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A friend of mine posted a pic on facebook about the most important words a mother can tell her child. The words were 'I believe in you'. My first reaction was to respond by saying too bad I never heard those words growing up, but then I started thinking and realized that I actually had really never heard those words. My mother has never told me she believes in me, she does take credit for my achievements though. I also realized that she has never said “I love you” or “I'm proud of you” to me. The best I got was the occasional “I love all of you”. Once she said that “We are all very proud of you”, this happened only once and it happened when I was already 28 after one of my articles was nominated for an award. To this day she has never directly said that she loves me or that she's proud of me. I guess this was the first time I had really thought about it like this and it stunned me that she had actually never said any of these things to me, not even once. Those little words could and would have made a huge difference in my life. Things I did often get to hear, were things like “You don't have to think you know everything” or “Don't they teach you anything in school” or “You are different”. Never underestimate the power of words.

Kwamina, you're so right, words are very powerful. I never heard "I believe in you" from my mother, but heard a lot of the same sarcastic comments you did instead. She had very little self confidence and extended that to me and my abilities. And she tried, when I was an adult, to say that the fact I was successful was proof that she had been a good mother. You better believe I snatched that unearned prize out of her hands as fast as I could. I survived and became successful IN SPITE of all the terrible things she said to me and the unsupportive, demeaning environment. I clawed my way up from the depths of hell without her help, that's for sure.

Mine was way overly flowery with the "love you"s and "i believe in you".

You know that thing where people say too much when they're lying? Sometimes it feels like that. I actually have an adverse reaction to the flowery verse. She's trying to buy her way out of trouble, trying to ingratiate herself when apologies are owed. It's part of the mask. I would have preferred fewer "I love you"s and more apologies. Or better behavior.

It also made mid childhood much more confusing. I remember her being mostly normal and actually loving as a toddler, then the bottom fell out and she hated me. I was kind of blown away like "What the hell just changed, I thought we were cool?" My whole teen years were filled with this; flowers and "you're the most precious blessing ever" cards one day, rage attacks where I was a venomous selfish slut the next day. I just stopped listening. To all of it.

And if she really does love me, I wish she wouldn't. She is an obligation to me. I am polite to her. That's mostly it. The feeling isn't wholly mutual in light of some of the rage episodes burned into my memory.

I think it's part of the "I hate you/Don't leave me" thing.

If she had just come out to my face and said "I hate you" I would have been like "I know. I hate you too, your behavior is appalling" and I would have gone on my merry way and saved myself a lot of psychological conflict. But I've spent my whole life trying to figure out how someone who "loves me most in the world" could treat me so badly.

Ideally there would have been a sane parent around to model sane behavior, and say those things in a meaningful way. That is something that has to be grieved. You can find new role models and mentors now who do believe in you.

That sounds exactly like my mother too. Very sorry that you also had to go through this but I'm happy that you were able to snatch that prize from her hands

HI XL!

Thanks for sharing your insights. This BPD really is so confusing, all the mixed messages are just too much to process when you're just a little kid. I sometimes also think that it would have made it easier if she just said "I hate you" without all the other theatrics, but that too probably would have been very difficult to handle. My mother sometimes turned into a real BPD Witch and when she was in that state it was clear how much she hated me. These episodes really frightened me. The fakeness is something that really bothered and hurt me too. She could verbally shred me to pieces and the next day have a huge birthday party for herself and pretend nothing happened. No apologies at all.