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I thought today would be a good day to update everyone here on new developments on my end. But first of all, I would really like to tell you all how much I appreciated your help on this safe board. You have provided, time and time again, validation, empathy, wisdom, knowledge, and for your presence here, on this board, for your guidance and friendship, thank you. We are all anonym, we are all strangers gathered here from many places around the world, yet you all feel like friends to me. Thank you.

I am doing better.

Cutting contact with my mother has proven the only safe way to go for me. I've been doing increasingly better since our last contact. I am less stressed, more in control, more in action as opposed to in reaction, I am less depressed, less anxious. I am reparenting myself, and as it turned out, I am a very good and safe parent to be around.  :(

My brother contacted me recently to tell me he was thinking of me. When I answered, he told me out of the blue he was on his way to the death anniversary of his mother in law. I knew why he told me that, yet I simply wished him a good day, and went ahead and enjoyed mine with my children. I didn't feel guilt. This was huge for me.

I haven't spoken to my other brother in quite some time, and I will honestly say I am ok with that. More than ok actually, and I don't think it makes me a bad person anymore. I am just living my life with those more precious to me : my husband and my children.

I've reconnected with one of my aunt, and with her daughter who was older than me so I never knew her well, but now we have children the same age and are at the same place on life .. and it was a safe and happy meeting. We agreed to see more of each other. It's funny how, as cousin, our mothers being sisters, we are different yet so alike. I think this is the beginning of a great friendship. Because of her career, she knows about the borderline personality disorder and is very interested in psychology. So I am happy to finally have someone I can discuss those things with in a healthy manner, with no emotional weight, just ... Like we discuss our children, our career, who we are.

I'm also coming to terms with the unhealthy dynamic between my father and I. This awareness has brought me closer to my husband. Closer than I ever been. it's like the energy in my own family changed... We are a front, and I see a healthy hierarchy between us and our children. We love them deeply, and we stand together for their good. I don't foresee risks of repeating my father behavior of having used me as a surrogate spouse. We communicate, I take the time to connect with him emotionnally every day now, and it is do very worth it. He has my back, and has never been more supportive and loving, and he already was. So I guess I am becoming safe too... I don't fear him anymore.

I know another wave will come at some point. But now is a good time to be alive, and I wanted to take some time to recognize it, and be grateful.

I feel like I've grown so very much and truly, I don't think this would have been possible without this self growth oriented board. So again : thank you for being here and keeping this board active.

 :heart:

How wonderful to hear; I am so happy for you!  :wee: I’m glad you have been able to reconnect with some of your extended family.

You have inspired me to try to reconnect with my aunt, my mother’s only sibling, but maybe I should just bite the bullet and see what happens. The rumor is that she’s bitter and has always been jealous of my mom, but I probably ought to check this out for myself.

RW, so happy to hear you are doing well! Few people on these boards work as hard as you do on their mental health, you have such courage and a lot of innate emotional wisdom. It is great to see all that work pay off  :wee:
And the help you have been to others no doubt added to your karma..
 :hug: :hug:

Riv3rWOlf, what a great update. Your continued journey of courage, vulnerability and self awareness are inspirational. You are generous with your  insights and guidance and have helped so many on this board. Thank you!

Thanks for the update! While these boards sometimes focus on the person of concern- the person with BPD, our task is to examine our own feelings and how to process that. The personal work has helped you and also, you are changing the cycle for your children :)

So happy to hear about your peaceful update. Thank you for sharing!

 :hug: :wee: |iiii

I read somewhere that when we focus on the needs (or neediness) of others we cannot focus on our own needs.

Not feeling guilt while accomplishing this important work really is huge.

It is so wonderful to see a subject line with the words "peaceful" in it for any of these boards.  :)

Thank you all for your words of encouragement.

Indeed, it's almost as if I could feel the wave was inbound and needed to be grateful for the moment.

But today I learned, from one of my aunt that knows my mother and I are not currently on speaking terms, that my grandmother died. She died surrounded by some of her children, she wasn't alone, and she had been in and out of the hospital, so it was coming...

This effectively created a bit of an inner turmoil as to my next steps of action.

My husband simplified it by telling me : funerals are to show support to the family and keep everything as smooth and peaceful as possible for everyone involved. What will your presence there accomplish? Peace or tension?

To which I answered tension between my mother and I.

So we decided sending flowers was most likely the best course of action.

Do you agree? Any ideas?

I am not yet feeling any urge to reach out to her to offer my sympathies... I truly feel disconnected from her. Maybe a small fear of a backlash if I don't.. the remnant of what our relationship truly was about: acting to prevent instead of acting from a place of love and care.

