Borderline Personality Disorder is too often a misunderstood and under diagnosed mental illness. Like most mental illnesses, there is questionable debate over how it works and why it develops. While there is some research that supports the possibility that it may be genetic, most research so far has pointed to Borderline Personality Disorder stemming from traumatic childhood events that had never been properly handled by parents and/or caregivers. This is not to point blame, but hopefully to raise awareness.
Borderlines are most typically women and most frequently occur in people who have experienced a traumatic event as a child. Most Borderlines present with similar histories; some kind of abuse, mistreatment, neglect, and/or abandonment as a child AND no help or therapy to address said issues.
What is so often overlooked is that a child’s mind is pliable, easily influenced, lacking experience, and without the learned ability to rationalize and to heal. As adults we can differentiate between right and wrong, healthy and unhealthy, and when to seek help. Children simply accept their surroundings and environment as reality. When a child is made to feel that they are unworthy or is mistreated in some way, they will incorporate that into their way of thinking for many years to come, if not forever. When a child is sexually abused and that issue is not properly addressed, that child perceives the abuse as normal, expected and an acceptable part of their life. Most abused children grow to become abused, or abusing, adults. This is because unfortunately their reality as children was never corrected.
The most important aspect of a child’s life is bonding with a parent or caregiver. Bonding is so important because it gives the child security. The parent that bonds with their child is aware of their child’s feelings, moods and behaviors. If abuse takes place in that child’s world, the bonded parent will pick up on the mood change, personality shift or odd behavior of their child and will act accordingly. The bonded parent will ask one of the most important questions a parent can ever ask, “What’s wrong?” and then find solutions to help their child, in cases where abuse took place this would mean therapy of some sort. But when the child has no bond with a parent, their feelings, emotions, moods and behavior go unnoticed or carelessly overlooked. This child is then left to develop her own coping skills to deal with the abuse. In a child, the only coping skills the brain has is to suppress the feelings of inadequacy and rejection, pain and hurt, because the healthy coping skills and ability to ask for help is out of their cognition. The suppression of these feelings do not solve the problem, but only induce more problems. Suppressing these feelings of hurt and confusion do not make the emotions go away, but rather the brain does it’s best to cope with what it can’t handle and therefore we have the emergence of Borderline Personality Disorder and possibly other mental illnesses and disorders.
Borderlines frequently suffer from extreme mood swings similar to Bi-Polar disorder. Intense outbursts of anger (stemming from misunderstood suppressed anger and no understanding of how to release it) and severe moods of depression (due to feelings of severe inadequacy and perceived rejection and mistrust towards everybody) are common. A dissertated feeling to the world (because the brain learned early on that it can’t handle the world) is exhibited in anxiety, self mutilation and even suicidal ideas. As an adult, who doesn’t always remember the details or the complications of their abuse, this behavior is notably disturbing, but since it is the Borderlines reality, she is not aware of what healthy really is or how to seek help on her own.
It is so important for parents to bond with their children, or at least grandparents or some other caregiver that is close to the child on a regular basis. Children need to be protected, looked out for and taken care of. They need us to notice when they need help with something and they need us to get them that help. When left without the bonding experience, children are left to fend for themselves and quite simply; they can’t.
