Fear of my own anger...

[Gadget42]

So about a year and a half ago I started the gradual process of coming to terms with that my mom is most likely un-diagnosed BPD. I was an only child who after my parents divorce pretty much had the responsibility of my mom's happiness placed on my 7 year old shoulders and its now 3 decades later and I'm just now starting to come to terms it.

I had a period of separation last year where I didn't talk to my mom for awhile at my then fiance's pressure and then over time she just slowly wiggled her way back into things. Nothing like it used to be where i was over there every day and always at her beck and call but enough that it started to put a strain on myself and my relationship with my wife.

It was after my grandmother passed away that it started to get bad again, I mean how horrible of a person would I be if i wasnt there for my mom after her own mother passed right?

And then you add the entanglement of money, my fiance and I decided we wanted to get married but we couldnt afford to do it so I went to my mom for help. She was left what was left of my grandparents money after my grandmother past and helped me out.

But here's the kicker. Up until my grandmother's last year all of the inheritance money was supposed to go to me.  When my mom helped with the re-writing of the will to exclude my aunt she sneaked in making herself the primary beneficiary. But here is the sad part, it isnt until just now over a year later I'm just starting to allow myself to be angry about it.

In the last two years I went from being single to taking on my now wife, her daughter and now our son in addition to her mother that lives with us and I have come on hard times financially, having to file for bankruptcy due to supporting a family and having a reduction of income at work.

So here I am on the fringe of accepting that my mom used me her whole life, that she never really loved me, made sure to push away anyone that was a threat including my father and the rest of my family with the exception of my grandparents and I'm freaked out.

I feel this well of anger and resentment finally coming to the surface in a way that's tangible and i don't know how to face it / manage it / get through it. I just had the experience of laying my grandmother to rest finally with her husband in Arlington national cemetery in VA and I would be lying if there wasnt a part of me that was didnt wish it was my mom I was laying to rest instead.

Where do you go when you have over 3 decades of belief that you are a great person because you 'take care' of your mother only to come to realize that I was pretty much brainwashed into believing that taking care of my mom and her needs was a core part of my own happiness. How do you face that the person you thought was the only one who truly cared about you only cared about propagating her own false reality in her head and using yourself as a crutch.

How do you face such a huge amount of anger and resentment? I basically am at the point where I'm on the cusp of admitting that a large portion of my life was based on a lie... . I feel like i have one hand on the flood gate while the rest of the water is seeping into every other aspect of my life and tainting it until i let it out. I guess the fear is once you open pandoras box you cant close it again, i can never slip back into denial that my mom was an angel, i can never just pretend that I love my mom and everything is peechy again. I mean theres even a small voice in my head saying that my mom is fine and my wife is just turning me against her, but I know in my heart that's not the truth. I know that until i face that my mom pretty much stole a large chunk of my life and I'll never get it back and to admit that I hate her because of it, and work though that, that I'll never be free or truly happy.

I guess I just need to know I'm not alone, that I'm not the first person to face this and how to process this deep swell of anger without resorting to taking it out on myself and my family.

Thoughts / Advice / Support appreciated

[Calsun]

Hi Gadget42,

You're not alone.  One of the most distressing realizations to come to was that my mother didn't really see me or love me. In her illness she was just projecting outward.  She couldn't see a person inside me, only what she was projecting.  I have felt a lot of anger, although I tend to have some of that towards my mother stifled inside because of how frightening she has always been, how rageful and violent. It would be good to access that anger towards my mother, but the fear and terror of her from childhood still covers it I think.  I have had a lot of anger in my life that has scared me though, anger that I turned inward, anger towards my father for not protecting me, anger towards women in my life, but my mother is no doubt the person who is deserving of the most, and yet she was somehow too scary still to allow the anger its due.  Something to work on in my healing.

