Born Borderline?

Yesterday there was a discussion in a Facebook group about whether borderline personality disorder could be a brain condition you're born with. The original poster started by saying she feels so broken and has her whole life that she wonders whether BPD is not just a mental disorder, but a brain dysfunction.

Now I want to say that a more severe disturbance has nothing to do with whether you were born with the condition. It's not like, if you were born with it, that it's necessarily any worse thn if you acquired BPD as a result of childhood trauma. Some commenters mentioned feeling their wacky childhood may've been due to their BPD rather than vice versa. Does it truly matter? I don't think so. Like, people are usually born autistic, but this doesn't mean all that happens to the autistic growing up is due to autism.

From what I understand, BPD is caused by a combination of temperament, which is largely genetic, and childhood circumstances. There was this debate in a Dutch women's mag a few months ago about two parents of BPD adults saying they didn't like the assumption that BPD is trauma-based because they didn't abuse their children. Then someone with BPD responded that even the most ordinary parents make mistakes, and this can set off BPD in vulnerable people.

Let's move away from black-or-white thinking in the nature/nurture debate. Let's also move away from blaming ourselves when something is brain-based, or feeling more broken for it, and from blaming our parets when something cannot yet be shown to be brain-based. Therapy can change brain function. So can other environmental circumstances, like trauma. When we have a brain dysfunction, we may perceive experiences differently. The two basically interact.

I remember when the Dutch organization that oversees health insurance proposed to drop mental health coverage for people who'd gotten mentally ill as a result of life circumstances. Have we truly gone backwards that much, believing that the brain and mind are two entirely separate entities? Science shows that, with mild depression for example, it doesn't matter whether it's due to recent divorce or it comes out of the blue, a wait-and-see approach is always best. With severe depression, not so. And as for BPD, it's usually severe enough to warrant treatment whether it's brain-based or not.

People Aren't Broken

After being told she'd be officially diagnosed as autistic, Autisticook wrote a post titled I'm Not Broken. I commented on this post, but wanted to expand on and generalize this a bit more.

I remember when in DID meetings, there were people who didn't want to have DID, and people who felt the DID diagnosis somehow validated them. I fell into the latter category and was often told I wanted DID too badly. The people who felt their diagnosis was validating, often said it made them not be crazy. "I'm not broken, I was traumatized," one person said, incidentally in the meeting in which I was kicked out for allegedly having imaginary DID.

In my journeys as an autistic, I learned a lot of what Autisticook describes: autistic isn't broken. In my brief travels through the natural multiplicity community, I learned the same of multiplicity. Then I heard dissociators say they aren't broken but traumatized, almost as if their perps are responsible for every single thing in the dissocitors' lives that is remotely "broken", and I cringe.

I don't care who or what made you the way you are. People aren't intrinsically broken, and using neurology or abuse history or whatever as a reason for not being broken, only makes other people, who don't share this same attribute, look broken. Like, are people broken if their behavior can't be directly linked to trauma or neurology? I'd say they arent'. Their behavior may be unacceptable, but so may the behavior exhibited by autistics or trauma survivors.

I am not saying you can't use your neurology or experience as part of your identity. I do this all the time. What I am saying is that a diagnosis is at once no excuse for unacceptable behavior, and unacceptable behavior doesn't make you broken regarldless of your diagnosis or lack thereof.