Why Do I/we Have Bpd

[emylo]

Hi

This is all new to me first posted last night has i been told on monday evening i have BPD which makes sense after so many years of distress. But i have been up all night wondering why do i have it ? what makes some one have it ? Why am i like this ? some times i know how unreasonable i am being or how high i am acting bouncing of the walls literally but still i can not stop , or the paranpia i have which is just ma and the more stressed i am the worse it gets. please can any one help advice or maybe there no reason , im so distressed i feel so alone no where to turn.

Emma x

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi Emma

Very appropriate and common question. Im sure others will offer more detailed replies, but a quick overview:

1) Invalidating home / childhood: Feelings are dismissed, belittled, or treated as 'bad', especially anger. The childs emotional experience is denied or their problems blamed on them / attributed to some core fialing in their being. Eg "Theres nothing to be upset about, youre just oversenstive"; "He didnt do anything wrong, you are remembering it wrong / its your fault it happened"; "If you just did (this very simple thing which will not work) then you will be ok". Better and longer examples of invalidation can be found HERE. Invalidation is the common element in most BPD sufferers. In some, the ability to "make the pain real" by some physical act can lead to self injury, though you will find many reasons why people self injure.

2) Some BPD sufferers experiecned sexual, physical and further emotional abuse to (1). The inabaility of the child to comprehend or recover from the abuse, which may be ongoing, leads to the more severe symptoms developing. Not all sufferers have experienced sexua or physical abuse however, and the emotional component - especially invalidation - tends to be the common thread. As a result of invalidation or denial, the person may not even believe that what they experienced was abuse.

3) Abandonment - either physical or emotional - by a main carer, which leads to the inabilty to tolerate being alone or being left. May be made worse by (1) because the person finds it difficult to define or understand their experience without external commentary as they have no strong conviction that what they feel is right, only that its overwhelming.

4) History of revictimisation - the person, due to the patterns of the past, tends to repeat similar relationship patterns to the above, leading to frequent re-experiencing of pain and crises.

5) Theoretical inborn 'labile' temperament. This is not the same as 'being born too sensitive' - what it means is that the person has an inbuilt tendency to rapid responses and changes in mood. In a healthy person that had not been invalidated or abused, this would just lead to someone who was emotionally impulsive, but not necessarily in the same way as a BPD suffererer. As I Say this is more theoretical and comes from observations of baby's apparent difference in temperament right from birth. At which point attachment issues take over Im not sure (see Bowlbys Attachment Theory for more info).

Some psychoatrists might tell you its genetic, or the result of a faulty amygdala or orbito-frontal cortex in your brain that you can see on an MRI scan. However this is more theory and selctive interpretation of data that might have another meaning or cause. No gene has been found, and its just as possible that the physical difference in the brain is as a result of the psychological problem, not vice versa. Endless studies have shown how psychotherapy and thought can change material brain function. Many people who accept the "broken machine" explanation of mental illness may find themselves stuck because they may belive they can never change - however many psychotherapies now exist to treat BPD. I hope you are going to be offered one!

Hope this was ok.

Ross

[pepsimeg]

Ross thats a great reply, explains it for many of us thanks xx

[hummm_mabbe]

You're welcome Fordy

Ross

[pepsimeg]

I often wonder if its just a disorder because of childhood abuse and so i think they should re-name it but as you say some believe its genetic.

My daughter whos 19 shows some signs of having BPD but i know she had no bad upbringing but saying that the drs years ago said she had seperation anxiety from the times i was in psych ward so maybe she has been scared (not intentionally) tho her symptoms are milder than mine, or maybe shes just genetically predisposed to it as my biological mother has a mood disorder too...I guess it will always be debateable as to wether its nature or nuture or a mixture of both.

[emylo]

Thank you Ross alot to get my head round i have been oiffered DBT but the waiting list is very long and when offered this i did tell him where to shove it but have since calmed down, but right now i have no idea what to do ifeel like i have been left .Tahnk you very much for your reply a great help

Emma x

[Data]

I think that the roots of BPD will have set in by age 3 (and certainly age 5) and it has to do with the relationship with the mother (or father/care-giver) in early childhood.

