We are not ourselves in their eyes, separate and precious and wondrous human beings, we are their security blankets or punching bags, considering the time of day or given day.  

We are the trash receptacles for all the contempt they feel for themselves and now they have us to punish and push away to escape their own inner ego-monster of perfectionism or they have us to tyrannize and push to be their perfect AVATARS so they can congratulate themselves for inspiring us and directing us there or get the payoff of punishing us for disappointing them when they invested so much faux-faith in us.

We are their p.r. department that promotes their impression management campaign which additionally cripples us since we are covering up their dark surreality with us while we create the illusion of their powerful goodness all the while the profound erosion of our spirits are taking place by them.

But we have been so profoundly confused by them -- confused means FUSED WITH -- and at times we PITY them and try not to notice how much we FEAR them, that we hustle to be as convenient as possible in their world of paranoid brittle hysteria.  

And we don't understand their disorder.  We don't understand the nature of their paranoia.  Trust with them is not global, not a long-standing reservoir of good will, it is specific to a limited narcissistic moment with them.  It is earned second by second with one more step on a tight rope with no net by us.

There is no resilience and capacity with them to accept us -- even for one tiny moment to accept us if they don't understand us -- IF THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND US WE ARE A THREAT TO BE BULLIED AND PUNISHED TO GET IN LINE.  If we take the focus off their needs, even if we must since our ignored needs are rushing in and demanding attention, we become their ENEMY and they threaten us with all they have to get us back into line.

They are disordered.  They cannot see us.  They are the PLAYWRIGHTS, DIRECTORS and MAIN CHARACTERS of their life drama and everyone else in the cast must read from their scripts and be waiting in the wings for their cue to come on stage and circle them and it is their show.  Even if you have a bit part, you must be available at all times and watching their show and participating in their show and GOD help you if you want to star in your own life.  It is treason. Improvisation is TREASON.  Invites total rejection.

And if you blow the role, you are gone in a heartbeat, banned and shunned by them and they demand that the cast and crew shun you as well.  And they act out on their stage as inconsolable victims of your selfishness and they hook others to enable them and rescue them from cruel, heartless you who had been their main enabler seconds earlier.

And you thought the role you had been playing at least meant something to the MAD GODDESS or GOD of the theater, enabling her or him, in an oh so vulnerable and needy survival mode always, but there is no will or comprehension to communicate with you because you are not nor ever were a fellow human being. They are not capable of respect and intimacy only affinity on THEIR TERMS.  THEY ARE WILLFULL NARCISSISTIC TODDLERS, stuck in that arrested development.  

You were a kind of machine that has now broken down and deserves rage and replacement INSTANTLY. They are not capable of hearing about you and your needs because they never were really all that important.  Sometimes they convinced you they cared, but that was in the role they were playing, not in their ego-controlled and numbed out heart as director and playwright. You got suckered by the role they sometimes brilliantly performed but alas it wasn't real at base. You got snookered.

And you are bereft, because the only thing you have experienced was being the second guessing security blanket or punching bag for the MAD GODDESS or GOD.  And your trauma is some Godawful baggage to sort out the challenges of survival now alone and confused and your identity so beaten up and well beyond recognition now. Your capacity for trust is shot.  And you still don't want to believe the tragedy or pathos of it all.  That is still your albatross, your addiction still to the denial.

Scott Peck said it is evil to "tit suck from and control the same person" and that is what they did for years and years.  He also said recognizing "evil" -- and it is one helluva "evil disorder" this uBPD -- in a parent is the hardest thing a child can do in a life time.  Most can't and stay enthralled.  

Hope was the last temptation of  Christ as they say.  Look what happened to HIM!  "Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had" the saying goes. What a hard step that is.

We were trained by them to over-identify with them to the exclusion of our own identity and basic needs in life. They do deserve pity, but they have lost that right with us since we have been so victimized by their disorder and they exploited our pity so unbelievably much and our basic need to be loved and cherished to keep us locked in our victimization. The sense of entitlement to our own God-given and satisfying life must be re-learned.  Somewhere we were hoping for their permission and blessing since they were playing God over us.  There is a God or Higher Power and that BEING is NOT them.  And that is the source of unconditional love for us as bereft adults, not our lost parents.  And that God is our parents' parent, too.  Not us.  Not our job ... .and it never should have been.

