The Abuse Factor of BPD

I thought I'd better mention this because it always crops up!

Abuse previously in someone's life is a risk factor of BPD; around 75% of BPD sufferers have a history of abuse.  I am not one of these people.  I believe it was just ingrained in me already and there was nothing I could do to stop it.  My childhood was actually good, and I still consider myself lucky for this.  I am the lucky 25%.  A fear that I have however, is that when I tell this to the psychiatrist, she won't believe me and my parents will get the blame for it.  In all honestly, I already worry that they blame themselves, because all of the literature on it suggesting abuse.

A lot of people that I have talked to who have BPD have not been as fortunate as me.  Symptoms of BPD have been in me for so long, that I don't see that anything could have caused them.  Some of my first, sketchy memories of when I was perhaps 2 years old already showed some traits.  On the other hand, some of these BPD sufferers seem to have developed BPD after abuse or trauma later on in childhood.  I vaguely remember standing next to the wall in primary school, maybe when I was 5 years old, and thinking that everyone hated me, and I was alone, while trying to scratch my hand off the stone-throw wall.  How could I have known what I was doing at that age?  Yet something in me still made me do it.  Every argument in the household, about anything trivial, often lead me to lie in my room crying for hours about how much of a failure I was and that no one loved me.  The argument that triggered this could have been something as silly as watching "star trek" instead of my kids programmes!


There must be some other contributing factor, like a built-in vulnerability, that lead me to be a borderline.  Although my life wasn't always roses.  I think the worst I had was some bullying in secondary school.  Although I wasn't popular in primary school, I don't remember any bullying more than name-calling in my later years.  So, in all honesty, I have no idea where it came from!  Maybe one day I'll have a horrible regression of some kind and remember, but I don't think there is anything to remember!