I am going over a book for parents of BPD children, as my oldest son has been diagnosed with it.  And in it I am reading the symptoms of BPD and seeing if they match at all to anything I went through growing up.  I don't have BPD now, but I suspect I may have as a teenager (though the core symptoms I didn't have).  But as I am going through this, I am making some connections to things in my life due to the abuse I endured from my parents (mostly, my mother).  

1. Fear of Abandonment.  In this book, they say as a child, one who had horrible separation anxiety, it could be a precursor to BPD as it could indicate the fear of abandonment.  Now, I did not have separation anxiety (not anything more than normal).  But I did have a HORRIBLE fear of being alone.  Which is type of agoraphobia.  I have many reasons this could have been instilled me, from being left alone to cry as a baby (something my aunt said my birthmother did to me a lot), to being shuffled around into four different homes in the first eighteen months of my life, but also (and I think mainly), my mother leaving me home alone at 3am almost every single night to take my father to work, which would be around a half an hour.  Not only that, all the windows were opened and the doors were all open, too.  Not unlocked....OPEN.  Wide open.  For any weirdo to walk in and assault and murder me.  Something I knew that could (and most likely would) happen to me.  Even as a little kid I knew this.  This is the same reason I was terrified of sleeping alone, too.  And I am 48 years old now, and I've been battling agoraphobia all my life and sleeping for me is CHAOTIC.  All my anxieties and fears come out when I sleep.  It's horrible.  And it always has been.  

As a teen?  I had no issues with abandonment.  If people left me, I'd be a normal amount of sad, but I never acted out or hurt myself because of it.

2.  Low Frustration Tolerance.  This is something that is an issue with ASD people too.  My son has this, but I don't as much.  I do at times, but no more than any other autistic person with the same frustration tolerance levels I have.  My mother, on the other hand....has absolutely NO frustration tolerance.  Like, she can't even wait for a vet appointment if they don't get to you fast enough.  She will sigh and moan and complain and be a baby about having to wait, because SHE is special and needs people to wait on her RIGHT NOW.  Same at restaurants.  It's embarrassing.  

As a teen?  I had issues with plans being cancelled.  But not much else.  

3.  Weak Empathy.  My son has this issue.  He has no idea how to empathize with others, unless it's abstract.  Like, he can empathize with strangers, but not his family members.  The closer you are to him, the less he understands you.  My mother is the same way.  She not only has weak empathy (or fake empathy...to make her look good and she will later retract it), she will go out of her way to hurt people (like me or anyone she's annoyed with).  And it makes her feel good.  Now, my son has issues with empathy and will resort to what I call "low blows" when he's horribly dysregulated, but he always regrets it and apologizes.  Whereas my mother denies and will do it again.  On purpose.  Just to show you she can.  Me?  I am hyper-empathetic.  Sensitive ADHD/ASDers who were abused usually end up that way.  I sometimes can't see something from another person's POV, esp. when my black and white thinking kicks in (from ASD), but if they explain it enough, I will say "Oh wow, yeah, I can see that now."  It may take a minute to sink it, but eventually I'll get it.  Whereas with my mother? HA.  Never.  

As a teen?  I still had the same amount of empathy I've always had.  

4.  Depression.  Now, I have issues with depression when my anxiety gets so bad that I can't tolerate it anymore.  And my son never had issues with depression until recently, after a severe BPD relapse (he was better for years, but Adderall turned it all back on).  And it was bad.  My own depression has flared up in recent years due to my oldest son's verbal abuse of me (and he telling me that my other son felt the same way about me, which was not true, my youngest was going through his own issues due to what was going on in our home with his brother's BPD).  So I felt this wound open up and it sent me into a depression that everyone hates me.  But that only happens rarely, and only after an RSD episode (rejection sensitive dysphoria).  For me, RSD can last for a bit, but something will always get me out of my small funk and I will realize it was just RSD (journaling helps a lot).  

But as a teen?  No.  I was never depressed.  

