Childhood Maltreatment and Borderline Personality Disorder

Adverse childhood experiences can lead to the development of problematic and pathological personality traits and various types of personality disorders. Specific categories of adverse childhood experiences, composed of physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and verbal abuse, are associated with escalated risk for pathologic personality traits and personality. A history of emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect in childhood has shown substantial associations with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Emotionally invalidating environments, in which a child’s inner emotional experiences are responded to by parents via ignoring, punishing, and dismissing, and regarded contextual risk factors, especially child maltreatment and abuse, and sociocultural invalidation are different types of invalidating environments where caregivers have the most significant roles. The overlapping factors that combine the other environmental and biological components lead to the genesis of BPD, and the role of cumulative influences of traumatic experiences exacerbates the severity of borderline personality features. Moreover, punishment and guilt are prevalent and unwanted emotions among victims of childhood maltreatment and abuse and are considered as mediators that lead to nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) in abused individuals. Temperamental vulnerabilities, encompassing affective instability, negative affectivity, negative emotionality, inappropriate anger, poor emotional control, impulsivity, and aggression, combined with traumatic adverse childhood experiences have a major role in the development of borderline pathology.