Thank you for putting years of emotional pain into words for those of us who can't fully express it.

It is a very painful read.

And it's a defiant tone.

We can rise above!

Thanks for the inspiration.

I am very blessed to have a place finally to let loose on some hard-won, empowering, heartbreaking and at times embittering lessons.  Thank you for hearing me and getting it.  You guys have been through similar roller coasters obviously.

manyourown, after pouring all this out your first message was really precious.  thanks. I can't believe how all that poured out of me so quickly.  And BBSunshine!  Appreciate the "amen"!  Air2009, thank you, too. OntheJourney I had no idea I had come up with so very many points. Some of them are dots I connected just being here a short time, added to the connected dots of a lifetime. Blueriot, ty to you, !   

Since writing it I was thinking about how important it is to feel one is able to assert one's will. Passages of life growth require it.  Otherwise one has arrested development.

"Saying no is the cornerstone of your identity."  I believe Alexander Lowen said that.  And somewhere I heard a saying about how you can't say yes to life until you have learned to say no.  Being able to say no is key.  Instead I grew up with what the 12 step rooms talked about, a "false personality."  Self-estranged.  Learning to treat myself someone once wrote as "a roommate I didn't like."

Those defining identity moments of saying no to an authority and gaining a sense of mastery and self-empowerment are denied to people with parents who lack the empathy to recognize that vital need of their children. That important sense of separateness without threat of danger.  Existential security it promotes and not having the sense of separateness as one grows sabotages one's capacity to enjoy an existential sense of security.

I went through those important passages sometimes but rarely out of fear waging the toddler war and the adolescent war but with the borderline parent and my other narcissist alcoholic parent (but not as God-like to me as the uBPD), I was forbidden to experience my right to say no and assert my wants, my will, my power.  To exercise power and be encouraged to exercise my power was not allowed.  Quite the opposite. And my mother was quite religious, and I felt she was wielding God's will against me as well as her own in demanding I not.

I am old enough now to have had a dramatic reckoning with my uBPD mother and come out the other side with a sense of horror as to how impossible any real intimacy was. I really tested her and did not realize but found out how ferocious the bp disorder is, though I wish I had known about it so long ago.  What I was up against.

I don't know if you are familiar with the powerful play A Doll's House by Ibsen, but in that play Nora is a child-wife for her traditional and pompous husband.  She was daddy's little girl and now she is cutesy for her husband.  But she is actually a much stronger woman than she plays, performing a convenient role for others she feels, but she has made a profound sacrifice long ago to save her husband and father.

And at one point, there is a reckoning and the truth is about to come out and she awaits the miracle with her husband.  He will learn how brave and sacrificing she was and he will RESPECT her at long last. Recognize her finally for who she considers her real self to be.

The husband freaks out rather than appreciates what she has done.  He is threatened by something and rather than rise to want to protect her now he is ready to throw her under the bus so to speak.  It is all about him and he is empathy challenged big-time. He is abusive to her.  The threat disappears, and then he is ready to go back to the status quo with Nora as the patronized child-wife and Nora is stunned.  Her illusion of his potential evaporates. She leaves to "find her real self."

I am sorry to go on so long about this.  But I had such a reckoning with my uBPD mother. That moment when I thought this is it.  The miracle has to happen, because I am ready to put it all on the table and I am up for demanding respect. 

I thought if it came to being honest with me or losing our relationship she would try to communicate. She would make an attempt to hear me.

SHE COULD NOT.  It was not that she would not.  She could not. She heartbreakingly to my perception didn't even try.  Didn't even know the first thing about trying.  She threw me under the proverbial bus for her own image.  And I would not cave.  I was at that Nora/Torvald (her hubby) moment when I was so horrified that she could not allow me to be the real person I am with her.  My adult voice was treasonous. The only way to rescue my relationship with her was to stifle myself and my will one more time and I would not. 

I still am stunned and keep needing to re-process the horror of her inability and profound lack of effort.  I guess it goes with the PARANOIA part of it.  I detached from her (but the truth is ... .the detachment was spiritually and all along from her) and did not realize I would be detaching from my family network to a great extent, too (though again I felt like the detachment though it was attributed to me was on their reluctance to engage), she could not even keep it private between us. I geographically detached for a seriously long, long time. 

