With my 27 year old BPD daughter, we don't know what the catalyst was.  My ex wife (likely BPD but diagnosed major depressive) showed the same traits and so did many of my ex's closest relatives (brothers, her mom, her grandpa).  Little is known how much genetics come into play, but I clearly saw a pattern on my in-laws side.

Anyway, back to my kid.  She started acting out around 5 or 6, very big mood swings, refused to apologize, bullied her sister fiercely, etc.  If you'd punish her, then she would do everything she could to punish everyone else too.  Breaking things in the house, hurting our pets, running away, spreading lies, etc.

We kept having therapists at school say she was manipulative, but clearly super smart and missing her potential.  She scored in the top .1% in the nation for math in 6th grade, yet she was had a D in 6th grade math.  Make that make sense.  Her score was the best in the history of the state yet she was close to repeating 6th grade.  Everyone was sort of baffled.

Around 12, she was getting more violent and more out of control.  During one of her manic episodes, I screamed at her and she suddenly got quiet and went to her room.  And we thought, "OMG, something got through to her."  So that became the norm, when she'd be out of control, I'd yell and she'd back down.  But before you knew it, I was always yelling and she started yelling back...not just at me.  She'd scream at her mom, threaten her friends and teachers, and it truly became a nightmate.

By the way, I was comletely wrong for yelling all the time.  When nothing else worked and that did, I went with it.  But I now believe that my aggression drove her aggression.  A lot of that is 100% my fault because she was learning all the wrong lessons in a house that was complete chaos.

By 19, we kicked her out.  She returned home briefly at 21 and 22, but quickly fell into old patterns.  She couldn't hold a job, couldn't keep friends for very long, and these patterns just kept repeating.  But at 23, she had basically a mental breakdown and took therapy seriously for the first time.  A lot changed in the next year and she's one of the "success stories."

She's not cured, not always mentally stable, but she's worked about 75% of it all out and is now a productive citizen.  She has a pretty good career and lots of potential, but she still crosses boundaries far too often and gets super close to the wrong types of people.  If she could figure that part out, I think she'd be closer to 90-95% "cured".  But the friends continually bring her down.

I think inner circles play such a crucial role in BPD people's lives; at an early age and throughout their lives.  My kid and i get each other now and our relationship is pretty good, but at the same time I don't try to influence her life in any way.  If she asks for advice, I give it.  Otherwise I keep silent and stick to the small talk that works for us.  It's not a perfect relationship by any means but I think it's the best it can possibly be.

I hope your post about your son helps others but also helps you, because I hope you can arrive at some self forgiveness. Some of the issues you mentioned were beyond your control. You didn't cause them.

While there is a genetic component to mental illness, it's not always a straightforward one, like hair color, or blood type. It could be many genes, a genetic susceptibility or something we don't understand yet. That your son's father has mental ilness does indicate a genetic possibility- but you have no control over what genes your son has.

You made the best choice of child care you knew. It was impossible to predict that your child faced that trauma. It's not good for a child to sequester them from any other people. Kids will go to school, to friends' houses. Most people are decent people. We just can't predict all the time.

As adults, while it is helpful to explore family of origin issues for understanding, adults have to work on their own issues and any childhood trauma in therapy themselves. To do nothing to change and just blame parents isn't helpful. At 45, your son's best chance at his own emotional health is to make use of the therapy resources he has. Compromising yourself after retirement is detrimental to you and won't help your son.

Pw BPD may tend to see themselves through a victim perspective and blame others, so forgiveness may not come from your son, if he's not able to give that. I hope you can give this to yourself and be OK with taking care of yourself now and conserving your financial resources.

I just re-read that entire post and honestly, he was a young guy that processed things in a very healthy way.  Better than most of us.

First, let me say welcome to the family.  Every single one of us arrived under the same circumstances that you found this site, so know that it's okay to not be okay.  We've all been there and had no idea where to turn.  It doesn't make any sense, because mental illness doesn't make sense.

I'll echo what Forever said, there's not a perfect person on this planet.  We all make mistakes, and we all mess up.  That's not what should define us though.  If you love someone, you forgive them and work through it together.

Let's dive into your post.  She's pulling and pushing, she can't make up her mind, and she says contradictory things all the time.  What's true and what's not?

Well, it's all true IN THE MOMENT.  Think about hitting your finger with a hammer.  It feels like the world is ending, the pain is extraordinary, yet ten minutes later most people have completely recovered from it.  BPD is a lot like that because the person's emotions are all over the place when they're unstable and they're lashing out due to emotional pain.

