Do Parents Cause Borderline Personality Disorder?

The most upsetting aspect of having Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is that our own parents, who are responsible for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being while we are defenseless children, are the ones who have sentenced us to a lifetime of frustration, suffering, and disorder.

This article will cause controversy, not because it is inaccurate, but because it contradicts much of what the professionals tell you about BPD. You may have been told that trauma or genetics cause Borderline Personality Disorder, but I will explain why this is incorrect since there is a lot more to it.

In the past, I've written an article about trauma and genetics being the cause of BPD, which I'm personally not behind. I still remain that article intact since it is how 'experts' describe the cause of the disorder. But for this article, I will show the real cause of BPD.

The main cause of BPD

The way we experience emotions and how we interact with others is provided by our emotional teachers. When we believe our feelings are unimportant, shameful, and worthless, it's because we learned this from our emotional teachers, which are our parents, who are essentially to blame for the disorder.

No matter how much they paid for our college educations, how much they supported our artistic endeavors, how many luxurious vacations they took us on, how many times they got us out of sticky situations, and how much they loved us, they failed at their most fundamental responsibility of all: ensuring our emotional well-being.

When a child arrives at school with a black eye and informs their teacher that the father is to blame, the consequences are immediate and understandable. But nothing occurs when a child arrives at school with questions about their fundamental value as human beings. No alarm bells are ringing. No one is held responsible. And to be very honest, the teacher will not even notice a child who questions their intrinsic value as a human being.

In a few days, a black eye will vanish. But a child who believes that their feelings are essentially meaningless, worthless, and something to be ashamed of will not go away, and this will represent their nature for the future.

How parents cause BPD

Whatever negative views our parents have regarding the fundamental things in life that humans must properly understand to have true happiness, they pass on to the next generation. The most prevalent misunderstanding about feelings that they pass down to us as children is that our feelings are a problem, unimportant and that it makes no difference. They mock you when you reveal your feelings, laugh, become enraged, and ignore your feelings altogether. When your feelings have no positive impact on how others engage with you, they have no inherent value. If your emotions don't make sense to them, then they're meaningless.

To put it another way, your feelings only count if they make sense to others. Someone else has to agree that what you're experiencing is correct, which explains why people with BPD are so dependent on others to feel good.

Because when you are young, you learn about the world and rely on these emotional teachers to understand the nature of everything around you. The message you receive by directly watching their attitudes is that your feelings are unpleasant to them.

If your emotions are essentially unimportant, shameful, and worthless, it won't take long for you to decide that you, too, are fundamentally irrelevant, shameful, and worthless. After all, your emotions are who you are. They are what distinguishes you from others.

Even though what is happening to you when you're young is frightening, true horror is what this causes in the years ahead.

Here are a few examples of what parents have done to their children:

• The inability to feel the connection in relationships. Those who are deeply embarrassed by who they are cannot bring themselves to give their real inner self to another person, which is what intimacy requires.

• A lack of self-acceptance. Instead, these children live with self-loathing or self-hate. A person who feels unworthy of love does not love themselves.

• Years of believing things have no intrinsic value. Any feeling of value they get will be shallow and fragile. Their internal value is based on external variables such as the job they have, their partner, their home, and the vehicle they drive.

• They'll be irritated and upset a lot of the time and have no idea why.

BPD caused by parents

In other words, the parents are the ones who have total responsibility for their children's physical, mental, and emotional needs, and have condemned their own children to a lifetime of anguish, frustration, failed relationships, and suffering.

Is the reason for this that these parents despise their kids? In some instances, yes. However, in the vast majority of these cases, the parents really care for their children. They just do not have the qualifications to teach children about life based on their own highly harmful education. They can't teach correctly what they don't grasp well themselves.

A parent's inability to satisfy a child's emotional needs is no different from a parent's failure to meet a child's physical needs. If a kid shows up at school with his ribs showing because he hasn't eaten in three weeks, he should be removed from his parent's custody. This is a case of physical abuse.

Similarly, all parents who have children with Borderline Personality Disorder, are guilty of emotional abuse in some way or another. Because emotional neglect is the same as abuse.

It's easy to say that the cause of BPD is due to trauma, such as having divorced parents, but the truth is that the emotional abuse these children go through for years is the real cause.

In most cases, the cause of BPD is not obvious or dramatic abuse, but it is very subtle. And the problem is that most kids truly do remember and view their parents as the model of what good parenting is. When a therapist talks to a child about the situation, they are not lying to their therapist when they say their parents are good to them. Denial and ignorance are the main causes behind this.

The kids are in denial because they have a strong emotional aversion to seeing their parents in any situation that makes them feel bad. The ignorance is that these children, adult or not, wouldn’t know what they’re seeing anyway, without healthy life experiences for reference. Additionally, most therapists and psychologists do not appear to be perceptive enough to see beyond their clients' verbal denials.

What's horrific is that the vast majority of these children will live to old age, if not death, without ever knowing their inner feelings. Even worse, these people will grow up and have children of their own, and what kind of emotional education will they pass on to their offspring? Emotional education will be identical.

Having a mother with BPD

I've been guilty of this. For decades I believed that my father was the cause of my BPD since it felt like he abandoned me after my parents' divorce. He may have played a role, but I've realized that my mother, also diagnosed with BPD, was the one who brought this upon me. Even though I've preached to her for all those years for her excellent parenting. Her emotional education has shaped me into the person I am today.

Even though she wasn't capable of good parenting, I don't know if I can blame her because I know how much she tried her best with the resources available. Her intentions were always good, and she did everything out of love. But this happens when you raise a child while having BPD yourself.

You can read more on Living with a Parent who has Borderline Personality Disorder.