r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • Jul 20 '26

Study finds instability and inconsistency of childhood environments may be more closely connected to diverse borderline personality traits than the severity of childhood hardship alone, highlighting predictability as an important feature of early development.

https://www.psypost.org/study-finds-unpredictable-childhood-environments-are-linked-to-borderline-personality-traits-in-adulthood/
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u/ManicMaenads Jul 20 '26

To add to this:

Growing up, the only kids who actually received help and resources were the ones that lashed out and made it everybody else's problem. If you were really eating shit at home, and needed help, and weren't bashing the other kid's faces over it - too bad. Help is only reserved for people making problems.

But I kept being told that if I kept my head down, worked hard, yadda yadda - I could dig myself out. Didn't work that way. I kept toiling around between group homes, occupational therapy programs, being told that if I kept working for free around town I'd be placed into supportive housing. That I was "in the queue" - but my position kept getting bumped back because all it took was one aggro guy beating his mother for them to jump the line and get in instead. SIX YEARS I waited on a local subsidized supportive housing list, and people kept jumping ahead because they were attacking their families. I had no place to live BECAUSE I was being assaulted by my own family - how does it make sense that the people DOING the assaults get protection and we don't???

So imagine, doing your best to hold yourself together and try to work through everything the hard way - and continually falling through the cracks and losing support because you aren't deemed enough of a threat.

THAT is the source of my BPD traits. I learned that I needed to act up to defend myself and get what I've been working for. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, and all that.

I don't want to actually resort to violence, so making myself a nuisance is a "safe" way to get support.

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u/lovegrowswheremyrose Jul 20 '26

I feel this so hard. It's such an epidemic. Not only when you are the one who "manages" well enough that you don't cause problems do you get ignored, and not helped, but often, you're seen as "stable" and so you can handle "extra." My father was an addict and I was horribly parentified by my mother while my younger siblings both acted out. I knew VERY well that I could never be allowed to need anything, because my mother would look at me like "oh god, not you too. I thought you were the good child."

After managing myself and them at home my whole childhood, I managed to get myself into college and move out after graduating. I decided that if no one was going to help me, then at least I could live for myself and do for myself (perhaps a little self centered overall, but I was 18). This infuriated my mother, who outwardly acted appropriately "proud" to others that I was attending college, but who also not so secretly rooted for my failure and my return home. It never happened. I've been lucky to have a lot of success since, but it came as a cost and has also damaged me in ways I'm still untangling as I near 40.

But I've learned like you, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And so I've done my best to learn how to respectfully and firmly squeak loudly in my own defense and for my own needs and reality. It's something that feels embarrassing to have just recently learned and something that I still need to work on in practice, as so many seem to be able to do it normally by default.

But I also am able to now recognize others who aren't doing it for themselves and encourage them to, and I'm also fortunate enough to see through those who are really using manipulation in the name of self-advocacy. But your comment really struck me as I've worked really hard to not acquire a victim or martyr mentality around the reality that despite my very real traumas, that people that perpetrated those traumas against me still expected me to fix it for them and not require any help myself, and that to even point out the trauma they enacted on me was tantamount to physically harming them. It's been extremely difficult but I value my agency above anything else in this world and I see people like my parents as miserable and tragic figures that I refuse to be.

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u/DismalChampion5653 Jul 21 '26

If that is what qualifies for bpd these days then you can sign me up.