[CrystalStorm]

I have recently had a slightly different whilst still similar reasoning for BPD proposed to my by my psychiatrist:

He said that it is often triggered by a trauma in childhood (obviously an extremely broad covering of situations there), but he also suggested that if you are a child who is simply more prone to dissociation you are more likely to develop BPD.

I don't think that this falls under the 'labile temperment' but maybe the two are linked?

This makes more sense to me in a way as I never thought of myself as having a bad childhood, but going through it again I can recognise that whiilst my childhood may not have been bad, I had abnormal thoughts for a child all the way back then, and as people in my fathers side of the family died as I grew up that could both be a 'trauma' and a partial explanation of how you can have a perfectly fine childhood and just not realise that things may have happened that affected you a lot more than you realised. As a child you respond to things so differently that sometimes adult stresses can trigger a seemingly confused response from emotions etc, which is roughly what BPD is.

Data, I think that may be a little early but I haven't got a professional Q, only A-Levels and reading around to go by

I think that something that's really important though, is to try and consider your childhood before you fall into the ' BPD=childhood problems, my parents must have done something wrong' pitfall, which I've seen too many people do.

Mewws

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi Mewws

I would be careful how you phrase yourself. The 'my parents did something wrong pitfall' as you put it affects a great many BPD sufferers (as well as other mental health problems) who have genuine negativity, or just absence of needed positives, in their pasts. Whilst you may not think it applies to you, be careful how quickly you dismiss others backgrounds.

I could just as easily say you are falling into the "rosy childhood pitfall" that so many invalidated and emotionally neglected people have, or the "it wasnt that bad really - they did the best they could pitfall". They seem to think that because thyey werent sexually or physcially abused, that they had a good childhood, and miss that there were massive emotional holes in their upbringing that direcrtly relate to their current emotional problems. The amount of newly diagnosed people I meet on here who angrily deny anything bad in their pasts, who then suddenly break down later and realise what really happened, is a lot greater than the ones who have just gone "nah, it was all rubbish. Its my genes". In addition, if you are prone to dissociation, it means you are more likely to FORGET genuine abuses (see work by Dr James Chu on dissociative amnesia and trauma).

So dont be so quick to generalise, and dont only accept a psychiatrists version of events. Psychiatrists are brought up on the purely biological theory of mental illness which in this day and age, is on increasingly shaky ground. A lot of them accept that sociological and psychological factors are necessary too.

Ross

[emylo]

I find this all so interesting as i can honestly say my childhood was fine no abuse what so ever in any way or form 2 loving parents and a loving family .But my relationship with my mother now is very difficult i never seem to be the person she wonts me to be ,but i am the oldest child of four and my physchitrist thinks that maybe thats were it all stems from. I later on in married and settled to a degree i could live a normal life then in feb 2008 i had my bladder removed and that has set me off again to a degree i cant live what i would call i normal life . I hold most of the traits for BPD and cant believe i have been like this for 9 yrs .I am desperatly hanging on how i have not mucked up my marriage or lost all my friends by now is beyond me . I hate the way i am some times i think is this me is this who i am and if that is true then im not a nice person.

Emma x

[hummm_mabbe]

i never seem to be the person she wonts me to be

Why cant you just be the person that you are? Why do you need to be a certain person for your mother? And what is it about you that doesnt seem to please her? Your job? Your partners? Your feelings?

If what you are and do is not good enough for her, that implies there is some other way that you 'should' be. Yet you are you. That is the core of invalidation.

What makes it so hard to let go of the need to be what your mother wants? If you were what your mother wanted, would you then be a 'nice person'?

