The whole family is shattered...is there hope?

[Parents! Get help here!]

My story is complicated.

I was married for 18 months to my BPD daughter's father. I wouldn't say he's BPD but had severe anger issues. She lived with him for the first year of her life, then had a 2 visits.

I had to move in with my parents and am now able to see that my father had severe BPD. We stayed with them until she was 5, then I moved away from the US to Italy and married an Italian.

My Italian husband never mistreated my daughter but he wasn't close to her. She had a lot of anger and behavior problems from the age of 3, and he ignored it and left it all up to me. The more he ignored her outbursts the more she acted out.

I was always in the middle. The stress was incredible as she grew. When she was 10 I had another daughter. By then the problems were causing a massive wedge in my marriage. I ended up at a psychiatrist for depression. As time went by and my BPDd got older, she got more violent. I took her to so many therapists during her childhood but no one here in Italy (the system is about 30 years behind here) recognised anything wrong. She would turn on the charm, tell lies, and fool the doctors every time.

At the time that she was becoming more violent and aggressive my husband moved to another city for work, only to come home on the weekends. I was alone in a foreign country with no family. I couldn't have friends, either, because of her. I couldn't work because I couldn't leave my little one with her. My stress and depression grew and instead of looking for help from a therapist (because they had left me flat in the past) I continued going to a psychiatrist who ended up putting me on every psych med you can imagine. The whole pharma experience almost killed me.

After 2 years of living alone, even though my marriage was technically over, I decided to move the girls to live with my husband. My BPDd had quit high school in the previous place, but started again when we moved and finished with high grades. Afterwards she decided to move back to the original town to go to university. We paid for her apartment and gave her my car.

She spend a year not doing anything--no job, never attended school, and then while texting on the highway, totalled my car. She literally wasted 10,000+ euros on school, I can't imagine what we spent for her living expenses and all she did was smoke pot and play video games.

Now we've moved back closer to the original town and she's moved in with us. She did a month in a rehab/clinic for DBT and is now in DBT. She's had a ton of job interviews but either they're "not right" or she does something to screw them up.

Our lives are fractured. Everything revolves around BPD. My youngest, now 13, is in therapy. A couple years ago she told me about how her BPD sister abused her--punching, and mentally--when she was small. She was too afraid to tell me until her sister moved out. I was so jacked up on benzos I didn't even realize and that destroys me.

My husband and I have no relationship. We're married for convenience. He works, skates or surf for therapy. We have to force ourselves to speak to one another because we don't care anymore. We're too tired.

I see my BPDd trying to use the skills she's learning in DBT but I also see the world becoming to much for her to bear at times and her losing it. It's like it's too much for her, no matter what skills she has been taught.

Is there hope? Is there anyone here who can say DBT works? If my marriage is over, fine. But I want my BPDd to be ok. I want my non-BPDd to be ok. I'm tough, I'm old. I can be ok if they are. I don't need anything else in life.

[Noteliz]

My story is complicated.

I was married for 18 months to my BPD daughter's father. I wouldn't say he's BPD but had severe anger issues. She lived with him for the first year of her life, then had a 2 visits.

I had to move in with my parents and am now able to see that my father had severe BPD. We stayed with them until she was 5, then I moved away from the US to Italy and married an Italian.

My Italian husband never mistreated my daughter but he wasn't close to her. She had a lot of anger and behavior problems from the age of 3, and he ignored it and left it all up to me. The more he ignored her outbursts the more she acted out.

I was always in the middle. The stress was incredible as she grew. When she was 10 I had another daughter. By then the problems were causing a massive wedge in my marriage. I ended up at a psychiatrist for depression. As time went by and my BPDd got older, she got more violent. I took her to so many therapists during her childhood but no one here in Italy (the system is about 30 years behind here) recognised anything wrong. She would turn on the charm, tell lies, and fool the doctors every time.

At the time that she was becoming more violent and aggressive my husband moved to another city for work, only to come home on the weekends. I was alone in a foreign country with no family. I couldn't have friends, either, because of her. I couldn't work because I couldn't leave my little one with her. My stress and depression grew and instead of looking for help from a therapist (because they had left me flat in the past) I continued going to a psychiatrist who ended up putting me on every psych med you can imagine. The whole pharma experience almost killed me.

