BPDFamily.com

I'll spare most of the details of my stupid, stupid decision -- made when I was vulnerable and nuts, just out of the psych hospital -- but I let myself be cozened by my uNPD mother into a terrible trap. She made all sorts of promises she has now denied, but suffice it to say i am now 3,000 miles from my support group, she has seized all my money and bound it up in a "trust" she controls, I am financially dependent on her and she is torturing me emotionally and has a degree of control over my life that nobody should ever let happen with a sadistic uNPD mother who has flipped into all-hate mode.

I can't figure out how to get out. She's high-functioning, charming as the devil and as much of a liar, and has managed to cut me off from all my other sources of support by lying to them and telling them she is taking good care of me and I am doing fine in her hands. So they have no motivation to help me. And I don't have the financial resources to escape. Or even the psychological ability, I don't think, anymore. She has broken me down that thoroughly and constructed her trap that tightly.

I have obsessed and obsesed about how to get out of here and i can't think of anything. Nowhere to go, no job prospects (I am now disabled) -- the only escape I can think of is the ultimate one.

But I don't want to do it.

But I think about it constantly, because living under her control and the sadism she is putting me through is breaking my mind, and that is seeming worse than death.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

I'm so sorry to hear about your terrible situation. Some thoughts and suggestions:

• Is there anybody at all within your reach who would not turn you away and let you stay if you turned up on their doorstep? If so, go there if mobility allows.



• Is there any free legal aid available where you are?  Even just one free appointment (mobility allowing) might give you helpful pointers. The initial focus should probably be on getting your money back under your own control.



• You seem to have internet access: contact your support system 3,000 miles away and let them know what's happening, if you can safely do so. At least one trustworthy person. Even if you don't have any clear ideas about what they could possibly do. They might come up with something you can't currently see yourself. At if you can get validation from just one person, it may give the strength to act when you otherwise wouldn't.

Finally, I know how perfectly constructed those facades of high-functioning, personality disordered parents can be. Personally, I've never been able to puncture them either. I only removed myself and was lucky enough to have a couple of other people supporting me emotionally and, at times, financially, so I never had to risk coming too close to my parents again (not that they didn't try to get me back under their thumb).

I wish you the best on your way to regaining control of your life.

Jessie, I'm so sorry to hear this, what an intense situation. I can definitely empathize: while not as extreme, I was once in a similar predicament with my mother, where I lived with her and felt I had no control over my own life, my finances, who I could see. She is also a high functioning BPD. The only thing that eventually saved me was reaching out to others for help to get out of the bad situation. Dahlia made some very good suggestions about getting support in this difficult situation.   

I need help as well. Recently my mother has gone back into the work force, she now comes home and fights me after a long work day. threatening to break my laptop, cell phone, take away my car. its awful. I don't have any support because my father has gone on a denigration campaign and has turned relatives against me. they don't want to help

I feel like I am in a incestuous domestic relationship with this woman. she tells me to stop wearing makeup, wearing dresses, demanded I stop buying things etc tells me i am old. i have no freedom

Dear jessienbp,


Just wanted to say how sorry I am for the unfair pain you are going through. Really glad you came to this board and Daliah has some great tips. Just want to encourage you that you can do it and I am praying hard for your situation.


-VQ

Hi, jessienbp,

I am so sorry to hear about what you are going through. It sounds like you are feeling  hopeless and alone. No wonder--it sounds like you are in a very vulnerable place, and having a mother with NPD probably doesn't help that. Most members here have also dealt with depression at some point, so we do understand, and we care about you. 

Even though right now it may seem like you are out of options, and the pain you are in feels tremendous, there are alternatives to suicide. It is hard to see when you are in the depths of it, but what you are feeling really is temporary and will not last forever. There are people who can help you find your way out and will be able to help you think of solutions. Would you be willing to call a local suicide prevention hotline, just to see what your options are where you live? I will be happy to help you find a number to call.

Daliah also has some very good suggestions for other ways to reach out. You mentioned you were recently hospitalized; do you have a way to contact your doctor or therapist, either by phone or e-mail?

Will you let us know how you are doing?

Wishing you peace,

PF

Bad.

I have sent you a new hotline number. Go ahead and give them a call--they are equipped to get you the help you need.

You are in our thoughts and prayers. Keep in touch.

Thank you very much.

-jessiebnp


-kharma

Both of these statements really struck a cord of familiarity with me. You guys aren't the only ones to have dealt with this horrible, entrapment situation. When it happened to me, I was too depressed to do anything. My antidepressants had turned me into a zombie, something my mom used a lot to shame me in front of her church friends.

jessiebnp, the fact that you are asking for help speaks highly of how strong you really are. I hope you reach someone from your support group and from P.F. Change's hotline. Good luck to you. You are worth being treated with respect and love, not manipulation and shaming.

jessienbp - hang in there. Loads of people on this forum to support you. You will resolve this, but might take a bit of time. Time to plan... . If you don't know someone right now that you could knock on the doar, maybe in time you will. If you don't have the funds to move, you can start planning an income. But for now, go easy on yourself, if you get your health in check then you'll feel more able to escape. Thinking of you.

How are you doing today?

I noticed in your first sentence you got down on yourself for believing your mother's lies. Been there and done that! It's so hard to say NO, because a piece of our hearts are wanting that mother/daughter relationship. 

Don't give up, OK?

Thank you all so much for your encouragement.

Unfortunately here in Los Angeles everyone I know is either her friend or her family; I've never lived here and have no friends here of my own. Technically her family is my family, but only technically -- she is Korean and an elder and has them all bamboozled into thinking she is taking great care of me, and if i went to any of them for shelter, they would ask her permission first and/or promptly return me to my current situation.

