Initial post

[Depression = 72% of members]

PS:  I see I placed this in the wrong place!  Please help me move it or feel free to move it to the proper area.  I am the child of a parent with BPD and narcissistic sibling.  I am not the parent of a child suffering from BPD.  Thank You!

  I am looking forward to learning from all of your wisdom and experience. I have been the oldest child/family scapegoat always held responsible for trying to help guide/save my parents even when I was very young and they made me be responsible for my younger sister and brother.  I spent my life being there for them whenever they called even though I was treated as if I did not exist until they felt anxious or needed something.  I had my ups and downs and due to all of the physical and emotional abuse/raging I went no contact with my father only to speak to him a bit before he died.

It has been hard with my mother who has a BPD diagnosis.  I took the ups and downs for a long time because she was involved with my children.   I am recovering for the last 18 months from a very bad concussion precipitated by illness and was just devastated by the fact that my mother who lives in my neighborhood and my sister who lives 2 miles away would not even acknowledge my illness... .no texts, not checks on me when I was home alone all day as my husband was at work from 5 am -8 pm when he would come home and cook for me.  I had constant vertigo, no driving, my brain could not regulate my blood pressure, heart rate, temperature... .doctors incompetent... .have a master's degree and could not speak or make decisions... .was crawling for fear of fainting again which is what caused the concussion and because of the dizziness... .it was just unbelievable to me that my mother and siblings would call on occasion when they wanted something but nobody would even text to check on me let alone come over or send a meal including for my child.

I had been discounted and "not good enough" to score a dinner with my sister and her husband for a long time but I could live with that and still went into mothering mode when she would call with anxiety or wanting me to plan an elaborate party for my mother.  I broke when she would not acknowledge what was happening for me as I fought for my life and endured so much pain and discomfort never knowing if I would get better as docs are generally clueless regarding post concussion syndrome.

Anyway, despite begging my mother to say something to my sister and brother she screamed at me that there was no way she would do that.  She wanted to be in my life but any real effort that would mean she would have to make never happened.  I think it's time to go true No Contact and try not to be upset that my sister is spreading negative stories about me to our family and people in town.  I get told to never close doors completely.  50 years of this is enough.  My kids will be torn and likely stay in contact/low contact.  Can I go to extended family events they attend and hold my head high or do I lose all of my family?

I question whether there is something wrong with me that I am not like my brother and sister and able to have a relationship with my mother, but they were never the scapegoat and they are very successful financially and that seems to feed my mother.  How do I change myself so I am not having to cut people out?  Or is it just different for me because i was always made the scapegoat and treated very differently?  They are used to me taking nothing and giving everything.  My husband can't stand seeing me cry as they break me in my current fragile state which they simply refuse to acknowledge.  Thank you for reading all this.  I'm sorry if it is too long.  I had little sleep last night.

[CPTSD]

PS:  I see I placed this in the wrong place!  Please help me move it or feel free to move it to the proper area.  I am the child of a parent with BPD and narcissistic sibling.  I am not the parent of a child suffering from BPD.  Thank You!

  I am looking forward to learning from all of your wisdom and experience. I have been the oldest child/family scapegoat always held responsible for trying to help guide/save my parents even when I was very young and they made me be responsible for my younger sister and brother.  I spent my life being there for them whenever they called even though I was treated as if I did not exist until they felt anxious or needed something.  I had my ups and downs and due to all of the physical and emotional abuse/raging I went no contact with my father only to speak to him a bit before he died.

It has been hard with my mother who has a BPD diagnosis.  I took the ups and downs for a long time because she was involved with my children.   I am recovering for the last 18 months from a very bad concussion precipitated by illness and was just devastated by the fact that my mother who lives in my neighborhood and my sister who lives 2 miles away would not even acknowledge my illness... .no texts, not checks on me when I was home alone all day as my husband was at work from 5 am -8 pm when he would come home and cook for me.  I had constant vertigo, no driving, my brain could not regulate my blood pressure, heart rate, temperature... .doctors incompetent... .have a master's degree and could not speak or make decisions... .was crawling for fear of fainting again which is what caused the concussion and because of the dizziness... .it was just unbelievable to me that my mother and siblings would call on occasion when they wanted something but nobody would even text to check on me let alone come over or send a meal including for my child.

I had been discounted and "not good enough" to score a dinner with my sister and her husband for a long time but I could live with that and still went into mothering mode when she would call with anxiety or wanting me to plan an elaborate party for my mother.  I broke when she would not acknowledge what was happening for me as I fought for my life and endured so much pain and discomfort never knowing if I would get better as docs are generally clueless regarding post concussion syndrome.