I really don't know what to say, as this issue of what to do if something were to happen was the thing that kept me in contact with my own uBPDm. As she aged, I was always anxious about being NC and what I would do if she got ill, was on her deathbed or passed away. So I stayed in contact, and she continued to dysregulate, doled out the rage and manipulation, and now here I am, a senior myself, and she is into her 90's and still healthy. So I am curious to see the replies from the wise and wonderful folks on the board. I think you are handling yourself with strength and grace. I admire your insights.

So sorry to hear, condolences on the death of your grandmother. I do not have any advice, but I hope you find a way to grieve that is healthy for you  :hug:

Sending all the best wishes.

So sorry to hear about your grandmother, and wish you healing thoughts as you figure out how to best grieve your loss. You have gotten to a good place emotionally and mentally, and therefore I have confidence that your decision is the best one for you. It will be important to self reflect and make sure you are doing what you want and need to maintain the psychological safety and your positive personal journey and also assuring you are able to grieve and get closure. In the post COVID world, I notice a lot of memorial services are live streamed, and I wonder if that might be an option for you to uphold NC and still achieve closure. Sending hugs and healing thoughts your way Riv3rWOlf  :hug:

Glad things are going so much better!

So sorry to hear about your grandmother, Riv3rWolf! What are your own feelings about your grief?
One of the things I came to resent about my uBPD relatives is the way even death and illness could not be 'normal' whatever that is, but that even the most fundamental things about life, which are overwhelming in their own right, had to be dysfunctional.

 :hug: :hug:

Since my FOO chooses to define family in a way that isn't safe for me, I get to decide how I define family.

They lost the moral higher ground when they enabled familial violence toward me and failed to ensure my safety.

That means treading carefully when it comes to family events. It can mean not going to funerals that no one thought to invite me to, or even having a wedding, since it would've been miserable for everyone and most of all me.

Safety, safety, safety.  |iiii

If going to a funeral means compromising safety, then it means figuring out if there are ways to feel safe, or choosing alternative ways to participate that sit right with you.

Your mom will be mad no matter what you do. 

Continuing with new developments over here... Because despite those developments, I still feel somewhat in control, albeit a bit lost as to my next steps. There is a lot for me to consider, and I've thought writing it down here would help.

My mother wrote me this morning. No emotions, just facts. She simply copied over the e-mail concerning my grandmother's passing, and said the funerals would be on October 1st. She said she also wanted to use that time to let me know she had a partial masectomy done, and that she was waiting on the test results to know if she had cancer or not.

I didn't answer right away. I checked in. Then I decided that in sickness and death, I simply could not ignore and not answer. But I chose that I would not engage emotionally. So I simply wrote back : "I offer you my sincere sympathies for your mother's passing. And I am sorry to hear for your health problem."

So she wrote back this afternoon that there is a meal after the exposition, and she is inviting me/us. That it is time for us to forgive and get over our anger. That she needs an answer soon to let my family knows, so they can book at the restaurant. She signed "Mommy and Grandma".

This second message already feels more manipulative than the first one. But that's the pattern... Reeling us in slowly. I am not trying to be mean here... In fact, I am not even angry at her anymore... At least, not now. I do feel empathy for her. She is going through a lot. But like you said LnL : safety safety safety. 

I haven't answered yet.

I am not naive anymore. Nor hopeful. Part of me knows it is not about me, it is about my children. And there is simply no way I am exposing my children to her right now. This is when I know I don't trust her. Thinking of her in my children's life brings up a lot of anxiety and fear. I simply cannot have that.

I could go alone. But then, this won't be the place to discuss anything that happened between us, and I offered her to meet with a therapist, which she declined. It is a bit of a wishful thinking on her part to think I somehow magically changed my mind because of what has happened...

What has happened now simply does not change the dynamic of our relationship.

My husband would have none of it. If I let him know what she says, he will simply brush it off and get angry because I answered to the initial email. He wants me to protect myself above the rest. So, even if I wanted to get back to low contact, which I don't, my husband would have none of it, or would make it hard for me.

I guess it really comes down to my children... I've been doing so well with her out of my life... I am not interested in bringing her back in... ever. It is sad. I am sad for her too. It truly is a tragedy for her to be mentally ill at a point where she destroyed her relationship with the most precious people she had.

I guess I know my answer... I cannot accept her invitation. It is not the place, nor the time. I also think she half asked it because she didn't one to be the only one in her family who's children didn't attend grandma's funerals... But two of my aunts and my cousin know why, and none of them judge me for it... They all understood.

How do I tell her though... Any advice for my next email?

I notice she introduces a time pressure that is likely not there.

You have time to think this through. There is no rush (restaurants can make room last minute).

You could arrive to the funeral fashionably late, pay your respects, then leave when it's over.

