Child of BPD Mother

[Our abuse recovery guide]

I just want to start by saying I'm so glad to have found this site. It's relieving to know that there are other people who have gone through/are going through things similar to what I have experienced. I'm a 21 year old only child of a mother with undiagnosed BPD (I'm positive this is what she has). Here is my story. It's long, but it feels good to be able to share it.


My mom and I have had an extremely unstable relationship for my entire life. It was always very confusing for me as a child because I couldn't understand my mom's behaviors. She would become very angry with me for doing or saying things that, to me, were innocent. I could never anticipate her reactions. She was very jealous of me and angry with me because I had a great relationship with my father. She had a very unstable and abusive relationship with her own father, and was looking for my dad to be her own father figure. So when I born, she was very upset with any attention that was diverted away from her and toward me. Around the time when I was in second grade, she began drinking heavily which only intensified her behavior. She began hating my father because he was desperately trying to seek help for her and protect me from her at the same time. My dad was in the national guard and also had a civilian job that required traveling. Every time he would leave for the army or work, I would end up having to stay with a relative because my mom would become frightening. She would follow me around the house telling me how much I had hurt her and betrayed her over the course of her life. She would fight me for the telephone if I tried to call for help. She would forbid me from talking to anyone in our family about things she had said or done and threaten that she would kill herself if I ever did. Eventually, my dad had to file for divorce because she wouldn't accept help, and he also felt she was a danger to me.

A short time after the divorce process began, my dad had to call it off because it found out that he was going to be deployed to Iraq for 18 months. My dad was deployed the summer before my freshman year of high school and had arranged for me to stay with family in another state for the summer. When I came home for the school year, my mom's alcoholism had escalated even more. She was like a Jekyll and Hyde. She would go from being sad and asking for my advice to being so angry it was scary because she would misinterpret something I said. She was very paranoid that people were talking about her or that I was sharing information about her with other people. She was always very concerned with her body image too. She was always asking if she was fat, and struggled with eating-disorder-like symptoms.

During this time that my dad was away, I had talked to my school guidance counselor about what was going on. I recognized that I needed help for myself because I didn't have my dad to talk to, and I was seeking a recommendation for a therapist. Without my knowledge, the guidance counselor called DCF and they showed up on my doorstep the next day. This made things a million times more difficult for me because my mom was so angry with me. She would walk around the house crying that she had always tried to be a good mom and she couldn't believe her own daughter would ever do this to her. She wouldn't let me out of the house for the remainder of my dad's deployment because she was worried I would talk to someone. I was only allowed to go to school and back. If my father called, I wasn't allowed to talk to him unless she was there. She put a password on the computer so that I couldn't email him. If I did talk to him or email him, she would make me tell him lies to make it seem like she was doing fine. Being around her all the time made it difficult for me to cope, so I started cutting and developed an eating disorder. She would make jokes about the scars on my arms, sometimes taking out a pen and saying that she wanted to play tic tac toe on my arms.

When my dad's deployment was over, I was so thrilled to finally have a stable person back in my life. I felt like I was going to be freed. Then, on the day when my dad landed on U.S. soil, he got off the airplane and had a seizure. My mom and I had to fly out to the base that he had landed at. I was the happiest I had ever been to see my dad again, but I couldn't understand what could be wrong with him. I was certain that everything would be fine and we would be going home soon. That night I found out that my dad had a brain tumor. Days later, after the removal of the tumor, I was told that my dad had terminal brain cancer and had 18 months to live with treatment. I was beyond devastated. A couple weeks later we were able to come home with my dad. I had a very hard time dealing with the fact that he was finally home, but he wouldn't be here for long. During my dad's last 18 months, he would sometimes forget things or do little quirky things because the tumor was in his brain. My mom couldn't seem to understand that it was because of the brain cancer and would blame him for "purposely trying to piss her off." She would also constantly accuse me of loving my dad more than her because I would do things to help him. Eventually, my dad did pass away at the end of my junior year of high school, and my mom kicked me out of the house the day after his funeral. She told me I was grieving too much and that I obviously loved him more than her because I was so sad over his death. I moved in with my boyfriend at the time and sought professional help to recover from my eating disorder because I knew my dad would not want to see me that way. I was determined to use my experiences as a reason to succeed rather than an excuse to fail. I did recover, and decided to move back in with my mom because I didn't feel that my relationship with my boyfriend was healthy for me.

