Hi Cats, childhood is for maturing so that when we physically become an adult we are emotionally an adult also. If your emotional needs were ignored while growing up, you didn't get to mature emotionally. You can mature emotionally as an adult. I did this. Identifying where you are at is the first step and then accepting where you are at. After this, exploring what is going on and understanding it. Finally, you can move into the problem solving. With your T pointing out in session what she is observing this will help you to identify where you are at.

Attachment and emotional regulation would be important here also. If your parents weren't helping you emotionally then your attachment wouldn't have been too secure and with your parents not helping you with your emotions, this would lead to you not learning how to regulate your emotions (your parents help you calm yourself and comfort you and this regulates your emotions).

Maturing emotionally in childhood requires a caregiver to help us figure out ourselves and how we fit in the world and how we can manage ourselves. A person develops BPD when the environment is not validating. A validating environment helps us figure ourselves out, how we fit and how to manage ourselves. An invalidating environment ignores us or gives us feedback that is distressing so that we can't figure things out. I'll bet you can remember some times where this happened?