Growing out of BPD.

[Parents! Get help here!]

also she mentioned:

- BPD-traits/instabilities  lessen when people get older

- relationships stabilise and they start to function better

- the risks on suicide lessen when patients get older

this is allready the second time that I heard a specialist on BPD testify and they always sound so positive... whilst on these boards people usually doesn't sound very optimistic... .

I have been told that sufferers of BPD can 'grow out' of this illness. However, I've also been told that this is not the case and that some people with BPD change their behaviour because of a change in their lives (eg. having a child). Does anyone have experience of somebody 'growing out' of BPD?

Thanks

[Gladys]

also she mentioned:

- BPD-traits/instabilities  lessen when people get older

- relationships stabilise and they start to function better

- the risks on suicide lessen when patients get older

this is allready the second time that I heard a specialist on BPD testify and they always sound so positive... whilst on these boards people usually doesn't sound very optimistic... .

I have been told that sufferers of BPD can 'grow out' of this illness. However, I've also been told that this is not the case and that some people with BPD change their behaviour because of a change in their lives (eg. having a child). Does anyone have experience of somebody 'growing out' of BPD?

Thanks

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[lever.]

Hi Gladys,

Whilst my daughter still has some difficulties she is now 33 and things are vastly improved from when she was in her late teens -early 20s.

Then she was quite low functioning. She regularly made suicide attempts, one of which was nearly successful, self-harmed by cutting, had an eating disorder requiring in-patient treatment and physically attacked me regularly.

All these behaviours have gone.

She now has three young children and is married.

She still has difficulties with regulating her emotions, impulsivity and personal relationships. I suspect that she no longer fully meets the criteria for a diagnosis of BPD.

However there are still enough issues that I benefit from the support and advice on here.

However things are better for her than I dared to hope

[Gladys]

Hi

Do you think you did anything to help this?

My son is 42 and I wonder if men are difficult from women. He has a child but from a very short-term relationship. The child's mother is also very difficult and demanding and certainly she makes my son feel bad about himself. He lives with us, is on benefits, is depressed most of the time, unpredictably volatile and does very little, so little that he rarely goes out and has become quite reclusive. He has a psychiatrist but he can't even get it together to go and see her unless with persuasion from me. He's affectionate towards his son but we do most of the caring.He takes no responsibility for anything, it seems. It's very difficult living with him but was even worse living apart from him because of the phone calls and the worry. His behaviour isn't dangerous most of the time, just completely passive.  Any negotiation on helping around the house or taking out his son is rejected. Any suggestions? Thanks

[tristesse]

Hi Gladys,

I have a 30 year old daughter with BPD and I do not believe they can out grow it, I do however believe there is hope in finding the right therapist to help her become stable and self sufficient. At the moment, she is living with us and has a 5 year old son, who also lives in our home, she is very low functioning as well. She does not get disability, and does not work, and she does very little around the house. Once in a blue moon she leaves the house to go to a store or take her son to the Dr. etc.

I have not given up hope that she can get better, at least enough to become somewhat independent. I will pray for your son and for you.

[lever.]

I think a combination of things helped the improvement Gladys.

She made an excellent connection with a psychiatrist- I wasn't involved in what they talked about but it obviously made a difference.

Both DD and I did DBT (separately)

I think the fact that she got married helped. Her husband is a little older than her, he works and is quite stable but he won't take any nonsense - I think she is a bit wary of going too far with him. She was pregnant as soon as they married and now has 3 small children. She does very well with them and copes in a domestic setting.

She still leaves a trail of people that she falls out with and I don't know how she would cope with holding down a job.

She still paints family members black and white in never-ending cycles and can blow up in a rage.

In answer to your question it is only partly what I have done. The psychiatrist and her husband have helped.

She deserves most of the credit herself -and some of it may just be increasing maturity

[Thursday]

Hi Gladys,

Welcome, welcome. Glad you are here.

I'm glad to see you are looking at your son's future because it is your future too.

My DH and I are very fortunate that his DD, my BPDSD23, is doing much better these days.

I read your thread and sat for a few minutes with your second post, sentence by sentence. There is a lot of information in that single paragraph. Most important are the different lives affected by this mental illness. It seems like souls get trapped in this illness, suspended in time, unable to grow or move forward.

My SD's history sounds so much like what your son is experiencing now, minus the child and minus being a male.

Until recently, I haven't been able to really put my finger on what is the number one thing we needed to "fix" for her. From my little crow's nest of being a step parent who came into her life when she was a young teen I could see her Dad enabling her and it looked all wrong to me. Someone very wise, not associated with me or our family, saw the enabling and talked to him about it in no uncertain terms, told her that he needed to move her out of our home or she would not get any better. SD was, at the time, acting on an addiction to RX anti-anxiety meds (Xanax). She has since gotten sober and we've had ups and downs with her until she finally got herself a full time job and started doing better in this as well. I can give you more details if you would like I just don't want to burden your thread with too much back story of my own.