For awhile my mom seemed so happy to have me back, but after a few months her opinions of me began to change again. She became paranoid and mean again. My therapist encouraged me to move out as it was not a healthy environment for me, so I moved in with my current boyfriend who has been my best friend since middle school. After I moved out, my therapist began talking to me about borderline personality disorder. She obviously could not diagnose my mother, but she felt strongly that this is what he has. As soon as I started reading into BPD, my whole life seemed to make sense. I did so much research on it and read so many books about it just because I could identify so strongly with what I was reading. Over the past year and a half since I moved out of my mom's house, I felt I was able to have somewhat of a relationship with her because I could set boundaries and visit with her on my own terms. If she became angry, I was able to go home and get away from it. She was still unstable, but at least she was semi-functional, until recently.

It recently came out that my mom was having an affair with one of her employees. She was friends with this guy and his wife since my dad was in Iraq, and after my dad died, this guy would call me all the time asking what to do about my mom and telling me how unstable and "crazy" she was. My mom was completely dependent on him. He would drive her everywhere and pick up groceries for her. He and his wife would always come over and sit with her while she cried. My mom hardly even did her own job because they would do it for her, and she wanted to be around people like that who would "nurture" her. Eventually this man started taking advantage of that, and would steal money out of her bank accounts and steal things out of the house that he wanted. Even after my mom figured this out, she did nothing about it because she was so afraid of losing someone who would do everything for her.

About a month and a half ago, I received a phone call from this guy saying that I had to get to my mothers house. When I got there, he was holding my mom on the floor. She was intoxicated and covered in bruises, and I had to have her sent to the ER that night for threatening suicide. She was released the next morning when she was sober. To make an even longer story short, it came out that they were having an affair, and my mom was arrested for third degree assault. She was also fired and denied unemployment. Because of what happened, she is not supposed to have any contact with this man, but her dependency on him has made her symptoms a million times worse. She drinks, and cries, and paces the house begging for me to call him. She calls him herself and threatens suicide to get him to come over her house. I recently found out that he was still coming over to continue the affair with her because he also has a strange dependency/obsession with her. I'm constantly rushing over the the house because of suicide threats, and when I'm there, she tries to get me to take care of her like she's a small child. One minute she's talking about how much she "loves" this guy and can't live without him, and the next minute she's seeking vengeance on him.

Two days ago, I received a phone call from the guy telling me that my mom was calling him and requesting that he take her to the hospital. My uncle came with me to her house to try to get her to actually go to the hospital, but she refused. It was obviously a ploy to get this guy to come over to her house. Eventually, we told my mom that if she wasn't going to go to the hospital, she would have to go to her primary care doctor. We got her to the doctor and were able to speak with him while she was in the exam room with the nurse. He called the ER and let them know that we would be bringing her there. My mom was reluctant, but she got in the car because the doctor told her he really wanted her to go. As we were approaching a stop sign, my mom hopped out of the car and refused to go. I then called the police to come get her back in the car. She was furious with me, and screamed terrible things at me the whole rest of the way to the hospital. She told me that I'm not even her daughter and that she would slit her wrists somewhere far away as soon as she gets out of the hospital so that I won't even be able to find her body. She was not intoxicated this time, so I'm hoping that gave a clearer picture of her problem to the professionals working with her. She was just transferred to the inpatient psychiatric unit today, which I'm hoping is a good sign. She has been dealing with this for as long as I can remember. Her mother and siblings say she's been this way ever since she was a teenager. I'm hoping that she'll finally get the treatment that she desperately needs, and that someone will take the time to actually diagnose her so that a treatment plan can be developed. I really want to get to know the person that my mom actually is, and I'm definitely not ready to lose my other parent. I love her to death despite the way she has been. I'm already terrified of what will happen when they release her, but I'm trying to put it in God's hands. I'm in my senior year of college in a wonderful program at a fantastic university, and I don't want to lose everything I've worked so hard to become. My mom has given me a passion to hopefully work in mental health someday to support other people who are going through this, and I know that I can't let the stress of what is happening now get in the way of my passion. It is just so hard to focus and balance everything that is happening. Does anyone have any advice on how to  manage that?

