BPDFamily.com

Hi, I'm Nicole,

I'm a bit overwhelmed trying to juggle my own and my daughter's mental health conditions. My BPD daughter's anger and dark moods trigger my other daughter's anxiety issues and sometimes leads to self-harming episodes. I can't exactly stop my oldest daughter from acting like someone with BPD -  she has it. Working on her improving her awareness of the impact her behaviour has on others as well as building resilience in my youngest daughter so those behaviours don't affect her so much.

Pretty sure my mum is BPD, so with years of dealing with her, my oldest daughter's behaviour doesn't really bother me - I approach situations with my BPD daughter calmly, with no judgement and no shaming. Works well, sometimes after she explodes a bit first, but I can deescalate her.

We generally approach our mental health challenges mostly with good humour and understanding. I call us the "alphabet family" because of the amount of acronyms we have. I feel no shame at having mental health issues. It is what it is and I am well managed. I try to teach my girls that life can still be amazing with mental health issues, we just have extra challenges and extra work to do around some things.

Me: Complex PTSD ("character building" childhood)
        PMDD Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (like supercharged PMS that lasts
        for 2-3 weeks - super fun!)
        Social anxiety disorder

Oldest DD, 17: Borderline personality disorder
                          Bipolar disorder type 1
                          Autism Level 1
                          Sensory processing issues

Youngest DD, 15: ADHD (inattentive type)
                               Unilateral deafness (right ear)
                               Social Anxiety disorder
                               Has tics, mostly facial, not been formally diagnosed with
                               tourettes though
                               Sensory processing issues

I am struggling with building resilience and how to de-escalate situations.
My oldest has BPD and she causes a lot of chaos in the family that has no experience with mental disorders.  I am always out to get tips on how to do it. I absolutely loved one mom's suggestion to hear "I am purple" , when my daughter says awful things about me. It works, cause I know I am not purple:)
I am here for the tips, if you would love to share.

My biggest survival strategies for my family are:

Don't take their behaviour personally. They aren't giving you a hard time, they are having a hard time. I visualise her as a toddler in that moment, because that's the amount of self-regulation she has available at that time.

When DD explodes or shows signs of exploding soon, I disengage and give her space, then after about ten minutes I approach calmly and say, how bout we try that again? This approach works because I remain calm NO MATTER WHAT and I begin each conversation with DD by reassuring her that I love her, and that I need her to trust me to have her best interest at heart and that I am only trying to help. I tell her she is NOT in trouble and that there is NO shame in her getting things wrong, but I need to step in and help her to get them right. I also end each conversation by repeating all of that. She responds well to that and it helps dissolve that "everyone's against me" feeling that she might be having.

Be clear about the difference between the things they CAN'T do and the things they WON'T do. Sometimes we can get very frustrated and think, "Why won't you just..." The answer is that they haven't mastered that skill yet. It's pretty rare for people to deliberately act in maladaptive ways. If DD has undesirable behaviours I search for the trigger and try to help her identify it and then work through a better way to handle it. Does that mean that she handles it better next time? Nope. But she'll NEVER learn the skills she needs if all I do is discipline her or yell at her. She might just learn the skills one day though, if I am consistent in my approach and get her to think about what she could have done better each time she gets it wrong.

Thank you for sharing.
i think this is the core of the problem, they don't have the skills. They need to learn them , but in my experience most psychologists keep digging in her past and trying to find family issues instead of actually analysing and giving my kid tools.

It sounds like you've got a good grasp on things, I'm guessing your "character building childhood" prepared you well for the straits in which you now navigate. For what it's worth I've also joked about being a one-man social worker for a family, but for a brief period we actually had a caseworker involved who I didn't just roll my eyes and tolerate, because she was AMAZING - a real diamond in the rough, saw some of the difficulties I faced as "the only healthy one and therefore the caretaker for everyone" and really stepped in and helped smooth the wheels for some social benefits and housing upgrades and such that would've taken me months to acquire on my own.

Basically the moral of the story is "Sure you can be your own worker, in fact it's probably best, and a lot of workers are crap anyways...but don't forget there are occasional ones that are worth their weight in gold.", we had one and though she was only involved for a few months - still comes up in conversation.