Emotional Invalidation During Childhood May Cause BPD

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsDefinitionBorderline Personality DisorderDoes Emotional Invalidation Cause BPD?Emotional Validation

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Table of Contents

Definition

Borderline Personality Disorder

Does Emotional Invalidation Cause BPD?

Emotional Validation

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Many people withborderline personality disorder(BPD) have had experiences of emotional invalidation. In fact, some experts believe that emotional invalidation may be one factor that increases a child’s risk of developing BPD in adolescence or adulthood.

What Is Emotional Invalidation?

Emotional invalidation is when someone communicates to you that your emotions are not valid, are unreasonable or irrational, or should be hidden or concealed.

Alternatively, a parent might respond with, “I understand you’re feeling afraid. Tell me what’s happening to make you scared.” This is a validating response: It tells the child that his emotions are respected (even if the parent may not agree that there is an objective reason to be scared).

Many experts believe that emotional invalidation, particularly in childhood and adolescence, may be one factor that leads to the development of BPD.

Marsha Linehan, PhD, the clinical psychologist who developeddialectical behavior therapy(DBT), has proposed that an “emotionally invalidating environment,” or an environment in which one’s emotional responses are consistently invalidated or punished, may interact with other factors to cause BPD.

In Dr. Linehan’s model, children at risk of developing BPD later in life are born with a biological predisposition toward strong emotional responses. Unfortunately, these strong emotional responses can be met with invalidation (which may, but does not necessarily, take the form ofabuse or neglect).

It is important to note that in this model, there is an interaction between the child’s emotions and the environment. Because the child has such strong emotional responses to situations that others might not react to, their emotions are more likely to be invalidated.

If a parent or caregiver interprets the child’s responses as overreactions, they are likely to respond with behaviors that discourage the emotional response.

Discouraging a child’s emotional responses, particularly if that child is temperamentally predisposed to have strong emotions, probably does not work to calm the child. Instead, it likely has the opposite effect—the child’s emotional response is heightened, leading to an intensification of the emotion.

Further, the child who feels invalidated may miss the opportunity to learn how to manage her emotions effectively, which may lead to more emotion dysregulation down the road.

Dr. Linehan’s model of BPD includes emotional invalidation as one risk factor, and there is some strong evidence of a connection between childhood maltreatment and BPD (various forms of maltreatment, such as emotional neglect and physical abuse, are inherently invalidating of emotions).

Further, research has demonstrated that BPD symptoms are associated with reports of perceived childhood emotional invalidation. But there is no way to know conclusively whether emotional invalidation is, in fact, a cause of BPD.

This is because most of the research on this topic is retrospective (meaning that the researcher asks the person to report about experiences that happened earlier in their life; these reports can be subject to bias) and correlational (meaning the research and results demonstrate arelationshipbetween emotional invalidation and BPD but cannot conclude that emotional invalidation is acauseof BPD).

How to Provide Emotional Validation

If you love someone with BPD and are reading this, you may have noticed that some of your own reactions to their emotions have been invalidating.

Because a person with BPD has such intense reactions to seemingly minor events, it can be very hard to remain validating. However, working with amental health professional in-person or onlinecan help you learn skills to increaseemotionally validatingresponses and help reduce your loved one’s reactivity.

6 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Elzy M, Karver M.Behaviour vs. perception: An investigation into the components of emotional invalidation.Personal Ment Health. 2018;12(1):59-72. doi:10.1002/pmh.1403Sauer SE, Baer RA.Validation of measures of biosocial precursors to borderline personality disorder: childhood emotional vulnerability and environmental invalidation.Assessment. 2010;17(4):454-66. doi:10.1177/1073191110373226Deshong HL, Grant DM, Mullins-sweatt SN.Precursors of the emotional cascade model of borderline personality disorder: The role of neuroticism, childhood emotional vulnerability, and parental invalidation.Personal Disord. 2019;10(4):317-329. doi:10.1037/per0000330Musser N, Zalewski M, Stepp S, Lewis J.A systematic review of negative parenting practices predicting borderline personality disorder: Are we measuring biosocial theory’s ‘invalidating environment’?.Clin Psychol Rev. 2018;65:1-16. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2018.06.003Sturrock B, Mellor D.Perceived emotional invalidation and borderline personality disorder features: a test of theory.Personal Ment Health. 2014;8(2):128-142. doi:10.1002/pmh.1249Reeves M, James LM, Pizzarello SM, Taylor JE.Support for Linehan’s biosocial theory from a nonclinical sample.J Pers Disord.2010;24(3):312-326. doi:10.1521/pedi.2010.24.3.312