Thank you so much to anyone who reads all this. I know that it's long and complicated, but I'm sure that a lot of us have similar stories. It means a lot to me just to be heard.

[jenot2]

I just want to start by saying I'm so glad to have found this site. It's relieving to know that there are other people who have gone through/are going through things similar to what I have experienced. I'm a 21 year old only child of a mother with undiagnosed BPD (I'm positive this is what she has). Here is my story. It's long, but it feels good to be able to share it.


My mom and I have had an extremely unstable relationship for my entire life. It was always very confusing for me as a child because I couldn't understand my mom's behaviors. She would become very angry with me for doing or saying things that, to me, were innocent. I could never anticipate her reactions. She was very jealous of me and angry with me because I had a great relationship with my father. She had a very unstable and abusive relationship with her own father, and was looking for my dad to be her own father figure. So when I born, she was very upset with any attention that was diverted away from her and toward me. Around the time when I was in second grade, she began drinking heavily which only intensified her behavior. She began hating my father because he was desperately trying to seek help for her and protect me from her at the same time. My dad was in the national guard and also had a civilian job that required traveling. Every time he would leave for the army or work, I would end up having to stay with a relative because my mom would become frightening. She would follow me around the house telling me how much I had hurt her and betrayed her over the course of her life. She would fight me for the telephone if I tried to call for help. She would forbid me from talking to anyone in our family about things she had said or done and threaten that she would kill herself if I ever did. Eventually, my dad had to file for divorce because she wouldn't accept help, and he also felt she was a danger to me.

A short time after the divorce process began, my dad had to call it off because it found out that he was going to be deployed to Iraq for 18 months. My dad was deployed the summer before my freshman year of high school and had arranged for me to stay with family in another state for the summer. When I came home for the school year, my mom's alcoholism had escalated even more. She was like a Jekyll and Hyde. She would go from being sad and asking for my advice to being so angry it was scary because she would misinterpret something I said. She was very paranoid that people were talking about her or that I was sharing information about her with other people. She was always very concerned with her body image too. She was always asking if she was fat, and struggled with eating-disorder-like symptoms.

During this time that my dad was away, I had talked to my school guidance counselor about what was going on. I recognized that I needed help for myself because I didn't have my dad to talk to, and I was seeking a recommendation for a therapist. Without my knowledge, the guidance counselor called DCF and they showed up on my doorstep the next day. This made things a million times more difficult for me because my mom was so angry with me. She would walk around the house crying that she had always tried to be a good mom and she couldn't believe her own daughter would ever do this to her. She wouldn't let me out of the house for the remainder of my dad's deployment because she was worried I would talk to someone. I was only allowed to go to school and back. If my father called, I wasn't allowed to talk to him unless she was there. She put a password on the computer so that I couldn't email him. If I did talk to him or email him, she would make me tell him lies to make it seem like she was doing fine. Being around her all the time made it difficult for me to cope, so I started cutting and developed an eating disorder. She would make jokes about the scars on my arms, sometimes taking out a pen and saying that she wanted to play tic tac toe on my arms.

