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

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What might it look like if a parent had more severe BPD and their adult child had CPTSD?

This video uses the example of how a parent (who may have developed BPD from their own childhood trauma and/or genetics) might compare to the manifestation of CPTSD in their adult child --and explores the overlapping symptoms, as well as differences.

❤️❤️❤️As always, your experience of BPD or CPTSD might be reflected in some, all or none of the case study I am sharing in this video!!❤️❤️❤️❤️

BPD and CPTSD can both be very painful wounds for those diagnosed, as well as for those on the receiving end, and both are worthy of healing, support and treatment.🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💕💕💕

xo
dr kim sage

@drkimsage

[polarpalmwv]

49. Male. College educated. Had a career for over 2 decades (that I despised from the start). BPD Mother who denies having any mental illness still at age 73 and still with both of her sons having become estranged from her. Passive father who died 20 years ago in his 50s. (I believe due to chronic stress. BPD mom was emotionally cruel to all of us.) Socially isolated in early childhood. Zero friendships or trusting relationships for the first over 30 years of my life. Currently married and with my husband for 16 years but he is the last person in my life. Family has either died or been estranged due to Mom's BPD. Developed a terrible habit of dating chat in the 1990s that never let up that I finally revealed to someone (my husband) this morning in a nighttime fit of shame on my part - so my marriage may be ending soon. No friends. I literally don't know what to do. I have lost everything because of the childhood trauma and, unfortunately, didn't work out all of this until these past few unemployed years. I feel like I am mostly c-PTSD but I also feel like I have some of the unique BPD traits as well - such as self-harming behaviors (like infidelity - like denying myself things - self-isolation as a form of self-punishment...). I appear normal to the casual observer but that goes away quickly since I never had an opportunity to develop social skills. Heck, it was only a few days ago that I learned that oversharing personal information is a bad social skill. To me it was always just being open about myself. Sadly, no one tells you when you mess up socially - they just avoid you because they assumed you learned social skills when everyone else did - as a kid. I never had a time of happiness. I hated myself before I could even talk and was PETRIFIED of strangers by the time I finally met another kid that wasn't a family member at 4 years old. I tried therapy/psychiatry and was met with accusations that I was lying about my condition. Dealt with doctors who don't believe me because I am too well spoken and educated. My world has been slowly decaying since birth - but the decay has accelerated lately and I fear soon becoming homeless since my mental health has made me too scared to work for fear of losing my temper at the first sign of maltreatment or abuse at work (which might be perceived and not even real). This video did a GREAT job clarifying these two conditions - BPD and c-PTSD. It bothers me that while I think I am more on the c-PTSD side of things, I also have many BPD-unique characteristics. HOW IN THE HECK AM I EVER GOING TO SURVIVE THIS WITHOUT MONEY OR SOCIAL SUPPORT? -- I both hate myself (c-PTSD) AND fear abandonment (BPD). I would not wish the hell of an entire life of this on anyone. If there really is a physical Hell, my life is WORSE - just a chronic, life-long, slow drip of one trauma-trigger after another, day after day, decade after decade....all due to to the ways in which my growing young brain misinterpreted my emotionally crazy mother. Unaware of the cause. Miserable. ALWAYS. I don't think I have gone more than 2 days EVER without severe depression and chronic anxiety. Forever I have felt like I am in a glass box with my VERY LOUD inner critic (who drowns out any actual real world sounds), while the world goes on just outside of my reach. I want to belong but never know how to make that happen. So I run...or freeze if I can't run.

[Sarahwithanh]

I was misdiagnosed with BPD before I was finally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and CPTSD. I found this extremely helpful in identifying the differences, thank you

[welcomecataclysm]

I feel like I have both. I fear relationships, feel inherently bad, but also have self-sabatoging behaviors and can lash out at others and then deeply regret it.

[suzannebigras]

At 64 i am so grateful that I have survived this long. I started seeking help by 15. I am so confused about the amount of diagnosis I have been given. Very little knowledge 50 years ago about Trauma. I have so much Therapy Trauma on top of having BPD AND CPTSD. Thank goodness that I have an ability to expand and somehow intuitively knew that I wasn’t what I was programmed to believe.
In my early stages of understanding, I was very suicidal with addictions. In 23 years of alcohol recovery I have progressed significantly.
I am now able to sit alone and stay present and not avoid my emotions and can be more of an Observer and can comfort my reactivity with tenderness for Self.

[bizarrebroz]

My entire family is on this spectrum somewhere. Ppl who grew up in a stable loving home are lucky, wow, I can't even imagine

[MF-twdh]

Okay so I've watched a million videos about this, trying to differentiate between those two and you Dr. Kim has said some brilliant things I've never heard before. After seeing too many psychologists and psychiatrists on youtube, you are the one that really put all things in order. So thank you very much, this video was so so helpful!

[kr]

Its pretty clearly different for me because I got CPTD from having a mom with BPD. I dont see myself as being like her at all in that way.
Edit: she was one of the 10% that accidentally completed suicide. She involved me to stop her like always, but I was too late this time. I'm sharing this because it's really relevant to the dynamic described here.

