What's it like to be the "golden child"?

[isshebpd]

It seems like most people here, like me, are the scapegoat or ignored child.

Are there any "golden children" here? What's it like?

My brother is the "golden child" and he seems the most messed-up of my Mom's three children.

[DogDancer]

That is a great question, issheBPD.

I've walked up to wondering it myself. Now that I see that question in writing, I'm surprised in a way that I haven't been *more* curious about it. Maybe it's because regardless of the side of the coin you've been painted onto, what a con job it all is. On some level, maybe, I wouldn't want to have to come to the realization that someone mentally ill was pumping smoke up my... .  you know... .  while treating other family members like dirt. I have to wonder what sort of guilt or even FOG might lurk within. My golden-child middle brother is certainly the one of us most in denial. He tends to live in a somewhat black and white world, too. However, he's too smart not to know on some level... .  

I'd like to know, too. 

Peace and continued healing,

DogDancer

[GustheDog]

I have an NPD father, and one younger brother (we're 27 and 22, respectively).

Our father's abuse, I would guess, contributed to me developing OCD/perfectionistic/altruistic-narcissism traits.  My younger brother has a lot of HPD traits.

Interestingly, though, there's no real "golden child."  It just depends what's going on in the family at any given time.  I'm pretty accomplished educationally/professionally, and my brother, well, isn't.  So for a while I was "golden" because I was achieving.  But I no longer take my dad's ___, and when we feud, I get painted pretty black.  My brother, on the other hand, is (obviously) an extreme extrovert and super chatty.  He's also the biggest bull___ter and ___kisser on the planet, whereas I'm "difficult" and "exhausting."

I've been NC with my dad for about 6 months now, because he sucks, so I'm guessing lil' bro is now the golden child.

[DogDancer]

Hiya GustheDog,

I don't know 'bout you, but i'd sure rather be you than your bro, regardless of who is being painted the gold color and for how long and when. And any time someone with N/BPD (at least the several of either that I've known) says you're "difficult" and "challenging," it means "you're right, I'm wrong, and i can't handle this truth." I'd say that's high praise after all. Not a lot of comfort there, but maybe enough... .  

I think most of us would just love to be loved for who we are by our disordered parents, without the "golden" v. "scapegoat" splitting -- the REAL reason, I think, that I've not spent a lot of time wondering about what it would be like to be split as golden. Yes, loved fully and totally. Even if for just a day. Yet, without their commitment to getting healthy, we are left with changing ourselves, getting healthy with or without them. Do you think you will continue the no contact? What else can you do to heal, in addition to participating here?

Peace and continued healing for us all,

DogDancer 

[stillthere]

It's like living in a cozy small town, but the roads are on fire everywhere he walks and every time she thinks he's walking to the town exit, she blows a wall of smoke and fire everywhere that it's nearly impossible to get through. She does this by saying that the ways he's trying to escape are wrong, trying to project what she's done wrong during her lifetime onto him, and criticizing him for every little thing, like farting.

My sister saw me as the "golden child" too. I didn't get to choose it. My sister labeled me that at a very young age as she's about a decade older than I am.

But it's really not as good as it seems. You get paid attention to, but 95% of the time this is horrible.

Your brother may or may not be embarrassed to make friends, he might be suicidal, isolated, lonely, depressed. You might see him laughing, but he is laughing because he's so happy to take a break from your mother. He has his own set of standards, but he frequently wonders if they're right. But you can't push your own standards onto him. Your mother has been so confusing for such a long period of time that he literally has to consider every possible option. Many times he might be so lost as to what to do because he might never be sure if every possible option is actually in front of him. He probably feels like everybody left him behind and wishes he had a normal life like everyone else seems to. He wants to get out, but he wants to do it the right way. He doesn't know what the right way is. He's scared to move out on his own, though, because your mother has probably convinced him that he can't survive on his own, even though to him that probably doesn't make much sense.

As a child, he probably felt like he had to be the "man of the house" at one point. For example, he may have thought things like "I'll eat less food so there will be more available. I don't want mommy or sissy to go hungry."

But anyway, he probably doesn't trust very many people. He likely doesn't talk about what happens at home, but he might try to give emotional hints. He may be very quiet when you're with both your mother and him, but more talkative when he's just with you. Just don't ever get angry at him or if you already have apologize to him, or he'll retreat back into his shell of hopelessness and confusion.