Ross

[emylo]

i displease my mother with my parenting skills the way i keep my house which i would like to point out is clean and generally tidy. My attuide towards life she never stops bending my ear treating me like im a baby (im 30 soon) she has not forgiven me for my past but looking back if i got medical help i believe would of been alot different . Infact as i write this things are jumping out at me like how out of all the 4 children i was the only one she never would let live with her again even those my sibling can be more pain in the arses than me , im sorry i am randomly going of on a totally different angle . Heads a mess thank you for your help advice etc

Emma

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi emma

It sounds like a very difficult situation to be in, and as you say you begin to realise things when you talk to others about their experiences. It sounds to me like your psych has the measure of the situation so that is good.

I can very much relate to what you are saying, the sensation that somehow nothing is ever good enough, the sensation that I am somehow incapable (despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary). I find it hard to reconcile that treatment with 'love', but the nub of invalidation is that you have to put aside feelings and belive what you are told instead ("we've always been loving and supportive - you're just being ungrateful"). Then its surprising when those feelings of anger, powerlessness and resentment come up 'unexpectedly'.

Sorry if you are feeling a little bit triggered just now, if theres stuff you want to talk about or ask PM me if you like

Ross

[CrystalStorm]

Hi Ross,

I'm sorry I came across as generalising.. it's not what I intended and with your wording I can see how it could be taken wrongly.

To be honest it's my first post here and I guess I need to get a bit better at expressing myself more accurately.. something I've always struggled with lol.

I do have more things to say in relation to what you said, but I feel that this topic is for Emma so I'll give her a message instead

From my (very) short time on this forum, reading the posts etc.. the majority of people seem to have a good knowledge of various issues, and most people seem eager to help others (for example Ross )

I really wish you the best.. It can be difficult after a new diagnosis that you don't necessarily understand fully, let alone your family relationships.

But if you can get help anywhere it would seem that here is a great place to start.

x

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi Moonlit

Thanks for responding, no hard feelings. Glad you are finding the site helpful.

Ross

[Data]

I find this all so interesting as i can honestly say my childhood was fine no abuse what so ever in any way or form 2 loving parents and a loving family .But my relationship with my mother now is very difficult i never seem to be the person she wonts me to be ,but i am the oldest child of four and my physchitrist thinks that maybe thats were it all stems from.

Is it possible that your mother communicated (either verbally or otherwise) that you were a disappointment to her - when you were a young child also?

That sort of thing can have a profound effect, far worse than a single traumatic incident in many cases.

[Villan]

moving on from what data said, it could also be summat that u felt rather than something someone said or did... sometimes is not as easy as just finding a particular thing that happened or was said, sometimes is just a general feeling that you were invalidated...

[sanctuary]

Ross, your reply to this post is an informed one and I know you are extremely well read on this subject so I want to just say thank you for sharing that knowledge with us all here......

The broken machine view of mental illness is perhaps flawed but not entirely without good evidence. You need to be careful not to take away the power of the research into the brain by dismissing it entirely. Some aspects of personality as I'm pretty sure you're aware already, have been shown to be hugely altered after brain damage in a previously ordered person. So for what it's worth, the research into the brain can lead to some exciting discoveries about what makes us function/not function.

If there was ever a question about BPD that got people talking it would be this one... what caused it... however we need to remember that the process of therapy is only one way of discovering what may have caused the physical patterns of emotional response in the brain. Only once we embark on a programme of therapy, can we sometimes begin to unpick the events that seemingly learned in us the responses and patterns that we have been disordered with and what follows is a process of consciously re-wiring the brain. However, there is underlying neurobiological based evidence that there is indeed a physical cause to personality change/function and so with respect, the science behind the neurobiological theory is to me just as relevant to the question of cause. It could be that two seemingly similar cases are widely different in cause.

A few trial diagnostic tests created for BPD using fmri brain scan imaging (can be googled) proved to be pretty accurate and I believe opens up an important field of research into to this beleagured question.

Whether it was external influences in a persons life that created the brain dysfunction, or whether the brain dysfunction created the perception of external influences being the cause is going to be a hot topic for a few years to come. I think that together, in conjunction, both the neurobiological and psychotherapeutic research will form an all round better understanding of mental illness yet at this stage, where questions are plenty and answers are few we would all benefit by keeping an open mind....