Anyway, despite begging my mother to say something to my sister and brother she screamed at me that there was no way she would do that.  She wanted to be in my life but any real effort that would mean she would have to make never happened.  I think it's time to go true No Contact and try not to be upset that my sister is spreading negative stories about me to our family and people in town.  I get told to never close doors completely.  50 years of this is enough.  My kids will be torn and likely stay in contact/low contact.  Can I go to extended family events they attend and hold my head high or do I lose all of my family?

I question whether there is something wrong with me that I am not like my brother and sister and able to have a relationship with my mother, but they were never the scapegoat and they are very successful financially and that seems to feed my mother.  How do I change myself so I am not having to cut people out?  Or is it just different for me because i was always made the scapegoat and treated very differently?  They are used to me taking nothing and giving everything.  My husband can't stand seeing me cry as they break me in my current fragile state which they simply refuse to acknowledge.  Thank you for reading all this.  I'm sorry if it is too long.  I had little sleep last night.

[Naughty Nibbler]

Welcome CPTSD:    
I'm so very sorry for what you are going through, both with your mom and your concussion.

I question whether there is something wrong with me that I am not like my brother and sister and able to have a relationship with my mother, but they were never the scapegoat.  How do I change myself so I am not having to cut people out?  Or is it just different for me because i was always made the scapegoat and treated very differently?  They are used to me taking nothing and giving everything.  My husband can't stand seeing me cry as they break me in my current fragile state which they simply refuse to acknowledge.

I suspect your problems stem from you being the emotional caretaker for you parents.  You can't change anyone else, but you can make things better for you by changing how you interact with and react to others. 

Various communication tools and boundaries will be helpful for you in the long run, but perhaps a good place for you to start is to make some sense of your history of being an emotional caretaker and how it has been different, from the experiences of your siblings. 

Perhaps the book and links referenced below can be helpful for you right now:

BOOK:  Surviving a Borderline Parent (Available in audible format, if your concussion prevents you reading right now)

FOG - FEAR, OBLIGATION AND GUILT
https://bpdfamily.com/content/emotional-blackmail-fear-obligation-and-guilt-fog

BEING AN EMOTIONAL CAREGIVER
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=173897.0

A THEORY OF THE PATTERN OF BLAME
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=271911.0

SPLITTING
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=62033.msg588248#msg588248

Let us know what you think after checking out the above book and/or various links.  I don't want to overwhelm you right now, so we will leave references for boundaries and communication skills for a later post.

Take care.  Hope you are feeling better soon.    I can't imagine what you are going through with your concussion.  I've had a few episodes of vertigo, but I've managed to get rid of my type of vertigo with some head positioning exercises.   I can't imagine having the problem for a long period of time. 

[Janneke]

Concussions and post-concussion syndrome are very scary. I'm sorry you didn't have your family's support while you were so ill. You were certainly deserving of help and love   and some caretaking.

I'm pretty new here and I don't have much advice except that you deserve to be treated well by people, and people who don't treat you well are not worth your time.

[CPTSD]

Thank you both. Your kindness has me tearing up. Isn't it something that when one grows up with families like mine, one cries when people are actually nice!  I have a wonderful husband of 2 years now but my first husband was of course terribly abusive and I am still getting used to how kind my husband is and that the other shoe is not about to fall all the time. 

OK... .deep breath and I'm sorry for not responding sooner... .I passed right out for some more sleep earlier.  I will take a deep breath, shed a tear and go read those links.  I have looked into all of this before.  I can't believe that I went back for more and got sucked back in because I truly needed help and didn't get it anyway!

It needs to stop because at this point, the stress of it continues to raise my already non-stop cortisol releases and I do not want to faint again.  My husband actually wrote my mother and sister and called them what they were after abusive texts from my sister and my mother's non-stop abusive behavior even after trying to explain again 19 months later how fragile my health is.  He was so scared with my anxiety and breakdowns from dealing with them of what would happen to me and now they are offended and my mother texted to invite me to our family holiday party and then called to uninvite me 1 minute later because she said my sister would be "uncomfortable" and that my husband needed to apologize.  "Uncomfortable"?  Holy cow! He pointed out what was going on with me in case she did not understand but all she could see was him calling her out on her stuff.  Someone healthier would have read his email and thought, "Oh... .I see... .I didn't understand how bad my sister's health is and as he pointed out, she has been there for me every time.  I will apologize and make amends".  NO!   LOL.   So my mother, sister and brother have each other and their kids and I am without immediate family and so are my kids though they are much older than my niece and nephews.   Well that's 3 more "kids" (My mother, brother and sister)  whose calls I don't have to take to fix their issues.  Hmmm.  Sad.

