BPDFamily.com

My family situation has been challenging and chaotic ever since I was born. To put all of it into words would be impossible, but I guess I'll try to give some background. My parents separated when I was 2. They had a massacre of a divorce that lasted 10 years of constant litigation. My sister is 10 years older than me, and my brother is 5 years older than me. My siblings and I all went to different high schools, since my mom moved us from our original town in NJ before my sister's last year of high school (she stayed with my grandparents so she could finish in the high school of my hometown) to a town 30 minutes away before my brother's last year of high school (he lived with my dad starting in middle school since my mom tormented him as a small kid), and then again to upstate NY for my final years of middle school and all of high school. My dad has some parental deficiencies of his own, such as not willing to provide more than the bare minimum or show emotional support in topics outside his realm of understanding, but the force that really left my mind cracked and bruised was my mom. To everyone outside of the family she meets, she is a nice, generous, and caring mom, and intelligent lawyer. Whenever my friends would come over for playdates as a kid, she would always be nothing but sweet to them, like the plates of brownies and cookies and ice cream she would always feed us. They would always tell me how great my mom is, and this would always make me feel more and more alone, because no matter who I told, they wouldn't believe my reality was true. My reality was my mother's manipulating rhetoric, the lies she would tell me of my father only truly loving my older brother and not me, that my dad thinks I'm not even his (later I discovered she had an affair that she never told me about, that my older sister told me about at age 13). She would go from telling me that I was the "best baby in the world" and that I was the most important thing in the world to her, to telling me that I am the worst daughter imaginable. She would sob on the floor, on random pills that I didn't know she even had mixed with a bottle of wine, and tell me that she's the worst mother in the world and that I hate her and that I think she's the worst thing to happen to me, resulting in me having to comfort her while suppressing the feeling of wanting to scream and cry and run until I can't run anymore. Only I was stuck on a hill, with my friends and the rest of the town 4 miles away, and my entire family except my mom hundreds of miles away. She would make me feel guilty for leaving her to sleep over at a friends place. She always tells me she loves me unconditionally, but loves to give me things only to snatch them away whenever she pleases, or whenever my words and actions don't please her, only to give them back to me (such as canceling and sending me replacement credit cards for food in college, threatening to take me off her phone plan (which she finally actually did in college), taking car keys away and giving them back, etc.). My reality was not being able to even speak of my dad, let alone actually talk to or see him, without her turning from normal, safe mom, to her more terrifying self. Certain words or phrases would also trigger this almost evil alter ego. She would also ___ on my stepdad and beat him to the ground, and since he would never stand up for himself, I ended up having to defend him, which would only turn her attention to me. And he would never stand up for me, nor even help me when the panic attacks began. I once locked my door to deal with one, and she took a screw driver to the door knob and ripped the metal through, trying to break in (she was never good at barriers). I once came home for February break my freshman year of college to her naked, drunk, and smashing plates on the ground, screaming about the usual about how ungrateful her family is and how the world is out to get her and more nonsense that I can't even remember because my brain loves to try to block out memories like those.

This was and is my reality. Obviously the description above isn't cohesive and isn't nearly everything I need to say, but that would take way too long. My reason for reaching out is that therapy alone hasn't been too helpful. I still feel like I'm alone in dealing with the aftereffects. My siblings and I all grew up dealing with the same mother, but we all had different experiences at different stages in our lives, and they both had support systems. My sister had my grandparents, and my brother had my dad and grandparents. They were all walking distance, all accessible. I dealt with her alone, on a hill over Cayuga lake, at least two hundred miles from the nearest family member. Having my stepdad there was both a blessing and a curse, because he took a load off me, but I had to also come to his rescue. It was the same as being alone with just her because he never defended me or comforted me when I needed it. So my siblings don't fully know what it's like, and they aren't very good at putting themselves in my shoes.

Now I'm dealing with the waves of depression and the anxiety and the constant feeling of unrest, unable to relax unless I'm sleeping or drowning out my thoughts with mind-numbing TV. It's affected my academics, my work experiences, and my social life. I feel lost and overwhelmed most days, and I just need to feel like someone else is out there who has dealt with a similar situation. Someone I can talk to about this without feeling frustrated when they respond with "I understand," because it will actually be genuine. 

My mother used to tell me,  "sometimes I wish I'd never adopted you!" I think the first time I remembered this was around 10. It's a very twisted and hurtful thing to say to a child, like your mother did to you.  Trying to reconcile the Splitting (see here (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=62033.0;all) for more) given that she could be kind was worse.  I have two kids now,  5 and 7. They can cry when I assert boundaries. They can drive me nuts sometimes,  but I can't comprehend ever telling them that they are the worst kids imaginable. Such language cuts to the core.  

You were put into the position of rescuing your mother emotionally (while she was emotionally abusing you), and also your step dad,  both physically and probably emotionally as well.

These are burdens which no adult should have to endure, much less a child.

So if you're looking for a community of people who can sympathise with what you went through,  as well as your current struggles,  you've found it.  

*welcome*

Turkish

I had a pretty similar experience with my mom. The reaction to the locked door, the best / worst kid, the isolation, manipulation, emotional abuse. My parents had a "massacre of a divorce" and her anger and bitterness and jealousy of any contact I had with my dad was incredible. He is dead now, but she still writes about him all the time, just a torrent of abuse directed at him and me for having contact with him. Or as she would say "showing how much I hate her by taking his side and believing all his lies".

I'm an only child, so I didn't have to deal with the different experiences siblings can have of the same person. But I had no support either, no witness to what happened. The only time social services got involved, I had weeks of emotional blackmail and abject tears begging me to stay with her. As a 10 year old, its hard to make those choices.

If therapy hasn't worked for you so far, I wouldn't give up altogether. Maybe the individual therapist or the techniques didn't suit you, or it wasn't quite the right time. I would really recommend trying again, maybe search around see what's available in your area, check out the books available on the subject, throw questions out there and see what answers come back. I really recommend "Surviving your Borderline Parent" by K Roth & F Friedman and anything on emotional processing.