Hello and welcome to the family!  Venting sessions are perfectly welcome here and everyone understands your frustrations.  I was where you're at now maybe 6 or 7 years ago feeling the exact same way.  And like you, I couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't keep being the rescurer and the persecutor and the victim depending on what time of the day it was.

Boundaries and consequences are the name of the game, because your kid needs to learn right from wrong.  You can do that lovingly sometimes, but other occasions require a different approach where your needs are bigger than your daughter's. 

For instance, if my daughter threatened my life, I'd dial 9-1-1.  Whether she was serious or not doesn't matter, because there's a lesson to be learned there.  You just don't do that to people (much less the people who are providing for you).

You mentioned things have been worse lately.  What's changed?  It could be things in your life or things in her life.  And it might not be bad changes either, this could just be push-back.

What type of relationship are you in?
 Daughter 21 living at home with me and my boyfriend/her stepfather of 10 years. Divorced from her dad who has no contact with either of us.
 
Who else (if anyone), in child's family, has BPD?
Undiagnosed BPD in father, grandfather, great grandfather
 
What is your child's strongest quality?
 She is brilliant - talented creative smart funny. A rock star under the mental health struggles she is buried under
 
What are the top challenges your child is facing?
 Suicidality, self harm, substance abuse, depression, won’t engage with the world, disordered eating, no accountability, won’t finish high school, or drivers licensing, or work, or do much of anything. Has a small group of friends who provide drugs alcohol and junk food.
 
What do you find most difficult in dealing with your child?
 Lying, lack of self awareness, lack of impact on others, self harm, says she wants to kill me
 
How would you categorize your child? Diagnosed? Undiagnosed?
 Diagnosed. Sees a psychiatrist. On a ton of medications
 
What do you struggle with yourself?
 Conflicting advice, despair, exhaustion,
 
Is anyone in therapy? Child? Parents?
 If so, what types?
 Child goes intermittently
 
What are your goals at bpdfamily.com?
 I was hoping for hope. For answers. Honestly I’m finding reading the posts is making me lose the scrap of hope I had.
 
TAKE THE PLEDGE HERE

Hi first time on the site. I found it after searching for help because my 21DD with BPD ADHD ASD and severe depression has threatened to kill me. This is a new low in our relationship and I’m scared for what this could mean for both of us.

I am told by family and professionals to set more boundaries and consequences. She has a psychiatrist, is on loads of meds, has attended DBT training twice, has started counselling again:

She lives with me and my boyfriend of 10 years who is the most dad she has, in a safe and stable alcohol and drug free home where she has a semi private apartment just for her. We are alcohol and drug free, home bodies. She has other local family supports. We try to prioritize meeting her needs while still living our lives.

Things have been getting steadily worse lately. I’m losing hope and I don’t know what to do. Reading the posts here I can see I have it easier than some but that there is no model for how BPD impacts your loved one or yourself.

This threat to me is shocking. I caught her in a lie, calmly noted it, and it has brought this crisis point on with this new threat to my safety. I am scared to leave her alone, I’m also scared to be alone with her.

I have sacrificed so much, cared for and loved her so much, I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how to move forward. I feel like an utter failure as a parent, nothing I do helps, nothing I do for her will ever be enough. I am exhausted from the years of fighting with her and then fighting for her. I defend her to others, try to help them understand she’s not well, support her and forgive her but now I want to give up, run away, stop existing. I need this not to be my whole life. It comes between me and everyone, my job, my relationship.

I didn’t intend to make this a venting session or dump I’m just all out of hope and I have no idea what to do next. I feel so alone.

I think BPD kids are the biggest challenge because they're the hardest to walk away from.  If it's a spouse, they can become a former spouse and we can move on.  If it's a sibling or another relative, we can limit contact or cut it out completely.  But with kids at any age, we still feel obligated as mom and dad to step in and save the day.

Sometimes I literally cringe when I'm writing to a new member here with a BPD kid, because I remember how I first reacted when I got the right advice from a fantastic psychiatrist.  He made it so clear that there's my problems and my kid's problems...and those two things are rarely the same thing. 

The biggest problem was me trying to save the kid instead of letting her learn the lessons her actions caused.  Deep down, I was the one at fault for so much of the toxic behavior that came my way because that's what I taught...dad can fix anything no matter how impossible it might seem.