He probably considers himself emotionally worse off than all of you because he's the last child available to be considered the golden child. If you gave him the option of changing his name and moving far away, he'll say yes. But he's still confused on whether he wants to spend the rest of his life completely alone because he doesn't want to be lonely because being lonely hurts.

It's not that he's in denial, it's just that he's extremely embarrassed because he doesn't want people to think that he's a weak man that can't protect himself from a woman without being arrested by the police. So he feels helpless. He can't defend him psychologically/emotionally/verbally so all he sees left is defend himself physically, but he can't. Besides, the cops will see physical damage, not emotional damage. Nobody has believed him or he is too traumatized that he can hardly assess or verbalize what has actually happened to him. Plus, your mother is so convincing to him or so it seems that he'll never feel safe.

And well, with my BPD mother, it was like the oldest child got the wrath and then the youngest got everything nice. Until the youngest is the only one left and they get both.

[GustheDog]

Hiya GustheDog,

I don't know 'bout you, but i'd sure rather be you than your bro, regardless of who is being painted the gold color and for how long and when. And any time someone with N/BPD (at least the several of either that I've known) says you're "difficult" and "challenging," it means "you're right, I'm wrong, and i can't handle this truth." I'd say that's high praise after all. Not a lot of comfort there, but maybe enough... .  

I think most of us would just love to be loved for who we are by our disordered parents, without the "golden" v. "scapegoat" splitting -- the REAL reason, I think, that I've not spent a lot of time wondering about what it would be like to be split as golden. Yes, loved fully and totally. Even if for just a day. Yet, without their commitment to getting healthy, we are left with changing ourselves, getting healthy with or without them. Do you think you will continue the no contact? What else can you do to heal, in addition to participating here?

Peace and continued healing for us all,

DogDancer 

I never thought about being called "difficult" by him as a compliment, but, now that you mention it, I think I've known this somewhere all along.  There came a point where I just couldn't stand his abuse anymore, and up until my early 20s I bit my tongue.  He's becoming a sad old man, and he's also an alcoholic.  He has no friends other than drinking buddies (which includes his "girlfriend" and his well-cared-for possessions.  In many ways I feel very badly for him and sometimes - though rarely - I miss him.  I tried to find a middle ground so many times.  It was just too difficult.  If he had consistent patterns to his abuse I might be able to just conform to his absurd system of rules and expectations, but, since they're constantly shifting, I always lose.

I won't break NC unless he takes responsibility and apologizes (for everything).  So I'm guessing we'll never speak again.   I had a very heartfelt conversation with him where I laid everything out like I was talking to a child.  I acknowledged my own shortcomings and said it was a two-way street.  It's not all your fault and neither is it all mine.  You've never said you were sorry to me for anything in my entire life and I would like to receive that from you or I won't be able to continue this relationship.  He said very matter-of-factly that he didn't think he'd done anything wrong, and then threw in a few daggers to the effect of "see how it feels when you've got kids" and cited my supposed lack of appreciation, etc.  He then suggested that I had some "issues" that he hoped I was able to work out.  He was right about that.  My issue was him and I walked away and haven't spoken to him since.

It's funny - I signed up here as result of my failed relationship with my exBPDgf, and didn't even think about discussing dear old dad until now.  It's been tough - I lost both of these people within a couple months of each other.  But now I know that I was rehashing my childhood with my father with my girlfriend!  And the icing on the cake is that she told me that "I am my father."  That's her most memorable projection, I think.

But fortunately I do have a mentally healthy mother and we have a very solid relationship.  She also has a good relationship with my brother (although he takes advantage of her), and there are no favorites.  It's not much, considering the hell I've lived through in the past year, but it's still pretty nice.

[DogDancer]

Good post Gus!

It sounds like a really good thing that you're sorting out the dad stuff even if you came to the site originally due to exGF. I hope you *do* continue to see and *feel* it as a compliment that your dad thinks you're difficult because people who are disordered can't handle anyone who really isn't and who won't play along with their cr*p.