What we are seeing now is a girl whose self-esteem is building and growing and at every turn we can see she is able to take on more and more. She still gets dysregulated, still has trouble managing interpersonal relationships and a few more areas of her life. But she has managed recently, with great self-control, a bad extended family dispute where she had several of these folks angry at her for no good reason. She handled it and is feeling even better about herself. She is talking now of "wanting to grow up" whereas all we heard before was that she DIDN'T want to grow up. She isn't late to work, she has a savings account that she takes pride in adding to weekly, she has even rescued herself from a flat tire and a banking snafu. She lives peacefully with her grandmother who she respects and protects and helps (these were not qualities I ever saw from her when she lived with us) She and her Dad are rebuilding their relationship and she is not bitter or angry about having to live elsewhere. Yesterday she sent me a Happy Mother's Day card with a beautiful quote about step-parents. Gulp, big ole lump in my throat thinking of that!  

I don't know all of your history Gladys and I hope you won't think I am intruding. This is my story of what has helped us and what has changed us.

The child's mother is also very difficult and demanding and certainly she makes my son feel bad about himself. He lives with us, is on benefits, is depressed most of the time, unpredictably volatile and does very little, so little that he rarely goes out and has become quite reclusive. He has a psychiatrist but he can't even get it together to go and see her unless with persuasion from me. He's affectionate towards his son but we do most of the caring.He takes no responsibility for anything, it seems. It's very difficult living with him but was even worse living apart from him because of the phone calls and the worry. His behaviour isn't dangerous most of the time, just completely passive.  Any negotiation on helping around the house or taking out his son is rejected.

Your paragraph starts with an ex who makes your son feel bad about himself. My SD really cannot tolerate someone undermining the way she feels about herself. If your son is anything like my SD, when first anyone is invalidating to her she leaps to anger first but very quickly plunges into a self-loathing that is truly devastating to see.

The rest of the paragraph seems to be showing a man who is just lost inside of his own self loathing.

I know this might sound like a strange suggestion since al-anon is for family of alcoholics and you don't report any alcohol abuse by your son, but the best place my husband and I have ever found to help us to help her was al-anon. We started going before we knew she was an addict and before I joined this board. We just, in our minds, changed the words alcoholic for BPD and it fit and we learned about not blaming ourselves, not blaming her and learned so much about enabling and how it kept her unaccountable. We learned how to love her without passively watching her unravel her own life.

SD was only 19 when she got clean. She has been doing pretty well with her life in general for about a year. I don't expect she will never have problems again but she does have these rudimentary tools of better self-esteem to work with. We have them to work with too.

Your son won't gain any ground with the situation as it is now. You and your husband are filling in a lot of gaps for him, doing for him things he should be doing for himself. I think al-anon would give you some tools to help you to figure out how to help your son and in the process you will help yourself because I know this isn't the life you want for him or imagined for him and certainly this is an unfair burden for you and your husband to bear.

I truly identify with what you have to say about the worry and the phone calls when he lives away from you. We have gone through that as well. It has gotten easier... . it has been months and months and months since we've had any real worry. We never would have gotten here if we hadn't made changes. And believe me, we used to be sick with worry for months at a time. It was bad, so bad. Now, I have nothing but hope and this hope is being elevated every day!

Wishing you the best and wishing your son the best. This is hard stuff... . and I hope I don't seem unduly harsh I just know that what really made the difference in our situation and I know how much better things are now. Sure, our kids are 20 years or so different in age but I don't think your son's life is over by any means. What you describe now seems like a very sad place to be for all involved... . and I believe it CAN change.

Thursday

[lever.]

I would echo two things that Thursday has said.

I think that without realizing it we stepped back when our DD got married and stopped enabling and filling gaps. Before that I had taken on complete responsibility, remembering her appointments and driving her there, paying her debts etc etc.

Also when invalidated she does exactly the same thing-flies into a defensive rage and then slides down into self-loathing.

Do hold on to the hope that with tiny little steps along the way things CAN improve for your son

[Gladys]

Thanks to all of you. There's such a lot here. I know you're right about his moving out but he refuses. He did have a psychiatrist but we were having to pay so he finally got an NHS therapist - but she never sees him. It's all such hard work and I feel depressed and depleted. I've been doing this for 30 years. I can't ever imagine him having a job. Sorry to be so negative but there's such a long way to go and I don't know where to start any more. Every time I try something new it seems to have no impact at all. I'm just not optimistic any more. And writing like this makes me feel like such a wimp - which I'm not in any other area of my life. Thanks to you all anyway.

[Thursday]

Hi Gladys,

Of course you are exhausted. This IS very exhausting and you have been trying to help your son for a very long time.

One thing I've learned about helping a person with BPD is when we let them stay where they are we aren't really helping them. It feels excruciating in the short term but we have to keep the long term goals in mind.

