BPD adult daughter sabotaging relationships

[Karen56]

Hi-thanks for being here. Little history first. I have a 46 yr old daughter who has had problems since she was 2. She threw tantrums, lied constantly and played her dad and I against each other (divorced since she was 15 mo-physical, he was mentally  & physically abusive and alcoholic). He dad wanted her to live with him and new wife (didn’t want to pay me child support) but I wouldn’t let him until he was clean and sober for 1 yr. When she was 8 he agreed-I took her to Alateen to help her. In the mean time-both her dad and I had remarried and had another child. I tried to make sure she felt secure-but her lying became a huge problem. Escalated when she told her teacher I had lost a baby-I was 5 mo pregnant. Her teacher came up to me to tell me how sorry she was for my loss. I was stunned. Talked to her pediatrician again he recommended a psychiatrist. After a few months-he said let her move in with her dad and don’t leave her alone with my new baby

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

[Sancho]

Hi Karen56
Thanks for posting. It's been a long journey for you, starting so young! Has DD been diagnosed with any particular conditions? I notice she saw a psychiatrist at some point and wondered if he had an explanation for the lying ie was it part of a particular condition.

You are feeling the weight of this long journey and I am glad you came here. Many of us have been on a long journey too and feel exactly the same. The great benefit of coming here for me is reading posts like yours and then I know I am not alone.

There are so many questions I have about how things are now and how your life is impacted by DD currently.

I hope you will post again if you feel it is helpful for you to do so.

[js friend]

Hi karen56,

My udd would often tell lies too and it  started from a very early age. Some times I think she would tell lies for attention and other times they were half truths, some were real big exaggerations. but some werent true at all. The smaller lies were things like  people had stolen her stuff so  she could get them replaced when it later turned out that she had destroyed them herself or stealing school kids toys and hiding them in her room.

The biggest lie that I can remember udd told when she was  in her teens was that I had been kidnapped and held for ransom by an armed gang, and that there had been a police stand-off, and apparently shots were fired before I was eventually rescued.

So I asked the person if they had seen it on the news. Of course not because it never happened. At one point I thought maybe udd was experiencing psychosis. Later I learnt that udd had got herself in some trouble with a money laundering gang but she had focused it all around me and I was the culprit (as usual) Luckily she wasnt charged with a crime because of her age at the time.

[Karen56]

Hi Sancho- it has been a long journey and I only wrote a fraction. She wasn’t diagnosed with anything at that time, it was 1986 and I don’t think they had an actual label for her behavior. What prompted the dr was first after she moved in with her dad, maybe a few months later she told me she had started her period-she was 9-both my mom and I were 13-and her dad wasn’t married and had some questionable friends. I was afraid she had been sexually assaulted. Took her to her pediatrician-she hadn’t been-it was awkward-and she was mad. I tried to explain I was worried she had been hurt. Then she told the teacher about my losing the baby-thus psychiatrist.
Thing with her now are up and down, currently down. We will be fine then she brings up something that she claims happens as a child. She told me I locked her in the chicken coop and served her lunch in there. We had a rule, you lie, you clean the chicken coop-applied to all the kids. She was the only one cleaning it ever. We had a safe way out for them-if they to,d us a lie & we knew it-we would ask “for reals” and the boys would all say no, I was just telling a story, or a joke. She double downed. It’s true to this day. I never locked her in nor served her lunch in there.
Her latest thing is to tell her brothers she’s was coming up for Xmas-yet no conversations with me. Xmas is at our house

[Karen56]

I guess we only have so much room, cut off the end

At Christmas talking to our middle son (37) who is neutral said it doesn’t matter it’s her truth and for me to apologize. I think she has false memories as she has told such awful stories about her childhood, say it enough it becomes your truth & that’s what I had told her-she was mad & said I was gaslighting her. My son said the same, even if it wasn’t true, it was to her. I’m at a loss on how to move forward.

[Karen56]

JS Friend - yikes! That was a whopper! And how scared she got into criminal behavior. Mine had gone thru a really bad time when husband cheated & they split, they were so nasty to each other. She really started drinking a lot, plus anti anxiety & anti depressants -she drove her kids to school drunk, hit a curb, went to work and they sent her home. She got laid off. The she got 5150 -and lied even to that psychiatrist who looked about 20. She’s the eternal victim. It’s so hard to navigate thru this. She sober now but she is still great for a certain amount of time, then it turns.

[CC43]

There are many themes on this thread, from a lifetime of volatile relationships, to substance abuse to victimhood to lying.  Alas, all seem typical behaviors of someone with BPD.  I think these behaviors are a manifestation of inadequate coping skills.  People with BPD feel so unstable, their emotions are intense, and they are volatile and impulsive.  Their emotional brain takes over and drowns out the logical brain--so they can't possibly have perspective, context, empathy or patience.  They don't really know who they are or have any vision of their future selves to guide and sustain them when life throws them a curveball or obstacles get in their way.  If they are stressed, hurting or feeling ignored, they'll feel it with such intensity that they'll do just about anything to let out the pain and try to get it to stop--even if they can't really pinpoint what's ailing them in the moment.  I think that's behind the lying, the accusations and substance abuse, and the dredging up of fabricated childhood traumas.  When they confront the consequences of their poor choices, they feel disappointment, regret and shame, but rather than process these feelings or learn from the situation, they will re-write history to blame somebody else.  In my opinion, the victim mentality might be the worst part of BPD, because it absolves the pwBPD of responsibility, and at the same time makes them feel powerless.  It also colors how she views the world--she's always a victim, and others are set on ruining her life.  She thinks everyone else should change, not her, and so she resists therapy and perpetuates her misery.  "Her truth" is painted black with negativity.  Unfortunately, that's how she tends to treat her loved ones, and so we're here on this site trying to process what went wrong and how to cope.