When my dad's deployment was over, I was so thrilled to finally have a stable person back in my life. I felt like I was going to be freed. Then, on the day when my dad landed on U.S. soil, he got off the airplane and had a seizure. My mom and I had to fly out to the base that he had landed at. I was the happiest I had ever been to see my dad again, but I couldn't understand what could be wrong with him. I was certain that everything would be fine and we would be going home soon. That night I found out that my dad had a brain tumor. Days later, after the removal of the tumor, I was told that my dad had terminal brain cancer and had 18 months to live with treatment. I was beyond devastated. A couple weeks later we were able to come home with my dad. I had a very hard time dealing with the fact that he was finally home, but he wouldn't be here for long. During my dad's last 18 months, he would sometimes forget things or do little quirky things because the tumor was in his brain. My mom couldn't seem to understand that it was because of the brain cancer and would blame him for "purposely trying to piss her off." She would also constantly accuse me of loving my dad more than her because I would do things to help him. Eventually, my dad did pass away at the end of my junior year of high school, and my mom kicked me out of the house the day after his funeral. She told me I was grieving too much and that I obviously loved him more than her because I was so sad over his death. I moved in with my boyfriend at the time and sought professional help to recover from my eating disorder because I knew my dad would not want to see me that way. I was determined to use my experiences as a reason to succeed rather than an excuse to fail. I did recover, and decided to move back in with my mom because I didn't feel that my relationship with my boyfriend was healthy for me.

For awhile my mom seemed so happy to have me back, but after a few months her opinions of me began to change again. She became paranoid and mean again. My therapist encouraged me to move out as it was not a healthy environment for me, so I moved in with my current boyfriend who has been my best friend since middle school. After I moved out, my therapist began talking to me about borderline personality disorder. She obviously could not diagnose my mother, but she felt strongly that this is what he has. As soon as I started reading into BPD, my whole life seemed to make sense. I did so much research on it and read so many books about it just because I could identify so strongly with what I was reading. Over the past year and a half since I moved out of my mom's house, I felt I was able to have somewhat of a relationship with her because I could set boundaries and visit with her on my own terms. If she became angry, I was able to go home and get away from it. She was still unstable, but at least she was semi-functional, until recently.

It recently came out that my mom was having an affair with one of her employees. She was friends with this guy and his wife since my dad was in Iraq, and after my dad died, this guy would call me all the time asking what to do about my mom and telling me how unstable and "crazy" she was. My mom was completely dependent on him. He would drive her everywhere and pick up groceries for her. He and his wife would always come over and sit with her while she cried. My mom hardly even did her own job because they would do it for her, and she wanted to be around people like that who would "nurture" her. Eventually this man started taking advantage of that, and would steal money out of her bank accounts and steal things out of the house that he wanted. Even after my mom figured this out, she did nothing about it because she was so afraid of losing someone who would do everything for her.

About a month and a half ago, I received a phone call from this guy saying that I had to get to my mothers house. When I got there, he was holding my mom on the floor. She was intoxicated and covered in bruises, and I had to have her sent to the ER that night for threatening suicide. She was released the next morning when she was sober. To make an even longer story short, it came out that they were having an affair, and my mom was arrested for third degree assault. She was also fired and denied unemployment. Because of what happened, she is not supposed to have any contact with this man, but her dependency on him has made her symptoms a million times worse. She drinks, and cries, and paces the house begging for me to call him. She calls him herself and threatens suicide to get him to come over her house. I recently found out that he was still coming over to continue the affair with her because he also has a strange dependency/obsession with her. I'm constantly rushing over the the house because of suicide threats, and when I'm there, she tries to get me to take care of her like she's a small child. One minute she's talking about how much she "loves" this guy and can't live without him, and the next minute she's seeking vengeance on him.