That's not to say you don't wish it were different; you clearly expressed that you do, and that you only went NC because he wouldn't even begin to take responsibility of his part of the relationship. And of course your exBPD threw that at you about you being your dad; she knew it would hurt you and cause you doubt and she did it when she was painting you black. You know you're not him or anything like him. You're healthy, and getting healthier, by the sounds of it. Good work, guy!

So glad, too, that you've got a healthy mom, and you two have a good relationship with her. Doesn't mean it's not hard not to have an unhealthy dad. It probably always will be to a certain extent, but you've got and are continuing to get a handle on things. That's all we can do; we can't force people who don't want to heal and get as well as they can to do so.

Keep on keeping on, friend. I'll be glad to hear more of your story if/when you feel like posting.

Peace and healing,

DogDancer

[DogDancer]

Stillthere hello,

What you wrote is profound. I haven't responded until now because I've really been mulling and processing this. I think it's made me sad, sad for me and my siblings, and I think it's confirmed some things as distinct possibilities that I suspect have been my middle brother's experience, the one who was the golden one. Mom died a good many years ago when we were in our 20s and just getting launched. We were so busy just trying to get through her death and get our adult lives going that it seems only now, in our early middle age... .  and as we deal with his children and their challenges... .  is all of this bubbling up.

I, of course, have been the one tackling it, and I have always been the boldest and most emotionally honest although middle bro does still maintain some of the narrative that dxBPD mom created that i was somehow untrustworthy and unreliable. Still, though, he and my youngest brother always knew -- and I've gotten verbal confirmation from youngest -- and big hints as you say from middle "golden" that he agrees, that I am the toughest.

You've really conveyed to me things that he has not been able to convey to me yet. I think you're speaking ground truth here.

I'm still processing. Thank you for these insights.

Peace and continued healing to us,

DogDancer.

[isshebpd]

Stillthere,

I also find your writing very insightful. There is a lot there I can see in my "golden child" uNPDbro. He was alone with uBPDmom and Dad for many years after my sister and I had moved on. He is damaged by being the "only child" for that time because uBPDmom has projected so much onto him. As for being alone, he has never been in a relationship and he's 35. That is, he has never been in a "couple" or had someone he could tell us is his partner or whatever. Some people are happy being single forever, but I know he isn't.

[isshebpd]

By the way, "golden child" uNPDbro probably does have a diagnosed mental illness. He has been in therapy for anxiety, and sees a psychiatrist.

[stillthere]

Stillthere,

I also find your writing very insightful. There is a lot there I can see in my "golden child" uNPDbro. He was alone with uBPDmom and Dad for many years after my sister and I had moved on. He is damaged by being the "only child" for that time because uBPDmom has projected so much onto him. As for being alone, he has never been in a relationship and he's 35. That is, he has never been in a "couple" or had someone he could tell us is his partner or whatever. Some people are happy being single forever, but I know he isn't.

That's due to multiple factors. He does what mother told him to do to get a girl, girls rejected him, he waited, he might talk about inappropriate things like sex and girls want to run away, he's afraid of being judged for picking the wrong girl, he doesn't feel like a man because he couldn't protect himself especially from a woman aka his mother, and a whole bunch of things in addition to those things like: depression, anxiety, eating disorder, substance abuse... His life was so crazy, developing any psychiatric condition seems like a possibility... Though he's still alive physically... He's a fighter... I bet if your mom is deceased and your brother had the opportunity to bash her skeleton, he'd do it... It's like some unresolved issue buried deep in the ground... I'm not sure of that, but it makes sense... I bet if he has/had a punching bag, he wouldn't just punch it, he'd consider it his lifelong friend. Unfortunately, he'd be punching his lifelong friend and in some weird way, he'd feel guilty... One minute he'd punch it and the next he'd kiss it, hug it, and cry... But I will tell you one thing... He may or may not seem naturally rude... But he's probably very sensitive to a significant other's needs... Unfortunately, sometimes or many times, he may go too far to accommodate her by sacrificing his own values, interests, and/or standards.

[Sofie]

I was the golden child growing up and well into my 20s and my older sister the scapegoat - and yes, I think that I am much more messed up emotionally than my sister even though most people who know us will probably think otherwise, because on the outside I to a much higher degree than my sister have done well in life in the stereotypical sense - I was a straight A-student, have a great career and all of the outward signs of "success" in my life whereas my sister had difficulties in school and now always struggles to make ends meet in dead-end jobs. Yet I consider her a much healthier person than I am. Why?