At least I am not living with her, but my apartment is in her name because i don't financially qualify, and she deliberately chose a hellish place for me to live -- a one-room place high up in a high-rise (she knows i have a severe fear of heights) in the middle of the most desolate neighborhood imaginable. (I can't walk currently anyway, so I guess that doesn't really matter except it is depressing.) it's the only apartment in the price range that doesn't have a pool, gym, and/or common room, so i am basically in solitary confinement. (No car either -- she promised to give me her old one -- she just bought herself a new mercedes -- but reneged on that promise among so many others.) The isolation is really getting to me.

Oh, well, don't mean to sound self-pitying. I am trying to think desperately of places I can go where i might have a shot at a job after a long period of unemployment and where I have some friends to fend off the isolation; no help forthcoming yet, but I will keep working on it.

have no choice, really. I am not going to commit suicide here because I lack the means (sure and painless, that is) plus i want to live, but I must say I spend a ton of time thinking about it as a last resort.

I feel so idiotic for having gotten myself into this bear trap. She just came on so sweet and loving and maternal and nurturing... . until she got me out here.

You're right, we must all have some profound need to believe our mother loves us.

Especially if other parents died early and no nuclear family support.

Or i just guess it is a mammal thing. Mother=comfort=life.

Hah.

Well, isolated that is, except for my mother's unanounced "visits" -to rage at me for everything for leaving a dish in the sink to seeming depressed to being such a burden on her that she wants to die. (She has the keys to the apartment, of course.)

It would help the depression if she didn't keep encouraging me to commit suicide because I am such a loser and "am not trying" and "faked my hospitalization so I could live off her money." (Uh, then why did I rent my own apartment in new jersey when i got out instead of asking her to bring me here? The latter was entirely her idea -- she literally showed up, screamed at my landlord until he was ready to evict me, told the friends who were helping me a bit that she would take over from there -- all concern and false promises, of course, packed up my stuff -- I couldn't stop her because I can't stand on the one leg until surgery -- and had my friend drive us to the airport. I was too messed up from my recent hospitalization -- which turned out to be just benzodiazapine withdrawal and loss of my psychiatrist -- if i had not been insane with anxiety i could have found a new one and never even considered coming with her, but I was and I did. Stupid, stupid.

I am looking for work here, but my industry doesn't really exist out here, just back home. barely. I might be able to get a job there, might well not.

but I would rather starve among friends and far, far from this constant, unrelenting emotional abuse and undermining.

Hello jessienbp,


So sorry about what you're going through. I have been praying for you 2x/day. Please know that you're not alone. I am going through much of the same things: I too am searching for a job, my car just blew an engine so I am in need of a car, and am in need of a healthy people around me. We can be in this together, of sorts.

This group has been such a help for support, encouragement, hope, tips, etc.,. so I know you will keep getting more of that here. Also what really helps me is seeing myself the way I want to be. I get a picture in my mind of what I want and replay it throughout the day (as though it has already happened.) It gets into the subconscious and pulls you toward it.

Your new life is possible. Keep moving forward with constructive actions and it will come.

xo,

VQ

Thanks ValleyQuail, as well as everyone else who have posted in support. It really helps. Really helps. Partly it is the "solitary confinement" -- no friends here aspect that is really getting to me. In prisons, when they put people in solitary, they get psychotic, and I am decompensating practically by the day. The fear of heights/high-rise business does not help.

And knowing my mom arranged that on purpose in her choice of building/location is so SCARY. G-d, personality-disordered people can be so unbelievably cruel. I cannot even imagine being that cruel.


Does anyone else get the terrors just contemplating how much hate these people can feel and act on?


But, they are insane. Gotta remember that. I just wish she were a waif and not a queen/witch, lol.



(Oh, and I didn't mean to imply my mom is paying for my apartment. She's paying for half of it since I cannot afford to live in LA. So my money is draining away.

One piece of possibly good news, though -- after 8 months of bureaucratic struggle, i finally got on medi-cal, so I will be able to have my knee operated on. The doctor said to expect only maybe a 50% improvement, but that would be a lot better than not being able to stand on it!

Oh, jeeze, my time is running out. (For planning a viable escape somewhere I can get a job, get my knee repaired, find an apartment, etc. far way from LA and the uNPD mom "beartrap".

She just called and is insisting we go to the social security office together (after going to my psychiatrist together) so she can start the process of getting me on SSI.

Her intent, in order for me to qualify, is for me to "spend down" or transfer to a relative (of hers) all my cash except $3,000 and then hide any income I manage to make by, again, transferring it to a relative of hers to be returned to me in cash.

I.e., she is planning to get total control of my money on the flimsy promise that I will be given it back by back channels. (SSI requires one to have basically no assets and no earning ability; it pays about $800/mo., which is far too little to live on anywhere.)

If I refuse, I am sure she will do what she has consistently threatened to do when I disobey her here -- have me kicked out of this apartment. (She is paying for half of it because I cannot afford to live in LA; and more to the point, hers is the only name on the lease, so I don't even have to be evicted -- she just has to tell the management I can't live in her apartment anymore.)

It's going to take me a while, the way things are going, to get out of here to another city and have someplace to live and figure out where I have the best chance of getting a job in my dicey field. Nobody in my support network can or will take me in to live with them. (They're in NYC, where people  live in closets to start with.) And my knee surgery isn't for 10 days and then there will be months of PT required, and I have Medi-Cal here but would have to get new insurance anywhere else -- and it took me 8 months to get on Medi-Cal, given the bureacratic breakdown caused by millions of new people qualifying under Obamacare. And a lot of states haven't expanded Medicaid such that I qualify.

