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My adult BPD daughter has caused her father and I a lot of heartache. We have tried so hard to help her, but she refuses to accept boundaries, and is extremely verbally abusive. When she has an episode, everything bad in her life is our fault, and she insists we "admit" that incidents that exist only in her head. The accusations tend to be vague at times, "you were bad parents", her sister was always treated better etc. When pushed for specific incidents, she will accuse us of saying the kind of horrible things she says to.us. her dad got 450+ (yes 450) abusive messages over a day or 2. Wishing us dead so she can dance on our graves etc, just vile abuse and accusations .  Everything is our fault. She will not engage as we "will not accept responsibility" for whatever she thinks we did. She bangs on about things we said years ago, but refuses to acknowledge the things she said. In her world, she is completely justified in abusing us verbally whenever she feels like it. She has been in court for threatening to petrol bomb our house. They ordered her to.have drug and alcohol counselling, and she has a psychiatrist and psychologist, but I am almost certain she lies to them. When she has been lucid, and I have asked what we did that was so wrong, she says she had a really good childhood, and we were good parents. We have had no contact with her or our grandaughter for a year now, are we best to leave it that way, or is there a way forward?

Hello PurpleTiger - and welcome. Like yours, our son had told us he had a good childhood - then completely did an about-face and accused us of emotional abuse and neglect. The hurt felt - and shared by all here - runs incredibly deep. He chose estrangement - over a year, now. We have healthy relationships with our other adult children. They've found it difficult to relate to their sibling, yet I'm so impressed with how they've loved him. As many here attest, our children with BPD have twisted what we have said, reading intentions that were never meant. So difficult...

Hi Purple Tiger: Still Water expressed what we, as parents of cwBPD endure every day, sometimes multiple times a day and the verbal abuse is incredible and unbelievable, yet we go through it every day. My adult dwBPD curses us out all the time since we came to visit her after a gap of ~30 months & we can’t wait to go back to our safety cocoon! But we made a huge mistake by promising to stay until mid-Dec although we put the condition that if the weather turns unbearably cold, we may have to leave early. However every day we are hearing’get out of my house’ & threat’s which are overloaded with venom and in the evening, it’s forgotten until the next time! As parents, we are suffering through this in so many ways and put up with everything because we love them unconditionally and I think our children know it very well. If they have treated anyone else the way they treat us, they know they have lost them, whether friends, BFs/GFs or anyone else. We are at a loss but this site has helped me immensely in staying sane and copy effectively despite everything that is going bad in my life. Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful support and suggestions you have been giving me. Take care and stay strong! Love you all, Manifest.

The only insight I can offer is that with BPD you experience emotions in different way. What may seem small to you, is experienced 100x by them. A small situation where you may feel like you weren’t supported can explode into ‘I’ve never been supported in my life ever’ for someone suffering. It’s hard but validating that these feelings are very real for that person goes a long way. No it doesn’t excuse bad behaviour but feeling understood really helps (even if you don’t understand). I know I certainly feel like I live in a world were no one understands me and it’s unbelievably lonely so having someone say in a sensitive way I understand how you feel but perhaps we could try communicating in this way moving forward allows me to learn from the situation rather then getting frustrated and lashing out.

Just a thought from a random sufferer. Wishing you all the best