BPDFamily.com

Hi there,
It has been a while since I have posted. I am reaching out to others who may be dealing with a BPD parent who is now elderly. I may be mistaken but it seems as though the BPD symptoms are exacerbated by the natural cognitive decline of age. I am the only child of four who is actively involved with my elderly mother. This is a challenge at the best of times but now that she is older it has become twice as difficult. I feel horribly guilty for not wanting to make the effort to see my mom and at the same time I want to make sure she feels loved and valued. I find it difficult, even after all these years, to let go of my expectations that she will actually be a nurturing and loving mother. I guess more than anything I am in need of support from others who may be experiencing the same issue.
Thank you!

I've gone through this. My mom would alternate between nice and accusing me of horrible crimes, even calling the cops on me once and saying terrible things to me on front of another cop. She'd later forget these events. It seemed to get worse with cognitive decline. I had to eventually get Adult Protective Services involved both to help her and as a protective boundary for me.

You know, it’s not actually our role, even as adult children, to make sure our parents feel loved and valued. In fact, that’s actually a role-reversal, so I really encourage you to make a conscious effort let go of your feelings of guilt for not being willing to do this for your mother any longer.

My MIL recently stepped in to help care for an elderly neighbor, and this included helping to organize her funeral. There were no adult children in the picture for some reason, although I believe she did have grown children. This was really eye-opening for me and made me realize that if our parents are too abusive for us to be able to provide caregiving in their old-age, someone else surely will be willing to step in, and as such, there really is no need for us to feel guilt. At the end of the day, nobody should get to have their cake and eat too, although sadly it does seem to be the case that abusive parents often do…

It sounds like out of all your siblings, you were “assigned” the role of caretaker, and maybe this is no longer a role you’re willing to play. Perhaps it would even be worth experimenting with stepping back from this role a bit, and to start asking your siblings to help carry the load.

My step-grandmother (uBPD/NPD) blocked every effort on my mother's part to help and support through my grandad's final years (Alzheimers). It was painful and frustrating, as my mom was an only child and wanted to help. Turns out my step-grandmother, who had never formally adopted my mother, had my grandad's will changed and witnessed by a family friend, in spite of his mental condition. My mother did not contest, because she was ready to be finished of what felt like a heavy burden. My step-grandmother died with her friend as the only support. No relative of hers was willing to make end-of-life decisions, so she lingered in hospital for 5-6 weeks. Mom had no legal status.

It is so, so difficult to navigate eldercare, even if the elder isn't personality disordered. My H and I moved my mom into our retirement house for three years before she was hospitaluzed, in rehab, then home health and eventually home hospice. She had a few BPD traits and could be difficult, but we managed. Some members on this board have extreme elder care challenges.

Are you taking care of yourself? Are you in therapy to help with your own support?

I absolutely concur.  Aging comes with the stress of body changes in eyesight, hearing, strength, advancing chronic conditions and other challenges including such things as the loss of a spouse, loss of driver's license, loss of ability to live alone.  pwBPD don't have emotional regulation skills, and don't really have the capacity to manage change or stress, so they are less equipped than most to age with grace. And when cognitive changes are thrown into the mix, everything spins faster (and downward in my experience). Then they have to dump all their toxic feelings onto someone else.

Like you, many of us feel the guilt you speak of.  Often we were groomed by our parent to be their caretaker.  On top of this, there are social and cultural expectations to care for an elder parent, and we get "leading questions" all the time which imply expectations to do more.  Eg. "Does your mother live with you?"  I struggle because I don't want to disappoint anyone, including myself.  But if we take time to really stop and think about it, would we look after any person who treated us abusively if it wasn't our professional role (doctor, nurse etc) and if they weren't our mother?  The problem is people don't know or can't understand our experience because they haven't lived it.  Unless you've lived it, you can't "get it". There's a large gap between our lived experience, and what most people see as acceptable levels of elder care for a parent.  In truth we want to do more, or wish we could. But we can't because they treat us badly and are capable of disrupting our autonomy to live our own lives, not to mention our "happiness" levels. To be more blunt, they are capable of destroying us in different kinds of ways.  