[wendi]

I hope in my lifetime the terrible stigma surrounding BPD is wiped out! CPTSD and BPD seem very similar. Every one deserves to heal with both diagnosis.

[tiablasangoriti]

I am a survivor of repetitive violent Traumas. Most of it came from a BPD Birth Mother. The time to heal is now.
I will not let my CPTSD prevent me
from having peace and tranquility in
any department in my life today.

Therapy is a good thing.

[comingforthattoothbrush]

Just on the topic of knowing who you are with CPTSD vs borderline: in some cases the parents' splitting occurs with the same person. So while one moment you are bad and horrible and awful, the next (when you're somehow meeting their needs) you are angelic, perfect, the ideal child - but you know that love is conditional and won't last. This can definitely create uncertainty for the child around their sense of self, so while shame is the dominant factor, for children of borderlines CPTSD can certainly involve some identity disturbance too. Thanks for making these videos, they're really good any very informative.

[ursulaknudson]

Thank you for posting . I had a therapist who identified me as CPTSD when I was worried I whats BPD like my mom. It was a huge step forward for me . It’s all about providing templates .

[DangerMum]

I'm in the process of disentangling my identity from my BPD mother. The biggest difference I see between us is, the vindictive behavior and when I get triggered I apologize when I come back to myself. My mother says things like "I'm sorry you're angry".

[Gloroxsocks]

this is literally me and my mum, i have cptsd and havent made any new friends in a long damn time as this has come to light and have left all relationships I felt unsafe in, which has left me friendless, bc with two unstable parents and no safe adults anywhere had meant I only knew how to make relationships with toxic people, ughh i hope i can find it in myself to leave my comfort zone because i LOVE talking to people and being social. thank u sm!

[SlumberBeark]

I feel like part of the safety also comes from the absence of the parent. For example I had such an unstable and shaken foundation that I would avoid school and not go, and this snowballed to where I would have patterns of avoidance and deception at school. I would love test days not because I liked taking tests or did well, but because there were no threats from the teacher to ask me questions I didn't know the answer to (I didn't go to school or do my homework and when I was at school I wasn't ever paying attention, but doodling). I loved test days because it was quiet and I could just fill in the bubbles and make up the answers and hand in the test. It is amazing I actually even graduated high school because I didn't even understand basic concepts like studying or self discipline and basically winged everything. I thought I was stupid when in reality my life was literally chaos. That I got a bad grade didn't matter because there was no consequences at home. So a lot of the safety and scanning for threats was from the absence of my parents, where I would cope with situations I was thrown in but didn't have the tools to handle.

[touchedbyfire]

Thank you for these videos Dr. Sage. I love how you manage not to make BPD parents into evil perpetrators and how you give suffering CPTSD children the validation to move forward with self-healing activities despite the triggering of guilt. That was the biggest obstacle for me. I had to figure out how to not feel guilty about taking steps to improve my own mental health which of course included no longer allowing myself to be party to the crazy-making tendencies of my parents. But after I took the first step, it got easier.

[-iloveyou]

CPTSD is bad… i got screwed up pretty bad in the military for not turning a blind eye to heinous crimes… combat is easy… but having my life destroyed for doing the right thing… it’s been ten years and i’m still really messed up, and its really hard.

[frankov]

That was really brilliant and empathic. You made the differences of BPD and CPTSD, causes, symptoms and treatment very clear. I was wrongly diagnosed with BPD back in the early nineties, but it turns out I have CPTSD, have been diagnosed and am being treated for it (with EMDR which is incredibly effective). Your video has made it even clearer what I have been dealing with, and yes, it's never too late to start the healing journey (I am 61). One thing I would suggest is to slow down; it's quite deep and emotive stuff to take in, and I found my self having to stop and go back (mild dissociation perhaps??). 'Love', both for one's self and for others that have been in and shaped your life, is so much to do with understanding, exceptance and compassion.

[cristinecornell]

I have CPTSD and this has been one of the most helpful videos I’ve seen on the subject. Well done!

[BaskingInObscurity]

Thank you for this comparison. I've been diagnosed with a few things for a long time, including CPTSD. But the last few years I've been working on understanding clinical narcissism and autism while not quite understanding what BPD is. You clarified essential points for me. I kinda wanted to give my mom a seemingly "lesser" degree of evil, but as far as I've ever been able to tell she doesn't worry about abandonment. She's just a vulnerable narcissist who was raised by a covert/self-righteous narcissist (who was also daily in my life), in a chain of various iterations through the maternal line. Not that it was the plan, but I was being trained to be a narcissist as well until in my tweens I developed friendships with healthy people who liked me and coached me when I needed to unlearn things. I'm grateful for the people who rescued me on time. I'm 54 and still discovering notions I harbor that come from that childhood environment.

[skylarclayton]

Thank you for this! Recently made myself get a new therapist and she's leaning towards me having tendencies of both BPD & CPTSD from childhood trauma and this... Really helped me understand why she's thinking along those lines. :) I truthfully didn't even know CPTSD existed so this is super helpful.