Blurts & Spasms

There is often a profound misunderstanding about BPD when people assert it is the result of childhood trauma. Most folks who have studied the literature and been involved in treatment and coping strategies for BPD learn that it is actually a genetically transmitted condition — much like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. That is not to say that children of a parent with BPD will always inherit it…but it is very often the case that a child exhibiting BPD characteristics has at least one parent who also has BPD. Childhood trauma does accompany a BPD diagnosis because of that borderline parent’s behavior, to be sure — the but the abuse did not “cause” the BPD, it just created an “incompatible environment” for a child with a strong genetic disposition to become borderline.

That said, the “feeling like they don’t deserve to be loved or cared for” description falls short of what is really going on for most borderlines. In reality, the intensified emotions, dysregulation, and consequent extreme behaviors exhibited by borderlines are a difficult-to-manage or endure state of being for them — not a reaction to some sort of underlying conviction about being unlovable or unable to be cared for. For example, if someone with BPD is feeling profound shame, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, or other debilitating wave of emotion, the intensity of that experience and how it frequently manifests in behaviors may appear (from the outside) to be a willful rejection of love — or a conscious sabotaging of friendships, family relationships, etc. But that is really not at all what is going on.

Instead, the way to better understand such situations is to imagine a person who is drowning in a stormy sea. That drowning person is not “choosing” to pull a person who is trying to help them underwater, or be deliberately unskillful as they desperately try to clamber into a boat or lose their grip on a life jacket, or consciously deciding that just giving up and sinking to the bottom of the sea is a “reasonable” choice. THEY ARE DROWNING IN A RELENTLESS STORM, and amidst that struggle there may be all sorts of intense emotions and negative self-talk that accompany profound panic and despair…but it is not some sort of calculated conclusion to embrace an unloveable identity. It is more akin to a desperate struggle to survive…and sometimes becomes so overwhelming that they give up.

I hope that helps paint a different picture of the behaviors being alluded to.

My 2 cents.