Relationships with friends

[mimis]

Hi there, I can't seem to find thread on our BPD children and their tenuous relationships with their friends.  I read it and thought, so it just not my D. Needing some advice from my friends on this board.  My D had her birthday this weekend. turned 23- She sent out invites to her friends to come out with her.  She had quite a few accept which gave me huge relief.  I was scared no one would show up. She wanted everyone to show up at her house at 7:00pm to presocialize before heading out to clubs. Her best friend texted her and said she couldn't come till after 8:30 as she was still helping a friend move out and her new B.F. couldn't make it. My D. sne tme a txt ranting and saying she hated her life.  Said her best friend and b.F. ditched her. I asked if she had decied to cancel and she said no. she was still going out.  didn't hear from her again till 2:00am. she was crying , saying this was the worst B.D. sh eever had. said her best friend did show up but left her alone for 3 hours, her other friends showed up but left later and she ended up staying by herself for remainder of evening.  My heart broke when I heard that.  The pot thickens though. The next day my older D. told me the missing pieces to the story.  Like how my UDBPD texted her best friend back with reply when she said she would be late "nevermind coming then, I will just see you at the bar"  Her best friend felt like crap after that but she still showed up.  Also 8 of her friends showed up to her house, and instead of being happy that they showed up, all she focused on was on how her best friend ditched her for 3 hrs at the bar, and how the other friends had to leave because their babies were a bit sick with teething but they wanted to come out to celebrate with her for a bit.  She texted one of her friends the next day who was at the party about how it was the worst day of her life. He texted back, confused saying "what do you mean worst day of your life"  I saw the text and thought,  Oh great another friendship down the tube. 

my question is should I be pointing out to her that she should have looked at the good things vs the negative? how do we support our kids knowing that they ar often the root cause to their own unhappiness? I told my Dh that it hurt my heart as all I could see was my little girl saying she has no friends and no body likes her.  Yep feeling sorry for my self and her.  Any advice?

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

[HealingSpirit]

WOW!  I feel your pain, Mimis!

All we want is for our DD's to be happy, and they somehow manage to screw that up for themselves.  It's tragic to watch, and very hard to know what to say that supports them in taking responsibility.  Say the wrong thing, and you get emotional daggers thrown at you.  Don't say anything and get emotional daggers thrown at you.  -sigh-

I don't know what the answer is... . yet.  I'm still pretty new here, so I don't know all the tools and skills yet to help you.  If your DD's situation happened with my DD, I know I would have said something that made her feel worse, by trying to make her feel better.  I think the answer lies in responding with S.E.T.  Support, empathy, and truth. 

When my DD messes things up with her friends and causes drama like yours did, I want to "fix it."  I want to help my DD take responsibility by pointing out the things she may have said or done that contributed to the result she got with her friends.  But I've learned enough to realize THIS IS NOT what to do!  I'm not saying that YOU do this, by the way.  It's just that I'm finally recognizing HOW I have been making things worse, when all I wanted to do was make things better.  Even as I write this, it's becoming clearer.  No wonder my DD gets so angry when I try to help her!  I just want her to take responsibility for her life and be accountable.  But what I've been doing and saying isn't working.

I can see that MY past "fix it" strategies have made things worse, so I'm hopeful that learning to really just listen and validate my DD's feelings will help us both.  I have a hunch the strategy for your DD is the same.  Listen, listen, listen.  But don't try to show her the things SHE did that actually created her drama or she'll bite your head off.  You helped me with your post.  I hope I've helped you. 

Hang in there!

[lever.]

I agree very much with healingspirit.

I have mistakenly spent hours with DD going over things and trying to help her see what she could have done differently.

She didn't learn anything from it, saw it as criticism and I think it made her feel worse.

I think its best just to listen and validate the feelings without going so far as to validate the skewed negative thinking.

I am still inclined to try to point out the positives but I'm trying to reign this tendency in as it doesn't seem to help.

[Thursday]

I too have found that trying to "help" my BPDSD23 by listening to her story and then pointing out where she "may" have gone wrong is not the right path to her "getting it" and wanting to change.

Validation leads to a place where she can pull her self-esteem together, feel stronger and more able to make changes. When she sees herself as flawed she gets nowhere fast. She spirals into self-loathing so easily.

When I listen and validate she feels better about herself. After awhile I start seeing that she will sometimes ask what she is doing wrong when things go poorly with her friends. I try not to give her too much information at one time. She can work on one thing with success when she isn't overwhelmed with thinking she "does everything wrong" (her words).

She needed the most help with not showing her jealousy by lashing out and being angry. She is still working on this but at now she has a clue that the fault isn't strictly with "the world" and she can own at least a little piece of her issues.

Baby steps.

thurs

[sadmudder]

Hi there, I felt like I could have written your post myself, the only difference is my daughter is only 15, but she has been doing this for many years.  She is constantly sabotaging her friendships, and has responded impulsively in very similar fashion, and made everything worse for herself.  She has always been her own worst enemy, and never seems to learn from her mistakes.  I keep hoping that she will grow up some and start to see what she is doing, but reading your post does not give me a whole lot of hope    She won't listen to me if I do try to talk to her about anything, and she has been refusing to go to therapy for months.