6 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Elzy M, Karver M.Behaviour vs. perception: An investigation into the components of emotional invalidation.Personal Ment Health. 2018;12(1):59-72. doi:10.1002/pmh.1403Sauer SE, Baer RA.Validation of measures of biosocial precursors to borderline personality disorder: childhood emotional vulnerability and environmental invalidation.Assessment. 2010;17(4):454-66. doi:10.1177/1073191110373226Deshong HL, Grant DM, Mullins-sweatt SN.Precursors of the emotional cascade model of borderline personality disorder: The role of neuroticism, childhood emotional vulnerability, and parental invalidation.Personal Disord. 2019;10(4):317-329. doi:10.1037/per0000330Musser N, Zalewski M, Stepp S, Lewis J.A systematic review of negative parenting practices predicting borderline personality disorder: Are we measuring biosocial theory’s ‘invalidating environment’?.Clin Psychol Rev. 2018;65:1-16. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2018.06.003Sturrock B, Mellor D.Perceived emotional invalidation and borderline personality disorder features: a test of theory.Personal Ment Health. 2014;8(2):128-142. doi:10.1002/pmh.1249Reeves M, James LM, Pizzarello SM, Taylor JE.Support for Linehan’s biosocial theory from a nonclinical sample.J Pers Disord.2010;24(3):312-326. doi:10.1521/pedi.2010.24.3.312

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Elzy M, Karver M.Behaviour vs. perception: An investigation into the components of emotional invalidation.Personal Ment Health. 2018;12(1):59-72. doi:10.1002/pmh.1403Sauer SE, Baer RA.Validation of measures of biosocial precursors to borderline personality disorder: childhood emotional vulnerability and environmental invalidation.Assessment. 2010;17(4):454-66. doi:10.1177/1073191110373226Deshong HL, Grant DM, Mullins-sweatt SN.Precursors of the emotional cascade model of borderline personality disorder: The role of neuroticism, childhood emotional vulnerability, and parental invalidation.Personal Disord. 2019;10(4):317-329. doi:10.1037/per0000330Musser N, Zalewski M, Stepp S, Lewis J.A systematic review of negative parenting practices predicting borderline personality disorder: Are we measuring biosocial theory’s ‘invalidating environment’?.Clin Psychol Rev. 2018;65:1-16. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2018.06.003Sturrock B, Mellor D.Perceived emotional invalidation and borderline personality disorder features: a test of theory.Personal Ment Health. 2014;8(2):128-142. doi:10.1002/pmh.1249Reeves M, James LM, Pizzarello SM, Taylor JE.Support for Linehan’s biosocial theory from a nonclinical sample.J Pers Disord.2010;24(3):312-326. doi:10.1521/pedi.2010.24.3.312

Elzy M, Karver M.Behaviour vs. perception: An investigation into the components of emotional invalidation.Personal Ment Health. 2018;12(1):59-72. doi:10.1002/pmh.1403

Sauer SE, Baer RA.Validation of measures of biosocial precursors to borderline personality disorder: childhood emotional vulnerability and environmental invalidation.Assessment. 2010;17(4):454-66. doi:10.1177/1073191110373226

Deshong HL, Grant DM, Mullins-sweatt SN.Precursors of the emotional cascade model of borderline personality disorder: The role of neuroticism, childhood emotional vulnerability, and parental invalidation.Personal Disord. 2019;10(4):317-329. doi:10.1037/per0000330

Musser N, Zalewski M, Stepp S, Lewis J.A systematic review of negative parenting practices predicting borderline personality disorder: Are we measuring biosocial theory’s ‘invalidating environment’?.Clin Psychol Rev. 2018;65:1-16. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2018.06.003

Sturrock B, Mellor D.Perceived emotional invalidation and borderline personality disorder features: a test of theory.Personal Ment Health. 2014;8(2):128-142. doi:10.1002/pmh.1249

Reeves M, James LM, Pizzarello SM, Taylor JE.Support for Linehan’s biosocial theory from a nonclinical sample.J Pers Disord.2010;24(3):312-326. doi:10.1521/pedi.2010.24.3.312

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