SPOTTING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CPTSD VS BORDERLINE PD (BPD PARENT VS CPTSD ADULT CHILD)

[Music] one of the things we know about borderline is that there often can be a very significant history of trauma in a borderline childhood now borderline also has a component that can very much be also genetic and we know that this sort of combination of genetics and environment in the right situations can definitely lend itself to creating a borderline pd in a human being now because we have a lot of trauma in borderline and because complex ptsd is all about trauma oftentimes in a childhood i thought it would be good to just describe the differences between bpd and cptsd using the examples of let's say a parent has borderline and their adult child has complex ptsd as a result of the parenting from the borderline and or perhaps in addition to that something also happened that created repetitive trauma from which escape was unlikely all right and so that's how i'm going to break it down and so i'm first going to talk about quickly describing each of these different dynamics how we see bpd and cptsd then i'm going to describe how they are similar and then using the example of let's say a parent test bpd and an adult child at cptsd what it would look like in real life before i get started i'm dr kim sage i'm a licensed clinical psychologist and i thank you so much for watching i hope you'll consider subscribing and clicking the bell and that way you'll get notified when i post new videos as always my goal of these videos is to talk about attachment and relationships and trauma and really to help people who may not understand how their childhoods were affected by certain parenting dynamics or how their relationships are affected or just how to understand ourselves better in different ways using media and teachings and whatever i hope you guys will find helpful alright so just quickly to review borderline pd is a pervasive mental illness that really affects interpersonal relationships and mood and behavior the core is really about an unstable sense of self relational instability emotional dysregulation and that can really play out in a bunch of different ways so we're going to see difficulty regulating emotions impulsivity acting out of behaviors thought patterns that really are driven by an unstable and oftentimes not factual belief system about the way the world works and the core of borderline is really about this fear of abandonment and everything is sort of derived from um oftentimes you know a lower sense of self with shame and guilt and not being worthy and like i knew you were going to leave me kind of dynamic and so i go out in the world then i end up recreating that right so the core is this wound about the sense of self and it manifests in really chaotic and dramatic and unstable relationships and emotions and experiences you know all over the map now complex ptsd at the core keeping in mind that borderline often does have a lot of trauma associated with it and often if we think about borderline coming out of a disorganized attachment story there's obviously going to be trauma there too but to have cptsd you must have an exposure to often a chronic or prolonged trauma often in childhood often from which things are preventing you from escaping like enduring a difficult home it can also be from you know ongoing chronic severe sexual mental emotional abuse captivity all kinds of things but in this video i'm going to use it to describe sort of how we might look at a person's life if that's let's say they have cptsd as a result of bpd parenting and or an additional trauma that occurred um often in childhood we often think of cptsd as a shame based disorder which really is a result of this long-term and chronic exposure unlike ptsd which is more of a fear-based disorder as we think about it the hallmark of cptsd is often this core sense of defectiveness of shame of even in many regards i am bad as i made in this video and so you can see that because of these how the sense of self is so negative at times and wounded there is a lot of overlap between cptsd and bpd and so where we see similarities are really in their effective patterns in terms of emotion so we're going to see a lot of emotional distress a lot of emotional triggers they can both have dissociation and suicidality and suicidal tendencies although it's much more likely with borderline they can often have anxiety and depression both of them they both can struggle with negative self-concept have difficulty regulating emotions have outbursts of crying or rage or fear they can definitely have interpersonal issues that can kind of cross over clearly because if your core is i am bad or you're going to leave me that's going to show up in how we engage in relationships one way or another because there's not a sense of trust and safety and security in the self and in the ability to navigate emotional triggers now you can't be diagnosed with both although we tend to want to sort of figure out what's the root of what's going on in terms of treatment because the treatment programs can be very different and we want to make sure we get that straight and that's why i think it's so important to talk about because they can look similar and yet at the core they do have a different i believe root the trees and the roots of each one are very different and when we're working with clients in this area we want to make sure we're getting it right because if we're treating just trauma versus treating you know a personality disorder we often can end up in the wrong department altogether and actually make the person's difficulties worse and we don't want to do that so i am not a big fan of labeling at all but i do believe that giving us obviously a diagnosis gives us a treatment plan and that is where it matters so i'll talk a little bit about treatment and how it's different at the end of this video alright so let's assume that we have a mom or dad with borderline and we have an adult child with cptsd what is it going to look like so let's say that um we're just going to call her mom and we'll just call her daughter all right i might interchange dad and son but remember that this disorder and borderline and complex ptsd it does not discriminate although we're often diagnosing women more with borderline and often more women come into therapy so there's probably more walking around with this with both of these labels but the truth is that it can apply to anyone all right so let's go through each category of where they're different when we think about mom or dad with borderline what we are seeing is