I think she figured I would cave the way I had caved my will for her need to control for so long.  I didn't. Let me grant you I was a real mess for a long time thereafter but it was the turning point of a lifetime.  I crawled away, feeling devastated, but knowing if I didn't ... .I would be permanently lost, in terms of my mental health.

Long distance attempts to communicate, some over the years ... .not many but still, always resulted in her being at first sentimental but then getting astonishingly hysterical when I tried to address my view of reality.  Also, I realize that my expressing anger was a monstrous breaking of the family code, too.  At first I blamed some of the estrangement on my unfamiliar anger to her and that was the cause of her hysteria and inability to reach and communicate.  But looking back it was more like a willful child who would not stand for ANY molecule of will coming at her.  My puppetness was yearned for. Not me.

It went on for so long and I reminded myself at times of Annie Sullivan patiently trying to get Helen Keller to fold her napkin, except my mom as Helen couldn't fold her napkin. She was angry at times, she was pleading at times, but it was a pleading for me to STFU about any truth or reality.  And the travesty of that reckoning I had originally had with her.  She had reacted to a wrong assumption about me.  I was asserting to her than and through the years she had been wrong in that overreacting assumption about me and I wanted her to acknowledge it.  The truth of my reality.  SHE FREAKED every time, no matter how many years went by.  She couldn't acknowledge something that seemed so modest to ask for. And my bringing it up to her was monstrous apparently.  It was not modest apparently to her.  Not to challenge her emotional reasoning, even if it meant losing a relationship with a daughter.  Wow.

But a daughter who didn't want to be a puppet any more, clearly.  She wanted to be a real girl and try to catch up to becoming a woman. The Stepford daughter, there was only room for her in my mother's life.

Both my parents were disordered I honestly believe.  Tragically so from their childhoods.  The largest damage to me came from my not recognizing how my mother was disordered, the extent of it, and my introverting my fear of her and her shaming and anger at times at me as evidence that I was so much less than.  My mother's attention to me confused me so.  The hot and cold stuff.  Infantilization and parentification.  Back and forth.  Depending on her emotional needs. You are the best girl in the world one minute, you are possessed the next.

I read a book once, ":)o I have to give up me to be loved by you."  Boy, is that not the essence of a relationship with a borderline.  And part of my own personal paranoia about entering relationships, potentially promising ones. I don't want to enter a thrall ever again like the one I lived in with my mother all those years.

When I finally stood up to my mother and the world at least of family came tumbling down around me, the "tribe" I had socially functioned in of primary and secondary family, there was pressure for me to give her what she wanted for the sake of the social peace from them, something I had not reckoned on and a loss that ambushed me. They did not want to learn about what was happening clearly and heartbreakingly, maybe they did know too well. My stopping my enabling was inconveniencing others and making them fill in with more enabling on their parts and also making them choose to stay in denial and the status quo or not. Status quo often wins.  Also, it belied my mother's image, the reality.  And I was not empowered enough to make my case to them at that point firmly and robustly. I was raised with the insane level of other-protective, self-destructive secrecy of the enablers of an alcoholic family.  Also, they were used to me as cowering puppet girl. And hadn't I been the big promoter in enabling my mother for her emotional security?

The miracle didn't happen that I wanted desperately to happen.  I could not relate to my mother person to person. Rather, she could not relate that way to me.  I could never it seemed command serious respect from her.  Our very relationship was not grounded with a reservoir of good will to be called on during the trying times. Conflict and miscommunication was always dooming, and to try to do anything about it made everything EVEN WORSE. That was the belief system I grew up with.

She was so hysterically threatened by me simply by me being an adult woman.  She required the predictability, the rules-playing, the obedience.  The power. An insane degree of power.

All in the chaos of an emotionally violent alcoholic home that she was willing to endure. But her adult child asking for a five minute honest conversation and to be heard and all hell breaks loose with her.  That is TRAUMATIZING. Hello?  Not the roller coaster insanity of the war between my parents.  How tragic and sad for both of us, for all of us.  Because border-line families result from borderline parents.  I must explore more of that, too.