My father's favorite saying was, "If you mess with the bull, you get the horns."  Yet somehow, my kid would mess with the bull and I'd end up getting the horns instead.  I had to learn to stop that, to step back and let her deal with the situations she created on her own.  I don't "get the horns" anymore and it makes a very big difference in my life.

Notwendy,
We are continually challenged to not spend too much time attempting to understand the behaviors of disordered people and not allow them to make us feel like we are the crazy ones. We are healing when we focus mostly on our own personal  growth and wellness.

Yes, it still hurts to be abused by your own family, yet the intensity and length of the hurt is much less as I move on more quickly.

Yeah, I'm 100% certain I can't ever go back or have contact. I have a weird rule that once someone hooks up with or has sex with someone after me...I'm disgusted and wouldn't want to even shake their hand again haha I'm weird in that respect. I have no evidence she has, but if I had to bet my life on it I would say with several people...especially since we started having sex like the same week she left her fiancé. How stupid was I.

I will always advocate for peace at work until I can find a promotion at the other location down the street.

Or if she gets fired, I'm unsure how she is able to come into work at 10am-11am every day and not get told anything.

And I dread the day her very sick dad passes away. That could spark an in person attempt from her. No other exes of mine have hovered like this and it's very annoying.

That's a fact. As you're adamant you definitely want no further contact with her then you ironically have to use the BPD 'split her totally black' attitude and keep100% zero contact.

In normal relationships we may be able to still carry on as friends with our ex to some extent, but mental illness is involved here; we may have moved on but they won't, to them it will be 'business as usual' if they think you still want some connection, however tiny.

Keep putting yourself first and enjoy your happy, healthy and non-chaotic life, long may it continue.

I remember a creepy tv show episode - might have been The Twilight Zone - where a guy wants a night of passion with a girl he used to know back in the day but he knows the demon granting his wish is very devious so he takes great care to phrase his wish so he won't be caught out.

Holding up a photo of the girl, he says 'I want her exactly like she is here, same age, same looks'.  He thinks he's covered every angle and the demon grants his wish.

The girl is beautiful, young.. and only 6 inches high.. exactly as she was in the photo

Often, my BPD daughter will call me in crisis.  I ask what's wrong, what happened.  She rattles on about how this friend did something to that friend, and now both friends hate her because they feel like she's playing both sides.  Or whatever it is.

I listen and for the most part, I stay silent.

Finally the question comes- "I don't know what they want from me or how I can fix this because I didn't do anything to either of them and they're both mad at me when I wasn't even involved."

And it's so tempting to give an answer to that- she did this herself by telling each of them exactly what they wanted to hear at the other person's expense.  That she's a lousy, superficial friend who's only in it for herself and she plays off others emotions to feel good about herself.  But that's not what she wants to hear and that's not what actually helps her.

Despite the rant, despite the situation, all my kid wants is for me to listen and help her calm down.  She knows she was wrong and doesn't need me to tell her that she's gone through these exact same patterns her entire life.

So what do I say?  "Calm down, it's going to be okay.  Real friends would not talk to you like that or treat you that way.  Just relax and give this time, it will all work out on its own one way or the other.  Do you want to come over and watch the new Disney movie tonight?"

And I get it, I'm dancing around the problem.  I'm not being heard or validated myself.  But you can't expect that when someone is in a disordered state.  Once my kid calms down and resets mentally, then I can talk to her about anything.  I can't go there until she's in the right mindset though because her "fight or flight" response will kick in.  So I wait, I calm her down, and I let the storm pass.  Then we can have the actual talk.

Anytime you're trying to fix a BPDs problems with logical advice when they're disordered, you've already failed.  They're 100% emotional at that time and need emotional balance.

That is similar to my first experience in a 12 step group to work on my own co-dependent tendencies. I had a sponsor who turned the mirror on me and it was hard to hear but then, I could see that it led to more functional behavior.

Like this group, it's a lay group- and so if someone sees this tendency in you, it's likely because we did it too- so it's not to be critical but to help you make positive changes. In my FOO, enabling BPD mother was considered a positive behavior- and so I had to learn about it too.

It's hard to see because helping people is considered being a good person and we want to be good people. It's easier to see a behavior that isn't- like if we went around stealing and hurting people- that's easy to see as "wrong". However, as you know now, helping too much can be hurting in disguise and now you are learning to see the difference- when helping helps, and when it doesn't. It's not an all or never help decision. In some situations, we still can be helpful but not in others and we need to see the difference. That takes some learning.