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CC43
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« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2026, 09:54:17 AM » |
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Hi there Hope,
I'm glad your name includes Hope, as I do think there's hope for your daughter, because she's young. If she gets the right treatment, she can turn her life around before BPD behaviors derail her entire life. My adult BPD stepdaughter decided to get the help she desperately needed, and though she still stuggles, her life looks much better than it did at 23, which was probably the worst year.
I have some theories about early adulthood being the worst. First off, your dear daughter is bumping up against an adult's world, but she lacks the emotional skills to handle it, and she's increasingly distressed. She feels inferior, incompetent and jealous, feelings which are exacerbated by excessive consumption of social media. Worse, she's frightened of the future, as she can't figure out who she is or what she wants, let alone how to do the work to get what she wants. She's so afraid of the future that she spends most of her time thinking about the past, both as a distraction and an excuse for her current dysfunction. My anecdotal observation is that the more obsessive a pwBPD is about the ancient past, the more frightened she is about the future. She can't look forwards because she's stuck looking backwards. It's like she's trying to drive down the highway of adulthood looking at the rearview mirror, and she's bound to have a wreck, if she hasn't had a few already.
I bet your daughter is blaming you for a terrible childhood, for ruining her life and for not doing enough for her. She might start out sounding like she's not delusional, but as she gets riled up, I bet she turns mean, calling you a terrible parent and accusing you of all sorts of transgressions, most which are highly distorted or patently false. Is she stuck in the past, dredging up the same old complaints, over and over again? No matter how much you apologize, or you try to put things in perspective, it's never enough, is it? In fact, once you start validating her, in an attempt to get her to calm down, she takes that as an invitation to try to get you to confess to things that aren't even true, right? Once she's riled up, she seems to spin out of control, and all logic gets thrown out the window. She doesn't know how to calm herself down. She has tantrums over seemingly nothing. My adult BPD stepdaughter would do the same thing when she wasn't getting the right treatment.
Your BPD daughter is doing these mental gymnastics in order to shift the blame for her dysfunction onto someone else, mostly YOU. But she's not really mad at you for what she's accusing you of, even if that is what she THINKS she's mad about. I bet what's really bugging her is fear about the future. She knows she's an adult in age, but she still feels like a dependent adolescent, and it's killing her. She doesn't really know who she is (she lacks a stable identity), and she doesn't have stable relationships (friends, co-workers, family, romantic partner). Without the high school routine that was forced upon her, she feels rudderless. Is she having trouble in college, and does she have a hard time finding (or keeping) a job? Has she lost her friends? She is discovering that she's not functioning well as an adult, and that makes her SCARED as well as inferior. "Everyone else" seems to have an easy time making friends, forming romantic relationships, finishing college and/or working, whereas she completely falls apart. This induces in her a deep SHAME.
Because of BPD, your daughter can't take setbacks in stride. She doesn't have appreciation for context or perspective--failing a class isn't the end of the world; having a fight with a roommate can happen, but apologizing goes a long way; everyone has to start at the bottom in the work world, getting fired isn't life-ending, there are a million other jobs out there. Her feelings of inferiority and dependency are super-sized and prevent her from taking responsibility for her life. Rather than take actions to make a life for herself, she regresses in AVOIDANCE, while expecting others to make her life FOR her. In the meantime, what does she do? She dredges up ancient history from childhood and blames her dysfunction on that--terrible/unsupportive/abusive family members, they are the ones who make her dysfunctional. This thought pattern makes her MAD, because she doesn't have what she wants NOW. When she sees you, she sees an opportunity to lash out and unleash all this anger and frustration onto you. If you're up for listening to her, you become her punching bag. This is all just to avoid acting like an adult and taking responsibility for her life and her decisions. That is simply too scary. She RESENTS you because she still NEEDS you desperately, and it's killing her inside.
On top of that, generally speaking, her expectations are totally unreasonable and unrealistic. I think this is rooted in adolescent or childish thinking patters. She's impatient. She's demanding. She expects adults to over-function for her. She still expects to be the center of attention at all times. She expects too much devotion from friends. She wants to make decisions, but if something goes wrong, she expects you to face the consequences and "rescue" her, because you "owe" her. Now, when she was a kid, this was normal. But now that she's an adult, she's having trouble adjusting her expectations, and at the same time, her childish expectations simply aren't being met. She still probably expects that you continue to pay most or all of her living expenses. She's resistant to doing adult administrative tasks, and she's frightened because she doesn't necessarily have the know-how, either. She's afraid to ask for help, say from a friend or an employer, because she'd be "exposed" for her lack of knowledge, for the fraud she feels she is. She wasn't really prepared to do autonomous, self-guided study in college, or to figure out how to apply for jobs, or even how to accept coaching from a supervisor. Any "criticism" would be taken personally, and she'd completely fall apart. I bet she hasn't really embraced the notion that she's responsible for herself now, because she's probably blaming you, full-time. Let me guess, your daughter says she suffers from anxiety? My bet is that's because she feels incompetent, inferior and scared. She's so afraid of a failing and a little stress that she gives up before she even tries, and to cope, she's lashing out at you. Does this sound familiar? If it does, it's because I've lived though it.
I guess some takeaways are to try not to take your daughter's outbursts personally, because BPD is NOT YOUR FAULT. You cannot control your daughter's feelings, and you are not responsible for them either. You control your feelings, and if you're stressed out and worried sick, I think you need to prioritize your own self-care, whatever that looks like for you. If you need a break, take it. If you need therapy, get it. Your job as parent now isn't to be a provider/full-time nurturer anymore--your kid is an adult now. Your role transitions to being a trusted adviser/cheerleader, as well as a good role model too. I think you should model for your daughter what a healthy adult's life looks like, and that includes taking care of yourself first and foremost. You take care of your finances, do a good job, keep a nice home and enjoy hobbies and friends. You have strong boundaries and don't engage with verbal/written attacks, and you don't react to tantrums. When your daughter goes on an emotional rollercoaster, you don't ride beside her, but you wait for her patiently at the exit. You work on remaining calm, with the hopes that it will rub off on your daughter. How does that sound?
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