Daughter of BPD mom

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hello, 
This is my first visit here.  My counselor believes my mother may have BPD, and I'm here to learn more about boundaries and coping with her behavior toward me and my children.

[Daughter21]

Hello, 
This is my first visit here.  My counselor believes my mother may have BPD, and I'm here to learn more about boundaries and coping with her behavior toward me and my children.

[Daughter21]

After reading one of the starter posts I guess I should post more info.  I could really relate to the idea of feeling guilty for posting here and the story in my head is that maybe I'm over reacting.  But overall I just feel really sad.  My mom is a master of guilt and shaming.  I have near constant anxiety around my interactions with her and constantly feel like I'm walking on eggshells.  When I married my husband 17 years ago my parents gifted us with part of the down payment for our house, right in the same neighborhood with them.  She is completely enmeshed in my daily life and it feels like there is no way out.  She would "die" if we ever moved away and yet she's often angry over tiny things that she blows into huge debacle.  She rages at my dad and he just ignores her.  She rages at me and then ignores me until I apologize.  She sometimes complains and criticizes me to my children who are 8, 12 and 14.  She insists on babysitting and then resents it- example,
She'll say, " You're going to run errands?  The kids don't want to go grocery shopping.  Bring my babies to me.  I just made their favorite cookies... ." 
An hour later she calls all upset, "when are you going to be back?  I didn't realize it was going you take you this long to run a few errands!" 
Then she's the victim and I'm taking advantage,  but there's literally no winning here because if I had refused to drop off the kids she'd be offended and think I was trying to keep "her babies" away from her.  Because she can be super affectionate and accomodating towards the kids I tend to think I'm being over sensitive or accept blame for her moods.  But now that Imy reading all this stuff about BPD and thinking about her effect on me growing up I'm starting to feel like a bad mom for ever letting her watch the kids.  Sometimes they will tell me things she says later and then say, "don't tell grandma I told you!" They're even afraid of making her mad,   It's really hard to make boundaries because she rages and holds silent grudges for weeks.  But I do love her and wish for a better, healthier relationship with her.  I'm just not sure where to start.

[Sophistigoth13]

Hi, I'm also super new to this website.

I can't really offer you much in the way of help, I can tell you that your mom sounds really similar to mine. She gets angry or does something inappropriate, and then if I don't immediately placate her, she will give me the silent treatment until she decides she's over it.

She also does things like come up with things she wants to do, and then complains about it. She decided she wanted to make my husband and I a wedding gift, which I did not ask for, and then reminded me for several weeks how stressed she was about making it, and how much of her time it was taking, despite me telling her constantly she didn't have to do it, or do it by a specific date.

I can also relate to questioning yourself, because my mom can positively be the nicest person, giving me food and gifts, etc., but every gift from her comes with a price. All the nice things she does are so I owe her.

Like I said, I can't really offer you advice, but I can tell you I know some of the things you're going through, and it really, really sucks sometimes.

[isilme]

Hi - I'm NC with my Family of Origin (FOO) and have been spending most of my time on other boards here, but I'm an only child of two pwBPD.  In my case, they were so extreme NC was the only thing I could do to stay sane and find me after being so enmeshed for so many years, but I know NC is very drastic and won't work for most people.

Boundaries.  I see a lot of people refer to boundaries as if they will make the person with BOD behave better, or even control them.  Sadly, it's not the point of a boundary.  A boundary is to set a rule YOU follow to protect yourself and your immediate family.  The pwBPD WILL rage and give silent treatment when a boundary is enforced "No mom, I don't want to drop off the kids today, I need them with me."  So she gets mad.  So she gives you the silent treatment.  The choice you have to make is to not let it bother you.  She controls you with feelings of Fear Guilt and Obligation (FOG).  The task you have is to not let her.  Do you need to feel guilty because SHE CHOOSES to get upset over something simple like not dropping off the grandkids?  No.  She is a grown up.  She should not act like an angry toddler herself.  And just like an angry toddler, we can't always give in to their demands, and we can't allow ourselves to take it too seriously when they say, "I hate you, you're mean!"

We often feel it is our job to make and keep the pwBPD happy.  It's not.  Only they can choose to control or not control their emotions.  All we can do is determine if a response from us is warranted, or not.  Often, it's not.  And like a child who holds their breath to get attention, ignoring them or just not reacting is often all we can really do.

[LittleBlueTruck]

Daughter21, I'm in a similar boat except my children are very young (a baby and a toddler). My mom is really great with them (I think) and is the lei
Art caregiver. We support her financially in exchange for this. When I had my youngest, we started talking about daycare for the 2 year old, since having both kids by herself might be a lot on her. She made a bunch of horribly guilting comments about how daycare is catastrophic for kids and panicked any time we brought it up. But now that my maternity leave is drawing to a close, she acts like we have dumped this unmanageable load on her and is acting resentful. I don't know what to do. We can't support our little family and her on only my husband's salary, so I can't quit. I just don't ever know what she wants.

I don't know if I'm messing up by having her around my kids. My plan has always been to seek another arrangement once they are a little older and she can start in on them!

[Highlander]

Apologies for being a bit of a downer on this post but I just wanted to share a bit of my story.

My husband had BPD and is now recovered.  It almost cost him his life.

Over many years, I was included in his intensive therapy.  We had therapy sessions together and alone.  His therapists believe that his mother also has BPD & NPD and concluded that her treatment of him, as early as a young toddler, was the reason why he contracted it himself (along with the fact his father has NPD).  At age 6 he was already experiencing disassociation and age 10 he began self harming.

With this knowledge in hand as well as additional research into therapists that connect 'invalidating parenting' to the contraction of BPD, our therapists helped us to understand that the woman was poison around small children. 

Worse thing was is that she believed that she raised her children well.  Never researched her son's diagnosis and made any connections with herself.  So last year when I was parenting her grandchild in her company she would dictate to me that I should be using her invalidating parenting techniques.

At this time we had never told her that we believed she had BPD or what our therapists had concluded (I'm sure you all know why - that some people just can not be told they have BPD), so throughout the year I was gritting my teeth to avoid any explosion (walking on eggshells) whilst deep down knowing full well her parenting techniques had been proven to be poisonous and even life threatening to young children.

All BPD sufferers are different and I note that LittleBlueTruck states that:

 

My mom is really great with them (I think)

So maybe LittleBlueTruck's mother is OK around little children, but it is well worth looking into 'Invalidating Parenting' (IP) and what many experts believe - in some cases they have found a connection between IP and children who contract BPD. 

Not saying that all parents give their children BPD, as I am aware some children can contract it different ways, and some siblings may get it while others don't (genetically emotional children can apparently play a part).  But in my husbands situation, his therapists held no doubt that IP as well as other dysfunctional parenting he was exposed to (ie simply being around irrational behaviour and arguments) that his parents were responsible for his contraction of BPD as well as his only sibling - his sister.

I am not saying that the children should be completely removed from their grandmother but if a BPD grandmother does portray IP and at times can think and act irrationally, then don't forget young children are learning everything in life including how to behave.   

From experience, I believe the amount of exposure of the children (ie using a BPD grandmother instead of childcare whilst working) should be thought out carefully and possibly limited as well as other methods need to be put in place to ensure that the children know that "if grandmother says some silly things such as "stop being stupid"" for just being a regular 2 year old pulling off some pretty awesome dancing moves to music etc etc than the children should be told "that is just gran.  You're allowed to be yourself and by the way your dancing moves are cool".