Because she is her own person to a much higher degree than I am - I have only in the past few years really begun to find out who I really am and want in my life. Growing up, my "job" was to make NPD mom happy - and the way to do that was to do well so she could bask in and take credit for my success. My sister flew under the radar much more than I did - while that for certain was incredibly tough for her as well, I think it to a much larger degree allowed her to develop her own interests and likes in life, because our mother was so obsessed with me.

Being the golden child doesn't mean you get or feel loved - at least not in my case. It means you get praise - which you grow up to confuse with love - when you do what mom wants you to do. The moment you don't or show emotions or interests that mom doesn't approve of or can identify with... .  you better watch out. It is living in a cage that may be golden, but in which you are basically just your mother's pet whose own feelings and interests do not exist, because mom sees you as an extension of herself (when you do right.)

I am increasingly coming to the realization that I don't ever think that I existed as a person in my own right to my mother, and I mean that quite literally - it's the stuff of nightmares, really. I am NC with NPD mom today - it is the only way I have felt able to begin becoming "myself."

[DogDancer]

Sofie hi,

It made me really happy to see that you'd gone NC with your NPD mother and started to explore. You should be very proud of yourself for breaking out and working on yourself!

What you've said is fascinating to me. It's made me think, as everyone's posts always do. So I'm going to process out loud. Thanks all, for letting me do so in my lengthy posts. I know they're long, but it really is helping me. I hope it helps someone else, and I don't expect replies to all of them, so no worries about that, please 

Sofie, your description of yourself describes me to a T in many ways, but we've got a weird conflation going on: I was the scapegoat internally in our family, but externally I was held up as a perfect child. It was a perfect storm of BPD dynamics + plus alcoholic family dynamics within our home. Lovely mind****. 

We, like many families, hid what was going on in ours, which was increasingly dysfunctional. Mom had dxBPD, which was uncovered when she and dad went briefly to couples counseling after he'd had an affair, separated briefly and then reunited. She wouldn't stay in therapy. He started to drink more and more. I got split as bad child because I was eldest, and I had the audacity to pull away from her (oh, oh - rejection) when she started creating facts out of feelings: She actually told us when she let us know that she and Dad separated --- after some initial bonding and honest crying together -- that he didn't love us, meaning us children as well as her, and we'd have to pull together because we couldn't count on him anymore! I was eight, middle bro, five, and littlest bro 3. She was really inappropriate to do so. And I knew this was wrong. I was horrified and didn't know what to do, but I left the room. I didn't want to be alone, but I knew this was not true, and you know what, even if it had been true -- it wasn't -- that is absolutely *not* what you tell children. It was right then the real splitting began.

As I got older, I started calling her on the b.s. actively, and it's not that I agreed with all of Dad's behaviors because I didn't, and I said so. I was not defending him blindly. However, again, I know now that I was pointing out what she couldn't handle -- her own in ability to stick with facts and cope with them and her feelings about them. I was doing what I was taught: Being truthful and honest.

Golden child middle bro, her favorite always, the only one planned with Dad, where she didn't just go off birth control and get pregnant without consulting him, was a good student. However, he was not like me "Miss Perfect." He got in some minor trouble in high school, including vandalism, sneaking out, drinking. Nothing outside of the normal range, but he also didn't push to reach his potential. He played a sport, but never pushed himself to reach max grades, didn't take on leadership roles, quit taking language or any other subjects he didn't like, or that didn't come to him relatively easily, etc. Nevertheless, he got increasing privileges, wasn't punished much, was allowed, essentially, to make mistakes, and just be.

Increasingly, it was the opposite for me: No mistakes allowed, no hijinks allowed, and Mom increasingly, actively, obsessively railing on me about not getting sexual with anyone, which, seeing as I was pretty straight laced, was not exactly a fact-based issue, but being treated like you're untrustworthy, unreliable, and there's something about you that is saying you're about to screw up hugely at any given second about something that is natural to start exploring in your teens... .  not good. MAJOR FOG.

