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Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits. Practicing lawyer, Senior Family Mediator, and former Licensed Clinical Social Worker with twelve years’ experience and an expert on navigating the Family Court process.
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Author Topic: D17 - drama and blame.  (Read 386 times)
Matt
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« on: September 02, 2014, 12:21:03 PM »

My D17 is starting her senior year in high school.  She's a very good student, taking advanced classes and getting almost all As.  She runs cross-country and is working on college applications.  (She will probably study psychology.)

She is supposed to have her senior pictures done by the end of September.  Local photographers charge about $200.  Her mom - my BPD ex - said, "Why don't you have your dad take them?", so D17 asked me if I would, and I said sure - I have a good camera and I'm a fair photographer.  We live in a beautiful mountain area - lots of good settings for outdoor pictures.

Last Wednesday we went to one place nearby, just to take some practice pictures - a spot by a lake - and they looked OK.  Then Saturday we drove into the mountains to scout for locations, and found one spot we both liked a lot - a dense stand of aspens and the ground covered in deep green ferns.  It was a long drive on a rough road to get there but we both agreed to come back the next day and shoot the pictures.

Sunday we got up super-early, to take the pictures in early-morning light.  :)17 wore one outfit and brought four others.  But we didn't find the spot with the aspens - I went the way I thought was right, but it wasn't, and then D17 told me what she thought was the right road, but that didn't work either.  After more than an hour of driving, the sun was too high to get good pictures.  :)17 started to cry, and blamed me.  I took her home - she's staying with her mom this week - and told her to call me later and we could decide what to do.

She sent me a text message demanding that we go to that spot the next morning - yesterday:

I'm getting up at 4:00 tomorrow.  Pick me up at 5:00 and we're going to exactly where we scouted, the exact way we went the first time.  If we don't get the pictures tomorrow, I don't care what the reason is, I'll just find someone else to do it.  I need to get this done and I've wasted enough time with it and it's just something else that's stressing me out which I do not need on top of everything else.

No "please" or "thank you".  No appreciation that it was taking a lot of my time too, or acknowlegement that neither of us picked the right road.

I called her and told her I didn't appreciate the blaming, but I agreed that was the best spot, and if she would be positive and not fuss we could try again in the morning.  We agreed to leave at 5:00 yesterday morning.

I got up at 4:00 and went to pick her up at her mom's house at 5:00.  Her alarm hadn't worked so she wasn't up.  I told her I'd wait.  Fifteen minutes later she came out, crying, and said she hadn't had time to do her makeup.  I told her, "Go ahead and get ready - I'll wait - it will be fine."  We left at 5:30 and found the spot pretty quickly.

We got quite a few good pictures - more than 100.  She wore four different outfits.  Later we took more pictures at another spot and some of them look good too.  I can fix them up some in my computer and I think we're going to end up with several very good and unique pictures.  The only cost was gas, and our time, but we both had the time since it was a three-day weekend.

But what I saw really concerns me.  Encountering some frustration - a task we both thought would take two or three hours ended up taking close to 10 - rather than treat it as an adventure, and keep it in perspective, she viewed it as a huge problem and very stressful.

I want to find out what is really going on - whether there's some other problem that is stressing her out, that I don't know about, and what keeps her from having any perspective or sense of humor about this.  I intended to talk with her about it late yesterday but that didn't work out - we both had stuff we had to do.

So I think I need to find a time to sit down with her and have this talk, and maybe that will help, but my guess is, it won't be enough.

She had been seeing a counselor over the summer and she thought that was helping, but since school started she hasn't gone back.  Maybe we should find a time for that.

I've also thought of suggesting she not run cross-country;  last spring she decided not to run track, and that helped her time and stress a lot.  But cross-country is very healthy, and it's a social thing for her too.  I might raise the subject but I certainly don't want to force it.