[Data]

moving on from what data said, it could also be summat that u felt rather than something someone said or did... sometimes is not as easy as just finding a particular thing that happened or was said, sometimes is just a general feeling that you were invalidated...

Well its the same thing. It is the parents job to make a child feel validated, particularly when they are young. If the child does not they are either not saying/doing the right things or saying/doing the wrong things.

[emylo]

Hi all thank you for all your opions all means alot to me . Thank you Ross for saying i can PM you i dont wont to but myself on you but its so nice finally being able to talk to other people . I have so many other traits of BPD but am to embarrassed to put them out in public. And with regards to my mother it is very possible as a young child i was lead to feel like a dissappointment . I know my family members all tell me that behind my back my mum says how proud she is of me with all the stuff i have had thrown at me in my life and how i have dealt with them but to my face i get nothing so i dont even believe my family members my mum shows me nothing to my face infact she can be a evil bitch alot of the time

Emma

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi Sanct

People have said this to me before and I want to explain why my views tend towards the anti-psychiatric.

I guess its your last comment that touches on what really throws me off with the psych research. When working as an engineer, I am expected to make solid recommendations on solid science, with provable conclusions. If I were to offer my opinion that the reason for the failure of a girder supporting a bridge were due to rust, because I was educated in a metals/chemistry university, I may miss the fact that it in fact broke due to being endlessly walked on, and the metal snapped.

My apologies if you are already well aware of the scientific process and things, but I want to justify why I feel this way. Science works by observing a phenomena, coming up with ideas as to why that phenomena exists, and then finding evidence that ONLY that theory fits. If the evidence may fit other theories, or there is evidence that absolutely does not fit your theory, then you may have to discard your theory, or find new evidence to answer the question. There is theory, then there is proof of theory and repeat of experiment. Thats the process - if you arent completing it or following it, you arent doing science, you're gathering data. If the evidence can be interprted two ways, you dont just pick the one you like - you must do more experiments to find out which one it is. In the bridge example, I would have to look for evidence of rust AND look for cracks in the metal, as well as lots of other things and rule them out. If there is no rust, it wasnt rust. If there are no cracks, it wasnt cracks. I cant just pick rust because I'm a rust expert, yet that is what psychiatry does with the fMRI data.

The problem with the "is it the cause or effect" question is that either camp simply decides what it is based on what background they come from. Because of this, there is no concrete proof of theory - there is only theory. But because we have all read about it so often - in other words, psychiatry is good at publicising itself - it is accepted. The same can be said of SSRI's which only now studies show function mainly as placebos. Placebos do work - and so do SSRI's. The thing is SSRI's work at about the same rate as placebo. But because of SSRI's, we all 'know' that depresion is a chemical imbalance in our brains. Yet that too is an unproven theory that we all just accept.

Its not that I dismiss psychiatric research out of hand - ive actually read a lot of it. Its that their methods are littered with confirmation bias and 'a priori' thinking. That is to say, "we already know its all biology therefore what we are seeing is biological". A good book that sums up this poor methodology is The Gene Illusion, a book that looks into the real history of genetic twin studies in schizophrenia - the 'gold standard' and touchstone of the "Mental health is biology" argument. Many people have argued that the Kraeplinian paradigm - the foundation of psychiatry - is ultimately flawed, and my feeling is that given the poor standards so often dispalyed in psychiatirc research, I am tempted to agree.

Its easy to look up a research paper online and say "see? theres the paper, theres the conclusion". But just because its been published and passed peer review, does not mean that its methodology and conclusions are sound. That is why science is a constant process of evolution, and ongoing proofs. For me, psychiatry falls at these hurdles and that is why I feel so strongly against much of what their research says. I cant remember the name of it, but there is an actual scale that can be used to assess the impartial nature and quality of methodology of research papers, Ive forgetten what its called, the cockcroft factor or something. But what Im sating is, a paper getting published does not necessarily mean its right. Entire journals have been accused of publication bias - that is to say, they overlook the bias of their own contributors because it fits with the bias of the journal. This is why the scandal over global warming figures at Anglia University was so damning - anyone who disagreed was silenced.

