BPDFamily.com

This is an issue I’ve been wondering about and wanting to ask about literally for years but couldn’t think of a proper place for it.

Earlier this week I came across an article that brought it back to mind, it’s called: “BPD and Anticipatory Anxiety: A borderline parent can sabotage your plan to fly away.” by Captain Tom Bunn L.C.S.W. (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=235620.)

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=235620.

This is the first article I’ve ever come across that talks about the dynamics between the BPD parent and BPD child. There are many articles out there about BPD parents, many about BPD in general, many about the BPD child’s development but this is the first one that I’ve found that talks about the relationship between the BPD mother and BPD child.

The article describes and explains in detail how the BPD mother (subconsciously) picks one of her children to be the one who won’t ever abandon her and essentially grooms him or her into becoming borderline as well… so that he won’t develop emotionally, won’t form his own self and –most importantly– won’t be able to separate from her later in life.

I’m not saying this is necessarily always the way it goes between BPD parents and children. I once knew a lady with BPD who had a BPD mom whom she dropped all contact with and never looked back (granted… this was after her mom tried to stab her…), so I suppose the dynamic doesn’t always have to be enmeshment… but I’m wondering how common it is, how exactly it works and, for that matter, how it can be dealt with.

The reason I’m making this post at all is specifically because of one part of the article that talks about the BPD child once they’ve become an adult and the BPD parent is no longer around. Having to become a separate, independent individual after a lifetime of being enmeshed with another borderliner and a lifetime of believing (on an emotional level) that his own life depends on the life of the BPD parent.

After my mother died, I didn’t fall apart, even though I expected to (and so did everyone who knew me). However, as I’ve been starting to realize in recent months, it might be that that was only possible thanks to a group I’d joined shortly before she died. It consisted mostly of pwBPD and the dynamics that I had with them were, in many ways, kind of like the relatively healthier and safer version of the relationship I’d had with my mother.

I’ve been in therapy for the past 14 years, starting at age 16, and I’ve spent at least 80% of that time just on trying to emotionally disentangle myself from my mother… and yet, no matter what, I still wasn’t able to leave her, I still ended up living with her until the day she died… and, even though I’d learned to set up boundaries to some small extent and to gain some emotional distance from her… I still required an emotional substitute for her.

A few months ago the group dynamic started changing, for the simple reason that most of the members moved on and away for various reasons. At first, for a long time, I was in denial of the fact that this had any impact on me at all, but then I started having various issues, some of which I’d never experienced before (such as panic attacks) and never expected to ever experience, especially not after so many years of therapy. It’s not about loneliness because I still do have some people in my life and I don’t think it’s even about abandonment per se… it’s just… not having her out of my system yet and not being able to get her out because there’s some part of me that’s missing what she had always substituted… and without her or anything reminiscent enough of her, there’s nothing there.

I’m sorry if this isn’t a good place to post something like this btw, it’s just that I can’t think of any other place that would be. When I try talking to pwBPD that haven’t had BPD parents, they just don’t get it (plus I run the risk of triggering them when talking about my BPDm and that’s something I worry about quite a bit)… and when I try talking to nons that had BPD parents, they usually don’t really get it either, at least not in full…

Once, on the Healing board here, I remember reading the post of a member who wrote briefly about his mother and sister, both of whom had BPD. The term he used to describe their relationship was that “they enveloped each other” and that sentence stuck in my mind because it sounded like he was describing my mother and me. On the one hand it was a tad bit upsetting to hear it being put so bluntly… but at the same time it was relieving and eye opening to realize that I wasn’t the only one who had that kind of relationship with my mother. Yes we were enmeshed, yes it was partly my own ‘fault’ and no, I don’t know how to deal with the implications of that…

I realize that pwBPD probably don’t come here very often, but does anyone here know of any BPD children of BPD parents (whether you know them in person or not... .) who managed to break away not only from their parent but from what that relationship did to them?

I realized this morning that the thing I’d learned from my mother, probably since forever, was that it was against The Rules for two individuals to coexist as two separate individuals… or for me specifically to exist as a separate individual at all for that matter… how does one unlearn stuff like that? (OK, I realize that’s probably too big or broad a question… but I figured I’d throw it out there anyway).  

Again, I’m sorry if this wasn’t the right place to post all of the above but I just needed to put it out there somewhere. Thanks for at least reading if you’ve gotten this far.

this is my take.  I think if you have a PD parent, chances are, you will find comfort in another PD.  So the pattern repeats itself … you get away from your PD parent and only to step into another PD's arm.  I think once you are aware of that fully, there is a good chance you can break that cycle.  Sounds like you have been doing lots of thinking... so that is a positive thing.  Just make sure you stay away from people who you are attracted to.  Because chances are they have PDs and they are bad for you.  Just because when you are used to a certain type of people … you find comfort in associating with them even when they can be abusive to you, so you got to be really careful about that. 

Thanks for the reply but that’s not exactly what I meant. I’m not talking about being attracted to abusers and getting abused (which did not happen to me with the people I’m talking about btw) I’m talking about the NEED itself to be in a scenario where I can give without taking and be invisible while doing so… it’s not self sacrifice, for me it’s something I need and that I’m falling apart without.

You can tell me to work on healthier relationships, but I have been working on healthier relationships, I do have people in my life with whom it’s a give-and-take, but you know what? That’s not enough…

Hi justnothing.  You have amazing insight about how you are still tied to your mother and how that is effecting you still.  I hope I understand what you are talking about in this post.  I first read it last night and I had to think about it for a while.  In a nutshell it sounds to me like you are talking about enmeshment and a lack of self outside of your mother.  Is that accurate?

If it is, I don't think you are alone in this.  I had some of the 'anticipatory anxiety' described in the article.  I was very enmeshed with my mother at one point and I am sure there are still some ties there that I have yet to break.  I am not sure if total detachment is possible after such a long time of basically living through another person, but I do think it is possible to have a separate life and existence from my mother.  I know several people who have been able to make that break and I know others who are still enmeshed (a few who are not in contact physically with the BPD but who are still very much tied to them emotionally).  The thing about enmeshment is that few people are aware that they are enmeshed especially when it involves the "mother in your head".

When I first started breaking away from my mother, my T had me focus on small things.   Stuff like learning what I liked and disliked (food, colors, etc).  Focusing on smaller things helped make the anxiety more manageable and then I was able to move on to other areas.  I don't want to go off on a tangent if it turns out I am not understanding what you are talking about here. 

Does what I wrote fit with your experiences?

Interesting,

I have different perspectives on this topic for you, I will try and be as objective as I can as well although please understand there is some bias and some issues I'm unaware of as I'm working through them.  

Before I start a little bit about myself to put some of it into perspective.  Well, I have low selfesteem, I have a white knight complex where I have to constantly save people as I was constantly saving my mother (see below).  I fit many of the co-depentant traits but more a people pleaser type where I always have to make them happy and be the rescuer.  I cant do this any more with my mother and I can see myself growing more distant in time and trying to seperate or manage my sons relationship with her.  I know she means well and I also recognise that she cant control it and it isnt personal its driven by fear.  I identify with some traits of basically every PD that there is, I dont know if I am being overly critical but I keep trying to find flaws or problems and diagnose myself.  I have only recently stopped this basicvally accepting that I will always have problems.  My P tells me I dont have a PD and dont need therapy anymore and know too much about cluster B PD's, more than him.  Very analytical in nature... .