[SeaSprite]

I'd also like some help with this one... . D16, and she has a history of short-lived and/or shallow friendships. It looks like she either chooses badly, or doesn't know how to be a good friend, or both. It sounds like she spends so much time trying to impress people with how awesome she is, she doesn't leave room for much else. And it's a vicious cycle, because she really wants approval, but then doesn't really get the intimacy she's craving and so on. She also seems to try to be friends with the cool kids, overlooking people who might be more interesting and tolerant.

She doesn't really tell me when things are going wrong, and she REALLY doesn't want any advice. I just get hints of it when she gets gloomy, depressed, angry, avoidant, etc.

She has a lot to offer, she's smart, and funny, and her younger self had a good heart, but somewhere along the way her emotions got so out of control that her social/emotional self just didn't keep up.

I've been watching the videos on this site about teens and BPD and validation skills, which I'm hoping is helpful. She definitely sees me as very judging and invalidating. Drives me crazy because it seems like I just do things wrong with her.

And... . she has just started rejecting any therapy, just when I found a local DBT skills program that sounds perfect. She said she doesn't need a "program" like program is a dirty word.

[Btv]

I agree with others.

My daughter H (24years) has been coming home from work angry and mad…"I don't have any friends!  I hate everyone at work!  Nobody likes me!  I want to die!  I wish I was never born!" on and on and on.  I sit with her and listen more than talk.  If I do talk, I'm afraid it will be the wrong thing, so I usually just listen, and interject a "uh, huh" and "wow, that must hurt."  letting her vent usually qualms the storms and within a few minutes -- 30 or so-- she's calm and sorting out her own problems.  the only problem with this, I see so far, is that it happens over and over again…we repeat the same conversation at least once a week…then the cycle begins again.  but reading the book by Kreger helps to remind me to listen with empathy.  Hope it works for you.

btv

[js friend]

mimis as you have discovered there are always missing pieces to the story when it comes to our pwBPD and the breakdown of their relationships.My dd is forever the victim, and these things keep happening to her... . and she doesnt know why.No mention of the horrible things she has said and done to others, yet still expects them to be there at a moments notice. So many times i would give advice on how to fix these r/s without having the fullstory at hand.At the end of the day without self reflection dd ends up just going round and round in circles and the fallouts happen time and time again.Now i dont try to fix things but just listen and validate dds feelings.

[CeeCee]

Hi all --

I read your post and felt like I was reading something I myself would've written a couple of years ago when my daughter was 15 or 16.

My daughter is 18 now. She has a couple of girlfriends, but the relationships are not very deep. Not what I remember my friendships to be like. She is always "warring" (is that even a word?) with someone. I was so happy when she graduated high school last month; I am so tired of the calls from guidance about her problems with other people in her class.

My daughter was a loving, kind child, too. When she was younger, I saw empathy for people, the ability to make and keep friends, creativity. Was not a great student in school though. Just always found it difficult. Could sit still and pay attention, but just wasn't interested in school.

Even though there was a lot of good in her, she was difficult to parent. Would have temper tantrums and I guess I wasn't strong enough a parent all the time for someone like her. She essentially would have a tantrum to get her way. It was exhausting. Sometimes I would be strong, and sometimes I would give in. She also had anxiety problems (panic attacks), and I was dealing with this overly sensitive child who would either become panicked or angry at the drop of a hat. But before puberty, she could laugh and interact as well. I would just label her a highly sensitive child.

When she was around 11 -- I noticed one weird thing. She joined a softball team. She was jealous that her brother was being recognized for his baseball ability, especially by my husband, so she joined, thinking he would pay attention to her because she played ball. While my mom and I watched the game, we noticed that she sat away from the team by herself. And when they tried to include her, she would basically blow them off and stand by herself. It was painful to watch. She seemed so... .disconnected from being able to be part of the group, even when the group was inviting her in. Another weird thing was she was terrible at the sport, but would come skipping off the field and say, "Wasn't I great?" And if you told her anything other than how great she was, or told her she had to work on some things, she would melt down.

Once she turned 12, it became really awful. She would be in a group of girls, fight with someone, say something that would cross a line, and then get booted from the group by whoever the Queen Bee was. She wanted to be the Queen Bee, but never was. And that was kind of the problem. She would get angry that everyone wouldn't do things her way or look at her as the leader of the group. And then for her it was time to go to war and try to get it to go her way. She was in and out of more friend groups in middle school than I can count. Parents basically told their kids to stay away from her. And they did.

Once she was isolated, she really went off the rails as she entered high school. Listening to screamo music with angry messages. Wearing all black. Bleached her once-gorgeous hair white, and added a lot of pink to her hair. Too much black makeup. And in our preppy town, just made herself out to be a freak. I believe she did this as a counter-strike to being rejected. Looking so tough that she put out a "you can't hurt me" message. So in high school, she had no friends. Everyone stayed away from this crazy looking, angry kid. And believe me -- she was a gorgeous girl. I couldn't believe what she did to her looks. And if I tried to say anything to her, she would melt down, tell me I didn't accept her as she was, that I was the worst mother, she wanted to kill herself. She began cutting. Which completely freaked me out. I had to take Xanax just to deal with what was happening. I couldn't believe what was going on.

