Could Exposure To Porn at Age 12 Have Made My Daughter Borderline?

Reader’s Question

I’m the mother of a 16-year-old girl who has been diagnosed with “traits of BPD” (Borderline Personality Disorder). My daughter was once a very smart, outgoing, intelligent girl. I worked very hard teaching and nurturing her, helping her build self-confidence and exposing her to as many things in life as I could. She was happy, worked hard at school, and the lines of communication were always open between us, even if she knew that she might get into trouble about the things she might tell me. We live in New York City, so she has experienced a very diverse, artistic, progressive lifestyle.

Last year around this time, she started “acting-out” and being very disrespectful to her father and me. Over the course of the past year, things just seemed to get worse. She has been to the psychiatric ward several times, and that’s how we were informed about the BPD traits.

My daughter was never abused — sexually or otherwise — and doesn’t have the history that seems to go along with BPD. She also seemed to be doing well for most of her life except for the normal issues that children have. However, I just found out that when she was around 12 years old, she was exposed to online porn. She has since told me that she was even addicted to it. I believe that this is what has her head so messed up and I don’t know what to do. She is soon going to attend therapy, but I was wondering if there is something specific that we should do like have her see a specialist who could maybe “deprogram” her? She is also now sexually active and experimenting with drugs, and I’m very afraid for her safety.

Any input would be appreciated.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Of course it would not be possible to render a valid assessment remotely, but the situation you describe warrants some comments for your consideration that might prove helpful to you.

Although it’s possible that your daughter might be “acting-out” an emotional drama otherwise too painful to reckon with by her use of porn, drugs, and defiance, it is not necessarily the case. Acting-up is often mis-labeled acting-out. (See Acting Up is Not “Acting-Out”.) Also, research indicates that females who display certain behaviors like sexual recklessness, inappropriate expressions of anger, emotional and behavioral instability, etc. tend to be given diagnoses like borderline or histrionic traits, whereas males tend to be given different labels for the same behaviors (e.g., antisocial).

If, despite the absence of the usual contributing history, your daughter does have some borderline personality features, it means that she has not yet solidified a solid sense of self. While it’s perfectly normal for adolescents to have a tenuous identity, if borderline traits are truly present, the degree of self-integration difficulty is greater than that of normal adolescence. Severe abuse and trauma have always been thought to be key variables in interfering with a person’s ability to develop a stable, integrated sense of self. But other things can contribute, too, such as being exposed to more ambiguity and diversity than can be reasonably understood and incorporated at early stages of development, having virtually no discipline imposed, or being so overly structured and guided in early years that there’s no chance for an internal compass to develop and there is no ability to function in the absence of externally-imposed structure.

The likelihood that all your child’s difficulties can be explained by her porn “addiction” (quite possibly another misnomer) is very low. It’s also unlikely that the solution is to have her “deprogrammed” in any sense. Your daughter will never gain a solid sense of self or develop internal controls until and unless she solidifies her own sense of self and her own set of values and principles of conduct. That’s the task of adolescence, and although she’ll need some help, the task belongs to her. Hopefully you and the rest of the family will be a part of the overall therapy process. But remember that everyone has their own role to play. Yours is to keep leading by example, to love, support, guide, and provide discipline. Hers is to come to terms with the issues raging inside her and to find and solidify healthy ways to get her needs met. Your daughter is 16 now. It’s no longer time for indoctrination. It’s time for her to decide who she is and what she wants to be like. And it may take her some time to resolve those issues.