After 2 years of living alone, even though my marriage was technically over, I decided to move the girls to live with my husband. My BPDd had quit high school in the previous place, but started again when we moved and finished with high grades. Afterwards she decided to move back to the original town to go to university. We paid for her apartment and gave her my car.

She spend a year not doing anything--no job, never attended school, and then while texting on the highway, totalled my car. She literally wasted 10,000+ euros on school, I can't imagine what we spent for her living expenses and all she did was smoke pot and play video games.

Now we've moved back closer to the original town and she's moved in with us. She did a month in a rehab/clinic for DBT and is now in DBT. She's had a ton of job interviews but either they're "not right" or she does something to screw them up.

Our lives are fractured. Everything revolves around BPD. My youngest, now 13, is in therapy. A couple years ago she told me about how her BPD sister abused her--punching, and mentally--when she was small. She was too afraid to tell me until her sister moved out. I was so jacked up on benzos I didn't even realize and that destroys me.

My husband and I have no relationship. We're married for convenience. He works, skates or surf for therapy. We have to force ourselves to speak to one another because we don't care anymore. We're too tired.

I see my BPDd trying to use the skills she's learning in DBT but I also see the world becoming to much for her to bear at times and her losing it. It's like it's too much for her, no matter what skills she has been taught.

Is there hope? Is there anyone here who can say DBT works? If my marriage is over, fine. But I want my BPDd to be ok. I want my non-BPDd to be ok. I'm tough, I'm old. I can be ok if they are. I don't need anything else in life.

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

[Kwamina]

Hi Noteliz

My Italian husband never mistreated my daughter but he wasn't close to her. She had a lot of anger and behavior problems from the age of 3, and he ignored it and left it all up to me. The more he ignored her outbursts the more she acted out.

Your husband wasn't close to your oldest daughter. How was/is his relationship with your youngest daughter?

Our lives are fractured. Everything revolves around BPD. My youngest, now 13, is in therapy. A couple years ago she told me about how her BPD sister abused her--punching, and mentally--when she was small. She was too afraid to tell me until her sister moved out. I was so jacked up on benzos I didn't even realize and that destroys me.

Hindsight is always 20/20, it is unfortunate that you weren't able to be more present then as a result of those medications but there is nothing you can do about that now. BPD isn't easy to deal with and one of the main reasons you were on those meds was because of all the stress and anxiety dealing with your BPD daughter was causing you. Once we know better, we can do better. You cannot change the past, but you can use your new knowledge and insights to help you move forward in a more constructive manner. You reaching out here and addressing your issues head-on is something I consider a big step towards making a change

I see my BPDd trying to use the skills she's learning in DBT but I also see the world becoming to much for her to bear at times and her losing it. It's like it's too much for her, no matter what skills she has been taught.

Are there any specific times you feel she gets particularly overwhelmed? Can you perhaps identify certain triggers that seem to really influence her behavior?

Is there hope? Is there anyone here who can say DBT works? If my marriage is over, fine. But I want my BPDd to be ok. I want my non-BPDd to be ok. I'm tough, I'm old. I can be ok if they are. I don't need anything else in life.

I believe there is hope. We of course do have to be realistic and BPD is a very challenging disorder. Managing this disorder can take time, what I do find encouraging though is that you said in another post that your daughter does seem to acknowledge she has issues and is willing to work on them. Her behavior is still quite difficult for the entire family, but hopefully in time her behavior will improve. Whether she changes or not though, you ultimately cannot control her behavior but you can control what you do yourself. Unfortunately the therapist you've been seeing has so far not been able to provide you the help you were hoping for, but I am glad that you've find this forum helpful so far.

I definitely encourage you to keep posting here and asking the members for support and advice. I also encourage you to study the resources and tools on this site. The tools might not work right away, in fact it can sometimes take quite some time, but I have found that they can help in dealing with our BPD family-members.

Take care