Yes, you have experience with the concept. While you did Alanon because of your relationship with your former H, and all 12 step groups have the same basic format- some have a different focus. CODA is on enabling in general. ACA goes into family of origin to look at learned behaviors and make changes now. You might want to see what these groups are like for you.

One idea of why your son resists the Kaiser groups is that there's accountabilty with the leader and others in the group, but these are good things. My BPD mother had a wonderful doctor but at one point got angry- perhaps he had boundaries, and then tried another doctor- and that one had boundaries too. So she went back to him. I think all along she knew he was a good doctor.

Kaiser is one of the earliest managed care models,  but now, almost all health care is managed care. From the people I know who are with Kaiser- I see that their health care needs are pretty well covered, even if some options are group options. That your son won't go may not be about Kaiser but his own reasons.

Hey Mom!

It's so hard at first, we want our kids in our lives and it's devestating when they're not.  I went through that a few years back with my non-BPD daughter and it's just as painful.  The difference is that my kid just needed some time and we were able to reconnect naturally.

With my BPD daughter, it's always a very different process.  She explodes, tells me off, disappears for days/weeks and then texts me for gas money out of nowhere.  Then I don't hear from her for six months.

I've realized over the years that these two relationships are certainly not equal.  One is a genuine father/daughter relationship and the other is me catering to the endless needs of my mentally ill daughter.  Either I do what she wants, when she wants or eventually there's serious conflict...and that's not a relationship.  So I stopped fighting for that many years ago.

While I love both my daughters equally, I refuse to fight to be involved with someone who treats me badly.  And by doing that, our relationship has actually improved quite a bit.  I rarely help financially anymore and she rarely asks.  While it's sad, I think it's the best possible option when looking at all the potential choices.  When we do talk, we get along well because I'm not longer in her inner orbit.

For your guilt, I'd say that it is not yours to carry.  You didn't create this situation and you didn't cut your daughter off.  She made adult choices and she's living by those adult choices.  Let her.  That's not a you-thing at all.

Hi Mom,

Many parents here are wracked with guilt, even if they did their absolute best with their children.  I think it's OK to sit with that feeling, but please don't beat yourself up too much.  You probably did your best, but things didn't go as you hoped.  Maybe there were a few things you regret, and hey, that's completely normal, because you're human, not perfect!  I hope you give yourself a little grace.  Why not start by forgiving yourself?

And how about this:  why don't you forgive your daughter for making you feel so miserable?  She's an adult, you did everything in your power to prepare her for the world, and now she's out there.  She needs to find her way, and if that means she cuts of contact with you for a while, so be it.  My guess is that she feels like she's a failure, and she doesn't want to feel the pressure of harsh judgment from you, even if it's entirely imagined.  By keeping her distance, she's avoiding feelings of inferiority, shame and guilt.  That could be why she's extemely jealous of any attention you give to your stepchild--because she thinks the stepchild has "upstaged" and "usurped" her, becoming the "good" child while she's the "evil" one.  The thing is, with BPD, she sees everything in black and white, and she takes everything like a personal affront.  Rather than deal with the truth--she acted in a mean way, she's not doing the work she should be doing, she's lazy/selfish/petulant/irritable/hostile--what she does is weave a victim narrative.  That flips the script and makes everyone else--especially you--the reason for all her troubles.  But here's the thing.  I think she needs some separation from you to realize that you can't possibly be the cause of all her problems.  Because if she's flailing and fighting all the time, when you're not even around, then maybe she'll come to the realization, hey, it's not mom, it's me.  I need to get help because I can't take this anymore, and I can't just blame mom.  Blaming mom (e.g. a terrible, abusive childhood, a childhood memory from over a decade ago) stops "working" for her.  The sooner this realization happens, the better in my opinion.

In the meantime, my advice is, you need to model for your kids what a healthy adult's life looks like.  That means taking care of yourself, your health and finances, doing fun things and enjoying your homelife.  That means letting go of things you can't control, like your BPD daughter's feelings.  That means giving yourself some grace, accepting that things aren't perfect, but that you did the best you could with what you had at the time.  And then when your dear daughter contacts you again, you'll be in a calm, healthy, happy place.

