possible that your parenting style was ineffective or damaging enough to lead to the manipulation, fears of abandonment, self-mutilation, or attempted suicides?

Most clinicans will tell a concerned caregiver that "no, you are not the cause of the illness" and "yes, you likely did things that were harmful to a child with a BPD predisposition".

It's a complex answer.

What is not complex is that our child is truly struggling and as their parents, if we don't try to help, no one else will. Dixianne Penney, Dr.P.H say, "right now it is difficult to do what you must do and that is, to put your own feelings aside and focus on getting the help needed and providing the support the person with BPD requires".

What role we had in this could be anything from spilling some of our "grown-up" adult struggles onto our child, to simply not knowing that we had a special needs kid - to everything in between.

Part of helping them and helping the family is to learn what it was that we did or didn't do and be willing to admit it and open to change our approach to the relationship for the betterment of all.

That is what we are all here to do. To take an honest and hard look at everything and find out how to make things better.

Share your thoughts here.

hit______

*Heritability of borderline personality disorder features is similar across three countries.

Distel MA, Trull TJ, Derom CA, Thiery EW, Grimmer MA, Martin NG, Willemsen G, Boomsma DI.

.Psychol Med. 2008 Sep;38(9):1219-29. Epub 2007 Nov 8.

© bpdfamily.com • 1998-2013

The research literature and training materials for mental health professionals make references to the purported incidence of abuse—intentional or inadvertent—occurring among people diagnosed with BPD. It is very hard to sit face to face with medical professionals and wonder what they are thinking about you or your family, just as it is hard for clinicians to face people who may well have contributed to distress in their patient. And this question often looms with family, co-workers, and friends as well.

In a study conducted by Marijn A Distel, PhD.of 5,496 twin siblings*, 42% of the people with BPD were reared in the same environment as siblings without the disorder. This suggests a genetic predisposition for BPD.

So is it possible that your parenting style was ineffective or damaging enough to lead to the manipulation, fears of abandonment, self-mutilation, or attempted suicides?

Most clinicans will tell a concerned caregiver that "no, you are not the cause of the illness" and "yes, you likely did things that were harmful to a child with a BPD predisposition".

It's a complex answer.

What is not complex is that our child is truly struggling and as their parents, if we don't try to help, no one else will. Dixianne Penney, Dr.P.H say, "right now it is difficult to do what you must do and that is, to put your own feelings aside and focus on getting the help needed and providing the support the person with BPD requires".

What role we had in this could be anything from spilling some of our "grown-up" adult struggles onto our child, to simply not knowing that we had a special needs kid - to everything in between.

Part of helping them and helping the family is to learn what it was that we did or didn't do and be willing to admit it and open to change our approach to the relationship for the betterment of all.

That is what we are all here to do. To take an honest and hard look at everything and find out how to make things better.

Share your thoughts here.

hit______

*Heritability of borderline personality disorder features is similar across three countries.

Distel MA, Trull TJ, Derom CA, Thiery EW, Grimmer MA, Martin NG, Willemsen G, Boomsma DI.

.Psychol Med. 2008 Sep;38(9):1219-29. Epub 2007 Nov 8.

© bpdfamily.com • 1998-2013

[wkjkek]

This is a very good question Blondy90. I wonder the same thing but more and more I come down to genetics playing a huge role and then of course, environment always affects us. But I will always look at genetics with my sister.

We were both adopted, me at 7-10 days, and my sister at 3 months. We are not biologically related. Unless there was an enormous trauma within those 3 months, then trauma is not the factor. Unless one considers adoption as a trauma and some experts do. Would she even have memories that young? We grew up with terrific parents and she suffered no abuse or trauma growing up with me.

Here's where I begin to really focus on biology... . my sister's biological mother and father had another child together a year after my sister was born and she was also given up for adoption. They eventually married and had two more children. My sister has three 100% biological siblings.

I have met one sibling raised by the biological parents and my sister has talked a great deal over the years about her adopted sibling (whom she has met and gotten to know well) and her biological mother (whom she has met). They are all so screwed up that it is really sad. The more I hear about them the more I believe her biological mother was also BPD and my best guess is that her adopted sibling and certainly her bother (whom I have met) also have personality disorders. The odds that the third sibling is mentally healthy are not so good given the rest of them. I don't think my sister stood a chance.

[Blondy90]

Thanks Skip, that's really interesting! It's definitely given me something to think about.

Wkjkek I've largely come to the same conclusion. On my mum's side of the family there has been paranoid skizophrenia, Munchausen's biproxy, PTSD and other mental illness. My mum herself suffered from clinical depression and bipolar tendancies. I think she would admit that she struggled to be a single parent (we did see my dad but he didn't contribute monetarily) and that her depression meant she sometimes didn't give us the attention we needed but I will say she was a fantastic mum given the circumstances and we were lucky to have doting grandparents who we spent the majority of the time with when my mum was working.

I just can't think of a big enough trauma to trigger BPD in my sister and considering we were bought up in exactly the same environment I do lean more towards genetics being the main answer. As I mentioned before, she had always displayed behaviours pointing to BPD and my mum worked in childcare so she is on the ball with noticing behavioural issues in children. By the time my sister was acting up enough to create her own traumas she was already displaying fully BPD behaviour. Her behaviour spiralled when she hit puberty which I know is common with mental illnesses being triggered or getting worse.

I do see the reasons behind clinicians being unwilling to diagnose mental illness before the age of 18 in the UK but it really would have helped us when her behaviour was out of control to know she had BPD and I do believe that teenagers can display and suffer from mental illness before the age of 18 that can be diagnosed. It's just such a shame so much mental illness gets passed off as 'normal teenage behaviour'.

I'll keep looking in to this though, it's really fascinating.

[Tayto]

from my own experiences with a Bpd mother and myself who is in remission with BPD I have found in myself and others that I know to be highly sensitive humans but to the extreme of emotions.

I sat with a class of  people with BPD doing DBT training.

I will give names but not real names so I can remember them more clearly.

michelle came from a very loving home with both parents loving and kind. she believes her being triggered into BPD was when she was doing a ballet class her substitute teacher mocked her on front of the other students which caused her to retract from society.

Sabrina had a loving father but her mother always complained that nothing she did was good enough, she believes this was her trigger.

Mike had a father who never showed him emotion and never gave him praise.

Dereck, came from an alchoholic family with both parents abusing them verbally and shouting a lot

Penny came from a home where she was abandoned at birth, she was beat daily and out of all the class suffered the most and ended up leaving the course.

John came from an alcoholic family with abuse through violence

Jackie came from a loving family in her words, her parents always told her that they loved her and that they were proud of her, her husband died at 29 years old and this triggered her into BPD in her opinion.

the one thing in my opinion that stood out with everyone is they were all highly sensitive, not all were into spiritual life not all came from violent backgrounds but all were highly sensitive.

when I feel happy, its the same happiness as getting married and absorbing all the love that I felt on that duy from my wife and the people that we invited to our wedding, the love I felt was unreal and this is how I feel when I,m happy.

when I,m upset, its the same feeling as loosing a child,there is no greater pain and unfortunately its the same pain all the time once I feel hurt.

every emotion I feel is felt to its extreme, as one person said

its like pouring salt on a body with no skin.


myself I was blown out of the water when I met these three people that in my opinion had come from ok families,it just blew me away to think that anyone can be born with this, it scared me to be honest as my wife and I had carefully planned to have a baby.

I asked the therapist in her opinion how do people get BPD and she said

from abuse, from trauma and from nothing