She loves you- that's true.  She hates you- that's true.  She's just being fully transparent in the moment depending on her feelings.  And feelings constantly change, so what she said 10 seconds ago could be a lie right now when she's in a highly emotional state.  Yet it was true when she actually said it.

Does that help or make things more confusing?

Let's move on.  What can you do?  That's the million dollar question.  You mentioned that she's living with your parents, which has to be awkward at the moment.  Will that change in the near future?  Because it would be very difficult to go no contact while also having a relationship with your parents.

Here's what would be helpful for you to learn.  If she's screaming or depressed or super excited or anything in-between, it's because her feelings are out of balance.  When you see this, it is not the time to talk about life decisions.  You can ask her if she wants to grab lunch or go see a movie when she's unbalanced, but you can't ask her to start dating again.  Make sense?  You save the "real" talks for when she's neither high or low, because that's when she's thinking more with logic and less with her emotions.

Second, when she's disordered (another way to say not her normal self), you're there to help her through the moment and get back to her normal baseline.  If she's sad, cheer her up.  If she's angry, calm her down.  This sounds ridiculous at first but you'd be amazed at what a difference it makes. 

For instance, if she accuses you of something that's not even close to being true, the natural reaction would be to defend yourself, to set things straight, to argue and demand an apology.  But for a BPD person, they're just releasing pent-up emotional energy and they aren't truly thinking about anything that's said.  That's why you don't fight back, you don't take it personal.  If she's mad, help her calm down.

If you want to give it one more try, then you must learn to communicate in a different way.  You must understand where her feelings and confusing words come from- it's mental illness and nothing more.  She's sick, she's unstable, and if you love her then you'll learn to understand what is actually going on within her mind.  It's heartbreaking, to be honest, and I can't imagine living my life with those types of destructive circular thought patterns.

Of course you're not perfect.  Neither am I.  Neither is anyone.  Yet there is a difference between people with BPD traits (pwBPD) and us... a certain level of distorted thinking - mental illness if you will - versus reasonably normal people.


A pattern we typically see is the other has an unreasonable perception of close relationships and so it starts with an idolization phase.  But like everything new, everyday reality sets in and life isn't as brilliant anymore and the other's moods and feelings overreact, going from extreme highs to dire lows.  It's an endless cycle of ups and downs.  Those extremes are not normal.

It can impact us too. Picture getting on a new roller coaster for the first time.  Rushing up and down the track is so exhilarating.  The first time.  But the second time is ever so slightly less.  And each additional ride gradually becomes a little more normal, little by little.  That's life.  Our reactions and impressions don't remain at the same highs as the first time.  That's how we are made.

Sometimes, too, we can become queasy on roller coasters with all the ups and downs and twists and turns.  In such cases we need to get off at the next return to the station, take a breather and recover our equilibrium... perhaps even reassess when and if to return.

As for your ex, real help for her would be for her to start meaningful therapy sessions to diligently apply the counsel in her life, perceptions and behavior.  BPD is a disorder of close emotional relationships.  She can't really listen to you due to her perception of the past baggage of the relationship.  A therapist or counselor knows to build a professional relationship of trust rather than an emotional one.

I am bumping this because I need help.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=3060772.0

This post was very similar honestly. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could communicate to her and not convince her to come back but find a way to have positive dialogue?

yes.

but that isnt an inherently good or bad thing. it just tells you that detachment is ongoing.

Hi there,

I have triplet nieces and a nephew who just turned 13, and their divorced dad is a highly dysfunctional, long-term unemployed, undiagnosed NPD.  He is highly combative, toxic, narcissistic and totally unreliable.