Two days ago, I received a phone call from the guy telling me that my mom was calling him and requesting that he take her to the hospital. My uncle came with me to her house to try to get her to actually go to the hospital, but she refused. It was obviously a ploy to get this guy to come over to her house. Eventually, we told my mom that if she wasn't going to go to the hospital, she would have to go to her primary care doctor. We got her to the doctor and were able to speak with him while she was in the exam room with the nurse. He called the ER and let them know that we would be bringing her there. My mom was reluctant, but she got in the car because the doctor told her he really wanted her to go. As we were approaching a stop sign, my mom hopped out of the car and refused to go. I then called the police to come get her back in the car. She was furious with me, and screamed terrible things at me the whole rest of the way to the hospital. She told me that I'm not even her daughter and that she would slit her wrists somewhere far away as soon as she gets out of the hospital so that I won't even be able to find her body. She was not intoxicated this time, so I'm hoping that gave a clearer picture of her problem to the professionals working with her. She was just transferred to the inpatient psychiatric unit today, which I'm hoping is a good sign. She has been dealing with this for as long as I can remember. Her mother and siblings say she's been this way ever since she was a teenager. I'm hoping that she'll finally get the treatment that she desperately needs, and that someone will take the time to actually diagnose her so that a treatment plan can be developed. I really want to get to know the person that my mom actually is, and I'm definitely not ready to lose my other parent. I love her to death despite the way she has been. I'm already terrified of what will happen when they release her, but I'm trying to put it in God's hands. I'm in my senior year of college in a wonderful program at a fantastic university, and I don't want to lose everything I've worked so hard to become. My mom has given me a passion to hopefully work in mental health someday to support other people who are going through this, and I know that I can't let the stress of what is happening now get in the way of my passion. It is just so hard to focus and balance everything that is happening. Does anyone have any advice on how to  manage that?

Thank you so much to anyone who reads all this. I know that it's long and complicated, but I'm sure that a lot of us have similar stories. It means a lot to me just to be heard.

[Rapt Reader]

I really want to get to know the person that my mom actually is, and I'm definitely not ready to lose my other parent. I love her to death despite the way she has been. I'm already terrified of what will happen when they release her, but I'm trying to put it in God's hands. I'm in my senior year of college in a wonderful program at a fantastic university, and I don't want to lose everything I've worked so hard to become. My mom has given me a passion to hopefully work in mental health someday to support other people who are going through this, and I know that I can't let the stress of what is happening now get in the way of my passion. It is just so hard to focus and balance everything that is happening. Does anyone have any advice on how to  manage that?

Thank you so much to anyone who reads all this. I know that it's long and complicated, but I'm sure that a lot of us have similar stories. It means a lot to me just to be heard.

Hi, Jenot2 & 

Wow. I admire you so much... .You will be fantastic working in the mental health profession, and I wish you all the best in that endeavor. After all you've been through with your Mom, your compassion, understanding and desire to help her is so commendable and remarkable. I hope you will find the information you are looking for here; I believe you will be able to mange your goals. You have come so far at this point, I think the sky is the limit for you!

You are being heard... .and I think if you haven't read over on the [L5]  Coping and Healing from a BPD Parent, Sibling, or Inlaw Board yet, you should head on over there, and make sure you check out the Suggested Reading, Lessons and the Coping and Survivor's Guide links to the right-hand side of that page. Post over there when you are ready; the insights, advice and support from people who have gone through what you have and are going through, will amaze you 

[sophiegirl]

Hi jenot,

Sorry to read your story, you sound like a strong lady. I am 47 and became caregiver to BPD mother 5 years after sporadic contact after I left home at 18 for uni. I thought she had changed hence agreeing to her living next door but actually after a few months it was clear she hadn't. by coincidence my work has brought me into contact with people suffering from mental health and physical disabilities and I have found it very tough remaining impartial towards each patient. I would suggest not taking this course of study until you are very sure you can set and stand by your boundaries with your mother first or it can dig up your own unresolved personal issues. whatever you do good luck!

[sunshine4916]

Hi,

I completely understand... .it's like your story hit home for me with the abuse my mother put me through... .unfortunately, I'm still dealing with it now though. I am 20 and I just moved out of her home a few months ago.

I'm so sorry you went through that ... .trust me when I say I understand and I offer empathy and support if you need it. I know it makes me feel very very alone.

-Sunshine