Me and my mother:-

My mother has some serious NPD traits and a bit of BPD thrown in.  I am pretty much detached from her most of the time as after long periods of contact she get triggered and knowing about BPD now and learning about NPD I cant handle it where in the past I used to comply.  I was the black child that caused all the problems growing up, she blames me for everything that went wrong and their is no accountability for her own actions, she always did XYZ because I was rude or arogant or whatever.  Never accountable.  I have to throw in, at times I wasnt the perfect child she craved, i was a little brat and recognise that so this caused the rages etc.  

My mother and her mother:-

My mother learnt this behaviour from her mother who was a serious NPD case.  She hasn't had contact with her in 8 years even where she was having heart surgery.  Hasnt had contact with both of her sisters as both of them have different mental health conditions according to her and she had to seperate for her own health.  

My relationship with exBPDgf:-

Well, I was the white knight saviour.  I write about this too much but essentially I put up with all hell trying to make it work before I couldnt cope with it anymore.  

My exGF's FOO has some of the dynamic that your after, two compleately different perspectives here as well for you with both sisters and how they have managed growing up.  

my exBPDgf and her mother:-

Father has some serious narc traits, Mother has BPD, daughter has BPD, daughter is the younger one and is compleatly enmeshed with her father.  She is reliant on her father for her emotional support when a relationship is failing and uses him to regulate her emotions in a big way, validate that it isnt her fault.  He tells her everything is ok and she is the golden child that confirms there is nothing wrong with his family.  He will always feed her and never let her seperate as she confirms his perfect family and lets him sweep aside the other issues.  exBPDgf's r/s with her mum is strained, she goes from love hate really quickly and the mother is always facilitating apart from when it comes to her husband, the father.  There is a clear boundary in place in the family where the mother knows that exBPDgfd is the golden child and the husband gives his daughter preferance over his wife in so many respects.  

exBPDgf''s sister (whom she told me had BPD, and I saw it as well) and her mother:-

Removed from the family at 13 years old.  foster care and moved back to America to start her new life.  hasnt seen her mother in (to my knowledge 10+ years?) and refuses to go back to the old family home due to bad memories that are painful.  With her father however she has a arms-length relationship where she manages it and allows him to validate her occasionally and tell her how well she is doing.  By this I mean he will do anything to get her attention and make out that it is still a happy family, she just cant keep the mask up for long.  

In answer to your question, it comes down to the experiences and the perception of those experiences.  exBPDgf's experience is that of the golden child, older sister became the black sheep that destroyed the perfect family.  That dictates the relationship.  Younger child proves the family isnt dysfunctional and that both parents were good so everything is enabled and relationship is toxic in both directions with unhealthy behaviours displayed by both parent/child.  


If you want I can explore it more with some of the motivations I see however that will start to involve my perceptions a bit more instead of observations.  Very hard for me to seperate the two and tried to do that for you.  

Hope this helps.


AJJ.  

Justnothing, thanks for posting. My mother is 89 and I believe was enmeshed with her mother. Despite my grandmother being deceased for at least 20 years, my uBPDm eats the same foods, cakes, ice cream that her mother enjoyed and will always announce whilst eating that 'this was grannys favourite flavour' etc. She buys clothes that were her mothers favourite colour, she listens to music that was her favourite. Without her mother my mother has no perception of what her own interests are, she has very few friends ad has very few interests.

I went the other way. I used to witness my grandmothers horrid verbal insults to my mother and my mothers dedication to her. She still describes her as a wonderful woman. (she was very intelligent and capable) I hated the thought of being like my mother, and although I have been emotionally abused by her most of my life, I have even ended up being her reluctant caregiver as I carry around the guilt that she installed I me from a young age.

On the positive side you are aware ad I hope that with continuing help you will find your way and move forward in your life.

hi justnothing, I share the same feeling as you do.  I was brought up to be just to give and not to expect getting back.  And then one day, I realize something is missing after i got into a relationship… in the first many years, I was perfectly ok... but then one day I woke up and realize, by only want to give and not getting anything back… doesn't do much for myself worth.  I started to revaluate and realize if you just give, then you only attract people who will only take.  And unfortunately, probably the NPD types… and that is exactly what happened to me.  What I was trying to say is that my view on this is that you got to first try to alter the nature of self and recognize that you deserve to receive and expect that, only then you will start to attract people who see the value in you and want to give and take, instead of vampires who just want to take advantage of you being comfortable of giving and not expecting anything back.  Of course, you may get lucky and meet someone exactly who sees your worth and you get to be in your comfort zone … my view is that work on recognizing you deserve to receive and start to receive and then so your gas tank doesn't run dry when that amazing someone came in your life one day.  best wishes.

Thank you so much for all the great replies everyone, this has given me so much to think about…


Thank you and yes that is pretty much mostly what I’m talking about.

I like your T’s suggestion on focusing on small things about yourself as a way of developing a sense of [separate] self.

When I found the article, it was after I was trying to find an explanation for a weird phenomenon that I’d tried asking my T about but she was as stumped as I was. Very, very recently I got into a new relationship, for the first time in years. One of the reasons I’ve been avoiding them for this long was fear of messing up. So I was thinking, a few days ago, of how to prevent problems from cropping up in advanced and I remembered this peculiar thing that I noticed in my mother many times… on some strange level – she didn’t seem to know who I was. I remember one winter a jacket of mine got ruined and she said she was going to the store anyway and could pick up a new one for me while she’s there… then she came home with a sleeveless vest. I said “but I wanted something warm, why did you get me something without sleeves?” and she said “because it’s in fashion”… and I was in shock because I was never, ever, ever into fashion and neither was she so why the heck did she think I’d prefer something fashionable over something practical? But that was only one of many examples in which she seemed to have me confused with somebody else. I vaguely remembered reading an article once that talked about how pwBPD seem to have difficulty constructing a coherent mental image of the other person in their minds (which makes sense in a way, when you think about splitting and emotional amnesia) and I started wondering if I don’t have the same issue and in truth I do seem to have a tendency to forget details about other people a lot… so I figured that maybe I could try writing down a list of my new bfs personal traits (both positive, negative and neutral) so that I won’t *forget* them later on and hopefully as a way of preventing idealization or devaluation from happening. However, I only managed to write a few lines when I started feeling a deep sense of dread. The anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t even force myself to keep writing. I found this intriguing because it implied that there was a resistance there… and if there’s a resistance there that implies that it’s more than just a passive side effect of emotional amnesia or the like. So I tried doing a google search about BPD and having “no sense of other” and came up with the above article… and some time after I read it the answer suddenly hit me: the enmeshed child is taught that it’s against The Rules for two individuals to coexist as two separate individuals!

That means that in any relationship he has one of two choices: either stop existing so that the other might exist as an individual, or destroy the other person so that he himself may continue existing as an individual. [There’s actually a joke about that: “marriage is an institute in which two people become one, the only question is ‘which one?’”]. This child was never taught what mutual respect is and doesn’t know that such a thing even exists, what he’s been taught about “respect” is that it means “flatten yourself so that there will be room for me” so that means that he’ll then either always think he’s expected to do that for others, or expect others to do it for him… or even alternate back and forth between the two.

I once read a sentence on one of the boards here that stuck in my mind: “it takes two wholes to make a whole, not two halves to make a whole”, I think that’s one of the most brilliant sentences I’ve ever read about relationships anywhere. The only thing I can think of adding to that is that when faced with another whole – it is OK to also be whole (“even” at the same time).


