Reading a book by Daniel Lobel called “When your daughter has BPD” and it’s very helpful.

I have given into my daughter for years to decrease conflict and create peace for years and in my experience it doesn’t help. According to Lobel, this feeds into a lack of frustration tolerance negatively. He calls it feeding the monster. Monster is the illness.  This is sending the message to her that I cannot tolerate her frustration and therefore, neither should she. Which adds to her fears and makes her over reliant on me. Which doesn’t help her and enables. .

I have been firmly setting boundaries for the last few months. And have experienced major lashing out from her and her BPD mom. It’s really tough though. Super hurtful things from both of them. But I’m holding the line. I can’t live like things were. And I’m not helping her and her illness at all by giving in. But it is hard right now. I just remind myself that it is illness and how hard it’s been before too.id rather have healthy boundaries.

Maybe someone else out there is feeling similar things and is on the fence on setting boundaries. Thought I’d share how helpful this book has been for me to follow my new path.

I can empathize with both of you.  My diagnosed stepdaughter is about the same age and apparently needlessly puts herself in sketchy situations.  She's tried selling provocative photos on the internet.  She's attracted to the modeling scene.  She said she's posted videos that went viral.  I can only imagine their content.

I think she's both naive and eager to get attention, and "likes."  In a way, I think she has a childish dream of becoming a princess:  adored by the public, beautiful, with people catering to her every whim. Constant consumption of social media makes this a compelling route.  It seems there are many young "influencers" out there who appear to have everything:  looks, fans, fun and the easy life, supposedly earning "millions" with a few posts.  That would be infinitely easier than having to earn a degree or to work full-time and support oneself as an adult, right?  The fantasy seems irresistible.  And maybe in young people's minds today, a thousand online friends are better than one real-life friend.  But I think the reverse is true.

I think it's taken my stepdaughter some time to figure out that posting provocative photos gets the wrong kind of attention.  I've gently tried to explain to her how the modeling world is exploitative, and that chances of making even a modest living from it are less than slim.  That doesn't mean she's not beautiful.  But I think she had to live the experience, paying hundreds of dollars for photos for her portfolio, to learn the lesson.  And maybe she's just a little slow to learn, because the fantasy is so compelling, and the positive feedback from strangers (e.g. the agency taking her money) motivates her.  To her, the alternative is too painful:  figuring out who she is!  studying!  getting a job!  Reality and adulting seem so hard by comparison.

I also tend to think that the identity of a person with BPD (at least in my stepdaughter's case) is fragile.  She doesn't seem to know who she is or what she wants.  She's afraid of growing up, too.  So she's impulsive and always looking for the "easy" way, overly influenced by external approval (e.g. internet likes).  Her internal compass is unreliable in my opinion, maybe because her emotions are all over the place.

I guess it's natural to become constant worriers.  But I also believe that experience, and failure, are an excellent teacher.  I just hope that it doesn't break her in the process.  I do think that she hears some loving encouragement and advice, but her mental state is such that she won't act on it, because it's too hard for her to take.  Accepting reality is tough, especially so for people with BPD I think.

I do not agree with the author and I do not feel there was any basis for an argument there other than the author's personal experiences.  That's the world we live in today though, as the author repeatedly said, "Far too many..." without giving any basis behind it.  It's sensationalizing a topic that may or may not be true.

I know this worry too, and it is very hard.
We worry about their safety, their self-destructiveness, their futures.
My young twenties daughter sells explicit content on Onlyfans, and how she promotes her content is distressing and shocking.
She received generous financial support from us, so money was not the motivation. I used to torture myself thinking that my often expressed view that pornography and prostitution are inherently harmful for women and girls was a factor in her choosing this. I thought I was safeguarding her with information, but overlooked her persistent need to prove me wrong - about my beliefs, politics and associations.

I have no suggestions or solutions to offer.
Just empathy and understanding.
It is distressing and we wish so much for our adult children to make safer, healthier choices.
You are not alone.
❤️

Like you said, that person left feeling engulfed and you made the mistake of reaching out too frequently.  It smothered them and they had to "escape".  We all do that when these relationships get difficult, so don't feel like you're alone.  It's intuitive to fight for the relationship.

With BPD though, the person has to have time to sort of find themselves and figure out what matters in their life.  That takes time and it's not a guarantee of relationship success...but it does give everyone time to heal and see things more objectively.

