Parent with BPD - Possible to Pass Down Symptoms?

[SweetJane]

My mother is an uBPD, though both my therapist and my sister's therapist believe that my mother has BPD. After reading up on BPD (books, articles, etc... . ) I sometimes feel that some of the symptoms apply to me (mostly the abandonment issues). It scares me. I have talked with my therapist about this and she does not think I have BPD. I'm wondering if any of you, who have a parent with BPD, ever recognize yourself in some of the symptoms?

[coraliesolange]

I have BPD traits but I don't have BPD.  Do you know how I know I don't have BPD?  Because I recognize the problem traits and try to do something to fix them.  Sounds like that applies to you too. pwBPD tend to make their problem into everyone else's problem and would very likely not be here asking about it.  It makes me sick when I recognize those things in myself but at least I'm aware enough to see it!

[Ziggiddy]

Hi SweetJane - itiwas difficult to admit it but I definitely noticed some traits in myself. I was pretty much going along thinking "My mwuBPD has all these problems - am I like her? Will I repeat the problems with my kids?" I thought no no. I know I'm not cruel to them, they feel safe but talking to my brother I couldn't help seeing that he had a few similarities. This prompted me to do a LOT of soul searching (as well as several personality tests which showed a variety of results but scored high with BPD and NPD traits) and I finally arrived at this conclusion: a mwBPD is going to naturally teach her children how to view the world until a time when they can see it independently. Unfortunately that means we will have some of that ingrained. I never really knew I had a clutter/hoarding problem until I was in my mid 20's but when I did realise I found it surprisingly easy to sort out - once I identified the voice in my head as being my mother's and not mine.

I had a terrible binge eating problem on and off almost always triggered by being with binge eating mwuBPD. When I moved out of home, I stopped needing to eat that way and became more in control. I also noticed that I would try very hard to save any and every friendship regardless of how strong or weak or how much or little I really cared about the person. Then I saw that was the abandonment reflex - the rescue response. After reflection I really think it's a matter of separating up what is learned in the home environment, what is normal reaction that other people also get - natural -  and what is off the scale. Maybe because you are researching the topic you may tend to see yourself and others in a new light (like reading Dr Google about a health symptom and suddenly you have that terrible disease!)

If you are here, you probably have some level of self honesty and you will probably review your own reasons for feeling that reflex. You may likely find it is a learned response and even if it's not, you will be able to find a way to address it that doesn't involve acting out classic BPD characteristics!

Good luck.

[strangerinparadise]

Wow. I think there is a time in all our lives when we look at what we were raised with and see what was normal and what was unhealthy. My mental health diagnoses is definitely not BPD but I also notice some BPD traits in myself. Like so many awesome people here have said, it's important to recognize them and work through them. I was a terror at one point when it came time to rip myself away from my mother's influence. As soon as I had hit rock bottom, I had a chance to examine how similar I was behaving to her. It was a bad time in my life but I managed to heal myself and get away. Something I don't think she'll ever forgive me for.

Good on you for recognizing this, SweetJane.

[clljhns]

HI SweetJane,

This is one of my greatest fears! That I would have any traits like my mother or father. I never wanted to be a raging lunatic like her, and as a result I couldn't express anger at all. Buried that down until I would loose it, and then finally went into therapy. I was afraid of forcing my opinion on others, so I couldn't communicate well until my later thirties. I had so many hang-ups, that I don't like to think what some of the people I have worked with or been friends with in the past must have thought of me then.

I can say that I do have traits of my mom and dad. While  I would rather not, it is just a fact that these two people brought me into the world and raised me in their chaos. I cannot undo what has been done, but I can smooth the edges of my own insanity until it resembles something a bit more normal. A little humor here.

Seriously, I do work very hard to not be like them, which I think makes me feel sane most days. Then I still have times that I question myself. I did recently in another post. I was told in that post by another supportive person that she also has "fleas" (i.e.-remnants of her BPD mom). Love this term! I think we all have fleas! I agree that you asking the question proves that you are not BPD. My mom would NEVER admit she had a problem.

Interesting post... .

[AsianSon]

Hi All,

I too recognize the fact of "fleas" from BPD, and I work very hard to watch for them and then manage or minimize them.  So thanks to all of you for letting me know I am not alone. 

Regarding "passing down" the traits, I am particularly concerned because I am quite certain that my maternal grandmother was also uBPD, and I see tendencies in my daughter as well.  Whether this is genetic or learned or some combination in between probably doesn't matter. 