Thank you, you have already given me a lot of material to work with and think about and I appreciate that. It hadn’t occurred to me that it can go both ways (where the BPD child can be either the golden child or the black sheep or even something in between). I guess it’s more complex than I realized when I first started writing about it from my own narrow perspective.

Some of what you described makes me think about the BPD child’s incentive to be in the relationship. A friend of mine once described my relationship with my mother as being “mutually destructive”. This is something I don’t have an easy time thinking about, I must admit. There were many, many times in which she accused me of being “abusive” and “manipulative” but my therapist keeps telling me that she doesn’t think I was at all abusive or manipulative with my mother and that that was just her projecting, playing the victim and trying to manipulate ME. But still I’ve always had this worry of “by what if there’s a grain of truth in there?” and “if there is, how can I know? Is it real? How does it manifest itself? Is there any way of controlling or stopping it? how can you control something when you’re not even sure it exists?”. There was at least one thing I can definitely point to though that was um… When I was in my late teens and early 20’s I had many fits of rage during which I broke things and/or threatened or attempted suicide. In my mid 20’s I realized that this had become the only way I knew how to “deal” with problems and made a conscious decision to unlearn that behavior. It took a long, long time and ironically the number one obstacle in my way was my mother. We would have a fight (i.e. she’d get annoyed over something that had nothing to do with me and find some reason why it was my fault) but instead of blowing up I’d go lock myself in my room and put my headphones on to try and drown both her voice and the emotions out… and rather than being happy that I was no longer doing my old thing, she was now banging on my door, yelling her accusations at me from the other side, demanding that I open up, telling me that I had no right to lock her out and that it’s unheard of for “children” (again: mid 20’s) to treat their parents this way and that no other daughter in the world locks her mother out like that… and this could go on for hours.

If the decision to learn how to stop raging hadn’t been something I wanted for myself, for my own well being, I don’t think I’d have been able to make it. As far as my mother was concerned I had gone from “abusing” her to “neglecting” her and while before she used to be able to happily play the victim (and guilt trip me to no end) now she just felt abandoned. I’m only realizing as I’m writing this now that it worked as a cycle: she’d try to get a rise out of me > I wouldn’t respond the way I used to > she’d interpret this as a form of rejection and try even harder to get a rise out of me > I’d avoid her to try and avoid reacting to her > she’d panic and try even harder > I’d avoid her even more.

After she died I felt so guilty because of that last part. I kept thinking that if only I had been normal then maybe I could have had a better relationship with her and given her more of the attention she needed so much. I figured that normal people have good, strong, solid boundaries and if only I’d had that and if only I had been stronger then maybe I wouldn’t have had to resort to running away to my room or shutting myself down around her and I’d have been able to take all her crap with a smile on my face and still spend time with her like in the good old days (the good old days being either when I was a kid and she and I would had many happy moments together… but I was a door mat… or later on when we had many happy times together but I’d sometimes turn into Ms. Hyde). Later on though I realized that if I had been healthy I probably wouldn’t have lived with her until the day she died. Heh… and then when I realized that I started feeling guilty for having gotten therapy to begin with because it was when I got better that things had gotten worse for her (I guess you can always find guilt somewhere if you look hard enough!).

Well, anyway, there’s that and then of course there’s the whole codependency thing, as you’ve mentioned. The whole “my life only has value because I can be of service to her” thing. When my friend described it as a mutually destructive relationship she told she was talking about that part. She believed at the time that my mother might have been able to have a full life if only I didn’t enable her. I really don’t know if that’s true or not. My mother was a waif + hermit and whenever I left her to her own devices she really did seem like a lost baby with no social skills and no coping skills of any kind. I tried to encourage her to make friends, I even tried pushing her to make friends (one crazy time I even tried coming on to a guy on an online dating site on her behalf because she insisted that I’d be better at finding things to say) but every time she got close to anybody, whether they were an individual or a group, it was just a short matter of time before she either rejected them or decided that they were rejecting her or both and then it was something for her to be upset about for months or even years on end. But whichever the case might be… I suspect that to this day I still have a tendency to only be able to get close to people if they seem to “need” me in some way. As soon as I’m around people that don’t look like they could “benefit” in any way from me being around, I feel redundant and that I should just stay away.

Btw, this may sound like I’m going off track but your post about the dynamics between the different people you mentioned got me thinking about something else – my 3 siblings. I have 3 half siblings from my mother who grew up in a separate household in a different country. When the 3 of them were still all under age 10, she divorced their father and left them all behind when she moved to another country, got pregnant and had me. I don’t think either of my siblings have BPD but my oldest brother definitely had a difficult time becoming an adult. There were a few years in which I think we were all kind of worried that he might end up homeless eventually because he didn’t seem to have what it takes to function as an adult. Fortunately he met a woman that managed to somehow straighten him out and in his mid 30s he was finally able to finish his degree and get and hold on to his first steady job. Between the 3 of them he was also clearly the one she picked as her golden child, whereas the 2 others were 2 black sheep. Probably because I was her new only child, by default I became her new golden child but I still remember growing up in the shadow of the first 3. With my oldest brother she had a love-hate relationship and was always either gushing over how perfect he was (and making it clear that I had to live up to that) or crying that he wasn’t writing to her or calling her enough, even though he was still a kid. As for the other two, they both “rejected” her all the time and thus they were evil. Even as a kid it was pretty clear that mommy’s love came with pretty clear conditions.

So… anyway… I daresay your post definitely gave me a lot to think about  and thanks again. I was very sorry btw to read about how your mother treated you when you were growing up. I don’t think that even if you were really a “brat” that that warranted your mother blaming everything on you. If anything, if you were indeed” a brat” that probably was the result of being treated like the black sheep, not the other way around. As for looking for flaws and problems in yourself… if there’s one thing I can recommend it’s to not think of “flaws” and “problems” as synonyms. I think my mother might have been a bit narcissistic too (I even bought that “Will I ever be good enough” book just recently) and a theme I’ve noticed among narcs, that they seem to apply to themselves and the people around them, is the idea that “problems”=”flaws”. A therapist once told me that therapy is about solving problems and not about “becoming normal” (this was after I told her that what I really wanted out of therapy was to “just have my brain replaced”) and it took me many years to fully understand what she meant by that… and even longer to agree.

It sounds like your mother might have idealized her mother as a defense mechanism, especially if in reality her mother was verbally abusive towards her. If I had to make a guess I’d say it’s probably both as a way of constructing a better mother in her mind and possibly also as part of a subconscious wish that if she worships her mother enough her mother might eventually repay her with love (even though she’s dead). I think there’s a part of me that has done that with my mother too and for both reasons, albeit to a much lesser extent.

Funnily enough, my mother used to totally idealize her mother too. When I was growing up all I knew about my grandmother was that she was a cross between an angel and a genius (admittedly she did have a very high education especially for a woman of her day) but when I grew older I started noticing details in the stories of her that indicated that she was also a pretty messed up woman who was never really there when my mother needed her. In the last few years of her life my mother was finally able to admit to herself that her mother wasn’t all perfect and also that her father wasn’t all evil… and it was nice to see her finally come to that conclusion. It felt like she was finally able to let them go after that point.

