Causes, Personal Experiences

There are a couple causes Borderline Personality Disorder, and they deal with childhood. The biggest cause is childhood abuse of any form. The other is genes, the disorder running in the family.

Now since the causes are so straight forward in their explanations, all I can really do is speak of my own causes. I'm going to be slightly vague and try to keep my story abridged, but I'll give you the general idea. I'll probably end up elaborating later anyway.

I'll have to start with how I was born. Not physically how I was born, but my temperament. Temperament is your natural predisposition, like where your point of level emotion is.

My therapist used a great example for me, and the best way to describe it is with pictures.

Okay. So there are two babies in a nursery at the hospital, both had been born at the same time on the same day. We will call them Baby A and Baby B just because I don't feel like being too creative.

So babies pretty much cry easily, right? It sucks but it's true. So, something sets them off, like some nurse drops a pan full of syringes, trips, falls, and pokes out her eye and is screaming in pain. These babies are going to start crying. This is where temperament comes in. Baby B has a naturally higher temperament than Baby A.

So, his stress levels are just naturally higher. That means when the nurse pokes out her eye, he's way more upset than the other baby. They start at their respective temperament levels and their stress shoots up.

Poor babies. There's even more noise as people come in with a gourney to wheel out the nurse. But once she's gone and peace and quiet is restored, the babies can finally calm back down. But, because of their temperament levels, Baby B is still going to be pretty stressed and can have his anger set off like a trigger once again.

So there you go. My explanation wasn't as good as my therapist's and I probably missed something important. Oh, also I am Baby B. Anyway, Temperament is only 50% of the problem. (Or just my problem, it all depends).

The other 50% is the presence of an Invalidating Environment. That means that where I (or you or whoever) grew up didn't provide enough validation for them. To explain, I will use my situation.

I have lived with my parents my whole life. When I was a kid, they were still married. With them, no matter what I did or how well I did in school mattered. I have gotten top grades for all years of my life so far, and it doesn't mean anything. I wasn't told "good job", it was just what they expected of me and as long as I met their expectations, there were no problems.

Also, there was a strong lack of affection. Remember years ago when someone made fun of Kobe Bryant or Kobe made fun of someone else, saying they were a bad person because "His mom must have never hugged him enough as a kid"? Well, that's part of my problem. I wasn't given too many hugs or kisses. We didn't hold hands in the store or whatever. Physical contact is very important from birth, especially before the kid can talk and understand what you're saying. Touch, especially a mother's touch, is very important and shows love. Then, once they can speak and understand, it is also important to verbally tell children that you love them and let them know that the good things they do actually ARE good and should be celebrated. I didn't receive that either, of course.

So, Temperament and Invalidating Environment play a huge role in a child's development. For me, it played a very negative role. These things are sort of the whole "setting yourself up for failure" kind of aspect. They didn't flip the switch on giving me a personality disorder, they just screwed up the wiring in the wall and rerouted it straight for disaster.