There was always a coldness to my mother, and there was an incapacity to soothe and comfort her children.  She inflicted the most sadistic verbal abuse and engaged in physical abuse, as well.  But the child needing to feel loved denied the reality of the mother.  It's communicated to you that since mothers love their children, your mother loves you. Love is the default setting for all mothers. But not uBPD mothers.  There's a whole different dynamic there.  They are not trying to soothe their children, they are intent on inflicting injury.  They aren't benign, they are malicious.  And they really don't know how to love.  They probably never experienced it authentically as children, and so what they provide is counterfeit.  And by a certain point in life when you try to spend that love bill that they gave you in your childhood, someone who knows the real stuff informs you that what you're trying to spend in the adult world is counterfeit currency.  Very upsetting realization.  Like Biff's realization about his father in Death of a Salesman.

I could relate to your story and your feelings of anger. 

Best,

Calsun

[diabow54]

Hi Gadget42,

I can relate to some of your feelings and beliefs about how your Mom has profoundly affected your life. You are not alone and are among 'a family of friends' who have faced similar crisis.

Once I suspected my Mom had BPD, I researched as much as possible to understand her disorder and how it ruled her life. I accepted she was sick and wouldn't admit it or get help. Like your Mom, in times of high stress  grandmother passing away), it heightened her symptoms horribly.

I felt betrayal too. I questioned my perception of my family history, wondering how I could be so wrong for 40 years. I realized I had to work on myself and not take it out on my family.

In the crisis I was given a book called 'Anxiety and Depression Workbook for Dummies'. I soon realized that my thoughts about how my Mom wrecked my life were created from my upbringing. I learned to stop enlarging beliefs, to stop thinking in polar opposites and lots more. It brought stability and control to my feelings even though my relationship with Mom remained the same. The anger also was replaced with the power of understanding through knowledge.

There is a wealth of knowledge and links to strategies to help you make sense of it all and to support you.

 

[Surviving]

Hello - I can empathize with your financial abuse by your mom.  My mom has put me through the wringer.  I understand your sadness about thinking someone loved you, I mean your mom is supposed to love you, but realizing that they don't.  I was an only child.  I have said to my husband - I'm really alone in this world.  My husband hates my mother.  Why can't we just walk away?  I have distanced myself from my mother literally moving states away, and by not speaking to her for at least a week or more at a time.  In a split second all that distance can come down with her wicked words that cut me like a knife.  It is very depressing and it has been a struggle to keep going sometimes.  I just try to appreciate the love of my kids and husband.

[Calsun]

I really appreciated the shares. It gave me a lot of insight. Understanding the dynamics of this really does help neutralize some of the anger.  And understanding that my mother's expression of anger was dysregulated and harmful helps, too. She acted as though being angry and abusive in that manner was normal and it felt powerful, when it was just highly maladaptive and both self-destructive and destructive of others.  I think when we have experienced a bully and abusive person and we are the ones that are abused, there is a natural and perhaps even secret part of us that wants to be like the bully, that seeks identification with the "powerful" one.  Not wanting to be the one get stepped on.

To learn that that is far from true empowerment and learning other, healthier, far more productive ways to express our personal empowerment helps break that chain.

I also know that encouraging dependence is part of what my uBPD mother sought to do.  Doing things for me far later than was healthy for psychological development and maturity was not an expression of "love"  which was the mask under which she did so, it was about preventing my "abandonment" of her.  Growing up and becoming independent and interdependent in a healthy way was a threat to the BPD's terror of abandonment. 

One of the ways in which they encourage that dependence is financially.  And I found in my own adult life that I made unwise financial decisions that seemed invisibly to lead me back to "needing" mom.  Perhaps, many of our financial issues in adulthood can be traced back to our BPD parents encouraging dependence. I was definitely taught that the only way that I could be loved by my mother or anyone was if I was dependent. Anytime I took steps toward my independence, I was threatened with abandonment. Of course, I was being emotionally abandoned all the time.  That's not what healthy parents do for their children.  They encourage confidence in self and encourage their children's growth and maturity. 

Calsun

[Gadget42]

That's some good insight regarding the financial issues, I have found myself making unwise decisions that would lead me down a path to needing to ask my mom for more money out of the inheritance money.