Incidentally, my mother also used to wear her hair just like her mother did and when I was little she would do my hair that way too despite all my objections o_O. it recently occurred to me that the way my mother raised me was pretty much almost identical to the way her mother had been raised and, for that matter, when I was a kid, my accomplishments and failures somehow always had to be made relative to my grandmother: “why can’t you be more like my mother?” or “well done! You’re almost as good as my mother!” or “you’ve got my mother’s genes!”. So… I think it’s possible that I was pretty much meant to be a clone…

Mind you, despite all this, my mother often said stuff like “I do NOT want you to be like me!” and when I was old enough to ask if she wanted me to be like her mother she said that she didn’t want me to be like her mother either because her mother had a ‘victim mentality’. My mother also often tried to encourage me to be independent and there were many times in which she actually said that I “need to be free of her”. I believe she was genuine when she said that, it’s just that she was made up of different parts, one that did want what was best for me and one that didn’t…

Btw, I’m very sorry that you’re currently stuck in the role of caretaker for you mother. Mine was disabled and very sick too, especially towards the end, and I know what an impossible bind that is. I hope you manage to find some way of at least shifting part of the responsibility somewhere else, like a home, another caretaker, etc’ (though I imagine she’d probably object to both options with all her might, am I right?).


Thank you very much and I appreciate your input. I know what you mean about how when we only give without receiving it’s detrimental to our self worth and that that kind of attitude often attracts the wrong kind of people… The thing is, it’s kind of like the chicken and the egg debate… I have no self worth to begin with, hence I am not at all comfortable getting close to people who will want to get close to me back… that would mean they’d start with high hopes, then take a good look at me, then see how defective I really am on the inside and bah! Can’t let that happen  But yes, I know what you mean and that is definitely an important part of it… it’s just… those core belief things…

Anyway, thanks to anyone who’s had the patience to read my insanely long post… that wasn’t really planned… but it was really great to be able to process all this stuff anyway :)

I thought this thread was very interesting and a lot of things correspond to what I experienced.

Without going into detail, my mother sees me as her proxy and has even caused me to go into debt while on "missions" for her (basically, visiting family members that I had no interest in seeing, but seeing them on her behalf, pressured to buy clothes even though she already knew I was broke, taking up study programs, instead of just working because it seems more prestigious, etc... .). I am to blame too, I feel like I have to consult her before every decision and constantly have her approval. I hope, that now that I am aware of this, I can start becoming more independent.

So, not only can enmeshment leave you emotionally stunted in a way, but also financially.

I had to live at home for 8 months this past year and was literally at her beck and call during this period. Whenever I was at home, I had to spend time with her, I couldn't be in another room reading a book on my own, unless she was. I would even go to bed earlier just so I could have some time alone. Even as an adult, you cannot get any privacy by simply closing your bedroom door. The only sacred spot is the bathroom.

I felt an incredible sense of emptiness during those months, like I hadn't been able to cultivate my own interests, I was just a husk providing her with emotional feedback.

WOW, yes!  I've gotten a better with this, but I still feel that way to a certain extent.  Compliments, kindness, etc. used to hurt so much.  I am working on that though and sometimes I still have a hard time because I am convinced once people get to know the real me, they will hate me.  In times of stress or when I am sad it is even harder to accept kindness or be close to people and of course, that situation becomes almost impossible because that is precisely when 'normal' people tend to want to get closer and say good things about you.  My ex, who was quite good at pushing me to my limits (which was mostly a good thing, but not always), would do this on purpose and he was able to bring me to my knees by saying kind words to me.  I learned to deal with it by telling myself he was entitled to his own opinion even if it was wrong.  Haha.  It worked though and I started using it to apply to other situations and people who would offer me kindness and want to get closer.  I am still a work in progress though.

It's been 10 years since I moved out of the family home.  Before I moved, I had several years where I was away for college and grad school, but then I moved right back in.  I was lost without them.  At one point, I did build this scenario in my head that I had a good, fun, loving family and I would talk about it frequently.  I think I did it partly to make my life more tolerable but also to try to rationalize why I was still living in the family home well into my 30's.

Justnothing, thank you for bringing this topic to the board.  There is so much here that you and the others have said that resonates at a deep level I am having a hard time figuring out what else to say.  I don't want to ramble and I don't want to turn this into being all about me so I will stop here.  Just know that you are not alone in this and that it is possible to break away.  I know people who have done so and I have great hope for myself and you.   :)

Thanks for your insight Justgiving. as always on this forum I am stunned when I read a post that I could have written myself. It helps me validate some of my feelings, I know when I read about other peoples experiences that my perception of a situation with my mother is not me being selfish or thoughtless. sometimes like you I wonder if its because I'm not 'normal', if I had more grace I could accept my mother and help her have a good life. The reality is I have invested time and she just sucks the life out of me.

Like yours my grandmother had a high education. She was born to a poor family in 1900 and went to work as a maid in a big house who, noting her intelligence, paid to send her to university. she worked as a school mistress then got pregnant and married quickly, I wonder if she somehow blamed my mother for the loss of her career. Of her other 2 children, she disowned one and the other left the country. Guess I'll never know.

Likewise my mother will also say I inherited my intelligence from her mother, she also from a young age would tell me 'not to turn out like I have'. I have tried quizzing her about her childhood and her relationship with her mother but all I can get is that she had a wonderful childhood and that her youngest brother (who did a runner) was the favourite.

As for tempers, yes I would scream at my mother in my teens and was close to wacking her over the head once in my 20's when I had to move in again with her after university. I got sick in my later 20's - I'm sure because of this destructive relationship and when I came out the other side my anger and drive was gone. I ended up getting married and having children and all seems good on the outside. the man I married however has NPD traits. although we have a good life I am once again nurturing someone else, and have ended up getting my mother back to look after too.

Your therapy and insight I am sure will put you in a good position to develop your life further and make healthy relationship choices. I don't think its an easy journey but hope you can maximise the positives.

Your understanding and insight is quite fascinating and I thank you for posting it here.

Are you familiar with projective identification?  Your mother projected her rage, being abusive and manipulative on you and, because you were raised in an environment where you were unable to develop good internal boundaries (knowing where you end in relation to other people) you internalized these messages.  Of course you doubt yourself.  Especially when later on in life you get angry and throw things and act out in rage... .you were groomed to take on your mothers bad behaviors so of course you are going to take isolated incidents and use them as proof that you are indeed just like your mother.  You ask how you can control something if you aren't sure it exists... .you do it the exact same way you were able to change your behaviors when feeling rage.  You did it and yet you seem to doubt your ability to do so (I totally get that though.  I just wasn't sure you were able to see it  )  The fact that you were able to change *while living in the same house and with her behaviors escalating* speak of your strength and determination.  I am in awe.  Truly.

sophiegirl said:
This relates to what you said about wondering how things would have been if you were "normal".  Well how on earth were we supposed to develop good strong boundaries and communication tools when we were raised to be the perfect movie screen for their projections *and* groomed to support their dysfunctional needs?  If trained professionals with good strong boundaries have difficulty handling people with BPD, those of us raised in that environment never stood a chance.  The fact that we are here and working on things says something about us as individual beings separate from our parents. 

Justnothing (I have a really hard time calling you that ya know) I have a horrible temper.  I can rip people apart with my words.  In my 20s I put my fist through a few walls and have destroyed things.  One time, I was in the kitchen chopping something to cook and my mother was there with her never ending nagging in that god awful voice of hers and in my head I saw myself taking the knife and stabbing her repeatedly with it.  I very calmly and deliberately put the knife down and had to walk away.  That incident scared the hell out of me.  It wasn't even a big incident.  I do not remember the details of what she was saying but  it showed me how close to the edge I was.  At times I felt like I was just this snarling animal inside the rage and hurt was so bad.  I felt like I was right at the edge of my sanity and just one small movement and I would be insane.

