How do you distinguish between borderline personality disorder and complex PTSD in patients with chronic relational trauma?  

In my experience, the best differentiating factor is what occurs in the transference and the degree of distortion that occurs in the therapeutic relationship. Patients with complex PTSD may have issues with trust, fear of abandonment, and feelings of victimization, but this generally does not exhibi...

In my experience, childhood trauma underlies many cases of borderline personality disorder. BPD is characterized by episodes of irrational, disturbing behavior. These episodes are often triggered by a buried memory of childhood trauma, and the behavior is that of the traumatized child, very inapprop...

Many similarities between people with BPD and complex PTSD make this a common diagnostic problem. Both have childhood abuse histories, difficulties in managing abandonment trauma and trouble with self-regulation, dissociative experiences, somatization, identity comfusion, intense re-enactments of th...