Help me understand. Please.

[going places]

PWBPD is 23.
She had a baby last aug.
March of this year, put a gun to her chin, in front of her soon to be ex, and after he knocked her out, he called the police and she was put on a 72 hour hold.
Either her 2nd or 3rd trip to the psych ward, in 18 months.

While in the hospital, he serves her w/ divorce papers and has temp emerg custody of the baby.

She gets out.
Prelim divorce hearing the day after she gets out.
Judge gives her 3 weeks to get her crap together.
Job, counseling, etc.

She is 100% addicted to social media.
Every fart she lets, she posts for the world to smell.

She still does not have a job.
She is drunk most of the time.
She met a guy on Tinder and went to Chicago to meet him.
She never talks about the baby.
She is more preoccupied with changing the color of her hair, getting a new tattoo (where she gets the money I have no idea) bragging about her sex-ca-pades with men and women, drinking drinking drinking... .

Then on Saturday, the ONE TIME A WEEK, she gets to see her daughter, supervised by the MIL, all the sudden she post's "I miss my baby, I want my baby back, I miss being pregnant, she's my world" bla bla bla... .

I don't understand.

I bought the book Boarderline Demistified... .and I am reading as much as I can... .and some of it I don't understand... .but it so far has not addressed how someone can completely abandon their own flesh and blood?
I don't understand. Help me please.

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 going places,

This must be breaking your heart  

I haven't read BPD Demystified. Is it helpful in explaining these behaviors?

There wasn't really any one book that explained things to me, it was reading a bunch of books plus the material here that helped me puzzle together confounding behaviors. I'm still learning.

Buddha and the Borderline is a memoir written by a woman who struggles with BPD that helped explain some things that never added up. Through her DBT therapist she begins to identify "fragments" of her self and how they function as coping mechanisms in response to overwhelming mood states.

Because pwBPD have no cohesive sense of self like we experience it, the fragments can feel unrelated to one another. Part of this seems to be connected to splitting, which is a process we apparently go through as young children. If that process is interrupted (for whatever reason, could be genetics), then the child does not learn to reconcile good and bad feelings (about others, about themselves). There is no one solid real self from which to experience these different feelings. So the feelings sort of become substitutes for that solid real self, except they aren't the real thing. They are only fragments.

For example, bad is a mood state connected to a fragment, then good is a mood state connected to another fragment, and so on, along a spectrum of mood states with different fragments cycling through, connected to those feelings.

In Buddha and the Borderline, the author talks about having an OCD fragment (control), and a fragment that is sexually promiscuous and seeks (risky) forms of stimulation, plus some other fragments that she struggles to identify as part of her.

Not sure if that makes sense.

I can see versions of this happening with SO's D19. If I use communication skills designed to convey my confidence in her competence and abilities, she is "mature" D19. If SO mansplains or lectures, D19 regresses to a "toddler" fragment. Something may trigger her to feel left out, and she has a "tween" fragment who is passive aggressive. These seem to all be relatively consistent fragmented selves that rotate in and out depending on what is happening around her and her own internal mood state.

Maybe that's happening when your pwBPD flits in and out of these different identities. In the moment when she is with her D, she is genuinely in love with this child who looks at her with love. Then a new mood state surfaces and she is back to being whatever fragment helps her solve the emotions overwhelming her in that moment, whether it's anxiety or fear or envy or inadequacy or shame, etc.

[going places]

Thank you for your reply... .please forgive me, but I do not understand what you are trying to explain.

It sounds like you are talking about someone with a multiple personality disorder (many people in one)... .is that what BPD is? Multiple personality disorder?

[livednlearned]

It's different than multiple personality disorder (now called DID or dissociative identity disorder) -- from what I understand.

With DID, severe disassociation can lead to "alters" that are not necessarily aware of each other.

In BPD, apparently the fragments of self do have some awareness of other fragments.

Most people who have a "real" self are relatively consistent in how they express their identity.

For people with a PD, their identity may respond more to a mood, which can be triggered by an external person or whatnot.

[UKMum]

Hi

I am sorry I have not got the answers you are looking for, but I related so much to your post I just wanted to say you are not alone - I wish my daughter's ex [father of my grandson] was fighting for his son - but he is too busy with the new GF he met on tinder when my daughter was 7 months pregnant [he threw her out at 5 months pregnant]... .AND antagonizing daughters condition by posting new relationship all over social media

Feel free to search my posts, it is SO unbearable when there are innocent children in the mix... .I KNOW my daughter planned hers to suck what few family members there are back in, it is crucifying me how she is using my beloved 3 year old grandson in a game of psychological warfare... .I honestly don't know how I am going to get through this anymore... .

I just wanted to let you know you are not alone... .I will NEVER understand her neglect/abuse of her son, but she believes the portrayal of the 'perfect mother' she posts on Facebook

 

[going places]

I just don't understand... .

Social Media is from the devil. She has been addicted for YEARS.

I don't understand how she can tweet " I was drunk the whole 5 months I was engaged " when she was (a) never engaged (b) cheating on the boy that was going to ask her to marry him (c) blame her alcoholism on him?

It's so out there, it's so unfathomable to me.
This is what made me go insane in the brain when she lived with me; this is the EXACT same thing her dad did. Of all the things I have read about BPD, my baby is very low functioning, and my ex is high functioning, with a side dish of Narcissism.

Holy cow.