You could attend the meal and choose to leave if you feel uncomfortable.

You can make a decision last minute.

You can send flowers, or nothing at all.

You can say you're going and not go.

So many options  *)

When I was preparing to end the estrangement with my father (golden child), my (adult child) mother flung open the door and invited my BPD sibling and his daughters. She then texted that it was done, "I told the girls you were coming and they were so excited. They haven't seen their aunt and are over the moon getting to meet you. It will be so nice to see the whole family together again."

Years and months of therapy to get to this point and my mother steamrolled her own agenda into what I felt was a very careful reentry plan.

I wrote back, "Maybe next time."

BPD or not, in my family when I give an inch they take a mile. I am supposed to do this because I'm the girl, the daughter, the youngest, the pushover, the trash can.

You get to set the pace for how quickly you want to move. If there is a time pressure to agree to a meal, then perhaps the answer is no because you're not ready to decide.

Just because she's sprinting doesn't mean you have to start running too.

I agree.

I am not sure if those are linked to anything but she also mentioned the oldest wasn't attending because he had something else, and that my other brother hadn't answered yet... And she needed an answer for me right away.

It is as if she feels abandoned by my brothers, alone, and she is trying to appeal to the rescuer role she forced on me from a very young age.

"Your brothers are not answering, they are not coming. I need you to come back as soon as possible before I burst." is how I actually read it.

When our mother doesn't go well, my brother used to call on me to take care of her. As the only daughter, it was my "role". It's like she feels now the emptiness. I was always there for her... Every passing, every depression, slept in her bed after she had have nightmares more than once, even when I didn't want to... Now she is in a dark hour, and for the first time ever, I am not there...and not in a hurry to answer, thanks to you.

Thanks you LnL, you are absolutely right.. I can take my time. Also thank you for broadening my views... I like the idea of simply going, maybe by myself, to pay my respect to my grandmother. And then to leave. I wouldn't stay. Just see her, get closure, and leave. I did like my grandmother, she was always nice to me, understood my sarcasm when no one else did. We had some good laughs together, rare, but real. She had a very hard life. I am sure she wasn't an easy mother. But she was ways nice to me and never said anything bad against any of her children that I know of. I also have a right to get closure.

I will think about it a bit more... It's funny how it feels so much easier to see solutions for others. When it is my mother, I feel confused.

The story about your mother calling you brother and nieces without asking first made my skin crawl... You were brave to cancel. Some other time. This is also the answer I could give.

Just found out there will be a web diffusion of the memorial... Might attend at this point. There is no body.

This morning, I wrote back to my mother's invitation to lunch and get over our "fight":  

"Thank you for the invitation.

We decided to assist to the ceremony remotely via the web diffusion.

I remain available to meet with a family therapist of your choosing to discuss our current situation.

I send you healing thoughts through your grief.

I love you."

And I meant it. As abusive as she was, I am coming to a point where, working on detaching the abuse from the healthy mother in my memories allowed me to focus on myself, to heal the parts within me that are her.

She is abusive. She has borderline. But she also loved me, and is going through a tragedy of her own. I hold no hope for a sane relationship, I am ok with having no contact with her, and it surprisd me this morning to connect to love for her, but without an obligation to reconnect physically or to have an actual relationship. A firm, detached love. But real love still.

On another post, someone wrote : "I can hold them into a soft light, with compassion", paraphrasing here... And that's how I felt this morning. If therapists can do it, so can I. I agree.

One day at a time. No rush. It comes and goes. I am still protecting myself. But today, I am proud. I am becoming a healthy adult. Slowly, but surely.

 :heart:

 :hug:

What a lovely note to send.

You managed to uphold your values, and expressed a lovingly stated fair, firm boundary with a path forward to a relationship your mom can walk if she chooses. It will be her choice whether she can hold herself accountable.

You left the door open with grace.

The note itself feels very peaceful, and is a lovely example of what many of us are working toward.

Thanks for sharing it here  :heart:

Of course.

She sent me the link to a self-described Shaman that does "family constellation", Reiki and acts as a Doula, with no reference at all in psychology, psychiatry nor even psychotherapy. A woman who states openly she came from a very dysfunctional family, and now she helps people to be born again during the course of 1 week end only, for the cost of...

Of course she did.

Now to phrase an answer stating : a therapist. A real one. Psychologist, psychotherapists, ideally with knowledge in trauma. Not a guru, not a life coach. Goodness...

To be fair there are a lot of bad pyschotherapists out there, and the vast majority come from dysfunctional families... When I went into family therapy with my siblings I had some pretty extreme negative side-effects that lasted for days after the session, and the therapist didn't seem to be particularly concerned that I was going way outside my window of tolerance. I don't think she was as "trauma informed" as she believed she was, and I quit after the third session.