Trying to break and run for it 3,000 miles away with no housing and the country's tightest and most expensive housing market is, I am so afraid, just not something I can arrange in time before my mother moves in to give me the choice of taking all my money away or taking away my housing.

Object lesson: Never, EVER let yourself get back in their financial, etc. control if you have gotten out, even if you are desperate and half-nuts and they make all the sweet, nurturing promises in the world. They lie. They want control. And, sometimes, they just want to do you harm for the hell of it.

Jessienbp

The good thing is you appear fully aware of what's happening, and how your Mom controls. She wants’ to know your weaknesses, so of course she'll come to the Psychiatrist. Can you get your next appointment to clash with something your Mom has on?

Of course she wants to dictate the financials, control again. But a word of warning. She suggests " hide any income I manage to make by, again, transferring it to a relative of hers to be returned to me in cash." If you do this, she has a trump card on you. Better still you record her suggesting of such behaviour, so you have a trump car on her.

My N once dobbed me into the Inland Revenue - I had nothing to hide, but as I worked in the finance industry, it looked really bad. They went through everything it was so invasive. If you hide the money from anyone, it should be your N Mom.

Have faith - you can always off load on this forum. It might be a bit of a waiting game, sounds like you need to sort your knee out first. But remember as you now know she's a N, this gives you some control back.

Did you get a chance to call the hotline, jessienbp?

Have you called any local charities or churches or social services organizations about ways to find a job or another place to live? You may also have tenant's rights even though your name is not on the lease; it would be worth checking out the laws in your state.  It sounds like you feel it would be best for you to stay in the state until your surgery and recovery are complete. Even though the industry you are used to working in may not have as much to do, perhaps there is some job that you could do short-term, until you are ready to move somewhere else. What do you think?

It sounds like you are willing to take steps to look after yourself, since you did get yourself enrolled in medi-Cal. I think you will be able to find other solutions as well.  |iiii

PF

Your mother sounds so much like mine that it's scary. She has tried to convince me I am crazy so I can get SSI too. It's like these BPD people all operate the exact same.

When I first read your first message, I immediately thought this sounded more like a domestic violence situation more common between spouses, although obviously it is your mother in this case.  Perhaps a call or email to a domestic violence hotline also might also give you some ideas?  I don't know if they extend a safe house environment to people who are trying to escape from people other than spouses, but it sounds like you would be a perfect case if so. 

Also, if things really get desperate, call 911.  The police in my town (admittedly not LA but still a larger town) say people far too often feel like they are "bothering" the police with their issues by calling 911 but they are here to serve and have connections to many community resources.  You could even call their non-emergency number for ideas. (Otherwise, they say they will just have to pull people over for traffic tickets.)

kharma -- Seriously.

What a bizarre, bizarre illness it is.


I haven't called the suicide hotline yet because I haven't gotten to the point where I want to die. It's more like despair at my seemingly inevitable future and what I might have to do in the long run. But the thought is frightening, not appealing. A sort of last-ditch thing. And I know I haven't come to the last ditch yet.

And, luckily, I am kind of terrified at the idea of being dead until the end of time.

As for calling 911, thing is, my mom isn''t being overtly abusive -- she is helping me, technically, by paying half my rent, etc. And I theoretically could leave anytime if I weren't lame and if it weren't so impossibly difficult at this point to think where I can go while not being able to think of any way of making myself employable. And that has expanded medicaid, and isn't too expensive, and where I know someone, etc. (I AM essentially one-legged, and the surgeon only expects maybe a 50% improvement, so any job that requires me to be on my feet is out -- I know that from past experience with the same knee problem -- and I have bad repetitive stress syndrome -- was actually declared to have lost 70% of the use of my arms by workers' comp -- so a sedentary job involving typing is out. And I just got a call from a friend today whom I thought was one of the few people staying afloat in the only field I am trained in -- journalism -- but it turns out she is working practically for free after multiple lay-offs (and she is highly qualified, more than me ) and is going back to school to become a nurse. her husband is supporting her for school. Nobody is going to do that for me. Actually, all the journalists I know have gone back to school to retrain for something else. I can't think what I could do, though, aside from the cost -- nursing was my own original plan before I ripped up my knee, but that's out now -- too much standing -- and I can't think what doesn't require computer use that's not manual labor that my leg wouldn't allow.))

I just can't think of a friend in a different city who doesn't have enough problems of their own to take in a dubiously employable, homeless fugitive, away from my mom. That's not quite the same problem as trying to escape an actively abusive mom, if you see what I mean. It's a poverty problem compounded by PTSD being induced by the proximity (15 miles is close enough) of my mom and her various shenanigans and emotional cruelties.

Am looking into public-service job retraiing programs. I hope they could think of something I could actually do, if i qualify.

I understand this isn't typical but I am in LA and I am willing to help you if there is no where else to turn. Message me privately if you get to that point.

The brain can only handle so much intensity, trust me I know.

If only to talk feel free to message me.

Boisnix -- Bless you. Talk about the kindness of strangers. If I think of anything you could do, I will contact you. Bless you again.

revision --

I did just nowcall the suicide hotline.

(Got a couple of particularly cruel and hope-killing emails from my mom, and those, on top of the bad news about my profession really not being viable to re-enter, triggered me into thinking it may be time to leave before the spiral into poverty and further despair gets *really* started. --No, I wasn't going to do it tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, but going to bed thinking about how one's only hope really someday may be a shotgun in the mouth didn't seem like a pleasant way to try to go to sleep. So I called just to talk to someone.

The woman was sympathetic and though she had a limited time to talk to me, I feel better for her empathy, especially since I was triggered by my mom having just demonstrated such a total, spectacular absence (or opposite) of it (again) .  G*d, I never get used to how with NPDs, it's always all about them. If they have a stubbed toe and you are dying, they fly into a rage that you weren't sympathetic enough about their stubbed toe when you last talked.