I don't have experience with parental controls on devices, so I'm sorry I can't really help you there.  However, I caution against giving any child unfettered access to phones.  I've seen what it has done to my stepchildren, especially in the teen years.  Basically they were addicted to their phones, and they were up most nights attached to their screens.  They were anxious and lost sleep, and they didn't function as well as they might have in the daytime.  I think that two of the kids lost some IQ points, because the consumption of pointless TikTok videos and video games crowded out other activities, such as reading, spending time with friends in person, getting summer jobs, etc.  Basically, they were busy watching other people do stuff on screens instead of doing stuff themselves.  I think the phones robbed them of all sorts of growing-up experiences.  So by college age, they were NOT ready for college.  They all struggled.  I think two of the stepkids fell maybe 2-3 years behind, emotionally, intellectually and socially, and yet they caught up by age 25 or so.  My BPD stepkid fell around 8-10 years behind in my opinion.  Part of the reason was, because the phones are so entertaining, that she spent around five years in her bedroom consuming social media, while not going to school, working a job, volunteering, spending time with peers, let alone helping around the house or even engaging in daily conversation.  Having said that, her BPD behavior and substance use disorder also set her back significantly.  I think if she hadn't had access to a phone, she wouldn't have languished for so long in her bedroom, and she would have gotten help earlier.  And at the end of the period of self-imposed prison, she wouldn't have had such a nasty hit to her self-esteem when she finally came out of her bedroom.  Alas, by the time she did that, all her peers had long moved on . . . graduating, getting jobs, some even getting married.  Since I'm not her mom (just a stepmom), I wasn't allowed to intervene per her dad.  But if she were my kid, I would have insisted that she pay for her own phone--because she'd learn she would have to work to earn privileges, and she'd get out of the house sometimes and have a more normal routine.  When her addictions were so bad that she dropped out or got kicked out of school, then I would have turned off wifi at nighttime, and/or confiscated the phone until her grades came up.

Anyway, onto the 13-year-old triplets in my family.  Their NPD dad wants them to have Iphones so he can reach them.  But in practice, all he wants is to play phone video games with his son.  He doesn't really care about his daughters and barely talks to them anyway.  A huge problem is that NPD dad stays up all night playing video games and sleeps most of the day.  That means he wants to be texting his son and playing online games with him at night, when he should be sleeping, especially during the school year.  NPD dad does NOT abide by any rules, and he does NOT consider his son's welfare at all, nor the impact of not paying attention to his daughters.  So my sister has not allowed her kids to have their own phones, and she also hasn't allowed them to open their own email accounts, either, save for the school email system.  The triplets have access to the internet through their school computers, which had been problematic as well, until the schools "locked down" websites that were distracting the students.  You see, some lessons were done via YouTube, which is highly addictive for the kids.  Anyway, whenever the triplets have screen time, they'll disappear in their rooms to consume YouTube and ignore everything else.  To deal with that, my sister uses parental controls and allows narrow windows of screen time for her kids, after homework has been done.  She feels she has to do this to protect their childhood.  There is a lot of emotional energy expended (begging, debating, arguing, tantrums) around screen time in their home, but I think the kids have gotten used to the routine for the most part, basically a half hour per day.  (When they were 11 and 12, to deal with constant nagging and tantrums about screens in their prior home, my sister decided to discontinue internet and TV service.  Any online homework was completed at school or on the public library's internet.)  Her house rule for personal phones is this:  If dad buys them a phone, that's his perogative as a parent, but the phones stay at his house.  Mom is not buying her kids phones.  If the kids want phones at Mom's house when they are older, then they have to work to earn them, and they have to pay for their own plan.  She says they have talked about this, and the kids agree, because even they know that the phones are too addictive!  Anyway, when they go to dad's house (which is rare, as he's so dysfunctional), they basically spend their time binging with screens.  Dad likes it that way, because the kids are quiet, and he can sleep during the day.  Even the kids admit that though they liked having the phone time, they end up feeling a bit sick and out of sorts afterwards, and they notice that Dad didn't really interact with them at all.  Unfortunately, Dad is not very protective of the kids, and they have seen things like porn on screens at his home.  I'm not sure what can be done about that, short of restricting parenting time.

Anyway, when screen time is limited, then life for kids really opens up.  They have time for hobbies, boy scouts, tinkering, riding bikes, play dates, sports, etc.  They are tired at bedtime and sleep all night, without a screen to disrupt their rest.  They actually speak to adults and are present during mealtimes.

You might wonder, well what if my kid needs to make a call?  What about emergencies?  At home, they have a landline.  Mom has an Iphone to consult onine scheduling and other information related to activities on the go.  If the kids are outside the home, there's always a parent, teacher or bus driver nearby to make a call if necessary.  Just the other day, my 13-year-old niece needed to take an Uber from home to her ballet class, because mom was at work.  Mom used the woman-only driver Uber app on her phone to schedule a pick-up for her daughter at the specified time outside her house.  In other words, the teen didn't need a Iphone to get her ride.  (In the old days, when I was her age, I would have called a taxi service from the home phone, but the Uber app is cooler because Mom can moniter the trip from work).  Now I'm sure Mom and her teen were nervous about this, but my niece really, really wanted to participate in the summer ballet program, and it just wasn't possible for her mom to drive her there while she was at work.  The Uber solution has worked well, and it has been the same lady driver every day.  My niece is responsible and motivated, and she's waiting by the door to catch her ride on time every day.  No phone is even necessary for that.