that the root of borderline is a fear of abandonment it is a fear that you will leave me and in a adult child with cptsd the fear isn't so much of abandonment it's of relationships all together why because mom or dad or both weren't safe therefore people aren't safe so i'm not really going to trust relationships if i have cptsd from the fact that it's not so much i'm afraid you're going to leave me it's that i can't trust you all together to be there for me to give me what i need to be a safe source of support and security and stability so i like to think of it as borderline is scanning for abandonment at any moment are you going to leave me you know why don't you think i'm good enough and those who see ptsd are scanning for a lack of safety because of the core we need to feel safety in order to feel trust so because cptsd is about this hyperactivation of our arousal system our nervous system i believe that the skin and borderline is for abandonment and the skin in cptsd is for do i need to go into fight or flight or freeze or fawn i am activated all the time scanning for security and safety to then decide what i'm gonna do to protect myself so you can imagine with a borderline parent who is always accusing you or coming after you or being emotionally abusive or upset with you that you've learned that i have to be on hyper alert all of the time because i know when dad comes in the door from work that's a bad time or i know on the weekend if i disrupt him or if he thinks i'm insulting him at the dinner table that's a bad time right so i'm scanning and assessing for safety and being alert borderline scanning for abandonment so i always think of also borderline is about fear of leaving you is the wound and for cptsd let's say daughter or son relationships you are the wound anybody who can be safe is the wound people are the wound they can burn you at any moment and so you must always be prepared for that now borderline feels that way too but it's going to look a little different now as a result of that borderline rage and anger are going to be much more significant than a cptsd ranger anchor yes we can have them they're sort of these out of body experiences at times where the person is triggered and that sense they both can have an overlap but you don't tend to see a vindictive nature to cptsd you know they might lose control but they're not you know filled with that hatred and rage so much that goes outward they are more likely to turn that inward and it's all about i'm bad i am defective and so the rage part can happen in the moment but it's not so much about this intention to wound and strike back in the way that it can be with a borderline let's say parent now let's say mom is the borderline or dad right so at the core they have this unstable self image who am i it can be sort of chameleon-like it can be always changing it can be difficult to have them understand that you can change too they like things to be a certain way and they're always trying to create identity in terms of like who are they well cptsd let's say a child adult child we know who we are let's say if we have this but we think we're bad right so it's not about i don't know who i am it's about who i am is shameful and defective and bad and wrong because let's say as a result of the borderline parent you told me i was bad and wrong and horrible and you showed me through your unstable behavior that human beings are not safe and that i need to protect myself at all times and whereas the borderline is like well i don't really know who i am that could change minute by minute day by day hour by hour both can definitely dissociate although i believe that for the borderline it often happens as they go into these emotional phases where they feel triggered by the abandonment or by the wound and i think for dissociation for cptsd it can often be triggered by you know reliving the trauma or having a trauma trigger occur now we can see this sort of criticalness that occurs in both but i think at the outward part for the borderline is that the criticalness although there is a a deep defective sense of self will often see it manifested in criticizing others whereas i believe that the inner and outer critic that exists in cptsd is more likely to be directed on ourselves yes we can be critical of others and not trusting but the person we're the most critical of is ourselves and we don't feel safe anywhere and so we're always sort of manifesting this sense of like i need to protect myself so when it comes to things like suicide for a borderline it's much more likely to be someone who's a borderline parent who will be cutting or engaging in risky behaviors addictions substances intending to actually hurt themselves in a moment of being triggered in rage now we don't really see that so much with cptsd we can definitely see suicidal ideation and flashbacks and all of that but i would say that the risk for completion of suicide or serious attempts is going to be much higher with bpd as a result of that like them feeling rejected and no one loves me and i don't matter whereas for a trauma victim it may be like i just can't live this way anymore i'll never i'll never get better and so that feels like a safer way out when it comes to relationships let's say a borderline parent they don't necessarily want to be alone and so they may struggle with loneliness and and needing to find someone to fill the space so let's say that they might engage in an affair or they might be a single parent but not for long they really do want to use they need to use relationships to deal with that loneliness and that deep sense of longing and that fear of being left whereas for somebody who has cptsd let's say an adult child they are really more likely to avoid relationships because at the core they feel unsafe they can't trust them or that they feel unlovable no one will really love them for who they are you know as a result of all the trauma they've endured or the experiences they've had thrown at them let's say through an abusive borderline parent at the core they believe there's no sense of value and trustworthiness and so i'm just going to avoid humans and relationships all together whereas a borderline might go in and out of relationships trying to always fill that deep sense of isolation and loneliness or fear of being left by filling it up with relationships those who have cptsd are more likely to avoid relationships altogether and or as soon as they get emotional or attached to sort of have to extricate themselves because it feels too triggering and too vulnerable and too unsafe also as i said before we will often see a