I have BPD and I don ' t have any history of trauma . At first this made me doubt my diagnosis , but I did a lot of research and I learned that there are a lot of factors that contribute to the development of BPD . Biological factors mainly genetics and brain abnormalities are a big part of BPD . And trauma can be a contributing factor but it doesn ' t have to be . A lot of people with BPD don ' t have a history of trauma . And smaller invalidating things can definitely contribute . Things like invalidating a child ' s emotions , failing to teach a child how to deal with emotions , or reinforcing a child ' s dysfunctional response to emotions can all contribute to BPD . This is sometimes called poorness of fit , which just means that no abuse or neglect happened but the caregiverenvironment didn ' t fit or couldn ' t meet the child ' s emotional needs . For example , my parents were never abusive and they were generally great parents but they didn ' t know how to deal with my super intense emotional reactions . They often discounted my over reactions and never taught me how to selfsoothe . So for me , I think my biology gave me really strong emotions and a predisposition to BPD and my environment didn ' t give me what I needed to deal with that properly .