I hope I don't have to make a habit of this suicide-hotline bit.

You need to leave and not look back. However that looks for you.

Hello Jessiennpb,

I may be off base here, I don't know.  However, many years ago when I took business law classes, I seem to remember that making contracts when one is not in their right mind, such as when you just got out of the psych hospital, makes the contract invalid.  I would think it could be a simple thing to declare the trust invalid, in light of the fact that you were perhaps mentally incompetent when you agreed to it.  You may be able to get your hands back on your money this way.  Could you possibly go see a lawyer, and see about suing your mother for taking advantage of your weak state, and at least have control over your own financial resources again?  This could then open the door to your freedom.   |iiii

I realize it would be super scary to sue a mother with NPD or BPD.  My mom is also a queen/witch BPD.    I am very fortunate, in that I moved out when I was in my early 20's and NEVER looked back.  

I'm so sorry you are in this terrible trap.  I will be praying for you.  PLEASE whatever you do, don't take your own life.  I really believe that sooner or later you can find a way out of this mess.  

I will be praying for you every day.  Please keep us posted.

Jennifer

Thanks deeply for the responses.

jennifer -- problem is, the trust is legal. I didn't sign it when just out of hospital -- it goes back to the lawsuit I had to file against my mother to sell our joint apartment in new York (or rather to get my half of the  money -- she was claiming it was all hers).

I was dead broke at the time because I'd been ill for years with a rare tropical disease I picked up in Asia that nobody could diagnosis til it nearly killed me. So I couldn't work much for years, but was working some -- it was a very gradual-onset sort of illness -- so it never occurred to me to go on disability. I was too ignorant to know about disability anyway, back then. So I was making just enough to slowly go broke, and then I got cured, so my plan was to sell the apartment (I lived in it; it was supposed to be mine, so she said (and conveniently forgot) back when we bought it; she was just using it as a pied a terre), take my half of the money and move to Texas (cheap, had a friend down there) and re-train as a nurse or PA. But she refused to give me my half and was interfering with the sale, so I had to file a Petition for Partition. Which I should have won hands-down, but I had a bad (absentee--he was in Turkey the whole time before the hearing and sent a totally uninformed associate to rpresent me, who got there late as well, so I had about a minute to coach him in the details of what was going down.)

Worse, my mother is not just high-functioning, she is brilliant, and had attended law school. And done litigation in Korea, which I didn't know about. Anyway, she played the judge like a fish and broke down in corcodile tears and claimed I was mentally ill and a drug addict and of course she woould sell, she only wanted the best for me, but not unless there was a settlement in which I agreed to only get about a year's worth of living-money up front, with the rest to be put in trust for me and doled out in increments too smalll to live on over years. (Because I was nuts, you see, and couldn't be trusted to handle my money.) The judge bought it, took us into chambers, and advised me that with her schedule, it would take her a year to get round to finding on the case properly, and that I obviously should accept the settlement. If I really wanted to sell.)

So between the judge having decisively decided the settlement was in everybody's best interest and the fact that I was dead broke and couldn't put the sale off a year, or starve, I had to accept it. I figured I could get away and get a start on the year's money, anyway.

but then I ripped my knee up clearing the apartment -- in NYC, to sell a property, you have to empty it totally of everything and leave it empty and "broom-clean", and my mother of course left this job entirely to me. And even with friends helping, I did too much lifting or twisting or something and re-tore the cartilage in one knee. Leaving me lame, and so there went my plans of training for a job on my feet. And leaving for Texas -- my insurance was only valid in NYC, and now I had a pre-existing condition. So I went to stay with some friends in Nj for a while (paid room and board), but ended up with a very conservative doctor who wanted to try all non-invasive procedures possible before surgery. none of which worked, but I wasted all the time my friends could give me to stay with them and nearly the whole year at it, and then came the klnopin withdrawal episode that my mother so cunningly manipulated to get me to LA.

So it is a legally binding trust. Of my own money, which is just weird, but my mom can do amazing things when she wants to.

Worse yet, the lawyer who was supposed to hold the trust (our real-estate lawyer) declined, because she had seen my mother's hidden face and didn't think it was in my best interest. but we had to get it set up before the sale could go through. And it ended up in the hands of my mom's nephew, who is a CPA and not an unethical one but is Korean and inexperienced with trusts and cannot be gotten to understand that he is my trustee, that he need not ask my mother permission to issue the yearly payout, that he shouldn't be talking to my mother at all about any of it except if she wanted to grant him the right to advance me some of it for medical emergencies, school, etc. -- I asked the judge if that was possible under the terms of the settlement, and her response was, "You'll have to ask your mother about that" -- see how buffaloed my mother got her?

So I have money, but it's locked up with my mother's nephew, who calls her "Honored Master" in Korean in proper Korean form, and actually seems to think it's my mother's money.

But I didn't know at the time he was such an idiot, I did know he is basically honest (just an idiot), and as noted, once the appointed trustee declined, nobody else could be gotten to touch the arrangement and serve as trustee -- which must have looked like weird-ass trouble to everybody but the judge, who was there for my mother's masterful in-person, weeping, "oh my poor sick crazy daughter, i must protect her from herself" snowjob. And somebody had to be found fast, because the sale was going to slip away -- it was a bad seller's market, my mom was asking a little too much, and this was the first and only offer we'd gotten in a year on the market. So I agreed to let David be the trustee. Only knowing he was a CPA and an honest one, not an old-country-culture-bound, trust idiot, as mentioned.

