Do you think your PD is purely genetic or has something to do with the way you were educated?
Personality disorders are the result of both. Without a genetic predisposition, you're likely to respond to dysfunctional parenting or peer groups with a dysfunctional behavior, not a dysfunction across almost all dimensions of personality. But plenty of people have the predisposition, but are supported in other ways that keep their traits from becoming dysfunctional.
As for me, I have a genetic predisposition to psychological disorders, like most of the rest of my family. My parents were a contributing factor, mostly because they didn't know how to help. The biggest trigger was my school life. From about 3rd grade on through 11th, I experienced pretty intense bullying. Sometimes it was physical or threatening, and I got beat up at least once a year every year from 4th to 9th grade. Mostly it was social, using manipulation and cruelty to destroy my sense of worth and warp my view of reality. I was excluded from just about everything, rejected for just about everything, and singled out for ridicule for just about everything. And you know what the school did to help?
They sent
me to the counselor. They didn't send the kids who tormented me about my appearance in front of the teacher every day. They didn't send the kid who would harass me and then pretended to be my friend, which
really messes up your idea of what a friend is when you're in 4th grade. They didn't call the parents of the kid who turned me upside down and slammed my head on the tile floor because I told the teacher he had been throwing crayons at the back of my head. The kid who knocked me on my ass because I asked for my notebook back? He was back to kick me through a doorway the next year. Nobody took it seriously.
I didn't realize how perverse it was until I became an adult, but what they did was say to me that
I was the one with the problem,
I was the one who needed to change, and
I was the one doing something wrong. They tried to teach me how to have friends, but I was the one being nice to everyone regardless of what they did. They told me not to fight back, so I didn't; that I could think myself through it, so I tried; and that bullies never win in the end, so I was patient. And it was all nonsense. Did any of my bullies ever go to the counselor? Not once. Did the principal talk to them or to me to figure out what to do? Not once. The only thing that ever happened was a kid who attacked me would get suspended. Then he'd be back two weeks later and the ridicule and shame and taunting would begin because I was a weakling and a tattle-tale and a whiner.
So I had a genetic predisposition, and then I was abused for a decade and nobody was able to help me, and for whatever reason that showed up as OCPD rather than PTSD or depression or something.
