BPDFamily.com

I have posted a few times on this site, and the community has been extremely helpful as I work through my “enlightenment”/“lessening of the fog” phase of dealing with my mom’s BPD.

I am finally getting to the time where I will have to go either low or no contact. I have been making all of the preparations to leave and not return. HOWEVER, I am trying to learn how others on this thread have dealt with the blackmail that comes with BPDs trying to reassert control over me. She is starting to realize that her control is failing.

In the last year she has called my job over 125 times at all hours of the night during her rages, to the point that the owner of the company turned off autofowarding because the calls would ring their home. She says her goal is to get me expelled from graduate school and thrown in prison with misrepresentation of facts and deliberate lies.

She’s even called my licensing board to have them investigate me. She says she won’t stop until I “correct my behavior”, which we all know is request that none of us will ever accomplish. So how have you dealt with the blackmail? In my career, these sorts of issues could have me banned from the profession. It’s a “remove first, ask questions later” type of career.

Please let me know. It’s one of the final pieces I need to resolve before I leave.

It sounds like you will need really good documentation and the help of an attorney to get a restraining order for your mother. It is clear she will stop at nothing to get even with you for not doing what she wants.

I agree with Zachira about a lawyer and documentation. What your mother is doing is abusive and dangerous to you. Treat this situation as if she weren't anyone related to you- what she is doing is illegal. She's threatening your ability to get a job.

You are a student and so have some resources to look to. There may be some legal aid available in your area for people on a small budget. If you don't know where to start- start with student health counseling and ask for advice, as they may know.

Do you get your own mail or are you at home. Post offices/UPS stores have personal mail boxes to rent- some can even give you a street address for packages (I think it's UPS stores) - if you are still living at home- have your mail sent to one of these boxes. If you don't have your own bank account in your own name - get one.

Calling your employer like this and threatening your license is seriously destructive to you and this requires a lawyer to intervene. What your mother is doing is extreme and destructive. Please protect yourself by getting a lawyer to advise you.

Hi Aristotle,

I've been wondering about you, and I'm glad to hear you are taking concrete steps to forge a life independent of your controlling and sabotaging mother.  I agree with the previous posters, you might consider getting a restraining order, though that may take some time, money and documentation.

Yet my first thought is, could a random call from an outsider really get someone fired?  It's typical for organizations to receive complaints from the public, and usually there's a process for dealing with them.  If an organization received a complaint from an unknown caller, they would typically try to resolve the issue on the phone, or report it to a superior after obtaining the name and contact details of the caller.  Oftentimes, the complaint is found to be completely baseless, and so nothing is done about it!  Over time, the call could be treated like Spam--routed right to the garbage bin.  If there's a complaint about an employee that might be valid and important, then the organization may decide to investigate.  But again, if the complaint is found to be trivial or baseless, I'm certain the company would side with the employee.  If the employee were fired for such a baseless accusation, then the employee has rights, and he or she could sue the employer for wrongful termination!  Trust me, employers do NOT want to get involved in wrongful termination suits.

But it sounds like you have a heightened sense of fear around what MIGHT happen if your mom calls your employer.  Look, generally speaking, employers want to keep their employees happy.  If you explained the situation to your supervisor or Human Resources--your mother is sick / senile / abusive / lonely and harassing you at all hours to prevent you from working--I bet the employer would be sympathetic to your plight.  Maybe they could work with you on an action plan, like changing your business phone number and instructing the switchboard not to forward any calls from your mother.  Or maybe they won't do anything.  In that case, they might take her call, write down the complaint, and then file it away.  Remember, it's their job to try to ensure their employees can work in a safe and productive environment.  This is not an uncommon issue.

I know you've been feeling trapped by your mom for a long time now, and you truly feel that she has power over you.  But I think you have more power than you believe.  In fact, now that you're exercising some of that power, your mother is becoming more conniving and desperate.  There's a name for that--"extinction burst."  That just means your mom is trying to use her controlling tactics now more than ever, because they worked for her in the past.  She's learned that, "If I call Aristotle's workplace, he'll get nervous and then do whatever I want."  I say, don't let her have that power over you, because you know what?  She doesn't have that power.  Organizations don't fire employees just because they get a baseless call from an unknown outsider, and if they were stupid enough to do that, then you could sue them for wrongful termination and get compensation.  Why would you get compensation?  Because it's wrong to fire employees because of Spam.  So you hold the cards here.  I know it sounds simple and maybe unrealistic, but you know what I'd do?  I'd ignore her calls, and ask my employer to ignore them as well.  I wouldn't acknowledge to my mother that she was making any calls--I wouldn't even ask her to stop calling; I'd just pretend the calls didn't happen, or that I was too busy to notice.  Eventually, she'll stop, because by calling she doesn't get what she wants.

I hope you find the strength and stamina to follow through and make an independent life for yourself.  I'm sorry you are dealing with a mom who doesn't want to see you succeed on your own.  I think that sometimes, moms have a hard time letting go.  But it's time to go, and it's not fair to you to be kept as a slave.

CC43-
I think you make a good point about how much fear is rational or not. It's hard to make sense of why we, as adults, would have so much fear about our BPD mother's power. It's because, even if we are grown adults now, we were once children and our parents had complete power over us. We depended on them for everything.

Admittedly, I still feel fear around my BPD mother. I can rationalize it but fear is the predominant emotion we felt around her growing up. She had considerable power and one way she controlled us was by somehow gaining control of something, or someone we cared about.

You are correct in that, if she senses she's losing power as we grew up and became more independent- she'd exert her power to cause harm to our possessions, or relationships and she has succeeded in causing damage.

She's also made threats that she didn't follow through on- but we don't know if she will or will not act on them, because, we know what she is capable of.

She didn't go so far as to call up my employer to make false statements about me but she did  say things to family members that affected my relationships with them. She also once showed up at my summer job when I was in college in a dissociated rage over something I had nothing to do with but she accused me of it. While this didn't get me fired, it did embarrass and scare me.

As destructive as my BPD mother can be, she hasn't attempted to get me fired or complain to a licensing board. These are potentially damaging. I think they need to be handled as they would if anyone attempted to damage someone's livelihood - for the security and peace of mind for the OP. It may be that we need to have protection in place for our own peace of mind, even if our BPD mother's don't eventually act on their threats, due to our experiences with them.