So the trust is legal. And it should have only hampered me, not k-o'd me, but I didn't know I was going to rip up my knee and waste half a year hanging around trying to get it fixed, then 8 more months in LA. Where it's taken me 8 months to get properly on medi-cal to finally get the knee surgery, by which time (now) it's so bad from the delay in surgery that even with the surgery coming up, the surgeon thinks I'll only get half the use of the leg back. (You're not supposed to limp around on torn cartilage for that long, and i can tell it's torn further since I've had to move again three times -- like a torn fingernail, the tear can keep lengthening until they clip the whole torn bit away, and it clearly has, because by now I can't stand on the leg, or stand period without a cane and not for more than a few minutes).


Life turns on a dime, they say. Or a few too many unanticipated bits of bad luck, underinformed decisions requiring precognition, and one decision -- to come out here -- made when i WAS basically nuts. And the world's shrewdest, most manipulative, best actress, most revenge-minded uNPD mom outmaneuvering one and doing the things they do that we normals can't believe people would do, or act like, or act so well as, and so can't really psychologically guard against.

So here I am. Nearly broke, lame, and with NPD mom in full control and taking her sweet sweet revenge.

Oh, yeah, and then there's the tooth implant thing.

I feel so stupid about falling into THAT trap of my mom's, I'll save that story for later.

Or suffice it to say that the rare tropical disease and/or a tumor in one of my salivary glands that blocked it off, caused my teeth to mysteriously start rotting and breaking off, so I needed four or five tooth implants. Badly, because the broken-off bits were infected, and infected gums are very dangerous and also would have made my knee surgery impossible. (Too much chance of the infection migrating to the knee incision.) So my mom, while still in sweet, nurturing mode, negotiated a very good deal with a good Korean dentist-- she is a great negotiator, one has to give her that -- to get the four implants and two root canals, blah, blah, for only $9K, of which she paid $4K. All very generous, eh? Except she lied to me and told me the dentist said the money could be paid in installments -- that part of the discussion was in Korean, which i don't speak -- when in truth it has to all be paid up front. Which I didn't find out until they'd started the work. So now I have to shell out $5K on the spot -- or had to today, technically, though I begged off until I could think about what the hell to do about that.

(I AM considering applying for SSI, because between a bum leg and two bum arms, a 10-year gap in my resume when I was slowly dying of Rare Tropical Disease and working in an industry that is legal but, uh, let's say nothing you'd put on your resume -- it was something i could still do while ill and from home and kind of stupid from RTD -- and a dead industry that's all I'm trained for, I actually am disabled enough not to be able to come up with any jobs I can think of that I can do. Secretary -- out; can't take the typing. Walmart greeter -- out; can't take the standing. Etc. Anyone need a 50-y-o, lame, RSI-ridden, PTSD-stricken employee who was sick in bed for 10 years and was a career professional in a field now deader than dirt, who can't afford to go back to school?

(I was a public-health journalist and magazine editor. A very good one. But print. And online, but online well before social media, which is now a standard requirement to have experience in for any of the few journalism, PR, or any kind of writing gig, really. Which are all being snapped up by laid-off New York Times and Wall Street journal reporters, and the ex-staffs of the six zillion newspapers and magazines that have folded in the past decade. FWIW.)

Anyway, am considering going on SSI, but that means i can't even collect my trust money, because you can't have a trust (or that much income, period) and get on SSI.

And the dentist wants her $5K by Tuesday. (She already bought the implants for me, which are expensive, so they are not really open to negotiation about installments after their making a big up-front investment, and of course my mom is insisting I pay the $5K up front too, to make me poorer and more trapped here; and she was/is the go-between negotiator, so she's no help.)

I really do sound like an idiot. And feel like one.

But my mother makes the devil look like a bad liar and actor and tempter.

Nothing worse than a malign NPD mom than a brilliant malign NPD mom who's not only high-functioning but super-super-functioning.

Jessienbp - would love to know how you're getting on. I was feeling suisidal 4 months ago, and now I feel happier than I have for years. My feer has gone, now I know why BPD do what they do. Now I know it's not our fault. And now I know I can predict her behavior. When you take their mask off - they lose their supprise factor. After all bload should never behave the way the do. I'm sure you'll get there too. (ignore my spelling, dyslexic)

HappyChappy --

What scares me is that I'm not actually feeling suicidal in the usual sense, I'm seeing suicide as a repugnant, terrifying, but possibly necessary measure to get out of this situation I'm in.

I'm calling all the friends and relatives I know who might be able to help, and they all sincerely want to help, but so far they all are turning out to have their own severe problems they're dealing with. It's like a curse or something. Everybody I've called has a sister with cancer moving in with them next week for chemotherapy, is insane trying to sue their school district to get their emotionally disturbed kid some special needs help, has to sell their apartment and move in with their own parents because they lost their jobs and unemployment has run out, just got divorced and are single mothers trying to cope with working and taking care of their rambunctious triplets while renting out the spare room for cash to pay the babysitter... .

People are in trouble themselves all over.

(Or at least the ones I know. A lot, just coincidentally right now. I'm starting to feel like my situation is ordained by God for my sins, seriously.)

Or, actually, it's probably the quickening slide of the middle class into the struggling class that has been so well publicized. (Not that most of my friends were that middle class -- one problem with being a professional writer, or having been when you had a job, is that most of your friends are also professional writers, and were poor to start with and are now getting laid off right and left, or were years ago and are renting out their spare rooms to boarders to keep food in their mouths by now.)

They're not emotional, depression-caused suicidal thoughts. They're practical ones. Like, maybe it's the only way out that is not as slow and torturous and painful as living on the way things are seemingly going to keep going. A way to take care of myself in the only way I can.

