Bipolarbear, do you think when you stand up and walk? That too is a learned response. How about when you brush your teeth or say "Hi" back to someone who has said it to you first?

I believe behaviors are learned. Even Pavlov's dogs salivating at the sound of a bell was learned; yes food makes one salivate but there is extra association needed to learn a specific behavior related to a chemical response. Depression may be chemically caused (not always), but the behaviors are all choices. One decides not to get up and take a shower or to sleep instead of fighting the tiredness; where there are different responses to the same stimulus, it's a learned behavior.

Yes, behaviors become automatic and unconscious but that's because they were learned so well, repeated so often. Someone we know, love, depend on saying, "You're stupid" we are going to learn we're stupid. It probably has nothing whatsoever to do with reality (after all, what does "stupid" mean? That definition would vary according to the person using the word.).

Fear is very much learned, especially fear of something that has never happened. Think of how afraid you are of zombies and werewolves, etc. when you're watching a horror movie A lot of us learn to be afraid of being afraid! I think that is what happens when we're afraid of being abandoned. We haven't been abandoned but have made ourselves supersensitive to all the approach signs that we react to them as if they are the real thing. It's like people with OCD who have to clean what isn't dirty because it might be.

That's why working hard with DBT and other CBT therapies can often be helpful for one with borderline symptoms or traits. We can learn better ways to respond and better ways to perceive other people's and our own behaviors.