My mother used to keep a gun beside her.  She started doing so when I was very young and continued to do so ... .I was going to say until I moved out in my 30s but really, she had the gun handy right up until the day she died.  Anyway, she told me she kept it because she saw the rage in me and I scared her.  She was afraid I would kill her and so she had to protect herself.  As a kid, I internalized her message (Projective identification) and saw myself as being an angry, forceful person full of rage.  Of course, later on when I did act out in rage, it just seemed to confirm things.  My mother was also the master at manipulation and had me convinced for decades that I had hit her on several occasions but had blocked it out.  Years later, she was the one who let the cat out of the bag and told me she had just made up the stories of how I had hit her.  I went numb and dissociated for days... .I had constructed this version of who I was in large part based on her telling me I was scary, full of rage and was crazy and she blew that apart in just seconds. 

It is bull___.  All of it was her.  Those times when I was so angry and destroyed things and put my fist through walls?  Normal reactions to the total insanity of the environment in which I was raised.   

Your friend said:
How were you supposed to not enable her behavior when your mother made you an extension of herself?  Were you supposed to magically 'get better' and have a whole set of life skills  that you had never had demonstrated and taught to you?  How?

So I did turn this into a "me-fest".  My apologies.  I am hoping by sharing these things it will confirm even more that you are not alone *and* that a lot of the things you have experienced are normal reactions to your environment.  And, apparently I needed to get a lot of this crap out of my system again.  (I feel like I am trying to bail out my boat with a colander... .)

I can relate to a lot of this too, just nothing. I am very enmeshed with my mother and co-dependent with her and also am just now in recovery from this and seeing a therapist and attending meetings for Adult Children of Alcoholics, which also deals with "family dysfunction" and many people at the meetings have borderline parents.

I just wanted you to know that I realize how overwhelming this is and how crippling it can feel, but you are on the journey to healing just by being able to realize it and share about it.  Clearly, you are a very intelligent and insightful person and I admire that.

I can also relate to what Harri said above.  My parents were always very violent and aggressive with me and my mother's rages often turned physical. One time she almost killed my stepfather with a magnum bottle of wine that I quickly took from her hand as it descended towards his head.  Yet, if I ever showed any aggressiveness they immediately told me I was crazy and needed help. Oy.

[quote author=Harri

My mother used to keep a gun beside her.  She started doing so when I was very young and continued to do so ... .I was going to say until I moved out in my 30s but really, she had the gun handy right up until the day she died.  Anyway, she told me she kept it because she saw the rage in me and I scared her.  She was afraid I would kill her and so she had to protect herself.  As a kid, I internalized her message (Projective identification) and saw myself as being an angry, forceful person full of rage.  Of course, later on when I did act out in rage, it just seemed to confirm things.  My mother was also the master at manipulation and had me convinced for decades that I had hit her on several occasions but had blocked it out.  Years later, she was the one who let the cat out of the bag and told me she had just made up the stories of how I had hit her.  I went numb and dissociated for days... .I had constructed this version of who I was in large part based on her telling me I was scary, full of rage and was crazy and she blew that apart in just seconds.  [/quote]
It is just criminal that a mom or a parent would do that to her own child, and yet this happens more than our society are willing to address.  So it becomes a vicious cycle.  mom cause PD in kids are often and then the kids pass that on.  Our society brain washes how mom is absolutely the closest caretaker and so all kids drop guard and get more confused when hideous behavior like this happens.  I was so confused about the projections and gaslighting that my wife would put out and it all intensified when her uN/BPD mom moved near us.  I suspect that is a trigger and then all the boundaries broke down and that was 7 years ago and every year, my wife's NPD has intensified.  My wife has been a narcissist pretty much from the beginning and then the PD part kicks in and again, I believe her mom is the trigger.  My uNPDw always say strange things and accuse of me weird stuff in front of my kids.  I started to see projection and started to realize that manythings that she accuse must be originated from her experiences and her perception.  Even though PD is kind of like a mental illness and we should try to have empathy, but their intention to hurt and destroy is so evident, that is is just criminal.  We can argue that a killer has psychological issues, which s/he definitely has, otherwise why would anyone take another's life?  But they still get locked away after the crime.  I am just saying that I think our society is letting N/BPD related abuses get a hall pass just because it is classified as some type of mental illness.  When it is directed at someone and intensified over time, again and again... .I don't think one can plead insanity for the abuse that they dish out.   

Damn, that sounds like pure hell… it also sounds like the ‘perfect’ way of destroying another persons’ ability to maintain any kind of boundaries because after they’ve been trampled on enough we lose our sense of entitlement to them as well as the energy or motivation to keep on fighting for them… I hope you won’t ever have to live with her again. :/



Thank you very, very much :) and I wish the same to you. I imagine it can’t be an easy situation at all to be stuck between an NPD husband and elderly BPD mother… but, if at all possible (maybe with external support?), I hope you manage to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives as much as possible.



Hehe, I like your approach. I’ll try to use that when people give me positive feedback. For some people when people do it IRL I have a tendency to get angry at myself… but I haven’t been able to figure out why yet.



Hey, you can turn it into a you-fest if you want  I meant for this post to be a general discussion (even if I have been rambling about my own stuff a lot), and you have brought a lot of good stuff to it so far, both experience wise and insight wise, so by all means ramble on :)


Thank you, that really means a lot to me. I actually hadn’t thought about the fact that I was able to change my behavior in the past and thus could probably do it again… There are times when I suspect that the idea that I’ll hurt anyone I’ll get close to is just a defense mechanism, because I keep going back to it even if there’s no evidence to support it. My therapist once asked me to describe my past relationships to her so she could decide for herself what I was like and so I did while putting an emphasis on all the worst things I remembered doing with each of my exes… and at the end she was like “you may be clingy but you’re not abusive!” and I was very surprised… and the truth is, I broke up on pretty good terms with most of my exes (without any of the BPD drama you often hear about) and am still friends with some of them… and even so, even as I write this, I’m still thinking: “OK but that still doesn’t prove anything!”… so I guess it might just be a defense mechanism… (erm… but I’d still “rather be safe than sorry”…), hum…

As for it being projective identification… idk… she was never as bad as I was, as far as I can remember, even though she had her rages and threatened suicide many, many times too. Erm… she did seem to try and encourage me to be aggressive a lot when I was growing up. She seemed to think that aggressive was a synonym of assertive… but, for many years, when looking back, I kind of suspected that she wanted me to become an aggressor. When I got into fights at school she’d say “good for you!” and one time, when I was about 8 or so, she actually told me that she wanted me to hit her (I tried but couldn’t bring myself to and she was like “aww that shows you love me”). This had me puzzled for many years, as to why she did that, but now I’m thinking that it might have been just one of the many roles she wanted me to play so she could play out some kind of fantasy. If so that might explain why she didn’t like it when I stopped playing.


I am so, so sorry your mother put you through that   creating a false past and actually a whole false identity for you based on nothing but vicious lies… that has got to be one of the worst, lowest and most despicable forms of psychological abuse out there.   I’m glad you were able to find out in the end what the truth was and that you can see that you weren’t at fault for how you felt and sometimes reacted. I’ll try to keep that in mind too and I appreciate you pointing out that in abnormal situations it’s not really possible to have normal reactions…



I totally agree. Society has a tendency to totally idealize mothers and to sweep these kinds of things under the carpet. I don’t think society gives these parents a hall pass for having BPD or NPD though, I think society just shuts its’ eyes to it all together.

