BPDFamily.com

It's a while since I've posted here as we've had about 6 or more months of relative peace while my daughter (now 31) has been living away from home. She is still away, but the contact time has increased as she needed help to move house as she couldn't handle it by herself. As a result of all the associated stress she has been uncontrollably angry, and takes it all out on me. Her anger was a problem before she left home and in fact at different times has precipitated her cutting herself off from virtually all family members except me. I'm now the only one she will have anything to do with and she only keeps that up because she knows she needs someone to look out for her. However, her anger is getting to the stage where I feel I won't be able to help her much more unless she does something about it. And there's the rub because she won't. She refuses all medical help saying it doesn't work and is a waste of time and money. She says I am the cause of all her problems, she has every right to be angry with me, I have caused all her problems and I just have to put up with it.

I realise this is totally unacceptable and I need to withdraw from her anger. But since her problems largely revolve around feelings of abandonment and disempowerment, how can I present any withdrawal on my part without making those feelings worse? If I simply say I'm not going to hang around and listen to this, she feels I've deserted her and becomes desperate. She's said in the past that just leaving her in times of crisis is the most damaging thing I've ever done to her. And in fact, I've never found it has achieved anything except temporary relief for myself. The fall out afterwards is awful and leaving her in these situations has never solved or improved anything in the long run. I really need a solution that she can buy into.

I'd be glad of any advice.

Can you mirror her words back to her in SET format to start a conversation? 

I've tried that (at least the SE part). We always get lost in the T bit as her anger is just existential and you can't say anything that makes her want to resolve it - she just wants to make sure I know how angry she is and will continue to be unless I change my behaviour towards her. She confuses me with eloquence and close analysis of every word I use, demands to know why I use a particular word or phrase, tells me it's inappropriate, irrelevant, derails the conversation, etc and before I know it we are in yet another conflict about my inability to use basic communication skills (I might say that my work involves communication and although not perfect seems to satisfy most of those I work with). The other day I tried to be honest with her instead of pulling wool over her eyes about the fact I was feeling under the weather and not able to call her and we've now had three days of her going on about how I don't understand, break my word, go back on everything I say and she's going to quit everything and give up. All because I needed a good night's sleep and a break (only 24 hours) of communication. I gave her definite times after that 24 hours I could talk to her but it wasn't good enough. She said she only needed 5 minutes of my time and I refused to give it, and then tried to justify my refusal. So she was through and was going to quit everything. Now she's not talking at all but just says, there's no point, I warned you this would happen if you abandoned me, don't be surprised that it has.