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My 18 your daughter is angry that we haven’t bought her another car because she decided she didn’t like the one that she picked out when she was 16. It was about a $25,000 Volkswagen Tiguan. She treats it like crap and brings up that it’s only fair that we buy her a newer car ASAP. She also wants us to get her an apartment so she doesn’t have to live with us anymore and as soon as she’s out has told us that she’ll never talk to us again blah blah blah. She’s obviously grown up, spoiled and entitled, and that’s on us. The only thing I am angry about is that she is doing her best to make our life miserable.

Hi there,

Indeed your daughter sounds very entitled, though I’d say that demandingness and petulance are features of my own BPD stepdaughter’s behavior when she went untreated. It’s like her expectations of others were unmet at every turn, and she responded with tantrums and passive-aggression, which as she aged looked more and more inappropriate and childish compared to her chronological age. She seemed so angry all the time because the world didn’t give her what she wanted!  It’s almost as if she expected to be a princess, with fabulous clothes and people fawning over her, but without having any responsibilities. Does that sound about right?

I’d say there might be a few different factors at play. At the core of BPD is high sensitivity, negativity and reactiveness to stress.  That leads to difficulties tolerating distress, including doing things she doesn’t want to do, like chores or working at a job, or being patient, or working towards a long-term goal. It’s like she’s a toddler sometimes, she wants to play with her toys, she doesn’t want to share, and she wants everything to go her way. If she doesn’t get what she wants, she easily erupts into a tantrum, and worse, the tantrum seems disproportionate to the distress or disappointment du jour. Now that she’s an adult, the tantrums are affecting her life. She might lose friends over them. And parents might start walking on eggshells in a vain attempt to prevent an outburst. Yet by giving in and allowing her to get her way, in the name of preventing an outburst, she only escalates. It’s like an arms race. She ups the ante. She might even go nuclear, threatening or attempting suicide in response to a stress or disappointment. That’s exactly what my BPD stepdaughter did.

I’m afraid to say that things got worse in early adulthood, when my stepdaughter had to cope outside the parental home, with less parental support. She bumped up against the realities of an adult’s life, with ever more demands and disappointments, but without an adult’s emotional skills to help her cope. Her outbursts and sudden quitting (of school, relationships, activities) made her lose all her friends, as they didn’t tolerate her demandingness and neediness like her family did. So she spiraled downward into a very dark and depressing state. Only by committing to therapy did she get back on track.

I’ll wrap up with two pieces of advice. One is that it helped me to think that BPD is an emotional handicap. In my stepdaughter’s case I felt her emotional age was only about 70 percent of her chronological age, and I adjusted my expectations accordingly. I also realized she needed extra emotional support throughout her early adult years. At the same time, I’m hopeful that as she approaches 30, she might reach full adult maturity.

The other piece of advice is that, if you are supporting your daughter in any way (housing, car, insurance, etc.), do not allow her to be NEETT—not in education, employment, training or therapy. If she chooses to do nothing, fine, she’s an adult, but then she’s on her own. But if she’s getting help from you, she has a job to do. Her job might be getting schooling and/or therapy at first.  She might not be able to commit to a full-time schedule at first—emotionally she’s still a young teen—but she needs to be on track. I often think in terms of being “on track,” working positively towards operating as an independent adult. What’s important is the forward momentum towards a positive direction.

All my best to you.