Helpful to hear and thank you for the guidance

  Hello all, this is my first post. I wish I had found this community sooner! My adult daughter (diagnosed twice by two different docs) lives in a different city and we were together last week for a family trip. The last three trips have included massive blowouts/meltdowns and this was no exception. She wanted me to admit to spanking her regularly as a child (I did not). We were able to get past this and when I returned home I ordered a copy of The Essential Family Guide to BPD through our family Amazon account. For that she really lost it and has since told her siblings she's going no contact with me. I should also note that my youngest is graduating high school in a couple of weeks and believe this is a strong motivational factor for this extreme behavior. I am not sure how she'll actually follow through with this, but it's really stressing out my younger kid who is having to step in as something of a replacement for me in the relationship. Not to mention it's ruining what is supposed to be a happy occasion, which is usually the case for us with the older kid. Any advice is welcome. I've done my best to validate her feelings and leave the door open, also offered to do counseling together. The problem is she's never wrong and therapy never works (her belief, not mine).

So I am fairly new here and have only posted a couple of times but everyone's feedback and experiences really helped me. I have the feeling of so much guilt lately, my 22 year old daughter has BPD and she has cut me out of her life about 3 months ago. I live with my fiance and he has an 18 year old daughter who absolutely adores me and she no longer has a relationship with her mother and considers me more of a mother. The thing is I get this feeling in my stomach whenever we are doing something and I can't enjoy myself because I feel guilty like I am replacing my daughter. My daughter used to get along really well with my fiances kids in the beginning but now has no use for them. I am always blaming myself for my daughter and always going through of what I could have done differently. 
My step daughter has asked me if I would like to go out shopping for a girls day sometime and I instantly had knots in my stomach from the guilt. I just don't know how to work through this I love my daughter so much and I wish I could go back and do something different for her...what I have no idea. I have a son as well who is 20 years old and we have an amazing relationship, I just don't know how 2 kids raised the same can be so different.
This guilt is going to put me over the edge, I cry almost every day thinking of how she must feel thinking I have let her down. I am willing to try anything to work through this guilt.

Those demands are just that, demands.  One of the facets of BPD is the FOG (Fear, Obligation, Guilt).  You need to balance your own welfare and your own wishes as to what you want to do with things you own, even if inherited, versus his predictable lack of appreciation.

Even if you treat him overly-fair and gift him whatever to appease him, he will still be the same problem person.  Knowing that, then make the decisions you wish to make, not what he wishes.  Yes, sadly, that's the way it is.

NotWendy,
Your second paragraph starting with In a nutshell is something I can remember easily and is a truth I can hold onto as I move forward.  I appreciate your input about Kaiser being an option- my son isn't left w/o resources. I was an Alanon member regularly for over a decade. I was greatly helped and grew as my first marriage was with an alcoholic np/bpd.
I'm now walking forward with my son and learning not to drift along with old habits and ingrained ways. I'll do it, a step at a time. 

It's interesting that he states he's NC with you but copies you on emails to the therapist which usually would be confidential.

He's communicating with you.

This is not to excuse his behavior- or for you to not have boundaries with him. For your own well being, it's important that you don't get involved in his emotional drama. You can enjoy your family and protect your circle of "normality".

However, it may help to see his behavior as not being about you, or anything you have done, but his own emotions and his own shaky sense of self. This way it doesn't affect you emotionally as much (I think we always have feelings about a family member but it's more about him than you).

Even though their behavior is dysfunctional and even hurtful, pwBPD want what other people want and for my mother - how people perceived her was important to her. One of the unspoken family "rules" was to not speak about BPD mother's behavior and to maintain the impression that she was competent and "normal".

She wanted what every other woman her age wants- to have her grandchildren show up for her and to have people see her as a grandmother. However, visits to her were not always pleasant- and there could be drama. It wasn't something we'd choose to do as a family vacation. We did visit her more than any other family member over the years, but also I had boundaries to protect my children too.

We hadn't visited my father's family in their area. This was a first time for us. A part of the visit was that it was in an area we wanted to visit as a vacation. In addition to seeing family- we did activities, saw sights. There wasn't a way to rationally explain this to her.