Thanks for letting me sort through more.  It helps.  And alas, I have fleas and I need to face down my own self-inventory here with time.

Thanks for reading this, those of you who have and will.  Clearly I am hungry for support and communication.

i came to that point of MIRACLE so many times with my mother. and was truly surprised and horrified at the outcome. every time.

i continue to be amazed at how often i am still surprised by my d's reaction to the real me. how can it still be surprising? but it is. i often think it's because it is SO wrong to react the way they do. SO dysfunctional. it is normal to think that relating to someone will eventually bring understanding. when it doesn't, it's shocking. every time.

i am learning to guard my heart and my emotions and still relate to my d. it's hard to even conceive of how you can relate to someone who does not have a grounded self. everything seems lie and a pretense. i have seen, rather, that everything is very real to them. so real that they can't handle it and fly from emotion to emotion without control. every excruciating minute is real for them. God help us all.

This is exactly it.  I can't believe that she would rather live her life without me as her daughter than actually accept responsibility for the pain she causes other people, especially her children.  For me, it's especially hard to believe because I would walk to the ends of the earth for my children.  My mom can't even walk to the mirror for hers.  It's very foreign for me.  I hurt when my children hurt.  Just last month we faced the possibility that we might have to move my 12 year old to a different middle school (special ed issues) and we discussed it with her.  She sobbed and her heart was broken and honestly, it broke my heart and was so painful that I just wanted to do whatever I could to end her pain.  In the end, the lady from the school district asked me "What does d12 want?"  I told her and she said, "Ok, then she'll stay where she is and we'll make that work."  WOW, I was so tormented by my child's pain and so relieved when it ended.

I think maybe this might be a   moment for me.  I recently started a thread about the money issues I have had with my parents and I have completely let go of getting paid back, and yet I can't seem to let go of the issue.  It's hard to explain, but when I tried to discuss this with her and how betrayed I felt by her, she actually said "so what".  And later referred to this issue as being my problem, not hers.  I can't believe a child would say to their mother "Mom, you hurt me" and the mom would say "So what.  That's your problem."

Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time letting go.  It's not that I can't let go of the money.  I have done that.  But when I (a) tried to stop the bleeding my saying no more, she got mad and (b) I tried to tell her how much that hurt me, she said "so what. That's your problem."  I guess I'm in denial a bit as well because I can't fathom a mother doing that to her child, no matter how old the child is.  We all make mistakes and at some point in our lives, I'm sure we all hurt or disappoint another person, but when that person comes to you and says "You hurt me" the appropriate response is "I'm so sorry" not "so what".

Very insightful post! I think you thoroughly summed up what it is like to have a BPD parent.


While this may be true for your parents, it is not a truth for you! You are precious and a valuable individual. It is difficult that the ones that should recognize how wonderful we are, cannot. Because they are incapable of seeing this within you, is part of their dysfunction. Have you watched any of John Bradshaw's videos on the family? The link is: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSD8ojBKBDBYNWJqkUAiBdUJjWiFShmKT. This is a series about dysfunctional families. I found this to be very helpful in understanding the dynamics of my family. I was reminded of his works when you said
 

It is very true that pwBPD have some sort of play they are acting out and we are the actors without any script. What would happen if you walked of the stage and didn't participate in their drama?

Are you in contact with your family? I know how difficult it is to contemplate going NC or changing the dynamics in the family. Where are you at with this?

Are you seeing a professional to help work through this? I found it incredibly helpful to work with a therapist while transitioning through the changes.
Yes. It can feel like we are their dumping ground, but their is the possibility of removing the "trash" and replacing it with a lovely garden! I have made the conscious decision to remove any negative effects of my parents and replace it with positive affirmations.

I would love to hear more about your story and how you are doing.  

Peace and blessings.  

Thanks for this post. I see my spouse in it, rather than my mother. My mother definitely has the traits though. I'm just trying to work out the damage and heal from it.

Your words describe the pain and the anger so eloquently.  You must be hurting - you're not alone and thanks for sharing

Thanks, Bethanny.  What a great post.  It all resonates with me very much.  I appreciate your defiant tone.  It is well understood.  As irony and life patterns would have it, I have moved past defiance into acceptance, due to this being the end of my mother's life.