lot of substance use addictions eating disorders gambling compulsive behavior in borderline parents let's say whereas that same need to have a substance for a cptsd adult child might be more about needing to numb out and to quell the flashbacks the trauma the lack of worthiness inside and so they both can use substances but i think the reason why they do it can differ a little bit there is obviously overlap there's a lot of overlap in these in these issues in general but there's a numbness inside that is often just desperately needing to be kept maintained for cptsd and i think with borderline there's more this high high and low low in the feelings those that have cptsd would much rather just not feel anything because they're so overwhelmed and flooded by their feelings and they're not they're less likely to act out in the same way to deal with that like a borderline might so at the core we have a borderline let's say who got it from her own childhood who also had the genetic predisposition let's say and borderlines often do a lot of trauma so there could be trauma there but let's say the child as i'm discussing did not did not you know they may have some traits borderline but at the core they're not having that disorder but they do have this trauma this repetitive trauma from the parent who was always yelling always unstable abusive name-calling verbally abusive um unsafe at the core you know that really heart of disorganized attachment has manifested in not only a trauma from the parent and how they parented but perhaps from the situations the borderline parent put them in through other child caregivers through shipping them off somewhere through leaving them with other caregivers through being absent or disengaged or dissociating right and so you can see how they can be so similar and yet when we talk about treatment the treatments are going to be very different so if someone has basically a bpd diagnosis we're going to really work on decreasing dependency on others managing and navigating creating a more stable sense of self holding the self accountable learning how to make repairs working on emotional dysregulation relational instability helping them create more you know wholeness and stability in how they engage with themselves and the world and clearly want to help them avoid these risky behaviors of self-harm or suicidality now with cptsd we want to really work on dealing with this avoidance strategy avoidance of social situations of people creating and fostering healthier relational dynamics of attachment security and safety we want to work on creating a positive self-concept that isn't about i am bad but about i'm a survivor i am strong we want to restore a sense of power and well-being and control let's say for example you know with with a cptsd we're really going to work on repairing and recreating and rebuilding the foundation of the sense of self how to manage triggers how to engage in the world in a safer way and that's going to be different from trying to navigate and manage these tendencies that are sort of self-destructive at the root of borderline because they really do they become just sabotaging behaviors emotions thoughts actions relationship issues that tend to push people away but they really don't want to be pushed away and oftentimes that route of not being lost and rejected will force them into treatment when they finally do lose their adult children when they stop speaking to them and things like that and or they won't get treated and it will just stay in their mind that like it was all your fault anyway but it's very different from somebody who at the core believes as a result of repeated trauma let's say in parenting that i am bad i am defective no one is safe i should avoid relationships i should numb and i have no power over my own life those are going to be very different treatment plans all right so i hope this was helpful i hope it gives you just some glimpse into these two different issues and how they can overlap how they can be similar but why it really matters and i do think it's important to understand that it is very likely that those of you are watching these videos who have shared your stories that if you have not developed borderline in yourself that you may have cptsd from a borderline parent or a narcissistic parent or any abusive parent or any toxic parent clearly it also applies to those who have had other types of abuse as well from sexual physical emotional abuse and the idea of all of this is that if you understand what's going on if you understand your wounds your story even your own things you need to repair regardless of whatever you believe you or someone else might have that is the only way to begin to change and heal it because if we don't know what it is we cannot begin to figure out how to heal it and treat it so i hope you will know that you are worthy of love and healing and belonging whether you have bpd or bpd traits or you are the victim of a story of a borderline or abusive toxic parent or you are thinking to yourself yeah i am actually doing this to my child i need to get help to stop it and it's never too late to start to heal your life it really isn't people can feel like well there's no way to get past it you know i've created so much chaos for my adult child they'll never speak to me again and they may never speak to you again but at the core i truly believe we want to be healed and whole we want to love our parents we want them to love us and be safe and you might be amazed at what a lot of work and a lot of repair can do for your life and so whatever happens if it also means that you can't talk to that parent to protect yourself then you should not feel guilty about doing that you had no chance to protect yourself as a child but you do today and so i hope this was helpful thank you so much for watching please stay safe and well and don't forget to subscribe and click the bell if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and i will see you next time bye guys thanks so much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Dr. Kim Sage, Licensed Psychologist

Views: 63,113

Keywords: borderline, borderline personality disorder, kati morton bpd or cptsd, complex post traumatic stress disorder, complex post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, complex trauma recovery, borderline vs complex ptsd, how to spot ptsd, how to spot borderline personality disorder, how to spot a bpd woman, dr kim sage, how to spot mental health issues, case study mental health, bp parents, bpd vs, bpd vs cptsd

Id: uohnFWG5Q2k

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020