As in the poem by Rudyard Kipling, which was actually good, if grim, advice:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, and go to your God like a soldier.

What's sometimes called "field mercy."

Euthanasia for a mortal disease that in the meantime is nearly unbearably painful.

Mind, I'm not there yet. (To the point of acting, that is.) Just constantly thinking about it as a future contingency, because it is in a weird way a comfort to know there is at least one way out. But of course somebody could still come through with a place for me to stay to get over the PTSD my mother is giving me that's making it so hard for me to do the things I could be doing to try to help myself here, in her shadow. Heck, there could be a divine miracle.

But my hopes, I must admit, are dwindling. Not many uncalled folks left in my phone contact list. And I'm decompensating, meaning i Am getting less and less able to help myself.

Sorry to sound self-pitying. I know there are countless people on the streets with no hope at all. And children being raped by their parents as we speak, and all the really hopeless and suffering of the world, and so on. My problems dwindle to nothing compared to that. it's just that they're mine, and making me disgustingly self-absorbed right now.

Exactly, so that means we can predict their next move. Kind of gives us an advantage.

I'm glad you were able to reach out to the hotline. You don't have to be about to kill yourself to call--even if it's just to chat or talk about a safety plan, it can be helpful. Your feelings are real and they matter, regardless of what other people may be going through. It is ok to acknowledge your feelings and admit that you have been abused.

jessienbp, your mother may have a personality disorder. It can be hard to accept that she will put herself first when you need someone to care for you, yet this is reality. It sounds like you have learned some hard lessons about trusting her to care for you. I understand you feel trapped and hopeless. There are solutions, though, and I know you will find some that work for you. I am glad you are looking into support to find a job you can do.

Is there any possibility you would be able to find a therapist to talk to? There is a pretty good on-line Cognitive Behavioral Therapy module available if seeing a counselor in person is really not an option. You might look at MoodGYM (https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome/new/splash) and see what you think.

PF

I'm making good use of the suicide hotline in the past few days -- I think I called them three times on thursday night. (They only give you 20 mins. per call.)

I just found out, from a lawyer I consulted for free, that my trust fund was effectively stolen when it passed into my mom's nephew's private hands. There is nothing to prove that it is my money -- and worse, my mother seems to have convinced her nephew that it is actually her money, i.e., that it is a normal kind of trust fund, where a parent or grandparent or someone sets up a trust for someone else.

but of course it's not. There was never any question, in NY, that it was and is my own money -- my mother just succeeded in having int bound up in  a way I can't access it at will. Or supposedly did. In fact, it is now in a bank account in my nephew's name with nothing to indicate that it is my money. He could very well -- illegally, but certainly practically -- give it to her, and I would be forced to have both of them prosecuted for theft and then somehow get the money returned to me. Which would take forever, and probably all the money. I mean, a sheriff would have to seize my mother's assets or something, and that would be after I had to go to to court in a different state and explain how a check that the real estate lawyer made out to a CPA firm in LA, which was the not the trustees named in the settlement, is actually supposed to be the trust for me named in the settlement that the real estate lawyer was named to hold. And that that check was what constitutes the $X that appeared in this private bank account in my nephew's name, and then that he wrote a check against to my mom.

That could take years. If it's provable at all. And if it's provable, I AM going to starve before I ever see any of it in my hands where it's supposed to be, if I do. Because it's what I have to live off of, or thought I had to live off of, and all I have to live off of.

So, great news, technically as of this moment I don't even have my trust fund, inadequate as that would have been per year. As a legal entity, it got stolen, all of it.

My social worker friend was discussing the pros and cons of homeless shelters to me, when I asked her advice. That was not encouraging.

After all, I can't very well even initiate legal proceedings with my mother while she's got me in a position where she's putting me up in my apartment but only her name is on the lease. And I've had no luck finding any friends who can take me in. And after Wednesday, when I finally have my knee surgery, I will be even more immobilized for while than I am now. Not to mention on oxycodone for the pain, which won't do much for my mental functioning or ability to move, say, even my computer to some kind of temporary paid crash pad.

OK, back to the suicide hotline.  

Those of you inclined to and generous enough to pray for others, please pray for me.

Well, I had my knee surgery this morning, and apparently my knee is really pretty screwed up, once the doctor got in there with a scope and could take an actual look around. Torn cartilage in not one but three knee compartments, which he removed, and advanced osteoarthritis. He's a very, very conservative doctor when it comes to surgery, and he's now talking knee replacement.

The good news is that he's one of the few people I've ever met who pegged my mother for what she is immediately. He volunteered, spontaneously, while talking to me post-op, that he's not willing to have any future conversations with my mother. (She took me to the hospital and home again. Her reasoning as given to me was to demonstrate that he should take me seriously as a patient because she was also Korean and knew how to talk to Korean doctors to get their attention. Her real reason, of course, was that she likes to interfere in my medical care. To ask questions like, when can she walk with a cane and then demand I walk without a cane after that period. Her way of enforcing that being to cut off my housing if I don't comply -- the standard device for enforcing compliance. As though this needs repeating-- Never, ever, ever get financially dependent on someone with BPD if there is any way of avoiding it. Don't let them control the money, don't let them be the sole wage-earner and get disabled yourself, don't believe anything they promise about how they will take care of you or repay you for your contributions to your joint situation, or any of that. Just don't, if there's any way to help it.)

But, anyway, this time she screwed up with the lying, which she is normally so very very smooth at. Apparently, and I have no idea when -- she must have looked him up and called him pre-surgery --- she told the surgeon I was an opiate addict and not to give me any opiate-based pain medication post-surgery. (I don't take opiates, let alone be addicted to them. Which she knows perfectly well, having access to my apartment and my presence at will at this point. She was just out to torture me physically, while getting around the problem of not being physically strong enough to batter me, as when I was a child.)