For my BPD mother, what she felt was that we were making an effort to visit my father's family and not her and she wanted us to do it for her. However, relationships are formed over years, and we were close with my father's family, and I think this visit triggered a lot of emotions for her. We had no intention of hurting her but due to her own feelings she felt it was.

Shame is a difficult emotion for anyone and especially for someone with BPD.  For your brother, I think he feels a lot of shame for not having what is a common situation for men his age- a job, a stable family. He wants what peers his age want but his BPD has made achieving that difficult. That's not your fault or anyone else's fault. So when he sees you with your family, and sees you achieving- it is hard for him to deal with that emotionally.

It's possible that his wanting more material possessions like your house is his way of feeling "equal" to you, however, a house won't fix his feelings. Neither would it help for you to not enjoy or protect your family from dysfunction or try to "fix" your brother by sacrificing any of that. Even if you did, it wouldn't be effective. Sadly- this is their own emotional issues. I hope though that seeing it this way will help you to feel his behavior less personally.

Wow, it hasn't even been a month since this last post...it feels like it has been 6 months! LOL!  About 2 weeks ago, after all sorts of drama, my uBPDh agreed to stay at our house the nights before I work (he had switched to his good mood), since our kids literally refuse to go to his place (he carried them out kicking and crying the time before and then apparently yelled at them in the car because they were making him "look like a bad dad").  He told me that he wanted to help me out with all of the house work and running around of the kids.  I took that with a grain of salt and said that would be great.  The second day of helping me run the kids around, he came with me to pick my S (14) and his best friend up from a sports training session.  He immediately switched to not speaking to me and when we got home, walked around the house talking to his sister on the phone, and while they speak a different language so I couldn't understand exactly what they were saying, I could understand him saying that I had cheated on him "again", blah blah blah...with my son's coach.  I left it alone and continued on with my night.  The next day, out of no where, he switches into a good mood and asks me if its ok if he spends more time at the house, even when I don't have work.  I agree, as the kids are on summer break and thus need more care than when they were in school...our babysitter got an internship so had to stop working for us and I like having him around when he is in a good mood.  He tells me he is truly going to help out and packs a bunch of clothes, etc for the house.  Things go great, no issues up until now outside of him getting upset that I had put items that needed to go to Good Will in my stepdaughter's room, as she hasn't lived in our house for over 2 years...and he was not happy about that!  But he got over it quick and returned to baseline.  I was impressed with him...until I bring my car in for an oil change and learn that it needs over $3000 of repairs, which actually wasn't the issue.  The issue was when we were going to pick up my car, we drive past the place with my SD (14) had drivers ed class.  She had taken her permit test that day and I asked him how it went.  She is very smart, etc, so I have no doubt that she passed, but figured it would be nice of me to ask, since he often says that I don't care about her.  He got a little snippy with me and told me that her class hadn't ended yet, to which I told him ok, I think it has (my son took the same class a couple of months ago) but ok.  He went silent and then a couple of minutes later told me that I was very fidgety and why couldn't I stop moving, what was I nervous about.  I ignored him.  He has been in his not nice mood ever since, but not horrible, just pretty much ignoring me, giving me "the eye", not doing anything around the house, backing out last minute on driving my kids places so I have to figure out other rides for them, changing plans that we agreed upon, etc.  Does anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with this.  I am actually ok with him and how he is acting.  I am aware that I could probably switch his mood by showing affection, etc, but have decided to follow my emotions this time, not his, so have not done so.  The part that I struggle with is him backing out on agreements that we made, when I said to him when they were made that these agreements need to be ok with him at ALL times, whether he is talking to me or not, etc.  To which he agreed!  BUT...he is not following this.  I understand that I have to do what I have to do until he switches back.  Once he does, what do I do?  One agreement we made was that I would start to drive one of his cars, since my car is nice but older and is costing us more in repair and he has 2 cars.  Every time he gets to this mood, he tells me that he needs to "clean his car", etc, so I am not able to follow what we had agree upon.  Which makes me want to just drive my car and not follow what both of us agreed was best for our family financially.  Same with house work...and same with driving my kids.  When he switches back, do I just continue on like we had never had these agreements?  Do I point out how he forces these agreements to change when he switches?  Thanks!