What I have noticed is to check for BPD traits in different situations or with different people.  Sometimes, the traits only show up in certain circumstances. 

The other thing I use is checking for pervasiveness or pattern of BPD behaviors.  I think this is a much stronger indicator of "having or not having" BPD. 

Personally, I wonder about myself at the moment because of an ongoing need for support from my wife.  I think she has difficulty coming to grips with past treatment from my BPDm and with her impression of how I should be handling my BPDm, the support isn't there.  I am concerned that this brings out the fleas from me--not a good thing. 

[G.J.]

Both my father and myself, independently see the same T.  Our T has also met with my sister and diagnosed her with BPD.  Based on all 3 of our accounts, the T has surmised that my mother is BPD as well.  This is what I've learned -- maybe it will give you some insight:

BPD parents typically split, making one child the "rejected child" and the other child the "golden child."  The rejected child (me) typically ends up with BPD traits ("fleas" that can be worked on and smoothed out with a lot of therapy.  The golden child (my sister) often becomes BPD themselves.  Even with longterm in-patient therapy, the prognosis for BPD's is not highly optimistic.

Due to my own terror over becoming just like my mother, over the years I've had myself evaluated by several Psychologists, who have all assured me I am not BPD.  I have also taken the MMPI-2 (extensive test that looks for PD's) and passed that as well.  However, I did not walk out of my childhood unscathed or without some significant BPD fleas.

I have abandonment issues and often feel alone in the world (even though I have close friends and good ties with my healthier family members).  Like a previous poster mentioned, I also hang on to friendships and relationships for too long, even when I'm being treated badly.  I'm terrified of confrontation to the point that I struggle to set even the most simple of boundaries with others.  I struggle with low self-esteem (even though I'm pretty positive I have no practical reason for it).  Too often, I put others' needs and feelings ahead of my own.  I worry that my perceptions of people/situations aren't accurate (even though I have zero evidence of this).  When someone behaves abusively towards me, I turn on myself and believe that I either caused them to act that way or that I deserved it.  I am desensitized to when unhealthy people are trying to "merge" with me, and those friendships/relationships tend to become chaotic due to my lack of boundaries.  I am often too willing to "negotiate away" my needs and rights, when someone has expectations of me that are unreasonable.  Fear, obligation and guilt tend to run my life.

I agree with previous posters, that if you're asking the question and you're worried about it -- you're most likely not BPD.  If someone is truly BPD, they typically will NOT admit that they are at fault or flawed in any way.  In times when a BPD fears your complete abandonment, or their lives have totally hit the skids (again  ), then they often become agreeable, apologetic, empathetic and seemingly sane.  But as soon as they have you reeled back in or have found someone else to attach themselves to, they retract these admissions immediately and go right back to their old ways.  I've never known one who has done any meaningful therapy, as they are incapable of truly looking at themselves honestly.

Moreover, in my experience, true BPD's have difficulty maintaining employment and longterm friendships due to their lack of interpersonal skills.  They engage in risky and self-sabotaging behaviors (chemical addictions, out of control spending, acting out sexually, eating disorders, etc.)  They're often pathological liars and incredible chameleons, wholly reinventing themselves over and over depending on who they are interacting with.  The ones I've known also have very bad tempers, tend to rage a lot, take even the smallest of things as personal attacks, and are incapable of seeing anyone else's point of view when they have a competing need.

Contrary to that picture... .   I'm very successful professionally.  I have no addictions and I'm almost overly-responsible in every aspect of my life.  I have many close friendships that have lasted over 20 years.  My dysfunction almost exclusively centers around my relationships with unhealthy people, and my inability to identify them and then deal with them in a proactive and self-protective manner.  Some of this is fueled by learned behavior from my mother, who "trained" me to respond to others' unreasonable expectations in self-sacrificing ways.  The other part is fueled by my fear of abandonment, even if I'm the one doing the confronting and/or ending the friendship/relationship.

This is just my experience and what I've learned so far in therapy.  But in comparing the two descriptions, hopefully it has given you some insight into the differences that I've noticed between people who truly have BPD and those that have problematic fleas. 