Hi justnothing.  Sorry for the delay in getting back to this thread.  There are certain threads I am a bit slow to process and this is one of them.  


Interesting response.  I wonder if you felt like it was just more pressure and expectations placed on you and felt you could not meet their needs, but I am not sure that would cause you to be angry with yourself.


This right here is why it took me a while to get back to this thread.  For a long time I have had the phrase "fear as a form of denial" running in the back of my mind.  It is something I know I have to look at but I also know it is going to require a lot of hard work and brutal honesty with myself.  I am not afraid of the hard work.  I am afraid of coming out the other side and having to accept that I have placed so many limits on myself and my life and have wasted an awful lot of time.  The last time I had a realization of that magnitude was about 10 years ago when I realized all the time I had wasted living my life for my mother.  Prior to that, I had glimpses of that realization but I slammed my mind shut to the full realization for at least another 10 years because having to face that everything was a lie and all that time wasted... .it was hard to accept that it was basically by my own choices.  My chest gets tight and my throat aches just thinking about the fact that I have still been doing that and in my mind I keep turning my head away from reality.  So that is one reason for me to stay in defense mode.  It is far easier to stay in my comfort zone even though I am not happy... .and my fears of being hurt, hurting others, being alone even after taking risks because deep down I really am a jerk, are known and comfortable.


So assume it is a defense.  What are some of the things you might be avoiding and what are the pay-offs for you?  Maybe a better question is what is the worst that can happen if we dare to let the defenses go in just one area or situation?


Well, just based on what you have written here, it seems very likely that you are being far harsher in your self assessment than you are when looking at your mothers behavior.  You are someone who takes the blame and denies your Self for another, so please forgive me I do not mean to harm you or invalidate you but I think your self-assessment is more than a wee bit off on this.   Rages and suicide threats are a very big deal and are huge abuses.  You were a child.  :)o you remember how you felt when she was raging?  Threatening suicide?  I got the rage from my mom and her wishes to 'disappear' and I can feel the fear now that I felt as a child.  I do not have the words to really describe the feelings.  I also remember how I felt when my father used to cry and tell me he wanted to die and that he could not take it any more. Again, I do not really have the words; they are lost in a jumble of intense emotions.  All of those were intense situations and terrifying.  I would imagine you felt something very close?  Would you even consider doing the same to a child?


Well, I am hesitant to say anything bad about your mother here, but that is not normal behavior to say the least.  It does sound like she was trying to get you to play a role to satisfy some need of her own.  Basically she was using you to feed her dysfunction.  It is the emotional component to abuse that is so damaging.  The mind games... .truly harmful and damaging behaviors.

I am not saying all this to point fingers at your mother or at least that is not my goal here.  I just want to give you a different perspective as it seems you are incredibly harsh with yourself.  She groomed you to be her toxic waste bin.  Intentional or not, that is what she did.  Chances are, like most of us here, you can trace the dysfunction back for generations.  It does not really matter in terms of a 'who done it' sort of way, but it does matter in terms of trying to separate yourself from your mother and her projections... .and opening yourself to just the possibility that your feelings and self-judgement are muddy... .

What do you think?

Ziggiddy started a thread on blame the other day and there is a lot of good information in there.  I think something Pessim-optimist shared applies regarding fear.


So we/I need to just push through the fear and take a leap of faith. 

This topic of this thread and the thoughts voiced in it really resonated with me.

For many years of my life, I kept the secret that I - deep down on an emotional level - had the intuitive feeling that I would die if my mother died. That I, literally, would cease existing if she was not there anymore. On a rational level, I always knew this not to be true, of course, but this was how I felt. I remember when I finally voiced these thoughts to a therapist in a very hesitant way, because I was honestly afraid she would think I was nuts, but - as expressed in this thread - she explained to me that this was a natural feeling based on growing up being groomed as mother's "mini-me."

No worries. I know it doesn’t exactly show with this thread  but I often have difficulty with forums because I’ll either not be able to think of anything to say and if I can think of something to say I’ll often not say it because it somehow doesn’t seem fitting or adequate enough so I’ll avoid saying it… and then feel guilty for not replying to some people (btw, hi there and cheers jmanvo and Sofie (http://www.yoursmiles.org/tsmile/emb/t1803.gif) (http://www.yoursmiles.org/t-emb.php)) because even though I liked what they wrote I won’t be able to think of anything [or anything ‘appropriate’] to say and I kind of suspect that fear of ‘making’ other people feel rejected might be one of those things that come from having had a BPD mom… either that or as a side effect of fear of rejection… or both… But tbh it’s really just as well that it took a few days for you to reply because there’s just noo way I’d have the strength or the mindset to even think about all this stuff during the weekdays .


Umm idk, my bf thinks it’s social anxiety (he has that so he would know what it sounds like), but I think it might be also in some way related to a part of me that I think feels that I “shouldn’t exist” which I think might be related to not having a sense of self and to the topic of this thread… but that’s an idea I’m still processing.


Please don’t be so hard on yourself for this. Sometimes personal accountability and the attitude of “people can only do to me what I allow them to do to me” are difficult things to swallow because it’s like “that means I’m *at fault* for everything the other person did to me” and “therefore I should be directing all that anger at myself” and “I don’t deserve any sympathy from anyone for what I went through because, after all, it was my own fault” plus “the person who did this to me is exempt from all guilt or blame and doesn’t have to account for their actions because after all I was the one that allowed it”. I think that there are two different approaches that children (and people in general) who are abused tend to take…

A. “I’m a victim”. The plus side of that is that they then don’t have to blame themselves and go through all the loop described above. The down side is that it leaves them feeling helpless because it puts all the power in the hands of person abusing them… the additional down side (especially for children) is that it also makes the other person the villain and in the case of a parent to think of the parent as a villain and as the self as totally helpless is both frightening and isolating.

B. “I’m not a victim!”. The plus side is that they don’t feel helpless (and, in the case of children, also don’t see mommy or daddy as a villain) and believing that they have the power can [in the case of adults] sometimes mean that they have the energy and the ‘tools’ required to change their situation. The down side is, as mentioned above, that they tend to blame themselves for everything instead of blaming the person who really is responsible for doing them harm. The other down side is that even though they theoretically have the energy and the tools to change their situation… they won’t do it anyway because they’ll be in denial that there even is a problem that needs to be changed.

So one way or another, there is some kind of bind… I think the only way to break the bind is by learning that responsibility isn’t the same as blame. If you’re afraid of seeing your mother as a villain (which was and sometimes still is the case for me) you can learn to see what they were and what they did without blame and if you are afraid of villainizing yourself by accepting that you did and do have free will and free choice… you can learn to accept responsibility without blame.


Oh, I think it’s probably one of several ‘reasons’ for me to avoid relationships :) especially close ones. One particularly ‘nice’ quality of this particular defense against relationships is that it puts me in the position of the potential abuser and thus puts me in the position of power instead of putting the other person in those positions… and that secret fear of the person I’m with having all the power and abusing me is frankly something I’m quite terrified of.

