BPDFamily.com

Hello all.  I'm new to BPD Family with a BPD mother whose mental health is rapidly deteriorating.

I live 2 hours in one direction from a town where I can receive counseling services, so I am trying to arm myself with some coping strategies.

Mom has been severely "off" my entire life, but I didn't realize it until she broke my car window in me when I was 16.  I had locked myself in the car to get away from her rage, which led to the windows being broken in.  The neighbors came out to say they were calling the police - dad intervened and they didn't call.  That was my first clue that I wasn't the problem.

Mom has run dad's finances into the ground, so when he retired, we moved them into my cabin (next door).  I wanted to help stretch dad's retirement money.  However, the closeness seems to have triggered something in mom - probably jealously over dad's happiness to be next door to his grandkids and his daughter.  Regardless, her mental health has been increasingly troubling for several years.

Last month, dad, sis and my family took a trip out of state for a wedding.  Mom was invited and declined to go.  She (while in a good spell) pressured me for several weeks to housesit and tend my dogs.  I agreed, knowing that I needed a plan B because she's so unreliable.  Trip time gets closer, she gets incredibly jealous and needy.  First she backs out of taking care of the dogs, thinking that will force my husband to stay.  I make alternate arrangements, so she moves on to the next target.

She starts in on how she NEEDS dad to be there for her.  She NEEDS him to choose her.  He lets her know that he is going to the wedding and she starts a rapid decline.

Altercation occurs, she pushes him down the staircase.  As he falls, he manages to scratch her arm - very, very minor.  She sees an opening and calls the sheriff (because they're new to our county and the sheriff isn't familiar with her behavior, this is alarming).  Husband and I go over to the cabin to be sure that they're aware of her mental health.  She starts screaming that I can't be believed because I have a sexual relationship with my father (?) and that she DEMANDS a welfare check on my five children because they live in filth.  Completely untrue, but extremely hurtful.  Anyhow - sheriff says he can tell that something is off but that it's "he said, she said" and that dad was going to stay down in the basement rooms so that things could cool off.

Of course they don't cool off.  She comes right back at him, this time with a butcher knife and a suicide note.  When he walks away from her, she throws the knife at him and embeds it in the log wall.  She knew he would call the sheriff back out again, so she tries to get rid of the suicide note by tearing it up and flushing it down the toilet.  She missed a piece.  Sheriff hauls her off to jail/72 hour hold for the suicide note.  Mostly they were just tired of driving the 45 miles to come out.

We take our out of state trip - dad tells mom she's not to come back to the cabin and gets her a hotel room while she finds an apartment in the town.  Only when we come home, she's there waiting.  I had to serve her with an eviction notice to get her out of the cabin and I am currently putting up the money to cover her apartment rent.

Things just keep getting worse and worse - constant harassment, bizarre behavior, etc.  I block her number on the phones and we let her know that she's not to show up at the school my children attend.  She had started to make a habit of cornering them at the school and making them uncomfortable ("I need you to tell your mom to stop hating me... .", etc.).  Completely inappropriate.  We finally have to tell her that any additional visits will result in me having the resource officer remove her from the school grounds and she loses it.  She goes into the principal's office with a blaze of some truth, half truths and complete lies.  I was pregnant at 16 and had an abortion (true - I looked for love and acceptance in all the wrong places and as a minor, I had no right to say no to the abortion my parents scheduled), I this, I that - everything under the sun and most of it completely outrageous and untrue.  No financial difficulties, no crazy things going on with foreclosures, evictions, etc.  To my children's PRINCIPAL in a tiny town of 600 people.  And then I had to have that conversation with two of my five children - the ones who were old enough to hear my deepest and most painful secret.

She has taken to trying to converse with me through my husband's Facebook messages, so I get this winner:

BPD Mother: When did you ask me to not go to the school? G is waiting for you. I told him you lie, cheat, steal and don't own that home and got evicted from your last home. I also told him you were pregnant at 15, aborted, and didn't graduate high school.

BPD Mother: E would like you to take something to put in Great Granny's casket to take to heaven. Is this something you would allow?

Since that, she's been blocked there too.

To make things worse, her 95 year old mother just passed.  Completely not unexpected, but the seriously out of control breakdown behavior is somehow multiplying.

Basically I just want it to stop.  I want it to stop so badly that I'm prepared to give up my beautiful home in my beautiful mountains - I'm prepared to give up this little community that I love so much and I'm ready to just move away from the insanity.  I can't even begin to tell you how horrible it is.  What about when she starts to drop in on my friends?  :)o I beat her to the punch and just tell folks here of her mental illness?

My dad has (at least for now) finally seen the light and acknowledged that she could definitely harm him and possibly worse.  At least for now, he claims she's never coming back to the cabin.  That's fantastic (he's in a habit of texting us in the morning and at night so that we know she hasn't killed him), but this raging hate and this all out assault simply has to stop.

Please help.  Are there legal remedies?  I can't even begin to tell you how depressed I am.  I feel totally powerless to stop the harassment.  My anxiety is through the roof.  I thought an unattended bag at the grocery store the other day was quite possibly a bomb.  I'm a completely normal, level headed 41 year old successful businesswoman who is slowly going crazy.

Hello thefieldsfab5,

You've got a lot here: safety of your dad, and safety of your kids. For your dad, can you encourage him to call a local domestic violence hot line? Calls are anonymous. If he's old, perhaps stubborn, and of course, male, he may resist this. Your primary concern, however, is your kids.

It's horrible that she went to their school to spout what she did. She performed a preemptive attack. You, howver, are the parent, and the school.should default to listening to you. If her rage is the downside to telling the school, point-blank: "she is not allowed on campus, nor to have contact with my kids," then at least your kids are protected. No one should fault you and your H from taking proactive steps to protect your children. You are their legal guardians, not her.

Turkish

As bad as things have gotten, the good thing is that you and your father have educated yourselves about her issues and behaviors and have begun setting firm/firmer boundaries.  No one, not even the police, may get her to change but you've done the next best and set up your own protective boundaries.  And yes, since BPD is a disorder most evident in close relationships, adding distance usually triggers the behaviors less, though of course no guarantees.

Oh my, thefieldsfab5. I'm so sorry you have to go through all of this. My N/BPDx spouse also told my son my most private, painful secrets, among other things that were also not true. That alone is tough to work through.

If you move, what is to stop your mom from following you? I think it's best to develop a strategy and learn skills to help minimize conflict with her. That means learning validation and SET, and meanwhile having very strong clear boundaries (these are to protect you, not to control her). Since she is dangerous, it's a good idea to have a safety plan in place: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=272865.msg12579850#msg12579850

Many of us here have spouses or family members who put us in dire legal situations. Smear campaigns and whatnot are very exhausting and can take a lot out of people. I would gather up your family and talk to them about BPD and how it makes grandma susceptible to extreme abandonment fears, impulsive behavior, and distorted thinking. The more they understand, the less frightening it will be.



LnL