The next therapist I saw was a psychologist, and she seemed to have her own agenda for me and expected me to instantly go no contact with my family and move on with my life, and then essentially scolded me when I continued emailing my sister, leaving me in tears. 

My third therapist I have also just terminated because he seems to be have some codependent tendencies and also just did not understand dysfunctional family dynamics. Then he tried to (subtly) discourage me from attending Al-Anon because it wasn't run by "professionals". That was the last straw for me. I have been attending Al-Anon for only a month now and I have gotten so much more out of it than the 1.5 years of therapy I did with him.

That said, I have recently started with another therapist that I really like, and she is clearly a very good therapist and I have been really benefiting from our sessions. But we aren't even doing traditional psychotherapy but rather the Inner Bonding process, created by Margaret Paul, whose book Inner Bonding is on the recommended book list on BPDFamily.

All that to say I am rather disillusioned with psychotherapy after having had those not so great experiences.

Yes I agree.

Also that's terrible, sounds like they retraumatized you? That's what I am trying to prevent. She sent me the link to this guru and I got a very bad vibe from the website and what she wrote. To clarify: I dont think she is bad because she comes from a dysfunctional family, we all do here and we are helpful to one another ! It's more the guru side of things... I am wary of any self proclaimed guru that says they completed a shamanic journey to the other side of things. It's just... Too much.

There are orders here for psychotherapists and for psychologists. But even psychologists are not all equal...

I quitted therapy. My psychologist was on vacation all summer, when I came back for my first session, he welcomed me with the wrong name (ok...), then, once we corrected the name thing, he proceeded to tell me he was waiting for me at 11am. I showed him his email that clearly stated 1pm. He started self-pitying, telling me about how he had been sick, that this was an issue for him that he couldn't get rid of. That he was waiting for a couple, and basically inviting me to leave. I told him I wouldn't be back.

The mixed up, it happens..but the self pitying and the forgetting my name? I don't think this guy can help me anymore.

I am so grateful for this board.

Oops, looks like we cross-posted when I edited it.  lol

Riv3rWOlf, you continue to amaze me. Your note to your mom is beautiful in its authenticity and compassion. Your experience is teaching all of us so much about the value of authenticity in the face of dysfunction. I am going to try to anchor to the idea of a firm detached love. I had “another” rough day with my sister that I am still processing and not even ready to post about.

I am sorry to hear about your bad experiences with therapists. As Couscous says,  the majority of people in mental health are well intentioned but many were drawn to it because of their own personal dysfunctional experiences, and there are a lot of bad ones out there. Anytime  a therapist is “telling you what to do” it’s a huge red flag. When I read books that are written by  “guru” therapists that prescribe black/white answers, rather than self exploration, I take it with a grain of salt. The job of a therapist is  to ask the right questions to help us understand our selves and our reactions. I am so lucky to have found an amazing therapist a couple decades ago, who is close in age to me, and who has truly “grown up” with me and my family. I can count on one hand the times he “told me” what I should do. (When he did he was always been right by the way). But he does keep me honest with my self and my values.

Keep looking Riv3rWOlf  as I believe there are good ones who can really help. Couscous glad you found one!

Do you feel an answer is necessary?

Maybe I am too cynical. I would guess your mother knows the difference between a life coach and a licensed therapist or counselor?

"I will see a therapist trained in family systems theory, who has expertise in trauma-based approaches."

Something like that to state what you are willing to do (without JADEing why her choice is wrong).

It reminds me of SD25's health issues. Instead of focusing on what will make her feel better, she gets into arguments with H over details. Then she gets to be the victim in perpetuity.

I just wrote her 10 minutes ago before I saw your answer LnL. I think I ended up going the same way you proposed, but I did expose myself a bit to a backash. I answered her :

"Sadly, Name is not a therapist.

I propose using this tool to find an accredited psychologist or psychotherapist : (link provided).

One trained in complex trauma would work better for both our histories."

I don't even want to do that anymore. What's the point really... But then, I am not going in with hope. Just to assert boundaries face to face with a neutral party as witness.

From my perspective, hiring a good therapist is like hiring any good professional: You have to know what you want which can take experience and time to determine. My last therapist who I saw for many years, was someone who I interviewed with specific questions before my first appointment. I specifically wanted a therapist with a long time marriage and children, who was close to my age. My main concern was hiring a therapist who was emotionally healthy herself/himself. Yes, it is true, many therapists get into the profession to fix their own problems. The good ones either have healthy attachment from childhood or really have worked hard in their own therapy to become healthy individuals. I had a few therapists before I got the one that really helped me who were very damaged by their own dysfunctional childhoods which did not work for me.