5.  Inability to take responsibility for behavior.  I don't have this.  Granted, I, at times, get defensive.  It's a mechanism created due to the fact that my mother was always accusing me of doing something wrong (or not good enough) and I felt I always had to defend myself.  I still feel this way with my mother and she still blames or accuses me of doing something good enough.  But when I actually do something wrong, I will step up and say so.  I will say there are times I don't think I did something wrong, and my son will get super pissed at me for not admitting I did something wrong...but, just like my mother, my son is always saying this to me.  So, I can never really have the chance to step back (until later) and see if I actually did something wrong, or if he's just saying I did, due to his BPD thinking.  And many times, I know I didn't do anything wrong (like standing up for myself) but there are times when I realize (or he explains it better in a way that gets through to me) that I was doing exactly what he said I was doing, except it was said in a way that didn't make sense to me at the time.  For example: He said I always make excuses for the things I do.  I don't.  But then I realized later, I actually do.  I don't mean to.  I am "explaining myself".  But my husband does the same thing and I get annoyed with him for it.  And then I realized, omg, that's exactly what I do.  He and I aren't "making excuses", we're saying why we did what we did.  And my son was right, it's annoying.  Sometimes you have to just say "Yeah, sorry about that, I will watch what I am doing and try not to do that again" rather than "Well, that's because I..." or "I just..." (fill in the blank here).  So, when I realized that, I talked to my son and said "I realize I know what you're talking about now.  Constantly explaining myself does sound like making excuses.  I am so sorry."  Whereas my son has issues sometimes with taking responsibility.  Eventually he realizes it, but sometimes it takes years for that happen.  And sometimes it's never.  But lately, it's been better, but it's still really, really hard for him.  It literally breaks his soul to say "Yeah, I did that and it was horrible".  BPD's sense of worthlessness prevents those with it to take much responsibility.  As for my mother, she takes ZERO responsibility for anything, unless she's playing you for a better hand.  Granted, her reasoning for doing so is probably the same reason my son has issues with it.  Just with the added benefit of not caring.  Yay.  

As a teen? I don't think so.  I do remember being called out for issues with friends, but I always remember being able to resolve our issues and I always said I was sorry when I did something wrong (when the person wanted to remedy the situation).  There are few things I never apologized for that I regret, but mostly I did.  

6.  Struggle for Self-Definition.  As a teen I had issues fitting in.  I didn't know how to be me.  I didn't know who "me" was.  Not because of the same reasons someone with BPD would (self-hatred), but because I have autism and I am weird.  Had I been allowed to be me at all times, instead of masking, I would have known who I was.  But every single time I tried to be me, I had my classmates, my teachers, my mother, my father, my friends, my boyfriends, etc. tell me I was "wrong" and "weird".  So I became a chameleon.  I never knew who I really was.  I didn't fluctuate and hate myself for it.  I just was who I was with who was with.  Now, as an adult, I take up fights that stir something in me and it becomes a part of who I am.  But just because those fights fluctuate, who I am doesn't.  I have ADHD, so the fights I take up add up to quite a lot.  But at my core: I am honest, I am kind, I am empathetic, and I am loving.  I am also a misanthrope, so I am not sure how that fits in LOL  I understand why humans are the way they are, but I can't tolerate it.  Like, "IDGAF why you are the way you are, I get why that is. I just want you to be better!"  But I can't change the world, so I don't participate in it.

So, again, this is a no for me.  

7.  Testing Others.  Yeah, this is a no for me.  I don't even have anything or any part of me that does anything close to this.  Not as a teen or an adult.  Now, my son does this, as does my mother.  

So, from what I am reading in this book, that before, I had a very basic idea of what Borderline Personality Disorder looked like.  When you just read the diagnostic criteria, some of that applies to my teenage years.  But when it says something like "unstable relationships with others", it doesn't explain what that means.  

When my son was having some of his most recent meltdowns, he accused me of having BPD, too.  And I started to wonder, "I know I don't have it now, but did I once have it?"  My teen years were pretty chaotic with my friends.  But out of the entire group of us, only one girl I think had actual BPD.  And that was Lisa.  She has all the hallmark symptoms and all the diagnostic criteria.  She's supposedly better now, but won't take responsibility for her actions back then, so I stopped talking to her.  Same goes for Candace, who clearly had and has NPD.  

So, yeah, apparently I do not have BPD.  And I never did.  This book is pretty good and can open your eyes to what (and why) goes on inside a BPD person's head, and it made me understand more about myself too, and why I did things I did (and none of it were for reasons stated in the book).  Yes, it's for daughters, but it applies to my son, so I am reading it anyways.  It's called "When Your Daughter Has BPD" by Daniel S. Lobel.  But Apparently my mother not only has NPD, she has BPD, too.  Which makes a lot of sense.  This book can help me understand her more, too.  Which helps me have more compassion for her when she's acting up.  Which is always a good thing.