For us, first we gathered information about options. Have you looked into some sort of half-way house situation for your son? Or, could you create some sort of half-way situation for him... . support him with an end date in mind, and build a structure for him that he can live within. At first my SD was against the sober living facility where we insisted she move to. It was expensive for us but the tools she learned there have really helped her. As I've mentioned, it was't an instant fix but as she moved forward (making mistake after mistake) she held a little bit of what she learned in her head. She moved into sober living house at 19 and moved out at 20 and is now 23. She has been in three different living situations since, two not managed well at all and she was asked to leave. Living with her grandmother now was a bit of enabling on the GMs part but GM has learned how to not give her so much because she could actually see what she was doing "to her" by doing "for her". One of the things that happened that helped GM see what SD was about was GM gave SD a huge sum of money with expectations that SD would learn to manage money and that the money would last a year  and SD ran though it in only a few months. Spent a lot of it on tattoos (nothing can wake up a conservative GM like a GD with a tattoo on her neck!)

My SD is an odd mixture of fierceness and fear. She is afraid of things I never worry about but she will take on some things that fill me with either fear or dread. That is where I started to try to mend our difficulties and to try to implant within her some idea that she had strengths that made her unique and important. And validation. Lots of validation of her point of view, her feelings. I tried hard not to be insincere but frankly sometimes I was praising her for hardly anything and I still do. I am not overboard but try to interject an "atta girl" where I see something, even if teeny tiny, to comment upon. Her Dad sort of sucks at validation, he is still a nagger- but their relationship seems to work for her so I try to sit back and let him go with his less encouraging viewpoint. Sometimes now SD and I look at each other and roll our eyes about some thing her Dad says!

Because of SD's experiences with people in AA she gets some good validation in other important areas of her life. And she does a good job at work and gets validation for that too. It just keeps building and building, the farther she goes with being independent.

You mention that your son is good with his son but that you and your husband take on the caregiving role. Not sure how old your GS is so maybe this idea isn't feasible but what if you were to arrange a visit and then you and your husband leave the house for a few hours... . force him to HAVE To take care of his son. Maybe you could leave prepared food and an activity for the GS to do with your son and then let him manage.

It's so easy to begin to think of our kids with this disorder as helpless. But the truth is, they are not helpless, they are stuck and even if they are not as capable as we originally hoped for (don't all of us think our kids are going to be rocket scientists?) they can usually manage far more than we think.

I think you are brave for coming here, seeking help and suggestions. It is a sign of your love for your son. Enabling always comes from a loving place... . the problem is it can keep our ill loved ones from reaching a better potential. And that better potential means a happier life for your son.

I'm sure others here will chime in with ideas and suggestions based on their own experiences with their children.

A year ago, my SD was sleeping all day and lying about applying for jobs. She was selling plasma to pay for her cigarettes and mooching off of anyone and everyone. She was driving everyone crazy. Everyone involved finally got the clue to quit giving her money as she slowly let pretty much everything else in her life fall to the wayside... . she was willing to accept lower and lower standards for herself so it was super frustrating how long it took her to finally get off her derriere to find a job. Although she claimed that she had been job hunting for over a year, once she got serious about job hunting she found a job within a week.

Last night, my SD took her grandmother, me and her Dad out to eat. It was at a nice restaurant and she encouraged everyone to order exactly what they wanted. I enjoyed myself! I used to dread being in the same room with her and last night I liked her! She gave me a second very sweet mother's day card and in it said she knew I had had to put up with a lot of bad stuff from her. This is a miraculous change Gladys, just a miracle. It is a miracle that started with the simple step of her Dad and then everyone in her life saying NO, we are not going to keep doing things the same old way because with the same old way all we got was the same old same old, which was NOTHING.

My SD will probably always have problems in her life. She is still very immature for her age, she still has such difficulties with her personal relationships, never had a boyfriend, she gets upset over silly things and it takes her a long time to process her feelings. She can still fall into the worst sort of self-bashing talk but now she can get herself out of this more quickly. She has a bigger world of people who can help her which is a relief for us. We are on a better road now.

Best of luck.

Thursday

[Gladys]

Yes, he does do this. He does take care of his son on his own, but only when he has to. I know this does his confidence a lot of good. However, it's his depression which makes it so hard for me to insist he leaves. I know you're right about these strategies but making him leave home seems cruel. It's so complicated, isn't it? I've read the books and I'm not a wimp but right now I'm feeling like one.

[lever.]

Perhaps taking small steps to putting more responsibility on him along with massive validation for any little success would start to slowly turn things round.

When I first came on this site I was advised that I was looking to deal with too much too quickly and that tiny little steps in the right direction were the way forward.

Perhaps try asking for his help with small things.

Is there anything that you could pretend to be finding difficult as you get older? perhaps gardening or something requiring strength or agility?

I know we were very lucky with the psychiatrist. I am in the UK and she was NHS but DD just made a good connection with her.

I really hope you come across someone similar

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Gladys]

Yes, I do try this from time to time and he does manage. Sometimes I just think he is really lazy! If it's something he's motivated by, he'll manage it. It's an achievable suggestion so I will do it again. Thanks.