BPDFamily.com

Hello. My daughter had her first episode of Depression when she was 12 and has several suicide attempts and psychiatric hospitalizations. I have supported her and cared for her all of her life. She has not been able to work for the past 6 years and we have financially supported her. I am a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner and I have been pretty understanding. But things exploded when she was diagnosed with BPD. She wanted to know why I hadn't told her and she has been furious that she lost years of potential treatment because of me. I explained that I knew she had BPD traits but I always thought her primary problem was a mood disorder. I composed a nice email to further explain my thinking on this and she refused to read it. I assembled some reputable websites and information on BPD and she refused to look at it.
She has been belligerent and accusatory since this time. She now speaks of having had an "agonizing" childhood. She has assembled a litany of grievances and accuses me of neglecting, invalidating and traumatizing her during childhood. She has now tapped into books and websites that encourage this line of thinking and she is only too happy to go along with all this. I am to blame for her having BPD.
But recently she has deteriorated greatly. Her accusations leveled at me have become more intense and she is currently paranoid and delusional. I spent a day with her last week and she was enraged and verbally very threatening to me. She wanted me to listen so as to understand her but I was not allowed to utter a word. Anytime I went to say anything she pointed her finger towards me and screamed "You cannot interrupt me!" What she has "learned" from the websites she visits are as follows: I am a Narcissist and people around me are "flying monkeys"; I gaslight her; I wanted her to be ill as it was gratifying to me; All of the financial help we have given her was so we could "control her" and "keep her small". She tried to paint this picture of me to my son and when he wouldn't go along with it she cut him out of her life.
She is currently very ill. She seems to have an agitated depression compounded by her use of a stimulant, rendering her intensely paranoid and wildly out of control. She threatens suicide. She sends terrible texts, sometimes 40 at a time.
She refuses psychiatric treatment, medications and will not go to the hospital. I could go to the courthouse and file for an emergency psychiatric evaluation but that would entail police officers coming to her home and taking her away in a squad car and taking her to the hospital. I really don't want to have to take this step. She hates being in the hospital and they only keep patients 3-4 days. Sometimes patients get discharged and then kill themselves.
I want to protect her but I'm afraid the Emergency Petition would be the ultimate betrayal and might destroy our relationship more than it's already destroyed.
All of this has broken my heart and it's hard to see her intense suffering at this point. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Willow, I can feel your growing concern in your words. If your daughter is threatening suicide, you need to get her to the hospital where she can be stabilized and assessed for treatment.

It’s typical for people with BPD to blame loved ones for all their problems and re-interpret history with the lens of victimhood, looking for signs of abuse. My stepdaughter does this frequently. And she resents being so dependent on her dad for everything (she can’t support herself yet). She surely feels ashamed about that and resents needing help when her siblings and peers are independent. This is painful to her and comes out as angry rants, blaming her parents for making her dysfunctional.

However, now the continued financial support is conditioned upon her getting therapy and following the doctor’s recommendations for medications. She has a choice to skip therapy or meds, but then her dad said he wouldn’t continue to support her. That’s when things started turning around and going in the right direction. It took six long years of increasingly hostile behavior, with suicide attempts and moments of psychosis, to reach that turning point. I wish it had come sooner. But my husband enabled some self-destructive behavior for too long. He didn’t want to send her to the hospital.

This is NPWillow. Disaster averted. Thank you very much.

Hi, I noticed you said your step-daughter experiences psychosis.  Is this typical in persons with BPD?  My daughter also experiences periods of psychosis.