Suspected BPD sister and gift giving to my daughter

[peanutbutterandj]

Hello everyone,

My sister displays several BPD behaviors and has for many years now. This mostly affects our relationship when she gets into conflicts with a family member and cuts contact with everyone at once. Typically, she will discontinue contact for about 6 months to a year and then "pop up" as if nothing happened and want to continue the relationship. She's done this at holidays and once at my house randomly. This has happened for several years and I am used to it at this point. I noticed that after having my daughter, her way of popping back in to my life is by asking to bring my daughter a gift. At this point my daughter doesn't even know that she's her aunt because she's rarely around. I am conflicted about whether or not I should allow it this time around, especially since she hasn't contacted me in months and our relationship is so strained. My daughter is only four and very attuned to emotions in the room. I'm leaning toward declining and saying that she can mail the gift.
Any thoughts on this are greatly appreciated. I can give more details if needed.

[ForeverDad]

I had many uncles and aunts and did not get to regularly see them all yet I treasured having them.  Now there remain even more cousins and we're so scattered that we only occasionally meet up yet we share a fondness for one another.  So I wouldn't see cause to limit contact just for that irregular contact.

However, you would be wise to have Boundaries in place regarding contact since you're aware your sibling has serious mental health issues, perceptions and reactions.  Such a boundary wouldn't be so much about how gifts are given but rather that your sibling always be polite in your or your child's presence.

I always knew I had a "grumpy" sibling - even complaining about my parenting - yet that was before I knew about PDs I never knew how important Boundaries are to limit the discord.  Our last conversation was an outburst almost a decade ago and my boundary is to not reach out to that sibling even though living on the same small street.  My grown child is aware to be cautious.

Our Tools and Skills workshops board has some articles on properly constructed boundaries that are very informative.  Since people with BPD traits (pwBPD) typically reject boundaries, hence our boundaries are for us to decide how we will respond to poor behavior.

I guess what I'm really saying is that we can't protect our children from all the metaphorical bumps and bruises they will experience in the years to come.  What we can do is to ensure we've done our reasonable best to provide them a good environment, train them - over time as they grow - to be perceptive decision makers, to make positive decisions and set their own boundaries of practical behavior as well.  That will be a process where they learn from your own example of balancing reasonable judgement with appropriate caution and appropriate boundaries.

[CC43]

Hi there,

It's tough to know what to do sometimes with the recurring cycles of estrangement.  The pwBPD in my life recently left her dad's and my home in a rage, and she has cut off all communication.  It's really sad, because we were the only ones left in the family she would talk to.  She has cut off all ties with siblings, her mom and stepdad, aunts and uncles, her only living grandparent and all her cousins, for a few years and still counting.  Sometimes the cutoffs seem really juvenile (e.g. blocking her phone, unfriending people on social media), but the point is, she is estranged and alienated from family.  She does the same with ex-friends, too.

The cycles of estrangement have become so recurrent that, like you, I'm almost used to them.  My take is that she needs an extended "time out" to get control of herself and get her act together.  Typically she will leave the relationship in a rage, because she believes she was wronged in some way, and yet usually it's because something else in her life isn't going how she wanted, and she seeks to blame somebody else for her woes, mainly as a distraction and deflection of her core issues.  She has a strong tendency to adopt a victim attitude, because it's just too hard for her to take responsibility for her life and her decisions.  Like your loved one, my pwBPD will typically resume contact eventually, usually when she needs something -- money, a co-signer, logistical help, etc.  She'll generally pretend that the last blow-up didn't happen.  I guess that's OK with me, because bringing up past grievances is like picking at a scab, and why re-live all the pain and bleeding?

You bring up another interesting topic of gifts.  My personal view is that unless we're talking about a birthday, Christmas or a major milestone, gifts aren't necessary.  My opinion is that a visit itself is the gift.  In my family, kids tend to get too many gifts as it is, and they have come to expect gifts sometimes.  When that happens, I have the sense that gifts become transactional, as if love is being bought.  Sometimes the gifts become a distraction in my opinion.  Anyway, I guess I try to show that my gift is one of love and attention, and I think the children have come to appreciate that.  If I were in your situation, I might say something like, Please don't feel the need to bring a gift, we'd just like to see you.

Now with BPD, I've found that holidays and celebrations tend to be very high-stress times.  The topic of gifts has come up on these boards from time to time.  Sometimes it appears that gift-giving is used as a means of manipulation and control.  Sometimes, the pwBPD will become upset about a gift, because they feel shortchanged or insulted in some way.  If you turn the situation around and are talking about a pwBPD giving a gift to another family member, the recipient's reaction could set them off, for example if they didn't seem grateful enough.  If others are receiving gifts and appear joyful, then it's easy for the pwBPD to feel left out and insanely jealous, because the pwBPD is reminded of how unhappy she really is.  So I guess my general advice would be to try to limit gift exchanges with as few people as possible when the pwBPD is around.