BPDFamily.com

My daughter may have BPD.  Her psych asked me to read the book because she has some coping traits of a BPD person. 
Things at our house seem to be insurmountable.  She is living away at college.  May not want to come home and it is heartbreaking. 
She calls her dad her abuser becuase she said he has verbally abused her whole life. 
He does have a temper and does yell but I always thought that as a family we reconciled, said we were sorry and forgave each other.
She says that she wishes I could just acknowlege the abuse.  I can ackowledge that he does yell occassionally but is trying to get better about it.  But I can't remember any long term abuse.  I can remember 3 times where he lost his temper with her and yelled.
I feel caught in the middle..a hurting adult daughter who feels like she has no one and a very sad husband whose daughter is saying he verbally abused her his whole life and because of him she will never be able to have a successful relationship.
I feel like our family is being ripped apart and so am I. 
My daughter is seeing a psych, and a psychologist and is about to start DBT and is on low doses of seroquel to sleep and lamictal for anxiety/mood.
I'm just wondering if anyone has been in a similar place as I am now.
I know that all families have problems but I didn't realize all this was going on for her...I thought we had a good imperfect family that was making it.

Hi Waves68!
 It is fantastic your daughter is getting help.
 
It is common within the BPD mind to think abuse happened when it didn't.   My adult son thought I was abusive for putting him to bed at 7 PM when he was 5 years old - this is not an exaggeration either. He recounted stuff like this all the time.  BPDs can't handle normal reactions- anything that hurts their feelings/ they don't like seems like unfair abuse in their world view.  Even though it is not based in reality, it's real to them.

Now for you- self care is paramount.  BPD affects the whole family. Joining this forum is a great step in building up your own network of support.  I agree with your daughter's psych in reading up on BPD ;there is a Library of suggested readings on this forum.  Keep writing back as you have need, we are here for you.

I'm so sorry that your relationship with your daughter is so challenging right now.  I'm glad that she's getting some help and it might help for you and your husband to get some help, too, from a therapist experienced with BPD. BPD relationships are often challenging to navigate.

People with BPD often misread what is being said.  My stepdaughter (22) does this often, especially when she's struggling. For the past several months, things have been fairly good between us.  Recently she went off her meds and is struggling.  For a few weeks, she was very needy and wanted to talk with me about her problems for hours.  Now I'm the bad person and she can't bear to be in the same room with me.  She moved back in with her mother and sometimes visits us when her siblings come over. She can't make it more than a couple of hours before I trigger her and she cries and she has to leave.  I'm on the bad side of her splitting right now, so she's misinterpreting a lot of what I say to her.

We had one of the trigger episodes last night.  We were eating dinner and she started crying and asked her dad to drive her back to her mom's house.  On the drive home, her dad asked her why she was so upset.  She said that I was judging/criticising her for her weight.  Earlier in the night, her siblings were talking about going to prom and I mentioned that her prom dress was beautiful. She took this to mean that since she no longer fits into her prom dress (which I didn't even know) that I was criticizing her weight.

The point of this story is to show that sometimes when people with BPD are in a difficult place, they will see in what other people say the things that they are struggling with emotionally.  I don't think that she's being manipulative and I believe that she believes that what she's perceiving is true. When she's feeling bad about herself, she interprets the world around her from that perspective. She reads into her interactions what she expects to see. I learned that chasing her doesn't work.  I need to let her get in a place where she will come to me. That's when she's ready to work on our relationship.  I tell her that I am always here when she's ready to talk. In the meantime, I expect that we will have several weeks when she doesn't come to see us or she comes, cries, and leaves. Paying too much attention to the crying makes it worse because then she feels self conscious.  We usually ask her if she wants to talk and if she says no, then we tell her that we will talk if and when she is ready to.  Then we ignore the crying and move on with what we were doing.

Hi Waves,

So glad you're here reading and posting. For me, just reading the experiences of others and the kind and thoughtful words of some of the frequent posters was a huge comfort to me. The initial stages of coming to grips with BPD are difficult, but they lead somewhere.

Reading (here and "Stop Walking on Eggshells") has me viewing my pwBPD very differently. I understand that behavior I had interpreted as manipulative may not be so. I am much better able to accept this person is not simply mean and self-centered, that there may be a real reason for her actions, and it may be she really can't control it. I've found that I am much less agitated by the situation, more understanding. I don't know if it's helped the pwBPD, but it certainly has helped me.

Continue to read. Post when you feel like it. There are quite a few people here going through what you're experiencing, and who want to help.