About 4 and a half years ago, in the middle of the big economic crisis, my mother told me that she wouldn’t object to me getting a job (which was something she had discouraged me from doing up to that point) and I took the hint and started looking around for one frantically. The economic situation was apparently so bad that even places where I applied for doing dishes or cleaning floors didn’t want me because they only wanted dish washers and cleaning ladies with experience. And then, one day, there was an ad for a secretary job. I had taken a course on secretary work in the past and was in the middle of studying bookkeeping so I applied and was invited to an interview and to amazement the guy actually hired me. Needless to say, I was ready and willing to walk on hot coals to keep that job… he’d tell me to stay later and later and I would stay later and later, he’d tell me to come to work at the crack of dawn and I’d show up at the crack of dawn. There were many times in which I remember being at work for over 12 hours on end, sometimes several days in a row and it went without saying that I wasn’t going to get paid overtime for it… but I didn’t say a word about that because I didn’t think I could find any other job if I got fired from this one and I thought that the only way to avoid getting fired was by being 100% compliant. After a couple of weeks of this he started making sexual remarks and then started touching me and even rubbing up against me. I had always been bad at saying no to men as it was but this was a guy I was especially afraid of saying no to and so I tried to express my resistance with body language, by physically pushing him away without saying anything and by making excuses like “I don’t think this is appropriate” and at that point he said to me “why exactly do you think I hired you? Do you really think anybody in their right mind would want to hire somebody like you?” and that hit a nerve because it echoed what I had believed; I was just about to turn 26, with no degree, zero job experience, a history of psychiatric issues and living on mental disability… and so “of course” nobody in their right mind would want to hire me, unless they had some ulterior motive for it. My mind went to the lack of food in the house and to the image of my mother crying and stressing out because of the minus in the bank and the bills… and I started rationalizing: “well, he and I are both single so what’s the harm? I’d been thinking of getting a new bf for a while anyway so what difference does it make if it’s for the sake of keeping a job? Heck! If anything, I’m the one that wants him! Not the other way around!” and then, instead of just saying yes, I went all femme fatale on him and told him I wanted him and demanded that he sleep with me. It was my way of convincing myself that I was the one in the persecutor position, I was the one on top, that I was NOT the victim. We did it right there and then in the office… and the illusion came crashing down when the first thing he said to me right after was “OK, now get back to work”. It took about two weeks before I was finally able to say no… but during that time he demanded it every single day before work and sometimes after (and yes, that meant I had to arrive earlier in order to be able to start the work day on time). I had been with a number of men before that; some were sweet and gentlemanly, some were chauvinistic jerks but I had never in my life imagined that it was even possible for someone to be as cold, demanding and selfish in his approach as this guy. I used to think that I wouldn’t have a problem being treated like an object… but that was because I didn’t know what that was really like. But the truly, truly disturbing part… was that I started seeing him as someone I ought to serve and be compliant to. I started feeling so sorry for him because his business wasn’t doing well and he was so stressed out because of that. His behavior was that of a criminal (turned out he had quite the criminal record for a variety of issues including assault and battery against the guy that used to work with him) but I started telling myself that ‘oh, the poor guy has issues, it’s because of his messed up childhood, it’s so sad, what he really just needs is love and support’… and I started going along with whatever he wanted not just because I was afraid of being fired but because I wanted to please him. Eventually though, after about 2 weeks, he crossed too many of my lines and one day I was finally able to say no to him and so we stopped sleeping together. Shortly after that I was able to bring myself to quit (he tried to coax me into doing illegal stuff for the company and that was where I drew the line).

Heh, the funny thing is that just a few months later I got myself a job in a large and perfectly respectable company and have been working there ever since. But it took me over 4 years to even consider dating again… and one of the things I told myself was “because I don’t want to hurt the guy” (because after all I’m the persecutor!)… but in reality it was because the experience above taught me that, when faced with a persecutor, I’m quite capable of falling into the role of victim and acting like I’ve got battered wife syndrome… and knowing that scared the hell out of me.

Another reason (that also scares the hell out of me) is the issue of this thread… with my mother I thought I was going to die without her and later on with my relationships (not just this guy) I believed I would die without them too and was willing to do anything to avoid losing them. When it came to decent guys that wasn’t all that bad, in a way, because they weren’t all that demanding… when it came to my mother it was pretty bad because she was very demanding… and when it came to this guy it was very, very bad because he was demanding to the point of dehumanizing… but even so (and even though I was still able to resist in the end) even so there was a part of me that was saying “fine, I’ll do anything, you can do and take anything you want, just don’t leave me because I know I’ll die once you do”.

Part of why I’ve been avoiding relationships for this long was as a way of showing myself that I can live alone, with no relationship and be an independent adult – and not die from it. I’m hoping that that experience can help against the fear of rejection. So far, with my new bf, I don’t seem to be experiencing any of the anxiety I used to have with previous relationships. I can not hear from him for a while or send him a message and he won’t reply for a while – and I won’t go bat crazy over it :). Mind you, it’s still early, so I’m not going to allow myself to be optimistic just yet, but as they say “so far so good”. I think the next frontier is boundaries… how to set them up and stick to them… actually no… correction… the next step is learning that boundaries are allowed, that they’re legitimate, that they’re OK and that they won’t immediately result in rejection (and that in the event that they do, the other person can go suck a lemon).

Hehe… well I reckon I kinda answered this part already with the above (well, OK, it was “above” before I had to break this post into two parts again (http://www.yoursmiles.org/tsmile/emb/t1824.gif) (http://www.yoursmiles.org/t-emb.php))… but my first reaction to the “Rages and suicide threats are a very big deal and are huge abuses” is still to think to myself “yes, I was horrible” :). I’m very sorry btw that you had to endure all of that hell from not one but both your parents… you may not have the words but I think I can imagine. As for what I felt… I mostly just remember feeling pressure. Her issues were something I had to solve, somehow. No matter what it was about or what had triggered it, I always ‘knew’ it was my fault=responsibility=fault. For example, if somebody at work had said something that upset her and she came home raging or in tears or both, it was my responsibility=fault to comfort her… if I wasn’t willing (not that that was an option) or able to comfort her, even if it was because I’d tried my best but somehow the words I had chosen just weren’t the right words that would have been required to comfort her – then her continued distress was my fault=responsibility. So for many years, as a child and early teenager, I learned to get better and better and better at being everything I was supposed to be [ironically] in order to ease the burden of the fault=responsibility and in a way ‘it worked’ because when I got better at it I got better at being able to comfort her and calm her down and thus I got occasionally ‘rewarded’ by having the yoke of blame=responsibility temporarily lifted, for short periods of time. (Speaking of enmeshment, I kind of think that taking on responsibility for what the other person feels might be a big part of it).

Even later on, when a part of my personality developed differently and I started having rages, that didn’t make the yoke bearer go away… all it meant was that I started having dramatic shifts between blame and guilt. The victim/Ms. Hyde/the rager vs. the guilty yoke bearer. The power struggle between those two hasn’t ever really gone away, it’s just less intense nowadays than it used to be.

Oh btw, and about whether I’d ever consider doing that to a child, my first answer is “no” and my second answer is “I don’t know… I don’t think my mother would have said ‘yes’ to that before she ever had children and if she faltered how do I know I wouldn’t?”



Thank you and I appreciate that. Recently I’ve been able to look more at what my mother did and I’m trying to be realistic about it. I’ll have long periods of time in which I can look at her and what she did and realize that it really was abuse and I need to face that and deal with it (and when I do that there are times when I feel the suppressed raging anger and bitterness in me)… and other periods in which I can’t bring myself to think of her that way at all and feel ungrateful, monstrous and… also that I’m running the risk of forgetting about all the good times we had together, her loving and sweet and funny side and that if I forget all that I might ‘truly lose her’ and thus lose a very big and important part of myself as well. I reckon that’s probably another part of enmeshment but I’m still trying to figure the safest way out…


That’s some very good insights and a very good point.

