Why do people with borderline personality disorder have a hard time growing up?

[Answered on Quora.com by Ken Pkillips]

They never got the chance.

Something, or someone, didn’t allow it.

Backstories from people I’ve known with BPD:

- They had to be a parent to their own parents.
- They had a long string of ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences) instead of an actual childhood.
- They’d been scapegoated by pathologically narcissistic family members.
- They were treated like objects instead of children.
- They never received encouragement and reward for good behavior, they were overly punished and ridiculed for bad behavior.
- They were abandoned at birth.
- They spent their childhood being passed from one foster care to the next.

People with BPD have a hard time growing up because they never got the chance.