Right now I'm dreading a phone call to which I am expected to relay to her about what happened at her own mother's laying to rest on monday that she didnt even think about trying to show up for. Sure she has weight and health issues that would have made it difficult for her to travel to Virginia but not impossible.

What really makes me upset is that she sent me a text message Monday morning thanking me for going and then didnt bother to check in on me till the evening. "sorry, got busy with so and so" the text said which was the name of the handyman she is having help her get stuff done around the house using money that isnt even her's. She said she was going to at least have some time of silence to honor my grandmother when the ceremony was going on. In reality she was probably too busy having her condo fixed up to even care.

I mean my wife and I took our 2 year old and our 11 month old to washington dc, dealt with monster heat and the stresses of travelling with two kids to meet up with some close friends of my grandparents and she is just off in her own world.

Then yesterday after my third attempt at blowing off this conversation where I feel i have to pretend to relay my experience of placing my grandmothers urn next to my grandfather's at their final resting place she suddenly asks, oh yeah did you take off work to take me to my eye surgery next week? I purposely did not respond because I  told her I have been taking too much time off at work and either my wife or mother in law could take her or she could arrange her own ride but she suddenly is like, you're taking me right? No i'm not *&#)( taking you and it just makes me feel worse because I feel like the only reason she wanted to hear about Monday is because she was just looking for an "in" to try to guilt me into taking her to her eye surgery. I purposely ignore the text and take the kids to the pool and leave my phone at home. I come home to a angry guilt ridden "sorry to be such a burden" followed by the typical BS "I'm sorry im not feeling well, i'll talk to you tomorrow."

Its like she knows if she pisses me off too much I'll be gone for good and she'll never get to see her grand kids.

It's stuff like this that makes me realize that what is of utmost importance to her despite my work on setting up boundaries is that she can still pull my emotional strings.

Hmm im starting to feel a little better... . maybe just venting and getting my thoughts into words is the best first step.

[Calsun]

When I saw my mother the other day.  She said, you know, I love you.  Now, that's nice, right?  But that was such a pattern of the relationship, too.  That she could act in a dysregulated fashion, be abusive, manipulative, controlling, split my brother and I.  But she loved me.  And when she said that, part of me, now many years an adult, melted.  That was what I always sought, my mother's love.  You know, like the sled, Rosebud, in Citizen Kane. A lifetime of seeking that love. And yet it was never consistent with behavior. And it was an empty payoff for years of manipulation, abuse, and betrayal.  But a part of me, for a moment, went back to the child's experience of feeling that my whole life's existence, all of the heartache and suffering was worth the transience of "winning my mother's love."  It's powerful stuff.  And there is greater awareness that it is just not worth the cost.  And it is not meaningful love.  I can relate to my mother in a limited way, set up boundaries, but to expect more is to set myself up for being hurt and for frustration and disappointment.  If I grew up with healthy parents, they would have taught me by example and by the quality of my relationship with them to avoid relationships with the kind of parents I grew up with.

Calsun

[Surviving]

It seems like many of us really just want our mother's love.  Even though the actuality is so toxic.  I like the Rosebud analogy.

[ThinkHappy]

Yes so many of us just wanting our mother's love and likely these feelings were heightened by our moms manipulation due to BPD illness.  I have been no contact with my my undiagnosed BPD mom for almost six years.  I have used the support from this forum to help me with my journey.  It's been a while since I have been on but last night I came down with tremendous sadness.  Luckily my husband was there to offer comfort and support.  He knows how not having them (mom and sis) in my life brings me sadness.  He thinks I feel guilty for moving on.  I don't feel so much guilt as much as sadness.  The reality of wishing things were different and knowing I want their love and for them to be in my life but I don't want the toxic price I have to pay for this to be a reality.  And the realization that I cannot change them into being healthy individuals.  So ultimately it's a sense of loss, sadness and emptiness that I have this memory of a relationship with a mom and sis that I will never have or fully experience because of BPD.  This sadness affects so much of my own happiness.  I know I should not let it affect my own happiness but ultimately it does.  It would have been easier if I never had a relationship with them.