And then... .  drumroll... .  I found out in my early 20s I found out, it was she who been sneaking out of her house at night as a teenager in the late 1950s and having sex with her boyfriend; she may have even loved him, I have reason to believe that she did, but there was no way that was going to fly because he was black. So, all that massive load of her cr*p was her own major projection of her issues onto me, and I hadn't known it, although I was intuiting it by the time I moved out at 19.

The only thing I was praised for, too, Sofie, in passing, like it wasn't any effort, was achievement and leadership activities in school. So I tap-danced faster, and faster, and was increasingly anxious, miserable, and quietly desperate inside. The really awful thing was, I *did* want to achieve naturally, i was really smart, I was ambitious... .  but who would want to do it inside this pressure cooker set of parameters? No one.   

I was so smart -- it was survival -- to leave at 19, and in my 20s to start to make up for it all and find out who I was, including not worrying about achieving max potential, doing some partying and rebelling, exploring my sexuality, learning about my own interests, etc. I did not know who I was either at that point that either, Sofie. I mean, most people at that age are still exploring and don't fully know, but I was so aware that it was more than the usual lack of self-knoweldge for me. I'd been "hiding inside myself" and doing a lot parentified stuff to placate Mom, and that I hadn't been doing the normal growing stuff during my adolescence until that point.

I was able to explore "self" in my 20s because I left at 19 when Mom told me she couldn't (read: wouldn't) pay for college for both of us. She had the money; the whole reason she went back to work was to pay for our educations; Dad paid for the rest. I went NC for a while, and in addition to self exploration, I also worked my butt off, put myself through university and grad school, but chose a service-oriented, helping career.

Middle bro golden child, who was supported financial until 26, chose a money-making career.

Who makes more money and so often gets more outward atta boys? Not me. That might not be fair, but life often is not, regardless of whether you've got the BPD in your family, right. I know what my choices have been and why, and although I'd change some of them now, with hindsight, they were mainly good ones, through a lot of rough times. So, I'm proud of myself. I am strong, and I always have been, and now I'm getting as healthy as I can be and growing more.

I think I'm the one who's more emotionally healthy now even though the last several years, all this stuff started to bubble up. And it's bro who I think is increasingly unhappy. He always behaved as if he's under the assumption that if everyone just made the same exact choices he had, life would be good for them, and he has compartmentalized/denied all the stuff that doesn't jive with that (being born male, being born into middle class family of high education levels, being the favorite, having a lot support that others don't get, etc.). But I don't think that narrative is working so well for him anymore. He's seen too much now, and I think the shell is starting to break for him, too. He's the only one in the family who's never explicitly and fully acknowledge the dxBPD mom stuff, or how I was treated. But, he's got two children with some serious issues: Asperger's son, and the Niece I keep posting about that I'm so worried is showing serious emotional dysregulation... .  

So... .  interesting twists on the theme. The work and healing continues in our family, that's for sure.

Okay, enough for now. I so very much hope that you keep becoming your wonderful self, Sofie. You deserve it. We all do. 

Peace and continued (hardwork and progress!) on healing,

DogDancer

[Sofie]

Increasingly, it was the opposite for me: No mistakes allowed, no hijinks allowed, and Mom increasingly, actively, obsessively railing on me about not getting sexual with anyone, which, seeing as I was pretty straight laced, was not exactly a fact-based issue, but being treated like you're untrustworthy, unreliable, and there's something about you that is saying you're about to screw up hugely at any given second about something that is natural to start exploring in your teens... .  not good. MAJOR FOG.

And then... .  drumroll... .  I found out in my early 20s I found out, it was she who been sneaking out of her house at night as a teenager in the late 1950s and having sex with her boyfriend; she may have even loved him, I have reason to believe that she did, but there was no way that was going to fly because he was black. So, all that massive load of her cr*p was her own major projection of her issues onto me, and I hadn't known it, although I was intuiting it by the time I moved out at 19.

DogDancer,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and interesting reply   - the above passage really resonated with me especially, as it is eerily similar to what I experienced only in my case mom wasn't obsessed with me having sex, but with me drinking and doing drugs. (Which was totally ridiculous and unfounded, as I think I might possibly have been the most sober teenager ever to exist.)