You maintaining no contact allows you to heal and focus on your own mental health, which has taken a hit going through all of this.  Again, the healing and gaining more mental clarity is the success part, which is why you'll see advice to stay busy with favorite hobbies and friends/family.  Sitting around waiting for the phone to ring is hurting you...moving on and adjusting to a life without your ex is healthy because it breaks the co-dependency.

In time, both of you should become better people...although your ex will still have a major mental illness.  With no contact, you can hope that the ex reaches out from genuinely missing you and by that point, you'll have healed enough to see the possibility of the relationship with fresh eyes.  There's no guarantees here that the relationship will succeed, which is why you must focus on yourself and actually healing from what was broken.  That way you walk away a winner no matter what.

One other trait of BPD is recycling relationships through different stages, and probably around half of the members here have seen their ex's want to rekindle the relationship.  So there's definitely still hope if you can avoid repeating past mistakes.  

Under the tools section at the top of this page, there's some great lessons on better communication techniques that will help you prepare.  Study them and take it to heart, because you're the one who will have to make the initial changes.  Good luck!

I meant to say - unusual for a teen with significant behavior issues to be well behaved at school making good grades.

"I need space" hasn't come up. When we had minor interactions shortly after the conflict, they've said things like, "I'm not ready to have you in my life." Lately our interactions have been brief but warm, but they're saying they want a clean slate between us and they want it to grow naturally and they want to be the one to initiate contact. But their overtures have been minor and infrequent and we haven't had an interaction in a couple weeks. I'm being respectful of what they're saying they want, but also wondering if the lack of object constancy means they're less likely to follow up as more time passes as I stick to No Contact.

is this person telling you that they need space?

it sounds like shes looking for love/reassurance, and going about it in immature ways.

it also sounds like the trick here is less about "what to do or not to do" in a particular circumstance, but that the way the two of you handle conflict is destructive.

have you had a chance to read through this 3 minute lesson on ending conflict: https://bpdfamily.com/content/ending-conflict

I don't agree with that author. It's one opinion.

Adolescents have the task of forming their own identity. They know they are "not their parents"- they are their own person,  but they don't know who they are exactly- so they may go through different ideas- clothing, music, hairstyles- that are "not their parent". For a teen girl- this could involve a form of "rejecting" the mother in some way. I think it takes an emotionally secure mother to get through this stage- and a mother who has the emotional maturity to not react in a hurtful way. Teen need boundaries but the boundaries change as they mature.

Emotional maturity, a sense of self, and boundaries are areas of difficulty with BPD.

This idea of teen age mother daughter issues is especially concerning to me because BPD mother "explained" our relationship that way at the time, and also implies it's a stage and it was due to my being a teen ager- taking any accountability away from her. My being a teen was the reason and it was assumed I'd get over it.

Sometimes it is the teen who has the issues- a teen may have a disorder, or troublesome behaviors. Or it may be situational- the teen is doing fine at school and elsewhere- but not at home- then one has to look at what is going on at home. It's not usual for a "troublesome teen" to be making straight A's at school like your D is. I did well in school too. Behaviors like promiscuity or drugs, or rule breaking- these didn't happen either. Yet somehow according to my mother, we had a "mother-daughter" teen age problem.

I experienced this from the parent perspective too. Yes, there were times my own teen D had me in tears- the moodiness, the rejecting of my ideas- like if I bought her something to wear, she didn't like it, or if I said something she'd roll her eyes. But who is the adult in this relationship- me- and this behavior isn't about me but my own child trying to decide who she was. The basics were in place- good grades, friends at school, no delinquent behavior. Boundaries were still there but I had to adjust them to this new stage. This is that "normal teen conflict" my mother was referring to, but it was qualitatively different from the situation with my own BPD mother.

The other side of this is that I got to experience what being a "normal" teen is from observing her- something I didn't experience. My teen could "push back" at me in this process because she wasn't afraid of me. I may have felt hurt feelings but I didn't respond with verbal or emotional abuse. My teen wasn't parentified- she wasn't responsible for my feelings. She didn't come home from school wondering what kind of mood I would be in.

If my relationship with my mother was due to "mother -daughter" teen conflict- then I should have "outgrown it". In that case, the issues would be resolved. I feel I tried. I assumed the blame for the relationship and have tried to establish a better one as an adult but she still has BPD. She is still emotionally and verbally abusive as she was when I was a teen.

Explaining what went on at home when I was a teen as a "teen age mother-daugher conflict" was invalidating and put the reason on me. It also hid the chaos and emotionally abusive behaviors that were going on at the time.