In another kind of way, it hurts me that I can't be the kind of daughter I want to be for my mother.  To say it's disappointing is trite on paper.  It's a very deep and shattering kind of disappointment.  I would be honoured to be a caretaker for a mom who had reasonable expectations and who valued and appreciated me for who I am.  It could be a truly special time to give that gift of support.

I hear Couscous' point that it's not our job to make our mom feel loved and valued.  But like you, I also want my mom to feel loved and valued.  I think it's because we still care about them, but it's a very very complicated love, and it comes with high risk, and low reward.  It's a painful love.  It's not reciprocal.  It's not safe. It's not respectful or mutual, and for all these reasons, it doesn't feel healthy.  

We're all different, but until I finally accepted my mom as she is, and let go of my expectations, I was swimming in frustration and chronic distress.  When I finally let go of my expectations, it let me start moving forward.  I actually came out of retirement to go back to work to give myself separation from my mom.  She went nuclear.  It hasn't been a smooth road since then on many fronts, but I don't feel I had a choice. 

I am sending you buckets and barrels of support my friend.  It's a big challenge to navigate.  But you're not alone.  You've got company and compassion here, and there's lots of knowledge, experience, caring, and support on this board.

This is how I feel.

My mom is on the younger end of what is considered elderly.  I once considered her being with me if she is ever unable to care for herself but I have accepted that I just do not want to do it and since I spent so much time in reversed roles with her, I am not allowing her to take the years of my life that will coincide with my children being adults and on their own.

It is a very sad and harsh reality but our parents will eat us alive if we allow it. I am not willing to take that chance.

My mother with BPD is deceased. I would very much like to have taken care of her in her old age when she needed help if she were not the kind of person she was. I missed having a loving mother and wanting to be there to repay the love I would have had if my mother had been a healthy mother. Take care of yourself and do what you feel comfortable doing for your mother.

Methuen says it so well, I agree with this. It's a special kind of disappointment, I think along the lines of our wishes all along, since childhood, for the kind of mother we so wished we could have, and for them to see us as the daughter we wish to be. For them, their perception is shaped by their difficult emotions.

I also wish my mother could have some happiness in her elder years and that I could relate to her in a way that comforts her, but my efforts to do so fail due to her own emotional distress. I can't really find the words for how it feels to see her distress, wish better for her, and be completely powerless to change her thinking and her feelings.

Although all her family members have tried to be caring to her, she can't perceive it from her victim perspective. Yet proximity to her also includes being the recipient of her verbal and emotional abuse- and so, I keep a distance from her which reinforces that perspective.



 

My uBPD mother, long dead, was the typical BPD, triangulating the siblings against each other.  Her children cared for her in the last year of her life.  In the last months of her life (she was a widow), she wept over how cruelly she treated our father.   She knew she was deliberately mean to him.  She had mild dementia, but lucid enough to recall she was cruel to a very kind, loving man.  My siblings and I are permanently emotionally damaged due to the way she raised all of us.

I sometimes wonder if any of my siblings will step up if my mother's health declines. We are triangulated as well. I have traditionally been the parentified one, happily giving up that role recently.

I believe they are fully aware of how they mistreat others. That's why they misbehave and project their shame onto their children. Science says they forget. I am not sure how much of that I believe.

Oh yeah, my mother is very aware and has told me outright that she's knows what she's doing is wrong, but that she just couldn't help it. I think she told me this in order to show me how much power she has to turn family members against me, and to threaten me that if I didn't get back in line, her slander would continue.

My husband's ex-wife (uBPD/NPD) said to him at one point...

"I know what I'm doing is wrong, and I know it hurts you, but it's what I want to do, so I'm doing it."

Smh. They know!

My mom once told me she can do what she wants to do, and has justified quite a few bits of her wrongdoing with no remorse. It's unbelievable.

My mother has never acknowledged how cruel she can be.  

I think I would fall over if she ever did.  I do not believe she has the capacity.  

Knowledge is power, and I just don’t ever see her giving me the knowledge that she is aware of how cruel and hurtful she has been.

It is remarkable that some of your pwBPD have acknowledged this.  But I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate it doesn’t help.  In a way it could be worse because once you know they have awareness, but keep doing it anyways - well I just think that could be even worse.

I’m so sorry.