We entered DBT therapy, and after about 9 months, I did see an improvement, and she did stop cutting. But she quit the therapy once she stopped cutting, because that was the only problem she thought she had. She didn't recognize her anger issues, or her lack of friends or ability to get along with her family members as a problem.

Another weird thing happened in the DBT group:  All the girls started bonding and communicating and caring about each other. They were talking about doing a barbecue and things together. My daughter was making these really cool feather earrings, and they would compliment her on them. But she wouldn't make eye contact with them, or emotionally contact with them at all. So here was my daughter in the middle of a group of girls who were experiencing a lot of the emotions she was, but she couldn't even connect with them.

I took a picture of my daughter lining up for her graduation walk. She was surrounded by all these kids she didn't feel connected to. When I looked at the picture, I recognized the look on her face. It was like she was going to have a panic attack, but was trying to control it. (I am her mom, have seen it so many times -- a blank stare, regulating her breathing, trying to control her emotions.) I was so sad when I looked at that picture.

Things are much better in some ways. She will never be exactly who I want her to be. And I am trying to deal with that. I see how her relationships are very surface (not emotionally deep), and if the person doesn't do what she wants, she is quick to get angry. I want her to be happy-go-lucky, and have lots of friends and a stable, loving relationship with a man one day. But I just do not know if it is possible. I almost hope she never has children, because I cannot imagine what kind of mother she would be. I feel awful saying that.

I know this thread is about friendships, and I wrote about more than that. I would say if you daughter is BPD and you can get her into a good DBT therapy group, you should do it. I saw all the other girls in my daughter's DBT class respond to it.

One therapist told me he thinks my daughter has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but wouldn't diagnose her until she was over 18. My father has it, and I think she has it too. I am so sad. Those are the hardest people to help, because they think they are perfect the way they are. An over-inflated ego to protect their fragile self esteem. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about what I did to not help her or cause this problem.  :'(

[chooselove]

I'm another mother who has listened for decades and hours at a time  about what "they" did to her and how "wrong" they were.  I learned early on, too, that if I tried to lead her into a better way of thinking, I just got yelled at and she stormed out on me "for taking their sides" or "never listening to her."  These days, I let her ramble on and interject a sympathetic word here and there and let it die out as quickly as possible.  I know she'll just repeat the whole drama to the next set of ears anyway, no matter what I do or don't say, so I just do my best to not trigger her, wind down the conversation and let someone else call her on it and be the butt of her wrath. I am tired, she has moved out finally and I'm just focusing on healing and resting and building up a positive social life for myself these days.  I'm 60 years old and want some happy times while I can after all the stress and spent resources. 

[mimis]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your feedback.  You are all so,correct in that it is best to just listen as in the past where, I've tried to give her advice, it just back fires on me and I end up,being the horrible person.  It is so true that our kids lack self esteem and need constant validation.  It's Unfortunate that we can't train their friends in this technique.  S.E.T. Has worked well in past for me but it takes practice and not something we can tell their friends to do.  My d has decided that she is done with all the people who have slighted her.  In her mind, it's always she who,is the kind and caring person and she says she is done.  I know in her heart she would rather it be the opposite. I am learning not to,put my 2 cents in.  It does no good.  She does some times says that it might be her as it seems like most of her friends treat her the same way.  I am hoping and praying for the day when she comes to,full realization that inner change may be required.  Again insight can't be shoved upon one who doesn't have it.  Like you all,said,,all a parent do is to listen. 

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

[mimis]

Dear cee cee, I wanted to personally thank you for your very insightful post.  There are so many similarities. During early years my D had very good relationships.  She is very creative and sensitive.  When she was 13, she told me she had trouble sleeping and when we went to doctor, she was diagnosed with anxiety.  Her panic attacks have worsened over the years and she has told me that she suffers from social anxiety.  I sometimes think she has a princess (narcissist) complex.   She likes to be focus of attention and has always felt inferior to her older sister.  Up,until last year the sisters have been very close but my UBPD has been so needy this past year and unreasonable that her sister has had enough. As we know our BPD kids are highly intuitive and she says her older sister hates her because she never wants to spend time with her.  As a mom , I want to fix things but I have learnt not to try and fix anything as I always am made to be the bad person.  I am becoming an expert at saying, ahhh that's todo bad. Or just learning silence is golden.

Like you I want my D to have good friends, a steady relationship hope that she will find happiness in marriage one day.  I can only hope this might happen one day.  My D did have a very lengthy relationship with a boy from high school but it just got too much for him. She was awful to him.  It is a pipe dream in wishing for this right now.   I am also,fearful of her becoming a mom as I too am concerned about what kind of mom she would be. 

I wish I could find DBT group for here but just finding a therapist specializing in DBT is hard. I live in Canada and not too much support which is why I rely on this board so much.

Mimi