OK... .going to read now.  Thank you for allowing me to get some of this out!

[CPTSD]

I was able to read the posts which is a great improvement for me.
I still walk on eggshells but am learning slowly that I don't need to do that with my husband.  It is foreign to me but great.
There was a post I saved on splitting that is very powerful.  I thank the person who wrote it immensely.  Since you offered the link I imagine you know the one to which I am referring. It is from the person who recovered from BPD after treatment and could explain from the "inside" what is happening when the person with BPD splits.   
I was the very good girl and am still told by my mother that I have tthe biggest heart in the world onto whom my mother projected everything she hated about her relationship with her mother.  I spent my teens saying, "but mom... .I'm not You!".   My parents blamed me for being the cause of my sister's tummy aches and being mean to her.  I probably took my childhood anger at the abuse I took out on her some and yet... .before my sister was 9 years old, she checked herself into the nurse's office at summer camp every day when she got there because I was not there anymore (I had moved on to sleep away camp).  The next year my sister came to sleep away camp with me, and her counselors came to get me every time she cried.  Maybe I was not the cause of her tears!

So, as mentioned in the post, I have been split the "bad" one for my whole life.
My mother definitely just chose my sister over me.  My sister is powerful, has a high powered career, makes a lot of money, is showy and seeks tons of attention and cannot stand being without an audience.  She can't stand it if someone does not like one of her Facebook posts and they are all to show off her marriage (it's not good), her kids who she makes perform and model local clothing, vacations, etc. 

This "confidence" and learned ability to use language in a persuasive way as she does in her corporate marketing career is appealing to my mother and others. 

So... .while I saved her from physical abuse as a child and stood up for her with her family, my mother's loyalty is to my sister.  It's a little mind-boggling.  As my mother kept harassing me via text and phone when I was in tears after trying to drive to an MRI last week and having road scares from crazy drivers, I called my husband and was hysterical.  Heart racing and jumping at every sound... .he texted my mother that I was fragile and to leave me alone.  She then tried to call me again.  His next words to her were not so nice.  Then she called him.  He is busy at work and under massive pressure in meetings.  It was some time before she stopped.  In typical fashion she sent a text a day later saying "Hi, How are you?"  I didn't answer and we haven't spoken since.

She had dramatically sent an "apologetic" email to the family saying she was canceling the holiday party due to family problems but I would bet that they went on without me as they did last year when I could not tolerate her last minute get-together and the one my 95 year old grandmother would be at with extended family that I knew I had to try to get through for just a little bit.  Bless my grandmother, she is the only one who calls to check on me and warned me about falling and not showering until my husband got home. 

My mother is 71, has been through DBT and decades of therapy with many therapists.  This will not change.  My sister becomes more narcissistic every day and when I look back at this past decade, the change as she has acquired more money and "friends" from her social scene and kid-related activities has increased tremendously.  My college-age child felt her quid pro quo manipulation when she called to offer my child a birthday gift and in the next breath sought her attendance at her child's dance recital.  It sounds normal except that even my child realized that it was all about increasing the size of her audience and don't you know, my child declined to attend the recital because she won't be manipulated and no birthday gift was ever give.   I don't see my sister's behavior changing especially given her response to my husband's email and plea for her to make amends with me while listing my health issues and all I have done for her including during this fragile time for me.   

Emotional caretakers... .we get an amazing adrenaline rush when one of our "children" needs us.   I'm tired.  I know they think my husband and I are horrible people and will shake us off (not that there would be any difference except not calling me on the occasions they need something) but somehow I don't feel confident like she portrays herself to be.  I still feel like that weak, powerless, unlovable child.  I can't believe I just said that given the strength I have had to face dangerous people all my life. 

It was a great post.  Now to adjust me!  I have tried boundaries. I have tried talking in diffusing ways.  It's exhausting and it always circles back to the same.  Now my mother has truly chosen twice.  Once in that she refused to speak to my sister and rally the family to help me and now with the response to the taunting text my sister sent me and my husband's response/uninvite to a family party.  I offered to speak with my sister but that was not good enough.  Frankly, I would never be her friend anyway.  Her friends have no idea who she really is.

So... .what is the point of trying to get blood from stones?