How do we love our adult child with BPD traits

[Momofthebride]

I am the mother of a 30 year old daughter with traits of BPD. We had always been emotionally close and enjoyed a loving mother/daughter relationship.  She asked me to be her maid of honor and her wedding was beautiful without any drama. My daughter has had conflicts in most of her peer relationships during her teen years into young adulthood. She always turned to me for validation and comfort. I tried to help her understand that people were not intentionally trying to hurt her.and to be more trusting. Following her wedding and her move to another state, she began accusing me of not being aware of her needs. I realized she was feeling the stress of the changes that come with a new life and a husband who was challenged to find full time work. Her husband does all he can to make sure she is happy at any cost to him. He gives her complete control to make decisions in their lives. He is a "nice guy". I tried to reassure her that things take time. Every time we visited more accusations were made about small things that  I had done or not done for her.  She began accusing her father, my husband in the same way. It was all so confusing and painful to us. A year later she became pregnant and it took one incident where we had a difference of opinion for her to blow up on us. Following this incident, she distanced herself as much as possible with very limited phone contact which was brief and withholding with one word answers.  She maintains minimal contact with her siblings who have also experienced her anger and rage. We felt like "the enemy". She ceased all contact with us for two months, "unfriended" me on Face Book so I could not see photos of our grandchild. Two weeks ago we received a brief call and she sent photos of our grandchild. We love her and want her back in our life but want to avoid "damned if you do damned if you don't " scenarios. We feel we have always been loving and devoted parents and offered apologies for any way we may have hurt her. I have read 4 books about BPD and I am seeing a family therapist. It's been very painful and life changing... .

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Kate4queen]

Quite often with PWBPD you are either black or white to them. It sounds like your DD has made her partner the good person and by definition (by BPD thinking) you guys are now the bad guys. There is nothing in a parents normal arsenal to know how to deal with that and it isn't fixable using logic or reason or love or enabling. It's just distorted BPD thinking. With my son I always say that we aren't even using the same deck of cards when we're playing his games.

All you can do is keep it to the basics. Don't get involved in blame games or defending yourselves and maintain that you love your DD and leave it at that. You haven't done anything wrong and you are obviously good people and parents because here you are-still trying to help your DD despite what she's done to you.

Sometimes the PWBPD will stop seeing the good person as good and they become the monster. My son thought I was his world for 20 years and then I became the enemy. It was devastating but 3 years on? I've learned to forgive him and just feel sad that he was unable to appreciate all the love we wanted to give him and prefers to see us as monsters. His loss. His illness's fault.

[lbjnltx]

Hello Momofthebride,

We are so glad that you are here with us.  I'm sorry that your relationship with your daughter is not good right now.  

All the stressors she has with being a new wife, new home, and new mom are above her distress tolerance level and she is projecting the excess onto you.  This is hard.

She probably needs extra validation and support and doesn't know how to express this need.  Have you been able to express to her how difficult all of this is for her and that it is completely normal to feel stressed out and that you are there for her to help however she needs you to be?

Maybe just send a card or even send a gift card to get her a massage/mani pedi... .if your budget allows for it?  Asking for help isn't something our BPD children are good at.    They often feel like they are failures and that asking for support reinforces their beliefs about being a failure.  When we can help them normalize their feelings about stressors it relieves some of that stress and they can function better.

lbjnltx

[js friend]

Hi Momofthebride,

This must be a very tough time for you.  

I have 2gc and my dd20 did not invite me to go along to any of the scans or hospital appointments before they were born.DD chose to invite other people, some were family memebers, others were new friends she had only recently met. I was there for the births though and see gc quite often now but I rememebr how much  It hurt to be excluded like that :'(

From what i see with my own dd20 it seems to be hard for her to treat everyone in her life equally.Either you are good or bad.No-one is on the same footing as she likes to play people off against one another. When my  dd was with exbf she hardly spoke to us, or shared any information about anything happening in her life including her pregnancies.Now exbf isnt around communication with us( her family) is a little better although still very limited.

Undoubtably your dd is feeling stressed at the moment and our pwBPD are not good at handling stress which includes differences in opinion.Try to avoid the circular arguments by bringing up old matters. Often I can see no logic to what my dd does, but she does have strong "emotional feelings" driving her behaviour. Secrecy is still a big issue with my dd, but by validating her feelings i now have more chance of  having a  limited interaction that can pass as a conversation with my own dd.

[feebeetyler]

Wow! Momofthebride I could have written your post. Our situations are nearly identical. The accusations, how I wasn't meeting her needs or understanding her. Bouts of anger even rage. Now she has stopped talking to us. She went through entire pregnancy barely speaking to us and when she did, it was with venom in her thoughts and in her voice. We used to be so close and talk all the time. She kept accusing me of not calling her, that she always had to call me. She definitely felt abandoned but there was no reason to. I was very attentive to her. She just couldn't see it. I don't think she will change much from the way she is thinking now. She thinks we are monsters and evil. She thinks she is protecting her children from us. So bizarre. I miss the closeness we used to have so much but I have somewhat accepted that I will never have that again. I am so sad that I don't have my grandchildren. I can't imagine the life they must have. She and her family live out of town so there is little I can do. I hope at some point she gets counseling for her anger issues and her feelings of abandonment.

[jdtm]

How do we love our adult child with BPD traits?

I am going to be very cynical here - to answer your question, there are times we don't.  And, there are many more times we do.  Every now and again there comes a point where ... .  Right now, that is where I am - tomorrow is another day, though ... .