“People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.” ― Marsha M. Linehan
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a very serious mental illness that is estimated to affect 1.6% of the U.S. population. It involves unstable moods, behavior, and relationships, problems with regulating emotions and thoughts, impulsive and reckless behavior, and unstable relationships. BPD is associated with high rates of co-occurring depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal behaviors, and completed suicides. Needless to say it is widespread and debilitating.
BPD has not responded well to a variety of therapies with the exception of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (BPT). It is interesting that DBT emphasizes mindfulness. This suggests that there may be a relationship between the etiology of Borderline Personality Disorder and mindfulness. In addition 30 to 90 % of BPD cases are associated with high rates of early traumatic experiences including sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Also, mindfulness has been shown to reduce the impact of trauma on the individual http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/dont-be-afraid-2-dealing-with-trauma/. All of this suggests that childhood trauma may affect BPD by lowering mindfulness.
In today’s Research News article “Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518520/
Elices and colleagues measure childhood trauma, personality and mindfulness in a sample of individuals with relatively severe Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). They found, although did not report, that the degree of mindfulness measured was very low in the BPD sample than occurs in the general population. They also reported high levels of childhood trauma in the BPD sample.
One of the most interesting findings was that the mindfulness characteristics of acting with awareness and non-judging were negatively associated with childhood trauma, but only with sexual abuse. That is for individual with BPD who experienced sexual abuse in childhood there were lower levels of acting with awareness and non-judging than with BPD sufferers who didn’t experience this form of trauma. Given the mindfulness scores were low to begin with and that sexual abuse is negatively associated with mindfulness, suggests that trauma may make a bad situation worse.
These are very preliminary results and do not clearly make a case for childhood trauma affecting Borderline Personality Disorder by lowering mindfulness, the results are compatible with this idea. It obviously needs to be explored further.
So, improve mindfulness to combat the effects of trauma.
“Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs.” ― Kiera Van Gelder
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies