Ask the Therapist
Learned Through Socialization
You repeatedly tell people that Borderline Personality Disorder is "learned
through socialization." Yet in one of your pieces of advice you state that
"borderlines are fabricators for the sake of leverage, manipulation, and
pity." This was said in reference to someone who asked if they should
believe their borderline friend when she talks about past abuse in her life.
If Borderline Personality Disorder is learned through socialization, don't
we need to look at where we first learn that socialization to find the root
causes of some of the problems? If the parents of an already biological
overly-sensitive child are emotionally and physically abusive, and
neglectful, why shouldn't they bear responsibility for what their child has
become in later years? Why is it the child's fault for developing this
condition? Can you not see that this mode of thinking adds even more guilt
and anxiety to someone who is already overburdened with more than their fair
share of both emotions? I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality
Disorder (it took me screaming at my therapist and demanding the information
for him to tell me) my childhood was constantly filled with being told I was
bad, worthless, unwanted, and not as good as my siblings or other children
my age. If I follow your logic, then my parents were right, and maybe I
should just follow through with all these thoughts of suicide that I've had
since I was 6 or 7 and save everyone the trouble of having me around. Oh,
wait....now you're going to say I'm manipulating you.
<snip>I'd really like a response, since you ignored the last questions/comments I sent.<snip>
Your BPD is showing. I did not ignore you, I get hundreds of e mails and I have to get through them all one at a time. I haven't gotten to your first one, yet. How is it that you can be so hostile to someone whom you don't even know and for whose intentions you have no point of reference?
So, you want to blame someone. OK, but you are simply falling into the trap of the disorder. You may not be responsible for the development of your symptoms, or your failure to have object constancy, or your object rage, or a host of other factors. But, you and you alone, are responsible for yourself and your life in this moment. And that's all that counts. The past is gone...burn it. The future hasn't happened...don't anticipate it. This moment is a gift...that's why it's called the present. Stop wallowing and pay attention.
If I recall the letter to which you refer, the person was asking about someone whose story changed and got more and more complex...that's what I was responding to. For example, a female BP personality who has had a single abortion might add one with every retelling, maybe even throw in a miscarriage for some sympathy, until she'd had 4 lost births. That is to what I was referring.
As for the disorder being socially learned, that does not mean that the sufferer is responsible for the disorder. It means that the coping skills that person developed in response to their perception of reality are distorted and their behavior -- for which they are responsible -- is informed by that. How those perception became distorted is a function of even more primitive social learning that may lie with the primary caretakers, or a babysitter, or a sibling, or not a person at all, but the effects of living with a disordered significant...like an alcoholic parent or a narcissist or having a sadistic math teacher in the 5th grade.