Later on in my life, I have pieced together that NPD mom's obsession with this began right about the same time she herself started abusing alcohol and prescription meds... .  this lack of ability to seperate between herself and myself - as I said before, quite literally - is something that to this day can freak me out to no end. I really think that she on some level thought we were the same person. Scary.

[DogDancer]

Sofie,

You're welcome. And thank you. It continues to help to hear and see how similar others' experiences with their disordered parent were, no matter how much I know it intellectually. You -- the real you -- were, I am sure, the DREAM child that many other families would have loved to claim as their own!   I'm sure you are now, too, even more so now that you've had more of chance to "be" rather than fighting for your life by fighting off your mentally ill NPD mother's attempts to make you her mirror, your caretaker and an extension of herself, and extra limb.

Something I've had to work on is fighting off feeling "trapped" and then feeling really anxious (that old anxiety) whenever I'm in a relationship or a situation that is either unpleasant or is just going to take some serious work to get through and is stressful. I know where that comes from. I was trapped so long inside myself, trying to keep the delicate flames of self low enough as to allow my separate self to fly under the destructive radar of my BPD mother, but high enough that I could fan them to fuller force just as soon as possible. I often compare my growing up experience, especially, and increasingly from eight through 19 (almost 20) as being a prisoner of war.

But I am not trapped anymore. My soul is free, and soon, I will have worked hard enough to changes some life circumstances that I previously chose, but which have been holding me back, fettering me.

So... .  keep up the individuation, the validation, the growing and development of YOU, Sophie. If you have not - maybe you have already -- but consider working with a therapist. You deserve healthy, caring, wise help to heal.    Me, too!

Peace to us all, and more healing,

DogDancer

[isshebpd]

That's due to multiple factors. He does what mother told him to do to get a girl, girls rejected him, he waited, he might talk about inappropriate things like sex and girls want to run away, he's afraid of being judged for picking the wrong girl, he doesn't feel like a man because he couldn't protect himself especially from a woman aka his mother, and a whole bunch of things in addition to those things like: depression, anxiety, eating disorder, substance abuse... His life was so crazy, developing any psychiatric condition seems like a possibility... Though he's still alive physically... He's a fighter... I bet if your mom is deceased and your brother had the opportunity to bash her skeleton, he'd do it... It's like some unresolved issue buried deep in the ground... I'm not sure of that, but it makes sense... I bet if he has/had a punching bag, he wouldn't just punch it, he'd consider it his lifelong friend. Unfortunately, he'd be punching his lifelong friend and in some weird way, he'd feel guilty... One minute he'd punch it and the next he'd kiss it, hug it, and cry... But I will tell you one thing... He may or may not seem naturally rude... But he's probably very sensitive to a significant other's needs... Unfortunately, sometimes or many times, he may go too far to accommodate her by sacrificing his own values, interests, and/or standards.

I've been thinking a lot about what you wrote. There isn't much written about the problems of sons of BPD mothers, especially around issues of intimacy and sexuality. Having a disordered Mom is horrible example of a woman. I had to learn that most women are reasonable, caring individuals who are NOT prone to irrational rages. I went through hell with my Mom as a teen and young adult, and still feel the rage and sadness inside of me.  :'(

[ScarletOlive]

issheBPD, I was the golden child. Ironically, my parents even jokingly called me this. Often, I was set up as the example of how to behave to my siblings. When the kids are split, there's not much they can do to get out of those roles. We just survive however we can. For me, that meant playing the role of the golden child by being perfect. I still got the beatings and physical abuse, but less often than my older brother and younger sister. Since I was supposed to be perfect, I had to rescue my mom from suicide, comfort her, deal with emotional incest, and be the PR person for the family. I also ran the house. My siblings had to do much less of these things.

I blocked out the abuse and stuffed my feelings, while my brother acted out, and my sister acted in (self-harm and depression). I doubt I could have continued to play the role of perfect if I remembered the daily abuse.

In essence, I don't consider myself or my siblings lucky by any counts. We all were placed in impossible situations and suffered terribly. Each of us had to do what we could to survive, and so the abuse affected us all differently. My experience is probably different from other golden children, too. The severity of BPD, the severity of the splits of kids, and the severity of the abuse are all factors, I think. I hope this helps a bit though.

[isshebpd]

Interestingly, my brother the "golden child" is self-centred and lazy. Trying to get him to help anyone is like pulling teeth and he demands recognition for anything he bothers to do.