I never had a label for my uBPD mother growing up, but I knew something was wrong, very wrong. She was the youngest of 9, but I had no siblings and no father.  When attempting to reach out to family regarding the difficulties at home, they poo-pooed it, pushed it off as standard mother-daughter turmoil, and also reminded me of "how much she's been through" in her life.  A young girl, then tween, then twenty-something, even into my thirties…didn't know exactly how to explain what I now know clearly…her extreme behavior had deprived and eroded my own identity that I desperately (and righteously) tried to create and maintain.

I met a few nice guys and even had a couple LTRs.  I thought I had done the work and had it all together when I met my ex husband at 32.  He was intensely attentive.  I wasn't crazy about him and even walked away in the beginning.  Yup, I ignored that little gut instinct.  Ultimately, I loved the way he loved me.  He put me on a pedestal I honestly never believed existed.  It was euphoric.  How could I walk away? 

Little signs turned into big signs over time.  The behaviors would quiet each time I threatened to leave.  I set up boundaries and stayed strong.  I called him out at every instance of perceived dishonesty.  It didn't matter.  He crashed through everything like the big bad wolf he truly was/is in sheep's clothing.  WOW what a shock.  The man whom I thought was my knight in shining armor was NONE of what he appeared to be. 

His mask was chipping off tiny bit by tiny bit and in the last year it was ripped off.  I hadn't a clue what was happening.  I was shattering…constantly.  Everywhere.  I could barely stand.  Several times I almost drove past right past my job and thought I should either commit myself to the nearest hospital or just drive off a bridge.  Something had to end the insanity.  What had become of my safe world and all the dreams I was busy building for the future?  Today I clearly see every moment of 7 years worth of projection, gas lighting, triangulation, narcissistic injury, and so much more my head spins and probably will for a long while.  I learned of my mother's uBPD during this fallout with my ex husband.  At this same time of finally having that "label" for my mother,  I learned that had found myself not only a personality disordered husband, but one who's "BPD" leaned MUCH, MUCH more solidly into the PSYCHOPATH category.  So there you have it, familiarity with dealing with an uBPD parent led me to what I found comfortably uncomfortable with an uBPD/ASPD mate.

My mother's disorder deprived me in so many ways of having a full life.  Learning to be patient with her, helped to lead me to a place where I dismissed what was not quite right with my ex husband and I stayed instead of leaving.  Thank god I'm out.  Thank god he discarded me and didn't kill me, because my soul was eroding and I couldn't explain why.

I forgive my mother.  I have been agitated or angry with her for the vast majority of my 40 years on this earth.  She lays in the same bed for 2 years now and is unable to use her legs or feed herself.  She has physical ailments that have never been her downfall as much as this BP disorder.  She loves/loved me as best she could.  I feel sorry for the combination of what she went through in life and what her brain is missing that created the perfect storm.  I feel more compassion toward myself and must hold on to that compassion toward myself for dear life. 

I was entwined with a parent and then I became enmeshed with a person similarly but worse disordered than she.  Now, it's time for ME.

Addressing the title, rather than the content of the OP:

I moved out of my mom's house the day of my 18th birthday, and was in semi-limited contact from then until... .well, 25 years later today (I will take the kids to see her tomorrow   .

Well into my mid-30s, my mom was still trying to make me into a "mini-her." Since I hadn't found a mate, she kept trying to convince me into giving her a grandchild, not that this is all that abnormal behavior for any parent of an adult child.

It got so that she kept repeatedly saying that I should just adopt a child as a single parent... .just as she did me. I know my mom well, and me being like her would make her proud on another level, and give her validation. I never seriously considered it, though it was an interesting thought for a little while. I'm not responsible for my mother's view of herself, nor her life's choices.

I can't even begin to describe how much I can relate to all of your posts on this thread. Your words reach out from the screen and slap me in the face.

I have had all of the same struggles you did with your mother. For the first half of my life I saw the chaos in which my family existed, and I thought that there must be a better way. But deviating from the "path" my mother laid out for us, and following my own "rules" and not hers, was devastating for me and the family. I went from being a golden child to being "someone I don't recognize anymore." I realized through my own experience, and through therapy, that my mother has a personal universe she lives that is governed by laws that don't exist in the world everybody else lives in. But with a uBPD mother, you have to choose. Do you live in the real universe, live your own life, assert your own independence, forge your own path, and in the process deal with the lifelong consequences of terminally disappointing your mother? Or do you live the life she expects you to, the life she tells you is the "right" one, and experience an unfulfilling existence that is never yours - only to endure more years of being told you are a disappointment? There is no way to win, ever. We yearn for the consistent affection and unconditional love from a woman who is incapable of giving it.