I would suppose that the way the doctor knew that for the bald-faced lie it is, is because, unlike opiate addicts, who ask for opiates with the excuse of faked pain, would, I had a perfectly legitimate excuse (invasive surgery involving removal of body parts I have to walk on) but never asked him to prescribe me any opiate-based pain medication. He just told me he was calling in a couple of prescriptions for me that I should pick up before the surgery, and one of them turned out to be for Percocet (sp?). Surprised me. But not too much, because, hey, when I thought about it, they give actual opiate addicts opiates when they have invasive surgeries. Or gallbladder attacks, or anything else demonstrable and known to be extremely painful. Anyway, he sounded pissed and disgusted by her doing that (we were talking on the phone), in a particular way I have not heard very often at all -- as though that were the natural reaction to something she did/said concerning me. Which it should be, but she's gotten away with similar lies/actions on even flimsier grounds in her smear campaigns. She missed her calling -- should have been an actress.

So the bad news is, my knee is pretty screwed up and will remain so, barring a knee replacement, which I would have to find a Medi-Cal doctor in my HMO and also my PCP's particular medical group, and is willing to do it on someone only 49, based on another surgeon's arthroscopic images. (The X-rays don't look that bad. X-rays don't capture the whole picture the way a scope inside the knee does. But most replacement doctors, in my experience, go by the X-rays.)  And then stay here for months and months while doing all that, getting the procedure, and having the months of intense at-home physical therapy required, plus finding a helpful soul to act as an in-home health aid, because a friend whose wife had one had to stay home all the time to open the front door for the physical therapist, as I gather one can't get out of bed right after a knee replacement.

The good news is is that at least I have one person on-scene who's cottoned on to my mother. Not that there's a lot he can do to protect me from her -- he's just a good, insightful orthopoedic surgeon -- but it's heartening to know there are people who can and do, besides my ex-shrink. And a friend in Texas who has a uBPD sister and knows what he's hearing, even in the smoothest and most rationalizable fibs and just slightly off tones.

That is comforting, actually. She gets away with it with so close to everybody, I was thinking she gets away with it with absolutely everybody. Even if the people can't help me, the affirmation is very emotionally necessary to me. for the FOG, and for the meeting of puzzled confusion in everybody I try to explain the real situation to.

I suppose that is why these boards are comforting to us, too.

After actually seeing inside my knee in the recent surgery, my (very good) doctor is recommending a knee replacement as the only way I will walk again.

My mother said that no matter what the doctor says in her hearing or otherwise, she absolutely forbids me to have a knee replacement, that I would have to return to New York if I want to have the procedure -- which I cannot do, for various solid reasons including but not limited to financial, and she has the power to prevent me because she can have me kicked out of the apartment at any time. She also has all my money bound up in a trust against me, though it is my money. I cannot afford to live here by myself -- that was part of the trap. She said she would set no conditions whatsoever on her help financially if i came here. She lied.

I would not only need a new place to live, I would need a place to lie up after a knee replacement and someone to open the door for the physical therapist and put groceries around my head and, if I tried to lessen costs by getting a roommate, a roommate who is willing to have someone bed-bound living with them who needs supportive care,  -- I have no support like that, here or elsewhere.

This is the second opinion I have gotten that I need a knee replacement, after trying the arthritis shots and months of arthritis-aimed physical therapy when I was still in NYC. The first was from the head of adult reconstruction at Montefiore and also a very conservative surgeon. I am lame to the point that I not only walk, I cannot stand on the leg.

I have sent out an APB to everyone who might help me get back to NYC -- where i would have to get back on medicaid, which took 8 months here -- and nobody can help.

i tried calling Adult Protective Services here -- they cannot help me because I am not qualified for SSI, not being permanently disabled yet as long as a knee replacement could fix me. My emergency housing option is limited to homeless shelters.

I have worn out the suicide hotline -- they have no real resources to help.

I am out of ideas.

She is demanding to speak to the doctor tomorrow.

Please, pray for me. it is all i can think of to do at this point.

She wants me lame (and in pain, or she would not have told that lie about my being an opiate addict and not to give me any painkillers after the limited surgery I did have, which i had hoped woould resolve the problem to at least give me enough mobility to have chance of escaping her).

I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

Jessie, just want you to know that I am praying for you in that i am sending many healing and peaceful vibes.i am sure many others are also following your story as well and sending their own prayers. This is such an extreme situation you are describing and i am so sorry that i are suffering!

I have also I been lied to by my own BPDmo, had my money stolen by her, been emotionally manipulated and  my medical problems dismissed by her.

I'm glad to read that u r utilizing the hotline as needed. Sometimes it helps just to verbalize things even if there is no current solution for all of your stress.

Also, remember that your mother is not entitled to get any info from your MD due to hippo laws. Sounds like you've at least found a good doc for your knee.

thank you very much, Please validate.

I know she has no right to speak to my doctor, but a surgeon friend I have here suggested i let her go along and hear what he has to say, a) just on the off chance she is acting out of mule-headed ignorance and not malice, and b) so he at least knows why, if i am not improving, under his care, why that is. (Intefering mother.)

Since she has the power to prevent me from being treated by him at all in any visible ways -- surgery, use of assistive devices -- if she wants to (financial blackmail), she can't really interfere any more if she listens to him.

He is on to her in the sense of not taking orders from her, or even her input. I am just hoping his input might do some good with her.

What do you think of Boisnix 79's offer to help?

Boisnix very kindly called me, but I was still full of anesthaesia from my knee surgery the day before, so I was too muddled to talk coherently. I've Pm'd him -- i think he will call again; he seemed extremely nice.