[clljhns]

G.J.,

I had to respond to your post, as it resonated with me! Ditto! Ditto! and Ditto! I predominately chose friendships that were one-sided and unhealthy. I finally realized the root of this when I was 48 and made my split from those friendships. I had a female friend who reminded me of my uBPD mom and was trying to work out the relationship with mom through her. When I realized this, I actually told the friend what was happening and that I needed to separate. Of course, it didn't go as simply as that. We remained attached another year going through several episodes of her trampling all over my boundaries. I can so understand the ability to ignore these behaviors in friends as I really did not have a good start to developing positive relationships with my parents. The upside to all of this, is now I have learned how to spot these energy vampires and I keep my distance. I read the article on Ruminations and it helped tremendously with understanding negative files and how to re-label them so that they don't keep popping up with all of the old feeling of fear, guilt, and obligation.

Thanks so much for sharing your feelings through your story! It helped me tremendously just reading what I also have experienced!

[Unleashed]

The fact of whether my parents passed down traits is not easily evaluated in one moment.  I will say I had a  NPD/histrionic side of my immediate family and a healthy supportive side.  Around the age of 5 I determined the disordered side was wrong, enough so that I became analytical of others and found the healthier path.  The presence of the NPD actually induced humility and kindness as well as having a humble and kind parent would have been.

There was a period of "splitting" in my youth, and trying to develop utopia thru hard work.  That was gone by twenty and I hope/believe I am balanced.  A recent psych eval indicated OCD tendencies with no motivativation by dr to treat them, i.e. super mild symptoms.  I do feel that I could have answered differenlty to the psych just due to a slight mood change and changed the diag. In other words a questionnaire and interview are not airtight methods of checking someone out mentally.

I'm very successful professionally.  I have no addictions and I'm almost overly-responsible in every aspect of my life.  I have many close friendships that have lasted over 20 years.  My dysfunction almost exclusively centers around my relationships with unhealthy people, and my inability to identify them and then deal with them in a proactive and self-protective manner.

Interesting parallel, I found that marrying a BPD was an act of charity, and was done with some awareness that I was marrying into a philosophy of fiction, accompanied with a limitation of self esteem due to NPD parent.  At a young age I married anyhow.  Trusting that any next will be better selected.

[Ziggiddy]

Without wishing to deflect from the original post or to 'thread steal' oh my! GJ & clljhns I got chills reading those replies. Resonance. Thank you so much. Very helpful to me to relate what goes on in my own head. Maybe we really are so strongly influenced by our upbringing that we do those things.

I have only very recently (3 weeks ago) discovered a friendship I had was a repeat performance of mother/daughter dysfunction. When she cut me off without a word of explanation I kept thinking "What did I do? I don't know what I did that was so wrong? Maybe I should ... . (insert saving/rescue reflex action here) Then something just roared. Why? Why me? Why is it always me who is trying to fix? Who is ever coming to fix ME? to save ME?" Fighting the rescue reflex made me feel so ... PRESENT in my own life! Like "Is this what normal people do?" how come we are all the ones researching and working and saving and helping? Don't we deserve love too? ok rant over. Just wondered whatever happened to my self esteem to lead me to think that everybody else deserves but not me.

i admire your strength and self honesty. Especially considering how far you had to come from

Peace

[clljhns]

Ziggiddy,

Yes! We do deserve love! What I came to understand about all of the unhealthy relationships I had was a result of conditioning. I was conditioned at a very young age to take care of my mother and father's emotional needs. I watched as my oldest sister would comfort and console my mother and hide in fear when that same whimpering mother would turn into a monster and beat my other sister and brother. My mother made it clear that we children were responsible for her behavior. She would also blame my father, but it had more of impact on my young psyche to be told I was the root of her anger and unhappiness. So, I internalized this and believed that I must do whatever it took to keep my mother happy. As long as she was happy, then I didn't have to see the Hermit or the Witch. The Waif and Queen were not so bad to deal with. I would also rationalize others bad behavior based on the framework from which I constructed my reality. I would feel sorry for everyone and would immediately want to just love them enough so that they weren't unhappy anymore. What I found was that I was codependent and wasted a lot of my energy, time, and love on people who were just like my FOO--energy vampires. It took me a long time to come to this realization, and even longer to put tools into place to prevent me from falling back into the same old trap.

I am glad that my story helped you in some way, if nothing else but to put words to what is in your heart. Please know that you deserve to be loved, most importantly by yourself first, then you can learn what it means to be loved by someone who also loves themselves completely and isn't looking for someone to meet these needs. We can never truly know what love is until we learn to love and nurture ourselves first.

Peace and blessings to you!