Someone earlier posted that they couldn't fathom that a child would say "you hurt me" and a mother would respond "that's your problem." What I have come to observe is that my mother truly loves and would die for me, and believes that she is providing for me in a perfect way. Her rules dictate that the things I'm upset about are not "real." These feelings and wants I'm asserting have no basis because in my mother's eyes, she has done everything for me. She has been the perfect mother, and I am the ungrateful and unappreciative child. My needs don't matter because they aren't real needs - so it's "my problem" to sort through my own wishes which are ungrateful and selfish. After all, our mothers project themselves onto us. Her accepting our hurt as being real means that she would have to reject the idea that we are an extension of her and are instead - gasp! - our own individuals. This would be a devastating step to take. It's such a strange thing for children of uBPD mothers to understand, because most of us would do anything to prevent our own children from experiencing a similar reality. I dream of nothing more than to provide for my children a home where there is consistency and love that is not conditional on a day or a moment or an impulse.

At one point many of us have experiences similar to you receiving a letter from your aunt and your mom simultaneously. We have a moment to compare your own mothers who claim to love us the most, and in the same breath despise us the most, with someone who is just "normal." It can be a shocking experience.

In grad school I read about A. E. Fisher's behavioral studies on puppies from the 1950s, and it made me reflect quite a bit on my upbringing. Fisher separated puppies into three different groups. Group 1 puppies were always treated kindly when they approached the researchers. Group 2 puppies were always punished when they approached. But Group 3 puppies were randomly treated kindly or punished. They grew up never knowing what to expect - their world was one of uncertainty. The study found that the third group of puppies was the MOST attached to the researches, loving them the strongest and exhibiting the most dependence/attachment. This was called the polarity principle. "Stress, including the mental stress of uncertainty, is an ingredient in attachment or love that perhaps even manifestations of hatred (its polar opposite) somehow enhance love." Uncertainty can lead to strong feelings of dependence and attachment.

Sound familiar?

Thank you for giving my internal struggle a voice.    You were able to articulate the control our BPD parents have over our lives and not just the control but the total disregard for our identities, our own souls even.  I have tried to explain to family members the total disregard my mother has for me as a human being even.  Its so heart breaking to come to the realization that they really dont care about you as a person, only an object to feed their neverending emotional needs.   They are soo wrapped up in their own pain they never even think to look at yours.   May you continue to find yourself in your journey. You deserve no guilt for wanting to do that.  It is everyones God given right and Im sorry we had mothers who didnt support us and shamed us for wanting what everyone deserves.  Slavery is a sin and someone enslaving your soul no longer deserves your pity.  

I think it's obvious that this is a common back story for a "non". In my family dad is the super  narcissist. I think it's been easier for me to see this through because I was adopted at an early age into the family. My brother was not, he is the biological child of this narcissist father.

My father is obsessed with his own life history and especially his childhood. Everybody in the family, including his children and grandchildren, are supposed to know details and names of all places and people he grew up with. My brother and his children actually travel regularly to the town where my dad grew up. It is an unsignificant place very far away, but it holds such a mythological status within the family.

My father has showed zero interest in anything we children have done if it is not anything he himself has suggested or initiated. He comes up with awful advice in all situation because he can't pass questions on to someone who knows when he doesn't know himself. And when advice is not followed he punishes with cold and disinterest.

If you come visit him on a good day he's good company but if you step by on a bad day it will be like he barely knows you and you will think, what did I do wrong?

I grew up hiding my emotional life and my real personality from him, because he could not handle it. He is a boundary crasher and takes up too much space in a room. He prepared me for my relationship with a borderline partner, because I was prepared for a lot of ___ that was not OK at all. 

Amen.

As hard as it may be.

Not hard to see how this can pass the disorder down through the generations.

If the genetics are already loaded then this would be just the shove to get it rolling.