I did find a really terrific website that has been helping me feel better emotionally, at least, as well as underscoring my need to GET AWAY from my mother, no matter if i have to limp to another state on one leg and live in a car.

I don't know if it's already listed as a resource here -- I did a site search and didn't turn it up -- but if not, it's called Emerging from Broken. The URL is that title run together, plus dot com.

It's by a woman healing from an abusive uNPD mother, her gradual realizations that it wasn't her that was sick and abusive but her mother, and her recovery process from depression, low self-esteem, self-blame, and dissociative disorder. (She's now No Contact.) I very highly recommend it.

Very cool, so glad.

Hi, jessienbp,

I'm sorry to hear things are still difficult for you. It must help a lot to have validation from your surgeon about your mother. I can tell you are taking steps to try and improve your situation where you can, and that is good. You are talking with the hotline and have consulted with an attorney, you are able to find yourself medical care (even if it is a hassle) and explore your options. You are looking out for yourself, and you are asking for help when you need it. Those are all good things.

Have you talked to your surgeon or any other doctor about the depression you are experiencing? Depression--especially when it becomes severe enough to produce suicidal ideation--may need medical treatment. Taking an antidepressant really can help get things balanced enough so that you can make other improvements. Have you considered this option?

Did you get a chance to look at the MoodGYM link? Are there any pastors in the area you might call for help in addition to the social services you've already consulted?

I will keep you in my prayers. I have been suicidal before and know how hard it can be--and also that there is hope to come out of it.


PF

I am on antidepressants. They aren't helping -- or maybe they are, maybe i would be worse off without them.

I am not suicidal tonight. I am just very, very afraid.

it's the isolation here in this strange highrise in this strange, not very friendly culture in this strange city, where my mother is really the only help I've got. She is uNPD but she is, in her way, trying to help as she thinks I need it, it's just that what i need is just a little human comfort and contact and she can't give me the first and there's nobody but strangers to give me the second.

Being so lame i can't walk anywhere to just see people on the streets, stuck in here all day and all night like nobody knows I'm alive, is just scary.

I am being a big baby tonight. I felt better earlier but my mom called and actually suggested we walk around and look for some kind of teaching-English kind of job for me around here, but got frustrated and started screaming and hung up when i told her i wasn't going to be able to walk without a limp by next week. (As I mentioned before, koreans have this ancient cultural prejudice against the disabled. They think it means one's family did something wrong to invoke punishment from Heaven. It goes very deep. I'm half-Korean by blood but totally American in upbringing and looks and culture, so i am not used to these things.)

I shouldn't blame her for all my problems. She is mentally ill and has no frustration tolerance and will not validate my feelings of wanting to at least be around some other people and not so high up in the air; but she is in her way trying to help, she just has completely the wrong idea of what i need -- some reassurance, not screaming. And I made a lot of bad mistakes that are the root cause of my situation. the worst was coming out here with her -- I can't get back to where I was, where I felt safe, near friends, for a whole slew of reasons I've already bored everyone with -- but selling the apartment in New York was a mistake. I didn't foresee ripping up my knee moving and thus totalling my plans to retrain as a nurse or PA, i didn't foresee how scared i would get, leaving familiar turf. i have a lot of problems with feeling safe, a lot, and those are my own problems. Sure she had a lot to do with instilling them when i was a kid; but agoraphobes should not be stupid enough to sell their homes. I just didn't know things would turn out this way -- the hospitalization, and ending up a continent away from my support systems, such as they were.

The total isolation is just really giving me the heeby-jeebies. I am kind of a loner, but there is a difference between solitude by choice and this.

I'd love to call my friends at times like this, but they're all on the East Coast and fast asleep by the time night closes in here and the isolation feels really profound. And this building is like a ghosttown -- a highrise that's half empty with no common areas and everybody Korean and looking freaked if i try to say "hi" in the elevators or something.

I don't know what i'm trying to say. forgive me.

Sometimes, it helps to adjust dosages or try a different medication (or combination of medications). If the meds you are taking now are not helping, that is important to bring up with your prescribing physician. You may need to try quite a few options before finding one that works.


Strangers are only strangers until you get to know them.   I know it can be hard being in a new city and having to build new relationships from scratch; I imagine you must feel even more isolated because of your mobility issues. I understand you feel the neighbors act weird when you say hi. Still, I can't help wondering if any of them might be feeling just as isolated as you. What would it be like to knock on some doors on your floor and introduce yourself? Would you be any worse off?

Alternatively, you asked for prayers, so I am assuming you have religious beliefs. Many churches have a way to offer rides or visits to people who can't get to church on their own. That is a great way to meet people that you have something in common with. Do you have a place of worship already, or would you be willing to call some up and ask if they can help you get there?


Do you get a chance to call them earlier in the day? Are you able to keep in touch?


You know, they say hindsight is 20/20. No one knows what the future holds, and even if we do make a mistake, there are ways to overcome it and recover. Maybe now you have learned some things and would make different choices--that doesn't mean you were or are stupid. We all make mistakes. You sound very capable, and I think you will find a way through this.

PF

Hi, Jessie:

I wish I had some answers or other help to offer but everyone else has already covered every suggestion I had, and more.

The only thing I can think of is Catholic Charities helped my mum when she was disabled and needed re-training.  Anything like that around your area?

I can only imagine the pain you're in, mentally and physically.  You're in my prayers, I wish I could do more.  I have faith that you will turn this harrowing situation around.  You must stop beating yourself up and start believing in yourself.  I'm sure I'm not speaking only for myself when I say I believe in you.  Sending you blessings of peace and good thoughts.  The answers will come.