I don't know if my sister will be able to enforce her rules with the triplets regarding screens as they get older.  My guess is that she will, because she has their best interests at heart.  I wonder if parents are coming around to this view, as phone time is increasingly restricted at schools.  I just can't even imagine making a kid responsible for carrying around a multi-hundred dollar miniature computer everywhere.  It's bound to be lost, broken or stolen in my opinion.  I'd advise, wait as long as you can before giving your kid his own phone.  I'd say make them work for it, too.  And if grades suffer or he quits his activities, take that phone away.  Take the phone away at nighttime too; if your teen needs an alarm, use an old-fashioned one.  Your kid is still a kid, and I'd say, don't let a personal phone rob him of childhood, through constant distraction, or worse, online bullying and/or predators.

I know that's probably a drastic view, but I really think that the convenience and pseudo-"safety" of a phone don't outweigh the very real drawbacks.

What type of relationship are you in?
I am a mom to 8, and our udBPD son is 18 years old. 
 
Who else (if anyone), in child's family, has BPD?
I don’t know, I have wondered.
 
What is your child's strongest quality?
 My  son has a knack for mechanics, he can be kind, and mannerly. He can also be athletic. He loves his extended family a lot.
 
What are the top challenges your child is facing?
 Aside from the BPD, he is depressive, oppositional and defiant. He is also addicted to video games and very immature. He did not graduate high school because he was too busy playing games.
 
What do you find most difficult in dealing with your child?
 His splits, and rage, especially since it is towards me. Immaturity, lack of motivation, and negativity.
 
How would you categorize your child? Diagnosed? Undiagnosed?
 Undiagnosed
 
What do you struggle with yourself?
 Currently I struggle with deflecting his hate and rage against me. Setting hard boundaries and following through. I have also really struggled in trying to keep this all in believing it was not as bad as it was and I felt embarrassed.
 
Is anyone in therapy? Child? Parents?
 If so, what types?
 No, we have done therapy off and on. We need to get that going again with my myself and the siblings that are still with us.
 
What are your goals at bpdfamily.com?
 To of course get support and help. We need resources and guidance, insurance permitting. I don’t want to feel alone anymore in this.
 
TAKE THE PLEDGE HERE 

Let me ask- would your husband consider active therapy if given an ultimatum?  Would he consider marriage counseling?  For your health, something has to change and he will likely be resistant to it.  You'll have to initiate that change though to drive the conversations.

You all are the only people I can think of to help me think through this. It’s been a long time since I’ve written on the boards, I don’t even remember my old username. Update: Current status, divorced, ex-husband uBPD/NPD, our only child, a son recently turned 13. Son and I lived with protection orders against husband from 2018, long custody battle, legal to include criminal case he didn’t go to prison for, and I had sole custody, until the judge decided to “make up for lost parenting time”, and sent son to live with his father, at age 10. Father has done A LOT to retaliate, along the lines of limiting son’s conversations with me, via coercive control. It’s been rough, but I’m ok, son seems ok enough.

Here’s where I am: son comes to me for summer vacations and every other Christmas /Thanksgiving, and we share custody a long distance, it requires unaccompanied minor plane tickets.

My son is here for the summer! He turned 13 this past spring. I have always provided him with a Verizon Gizmo watch, and a TracFone, so that he can call for help if he’s in trouble. Dad can’t turn off the Gizmo and has no access to parental controls to turn it off. He can take it from him, and son would have to choose to tell if bad things are happening. So far, he has not disclosed anything, he’s probably protecting his father, but, I want to hope for the best and not assume the worst.

I promised my son an iPhone for his birthday, and with that comes, Apple Family Sharing. I’m the account manager. But son is 13 and *could* remove himself from the family in Apple, Apple allows that at age 13.

Here’s where I need wisdom for anyone who has lived this controlling, manipulative coparenting meanness.
While I have my son and the new iPhone I just bought him here for the summer,  what settings, apps, etc. does anyone know of to front load me with discernment and wisdom? I sense there could be trouble on the horizon, and I can feel that I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t want to find out the hard way.

Can anyone give me a heads up, from experience? What could go wrong, and how could I possibly prevent whatever that is?

Thanks!!