My sister, OTOH, was pretty much perfect in every way (straight As, athlete, artistic) but never got the royal treatment (in fact was emotionally abused too). When she graduated from HS, I swear she was gone so fast all I could see was a cloud of dust. She had uBPDmom and uNPDbro pretty much figured many years before I wised-up. My Dad's mother doted on her as "the girl" so that's why she has higher self-esteem than me.

The "golden child" thing is a transient label too, I understand. uNPDbro has pushed things too far and received the wrath of uBPDmom. But with him, he really was "bad" when he got in trouble. Most of the time, it seems he can get away with anything. Even getting caught drinking and driving earned more sympathy from uBPDmom than anger. The way uBPDmom described it, you'd think uNPDbro was a victim of police brutality. Someone paid for the high-priced lawyer who successfully defended him on a technicality. My parents deny it, but I think they did. They lie.

As for survival tactics, everyone outside of the family thought I was a sweet kid. No I was a shy, nervous kid. I was also a small kid. Being the shortest boy in my class most of the time, I was one of the two boys that always held the sign in front of class picture (sitting in front of the other kids). For some reason, despite being small, I didn't really get bullied by other kids. Bullying me wasn't worth it, because I didn't react. Being stone-faced was how I dealt with the Mother screaming at me.

I'm happy to say I grew fast once I hit my teens, and am now even taller than my Dad I also rebelled as a teen, making me even more of a target for the Mother. By the time I was 15, I was getting in trouble at school, doing all kinds of drugs, and almost got expelled. Thankfully, I somehow pulled it together to graduate and go to University  ... .  where my Mother stalked me   I think she also stalked me in HS, and used my sister to spy on me (I forgive her she was a child).

[Let it Be]

Interesting thread. Thanks for sharing.   I am wondering if the whole golden child, scapegoat child is just more about BPD's coping skills.  Since they are not very differentiated wouldn't they tend to triangle more as a coping mechanism?  My s was married to a BPD and my gd became the scapegoat child, I think replacing that role somewhat in the family from the youngest child.  The golden child is pretty, athletic and the oldest girl.  Her room was the nicest and the my gd and the yougest child actually slept in a room that had dog poop on the floor and often no sheets on the bed.  But I agree that I think the golden child has a load to bear that the other's do not.  Always trying to maintain that "golden child" role must be really hard.   She tells her mother everything.  The ultimate tattle tale so to speak although all these kids seems to do that.  Everyting about friends, siblings goes back to mom.  It keeps the drama alive!

[isshebpd]

Golden child is "camping" again at uBPDmom and enablerdad's place again. I don't know if its appropriate for me to be upset about this. He has an office set-up in their basement, but supposedly he has his own apartment elsewhere. He goes to their house to work in this office, but always ends up living there for weeks at a time. He takes a lot of liberty in their living space. I even think uBPDmom does his laundry, but she denies it. They are also feeding him, but I agree with that as he will eat really bad food otherwise (I want him to be healthy even though I can't stand being around him).

He is 35. I also worry about golden child (uNPDbro) stirring up uBPDmom. He seems to order them around a lot, treating them like they are his servants. I hope he's not abusing them.

(BTW thanks to the moderators of this board. I'm posting a lot right now, so I really want to thank you)

[DogDancer]

I find your posts interesting and useful, issheBPD. Post away! It really does help to see other people processing out loud, discovering, talking about events unfolding, processing some more.

I've felt guilt and shame that I didn't realize I was still carrying start to loosen their hold and begin to dissipate after reading other people's family stories -- both narratives about the past, as well as current sagas unfolding. I know, in this way, that I'm not alone. My experiences are not so weird or unusual or -- bad as some of them were - not unheard of; they are the known patterns of disordered families.

All of it helps me know that me and my trauma -- well, I'm not so odd or alone. I'm right in the middle of a big group of great people, who like me, are seeking and doing the best we can, and working on getting stronger and healing more. It's all a lot less scary or secretly shame and regret-inducing than it's ever been.

So THANK YOU, isshepbd, and everyone here, for all that you say, and for all that you are doing on behalf of yourselves and others, to heal!   

Peace and healing for us all,

DogDancer