I know what you mean about the examples of brain damage leading to personaity change, such as the famous bloke with the spike through his brain and similar examples. I have just never seen the kind of clinical proof that can tie these very obvious examples to the more vague ones of fMRI imaging. There is no 'damage vector', and there is no consideration of things like how hebbian learning can alter the fundamental physcial make up of the brain via psychological means. I do believe there are temperamental factors at play, I just dont believe in the 'undersized amygdala' type theories. Until better science with more solid conclusions comes out, Im not that tempted to revise my view on it. Not to be argumentative - I really do feel that if psychiatry comes out with good proofs, I would change my mind, otherwise im guilty of the same confirmation bias I am accusing them of.

Ross

[emylo]

The more we talk about are childhoods the more i can say i hardly remember a thing i know i was loved but can never remember getting a hug i know my parents are good people but i cant think back to my childhood i remember happiness but in the same breath i cant remember feeling sadness i just feel nothing i guess . I wish i could be more open and honest on here my problems go such much deeper and i am to ashamed to put them down in writing of fear of being judged but i thank you all for your kindness

Emma

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi emma

I think its something that needs to be explored, because when you first start out it is very confusing and so often people can feel very separated from the emotions and memories.

For me the confusion between 'knowing' and 'feeling' love came from what I was told, vs what I actually felt and remember feeling. I am not saying this is what has happened for you, but in invalidation, the persons feelings are dismissed and replaced with the opinions and words of another. That is to say, a person can be told they are loved, and even told they were always treated with love, but yet something inside - an actual FEELING - says "hang on, im not sure if I agree with that". But guilt and fear means you have to choose what you are told, over what your feelings say, or run the risk of being "an ungrateful little ****".

It doesnt mean there was never any love, or that your parents were evil. All it means is that inside, you have feelings perhaps of anger, resentment, sadness or shame and so on that may have come about as a result of one or some of your parents behaviours, or ways of relating that were taught or modeled, and that the strength of those emotions has been enough to tip you into a place where the effects can be labeled a personality disorder.

This is where people get annoyed at the "parents did it" theory, It isnt necessarily true that what was done, or not done, was done with malice or inention. But whether it was meant or not, or was an act of simply not knowing any better, does not change the hurt or anger it may have caused. Where the logic goes out of the window is when someone says "because it wasnt intentional you have no right to feel angry or blame them", which is once again invalidation. Feelings are what they are, and if you still feel them now then that is evidence enough that they exist and need to be heard. If someone upsets you, you feel upset. Sometimes you might tell them, and they may say sorry, or you may have an argument and get to the bottom of it. But the 'parents on a pedestal' problem means that any negative emotion aimed at them must be stfiled, ignored or repressed, or is some evidence of weakness or badness on the part of the person.

The aim isnt to blame and castigate parents - the aim is to get out the long stuffed away anger and sense of deprivation that may be buried away under layers of guilt and self-blame. You do not necessarily even have to confront them or tell them this - just as long as the emotions that are strangled away inside, like your feelings of never being good enough and the probable anger and frustration that may bring, find some way of being expressed and understood. That is what some types of therapy aim to do. Dont aim for perfect recall and absolute truth before you are 'allowed' to feel angry - your problems are coming from you emotions, and its those that need to be heard. They have their own truth that must be spoken.

Ross

[emylo]

Thank you im thinking maybe for now i should forget why i have BPD and try and deal with it and see what i can do to help myself i have to say im pretty pissed off i have not been put on any meds seeing as at the moment i am more or less at my worst cutting wrists when i cant deal with stuff screaming crying high , low etc and i cant seem to find a middle ground with me i feel like i need to be leveled but not sure how to do this on my own. Thank you again.

Emma

[Data]

I largely go on my own experience. My therapist is very experienced and strongly believes I have BPD. I have had problems since at least the age of 5 and have experienced no incidents that people normally think of as being traumatic. However, my relationship with my mum was always very strange.