anxious and confused

Hello!

I was recently in a counselling session when my therapist made the suggestion that my mom has BPD. Part of me feels really guilty for considering it. I've blocked out swaths of my childhood and have a hard time remembering what she was like. I've started looking into BPD and the experiences children with BPD which has helped bring some of the memories to the surface.

In the past I've thought my mom might be struggling with mental health. I've mainly thought she was struggling with depression because in the last 5 or so years she's begun to miss a significant amount of work, enough that they are paying her only a percentage of her salary. I've tried to encourage her to seek out some help but she seems to believe that therapy is a hoax and she's said she feels uncomfortable telling strangers about her feelings. So, I don't know that she'll ever be diagnosed. I'm incredibly frightened about the reaction I would receive if I suggested that she might be borderline. My mom has a history of suggesting that there is nothing wrong with her but something wrong with the way I perceive things. Over the years she's suggested that I have a mental health issue, going so far as to contribute to my being misdiagnosed which lead me to being medicated for years for a condition I don't actually have.

This image of me that she has constructed has contributed to my having a really uncertain identity. I have a hard time standing up for myself, respecting my needs and wants (or being aware of them at all), and I tend to be easily taken advantage of by others in my life. She's really persuasive in convincing me that I am who she thinks. Any time I'm doing well for myself she sneaks in and undermines it. She often pretends that this is for my benefit. Nothing I do seems to please her, even if I'm following her instructions. She often alternates between telling me that I'm a bad person to telling me that I'm her best friend and that she admires me. Sometimes she admits that she's jealous of me.

I now live four hours away from her. I have a partner and I'm getting married shortly. She's made my wedding all about her. I feel incredibly guilty that I can't afford to have the wedding she wants to have. She also keeps offering to buy me things and then after the purchases are made she drops suggestions that she can't afford what she's offered to buy and that I'm expecting too much of her. I feel incredibly selfish for doing this now.

I think she's been this way for my entire life. I've always been a really insular child and now I have extreme social anxiety. I have very few friends, none of whom are close. I tend to put myself in bad situations when it comes to friendships. As a result I feel really dependant on my mom to be part of my support network. I'm in school right now so I don't have a lot of spare money for emergencies and I feel dependant on her in that way as well. There have been many instances where I have given her money or bailed her out of difficult financial situations. Unfortunately my father is unemployed and an alcoholic. He was physically and emotionally abusive while I was growing up also. My mom would alternate between suggesting that I deserved what he was doing or being outraged at him for abusing me.

I know that these traits aren't natural to me and that they're the product of my upbringing. I'm starting to come to terms with the idea that the things my mom has told me are my fault may not be, and that she's not my responsibility. It's hard because she seems really out of control right now. She spend excessively and she is an over eater. She's gained almost 50 pounds in the last four months. It's really demonstrating to me how I was a key part in taking care of her and my younger brother. My mother was an absentee parent from the time I was 10 to the time I was 16. I pretty much single handedly raised my brother.

I really want to start healing. I feel like in so many ways I'm starting a new chapter in my life. I want to stop being afraid of success and happiness. I want to expect to get the things I deserve. I want to stop having unrealistic expectations of myself which near perfection. I suppose I'm just trying to make sense of all of these new feelings and thoughts. I have to be honest it's been difficult trying to talk to my mother since I've begun doing this research. I have a lot of doubt.

How can I prepare myself for healing?

My mom has apologised for her behaviour in the past which I thought would make me more receptive to forgiveness. Except, nothing changes and I'm still stuck in this cycle.



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