First Timer

[Maple leaf]

This is, as standard, a very long introduction.  But there is a question at the end that I am hoping someone can answer.  But first, my intro. 

My husband and I have three teenage daughters. Two were adopted from Asia as infants and therefore, no family history and we very likely will never have one.  The eldest has just this month been diagnosed with BPD.  She has never experienced any other kind of trauma as long as she has been in our life, so I must assume that the trauma of being abandoned, cared for by multiple nannies in an orphanage and then being whisked away to North America to live in a different culture with complete strangers who don't like anything like the people she is used to (we are Caucasian) is what must be at the root of her difficulties.  I am doing what I can to learn as much about the disorder as I can.

She was diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school (we took her to a psycho-education psychologist to determine why she was suddenly not learning anything at school), but frankly my husband and I had trouble believing it.  Once we removed her from a bullying situation at her local school and put her in a private school with smaller classes and kinder classmates, she did very well at school.  Basically was an honours student.  In high school she was enrolled in a fairly academically rigorous school with lots of requirements for physical activity, creativity (ie music extracurriculars) and community service to be met.  We liked that because it kept her busy and "out of trouble".  However, it was also pretty exhausting.  But she always rose to the challenge and did very well in all aspects.  Which is why we were always skeptical of the ADHD diagnosis (but now we know it was simply foreshadowing).  There was a fair amount of peer pressure to do well.  If we had known exactly how rigorous it was going to be, we wouldn't have chosen that school, but we were naive.  Anyway, like I said, she did well and was accepted into a good university, which is what she wanted but now regrets because it is too far away.  She is now in third year of a co-op program and is just finishing up a work term and is about to head back to school after Christmas. 

Her younger sister, also adopted from Asia, came to us very early in the summer, after her graduation from high school and told us she needed help.  She had been suffering from depression, generalized anxiety, social anxiety and insomnia and felt like ending her life would be preferable to everything she was dealing with (again Adoption issues?).  We immediately got her into private therapy (so grateful we can afford it - the wait for community services was just too long).  I called her older sister who was at Uni at the time to tell her what her sister was going through and asked her to promise me that she would come to us if she ever needed help in that regard.  A few months later, just before she came home for her work term, she emailed me and said she felt something was wrong with her.  She had felt this way for several years, before she graduated high school, but didn't know what was going on.  She felt sad, empty, was losing friends and she didn't know why, was becoming inexplicably enraged at her boyfriend and had lost interest in things that normally she enjoyed.  When she came home we sent her to psychologist right away and she went a few times, but felt it was a waste of time; that it was not helping.  Her boyfriend's hometown is in the university town my daughter goes to, so they were now living apart.  She told me that they were talking about breaking up because their schedules no longer mesh because they are on opposite work terms, but she said they both also really loved each other and she was trying to get them to stick with it.  But I would hear her on skype or on the phone with her boyfriend late at night and she would be weeping and pleading with him and also sounding accusatory.  A couple of times, I would get out of bed and go ask her if she was ok and she would yell at me to go away and then the weeping would intensify.  I didn't know what to do.  She wouldn't go back to the psychologist.  But then, out of nowhere one evening, I heard yelling and stomping from her room and then an ungodly sound of something breaking.  I raced upstairs.  She was sitting in a fetal position on her bed rocking back and forth, wailing with a large, full size mirror lying shattered all over her bedroom floor.  She had picked it up off the floor and thrown it across the room.  She was still on the phone with her boyfriend and she wouldn't hang up.  My husband and I are not used to this sort of atmosphere.  We come from relatively calm family backgrounds.  We calmly cleaned up the pieces and made her promise that there wasn't any of it in her bed with her, because at this point I had no idea what her intent was.  The next day I called a psychiatrist with whom we were on a wait list for and his assistant told me to take her to Emerg as soon as possible (which would get us past the long waitlist).  That night, daughter agreed to go with me and after many hours there, we finally got an appointment to see a psychiatrist a few days hence.  That is when the diagnosis was made.

We are very concerned about her because she is about to go back to school and we are afraid of what her moods will do to her and her relationships.  When we started learning about BPD, it all made so much sense to us.  For YEARS, we had worried about what was going on with her, but so much of her behaviour was just little things and hard to describe, but now it is clear as day to us.  "Walking on Eggshells" literally describes our family's reaction to her so often.  We have enrolled her in a DBT program for when she goes back to school (there is a DBT program in that town, luckily).

My question is that a description of "borderlines" is that they feel like they have no skin sometimes and can't bear to be close to anyone.  Is that referring to a physical repulsion of an affectionate touch?  When daughter is highly agitated and I try to calm her down by hugging her, she only gets worse and yells, ":)on't TOUCH me".  Is that what the skinless description is referring to?

Thank you for listening to me and, hopefully being able to answer my first (of many I am sure) question.

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

[livednlearned]

Hi Maple leaf,

Welcome and hello 

I'm so sorry for what brings you here and glad you found the site. You must be very concerned about her going back to university. Does the DBT practitioner recommend she continue with school, or take less of a load?

It's a good sign that your daughter was able to say she felt like something was wrong, and that she agreed not only to see a psychiatrist, but to attend DBT. That is a huge big step, and requires a lot of courage and bravery on her part.

To your question about  having no skin -- it can be both, although typically it is about the emotional intensity.

However, my son has sensory defensiveness. He is so sensitive to sounds, sensations, touch, light. I've learned to listen and validate and accept that he is an environmental sponge, and has the soul of a poet. He is so stimulated by normal, everyday things that many of us learn to dial down low so we can focus on other things. It is much more challenging for him to do the same.

There is an interesting child development theory about "orchid" children and "dandelion" children. Dandelions are more common, more abundant, more homogeneous, and tend to be resilient. Whereas orchids are special, unique, and exquisitely dialed into their environments. The development theory focuses on how these orchid children are actually more likely to respond to the right interventions, and if they learn to thrive, have so much to offer. I've shared that with my son, so he can see his so-called sensitivities as strengths in the right conditions.

To your comment about daughter's agitation -- it could be that she does not want comforting in that moment. She may want validation for the intense feelings she has. My family lineage is also British, a very reserved way with emotions, to the point of masking and repressing them. This can be like throwing a match onto gas for people with BPD. I've had to learn to show more emotion on my face, add inflections to my voice, and validate validate validate intense emotional states.

Otherwise, sensing that you are not grasping the intensity of their emotions, they may escalate until you are equally as dysregulated.

If you can meet them where they are before full-blown meltdown, it can help prevent things from getting worse.