When a Child is Involved

[tryingveryhard]

Hello Everyone,

My sibling has UBPD and several formal diagnoses, including anxiety and depression and post traumatic stress disorder. She has a daughter who is a teenager now and has become increasingly independent, including spending more time at her father's house and with her peers. This includes sleepovers. My sibling told me she has had a nervous breakdown over this and actually got herself a psychiatrist. She has been having a meltdown for a couple of months, quite intense, and ongoing since the abandonment or perceived abandonment by her teenage daughter is ongoing. Given that my sister cannot control or prevent the growing independence of her daughter, I fear she will continue to be very unwell for perhaps a number of years. It is so hard.

Last week my partner and I had to sort of swoop in and take my niece out of my sister's home for a couple of days to let sister calm down and protect my niece from having to cope with my sister's overwrought crying, anger, and so on. That is when we learned that she has been telling her daughter that she doesn't love her and that she is the source of her current emotional illness. I felt shocked by this. She agreed to my niece coming with us for a few days. I asked my sister using texting if she was in a good headspace for my niece to go home or if she should go to her dad's. My sister started texting insult after insult and blaming me for her ruined life, etc. I was able to literally give zero response to the diatribe and simply asked several times whether my niece should come home to her mom or her dad. My sister has the main custody. I would have kept my niece here but my niece wanted to go home, to try to take care of her mother I think. In the end, my sister agreed to my niece going to her dad's. She stayed with her dad for a night and then went home to her mother's. I now contact my niece once a day to check in and I ask her directly if her mother's behaviour is normal or "moody" (to use my niece's word for my sister's instability).

In any case, this recent encounter with my sister's full on BPD raging and her extreme and inappropriate reaction to my niece's growing independence really smacked me in the face with the seriousness and predictability of the illness. The abandonment, splitting, emotional dysregulation, weeping and raging, victimhood, blaming everyone for everything, the incredible catalogue of insults and just plain nastiness is truly textbook. Focusing on myself more personally, i was able to detach from her diatribe, and give it nothing. Now several days have passed and my niece told me my sister changed her medication and is "normal" again. (at least for the moment). My partner and I decided we'd bring our niece to a great place she loves for a day of terrific fun. My niece said she had to ask if she could go, and texted me that her mother said she would "think about it". I asked to speak to my sister and asked if we could bring my niece out for the fun day and why she needed to think about it. (for context, we spend lots of time with our niece since she was born and do stuff with her and my sister only has a problem if she is in the throes of anger about some imagined or perceived insult). So it is sheer vindictiveness or meanness for her not to simply say Have Fun. A big part of her current meltdown has been ongoing, disorganized and inconsistent, unfair and punishing and capricious attempts to make my niece basically stay home.

This is very painful stuff all around and yes I am deeply concerned about my niece. Also I feel compassion for my sister because she is ill with a serious and awful disorder. She suffers a lot. Anyway, I felt good about myself for being able to give nothing to the diatribe and effectively support my niece while avoiding arguing with my sister and being triggered by her admittedly long list of low blow insults and complaints. It really is hard to take especially given how much my partner and I have done and continue to do for her. How we didn't break off contact even before there was a child involved. We try very hard .

But the reason for my post is that the feelings that i shut down to deal with this barrage of below the belt "hits" have showed up in the form of anxiety, including feeling weird, stomach pain and mild weepiness, feeling down. I feel better now just writing this. I am posting mostly to get it "off my chest" to a community of peers who understand what i am talking about, the frustration, sorrow, fear, worry, heartache, despair, resignation, anger, disgust, and, sometimes, when I'm able, compassion. I'm not sure what to do to make myself feel better in terms of this anxious feeling. I want it to go away and to return to a more comfortable and calm state.

Thank you for any help in this regard and all the best to you, wherever you are at this moment, dealing with the profound toll taken by the illness on everyone involved.

[Mutt]

Hi tryingveryhard,



I think that you did good with what we call not JADE'in ( Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain ) I usually states things one or maybe twice with the pwuBPD in my life, I don't repeat things.

You mentioned the father, does he have shared custody?

[tryingveryhard]

Thank you Mutt.

Not repeating things is an interesting strategy that I haven't really thought about before. I could have asked my question of the pwuBPD in my life just once or maybe twice, instead of multiple times. When she didn't give an answer after the first or second time I could have ended the conversation there and then. Why would I and did I keep trying to get an answer? especially when it was obvious no answer was forthcoming? fear, guilt and confusion is the answer I think.

Yes the father does have shared custody.

Thanks again Mutt. Good food for thought and hopefully change.