There is a lot on her plate right now but there will be a lot on her plate other times too, all through life.  She needs to change the way she looks at things.  I've let her decide about her schedule and she spends almost half her time with her mom now - maybe too much.  Her behavior this weekend reminds me a lot of how her mom handles stress - everything is a big tragedy and it's all somebody else's fault, usually mine (or that's how it was when we were together).  Stress means somebody else is not just mistaken but a horrible person to be attacked.  I can't imagine anybody being happy with that outlook.

Most people see D17 as a very bright, cheerful, optimistic person, and that's how she used to be, and still is a lot of the time - unsinkable.  This new side to her bothers me a lot... .
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PinkieV
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« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2014, 03:24:39 PM »

Hi Matt,

I'm the mom of an 18 year old recently graduated DD.  I can tell you most of your daughter's behavior is typical in my eyes.  It's her senior year, a monumental year in a teen's life.  She probably wants to do everything she's involved in, but it's a lot and stresses her out.

That being said, with a BPD mom, she has learned some unhealthy coping strategies.  She might feel like counseling is the last thing she has time for, but it's probably necessary.  I'd sit her down to talk about life overall - catch up on school, social events, etc., and see if she seems happy and excited, or just stressed.  Let her know it's okay to take some things off her plate - she doesn't have to do it all.

I think I mentioned a while back that I have a "date night" with my daughter to catch up.  Your daughter may not have time every week, but planning to catch up together without any distractions help her talk everything out and come up with a plan to manage her time.  Sometimes when we put it all down on paper, it makes everything seem more manageable.

And yes, sometimes she's just going to lose it for no good reason!  Smiling (click to insert in post)
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Matt
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« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2014, 03:57:44 PM »

Thanks - this helps.

The "date night" idea might be good for us.  D17 has told her big brother that she wishes S16 wasn't around all the time - he now lives with me all the time - because she doesn't get time to talk with me, without him around.

That's not entirely true:  he's often out of the house or in his room, so when she's here, we can talk.  But I think if I propose one night a week to have dinner with her - no S16 - she might like that.  (I think S16 would be OK with it too - he'll get to fix his own dinner - Hot Pockets or whatever.)

I think she'll also be open to counseling.  I don't think her counselor "fixed" anything but just having someone to talk to would be good.  She often bares her soul to her big brother, by letter, but that's not a very immediate help... .
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Turkish
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« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2014, 12:02:13 AM »

My first thought was what PinkieV said, that senior year can be very stressful. She's on the verge of adulthood, and it's a huge transition. I remember resenting the typical senior things, because I felt like a lot of it was performing to please others, not what I wanted to do. I was also a bit scared of being responsible for my future because even though I didn't like high school, there was a safety to the routine: next year I'll be a sophomore, junior, senior, then... .what?

It would be great to have a conversation to draw out whatever is stressing her and then validate it. It's understandable being triggered given being married to her mom, and it sounds like you may have been.
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    “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” ― Rudyard Kipling
Matt
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Relationship status: Divorced.
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« Reply #4 on: September 04, 2014, 12:11:13 AM »

It would be great to have a conversation to draw out whatever is stressing her and then validate it.

This afternoon we looked over all the pictures - as I took them, and I had retouched some of the best.  We agreed on about a dozen that are very good.

I offered that if she isn't in love with any of them, we could go back this weekend.  She wants to do that and I'm OK with it;  based on what we've learned I think we can get some better shots, and the drive will give us another chance to talk.  I'm sure she'll be calmer.

It would be great to have a conversation to draw out whatever is stressing her and then validate it. It's understandable being triggered given being married to her mom, and it sounds like you may have been.

I hadn't thought of myself as being triggered.  I understand that her behavior might be within normal for her age, but the aspects that bother me are the blaming and taking things way out of proportion.

Even if it's normal for her age, and not a reflection of her mom's behavior, I think it's very important for her to work on this stuff.  Right now she has a lot of support - her family and close friends.  If she is still handling stress so poorly a year from now, when she's away at school, that could be a big problem.
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