I just checked out the thread you mentioned now and this quote struck me:


It had never occurred to me before that in a way I need to allow myself to blame my mother in order to be able to truly forgive her. When she was on her death bed (and already brain dead so she couldn’t hear me) I told her about the abuse she put me through and that she had hurt me probably more than she’d ever hurt anyone else in her life but that despite all that I forgive her and want her to rest in peace. At the time though, the angry/bitter part of me was completely repressed and I was speaking out of the interest that my mother (if her spirit could hear me) would not take any blame with her to the after world because all that mattered was that she not be upset or in pain (assuming that spirits might be able to feel any of that, that is). But in the end… the part of me that can easily and readily forgive her is the part that isn’t angry and isn’t able to blame her for anything… whereas the part that’s angry and bitter and blames her isn’t able to forgive her…

Hi Sophie.  It seems like several of us here can relate.  I am not sure I ever feared I would die if my mother did, but I did feel a big push to detach as much as I could while she was alive.  My fear was more that I would be nothing... .just empty.  As she was dying, I remember thinking how grateful I was that I was able to work through quite a bit of my enmeshment.  It is not something most people will understand so I don't talk about it much. 

Justnothing, so many of the points you made in your last response hit home for me. 


:)  Oh, that made me laugh.  I am sure it was difficult for both you and those who care about you, and yes, if you threatened suicide to manipulate someone and raged at people it was still a huge abuse.  I never threatened suicide (though I do have suicide ideation- at least I think that is the right term) but I have done my fair share of raging.  No double standard here.     The point I was making is that ... .well, you got the point.   :)

The way you separate blame and responsibility and how you talked about it here makes me realize that I do have the two linked together in my mind.  Thank you for spelling that out so clearly.  I am still trying to sort it all out in my head though.  I am very sorry you (we) had that kind of pressure to deal with at such a young age.  I tend to just lump stuff like this into the emotional incest/parentification category and think of it as being bad but have not really looked at it in terms of what I still do today.  So when you said this:
I have to agree.  It is enmeshment.  For some reason I was thinking of it just as poor internal boundaries (knowing where I end in relation to someone else.  I am sure there is a proper term for that sort of boundary problem but hell if I can remember it!).  So seeing you use 'enmeshment' to describe this gives me a broader view and that leads to deeper understanding.  Thank you.


Good point.  We don't know what we don't know.  Back when i could have had kids, I chose not to as I knew I would not be a good mother.  Knowing what I know know though, I think I would be an okay mother.  Not perfect, but okay.


Again, I can relate to this as well.  I still have times when i feel immense guilt when i look at some of the things my mother did and call them for what they were.  It took a while though to get to the point where I could see the good the bad and the ugly in her and to realize that I could not have just the good/fun/loving mother without also accepting the rest.  I am sure you will find a safe way to get out.   I am confident that you will not lose sight of the good aspects of her as you work your way through this issue. 


For me, forgiveness is a choice that I make.  sometimes I have to do it multiple times a day.  I don't think a place of no anger, hurt and resentment is possible though.  When I am in a good place, I am able to sit with those feelings for as long as I need to and then release them.  I do the same with the love I feel for her.  I don't want to hold on to any one part of my memory of her.  I want to see and maintain the complete picture of her. 

I think Ziggiddy was right on the money about placing the appropriate amount of blame on the person, including us.  I am having a very hard time with self-forgiveness.  A lot of that is related to what you wrote about the two types of victims.  I am the "B" type of victim for the most part.  The belief that I chose what happened to me is all about control.  I do not like being/feeling helpless and powerless and yet this viewpoint has become a way for me to victimize myself and blame and shame me.  I also struggle because I did make choices and I did know certain things were horribly wrong and I still allowed them to happen.  As an adult.  I am getting better, but it had been dragging me down quite a bit lately.  I am victimizing myself for being a victim. 

Your experience with your old boss... .my gosh I am sorry you had to deal with all of that and I am very glad you got yourself out of such a situation.  He took total advantage of you and his power.  Leaving took courage and the fact that you got out within two weeks of the sex stuff happening is telling.  It means you have enough of a sense of self and awareness that you were able to stop.  I understand wanting to please someone and changing roles and accommodating the needs of another to accomplish that and even beyond that point to where I changed my beliefs and values for a time.  Aside from the details, isn't that exactly what we had to do as kids though?  I am not saying it is okay or trying to excuse it though.  I did similar with my ex.  I was recreating the same dynamic I had with my mother.  Based on what you wrote, it sounds like you did the same with your ex boss. 


:)  Yeah.  You are worth it.  It is okay to have limits, say no, be treated and talked to with dignity and respect and to be valued just for being you. 

Justnothing, I am impressed and happy that you were able to take time for you and then go out and still live life and not shy completely away from relationships.  You may not want to allow yourself to feel optimistic about your relationship, but I do. It sounds like you have made quite a bit of progress.  I have recently come to the conclusion that recovery for me (dx with c-PTSD which is pretty much the same as BPD) is going to be a lifelong process, sort of like being a recovering alcoholic.  Awareness, conscious choices and self-acceptance are going to be something I have to think about every day. 

OK, well, I know what I said about being irrationally nervous about taking time to reply to posts… but even so I’m still sorry it took time to reply, I’ve just been having a really hard time doing so during the week days…

Mostly I just wanted to say thank you very much for all your words of encouragement. I’m not always sure if I’ll ever be fully unenmeshed or that I’ll ever be able to have a truly balanced and unchanging view of her… but I’ll keep trying anyway.


I’m sorry you still feel stuck in that kind of pattern… it’s good that you have awareness of victimizing yourself for being a victim though.

I recently had a long and meaningful chat with a friend of mine who had experienced emotional incest with her mother. She wanted to talk to me about it because I once told her about my own experiences with that and my mother. The “who is to blame?” thing came up quite a lot. I think, before beating yourself up, it’s important to remember that a lot of times we get conditioned into making “our own choices”. Sure it’s important for people to take responsibility for their own choices, but I think there’s a difference between choices we make when we’re in a position of power and choices we make when we’re in a position of fear and weakness… not to mention choices we make when our view of reality gets skewed, for whatever reason.


That’s a very good point, about it being the same dynamic. I suppose kids learn how to take on whatever role will best enable them to get approval or whatnot from their parents.

In a way this might [possibly] explain why the borderline personality is so unstable/chameleon-like. Most kids, with stable parents, only ever have to have one personality in order to appease their parents, whereas kids with BPD parents have to have several (because approach X will only ever work some of the time but never all of the time). Some manage to keep in mind that it’s just role-play and not incorporate it as part of who they are… and some don’t.


Again, thank you very much (http://www.yoursmiles.org/tsmile/emb/t1824.gif) (http://www.yoursmiles.org/t-emb.php) and same to you :)

I hear you about recovery being a lifelong process. I used to be unable/unwilling to accept that and for years was fixated on the idea of someday crossing some kind of magical threshold beyond which I’d be totally normal and everything would be totally perfect (heh, B&W thinking  ) but that attitude that says “focus on the journey rather than on the final ‘goal’” made things a whole lot easier… (for one thing, it made it easier to stop beating myself up for not being somewhere over the rainbow yet). Anyhow, it’s better that we’re aware that we have to be aware than to be like all those who live in “blissful” ignorance