Are you ever afraid of your pwBPD?

[WickedStepMum]

My 18 yr old SD has BPD. She leans into her anger heavily.
I was wondering if anyone else here becomes afraid of approaching/engaging w them during the bad moments.

I grew up w a histrionic narcissistic mother who often raged. So for me, it’s quite triggering and I feel small and scared.. but I digress. A 50yr old mouse. 

Someone mentioned grey rocking and envisioning Sancho ducking the whizzing hurtful words of blame. I will give that a go! My husband has always told me not to take her words personally.

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

[Pook075]

My 18 yr old SD has BPD. She leans into her anger heavily.
I was wondering if anyone else here becomes afraid of approaching/engaging w them during the bad moments.

I grew up w a histrionic narcissistic mother who often raged. So for me, it’s quite triggering and I feel small and scared.. but I digress. A 50yr old mouse. 

Someone mentioned grey rocking and envisioning Sancho ducking the whizzing hurtful words of blame. I will give that a go! My husband has always told me not to take her words personally.

When a BPD is upset, there's no telling what they'll say.  But honestly, it doesn't matter.  The words are meaningless and the only real goal is to calm them down.  So you try by speaking in a calm, reassuring tone and trying to be an ally. 

But if that fails, step two is just to walk away.  It takes two to argue, so if you decide you're not doing it anymore, then problem solved.  Let her yell at the wall while you drive to McDonalds and get a milkshake.  Her dysfunction doesn't have to be your dysfunction.

Third, you said the BPD daughter is 18...that makes her an adult.  If you feel scared, tell her to leave.  If she escalates, call the police and have her removed.  Do this a few times and the point becomes very clear that it's a privilege to live there, not a right.  She can stay if she can be pleasant or she can leave and be miserable...she gets to choose.  But you have to have boundaries in place that let her know raging at people is not okay.

Why?  The more you let her rage, the more entitled she becomes, and the worse her mental illness is.  But teaching her right from wrong, and that life has consequences, will ultimately help her mental illness and could drive her to taking therapy serious. Again though, she gets to decide...you just have to lay out the ground rules.

[CC43]

Hello fellow BPD Stepmom,

I'm a stepmom of an adult BPD stepdaughter, and I know how disspiriting that can be sometimes.  To answer your question, no, I haven't been truly afraid of my pwBPD, but I've been afraid FOR her.  Her tendencies have been more self-destructive than violent towards others.  Having said that, when under extreme stress, she has experienced a few episodes of disassociation, which were scary.   I've also been afraid of leaving her unsupervised in my home, mainly because I was on suicide watch, but also because I thought she might start a fire or do some other damage to the household out of carelessness or cluelessness.  She didn't care one bit about her environment and neglected to take care of things when she was untreated.

I happen to agree with Pook on his points, especially about not taking anything your daughter says personally, and having to take a "tough love" stance if she's being abusive in your home.  While I think it's important to be compassionate, BPD comes with some pernicious and destructive behaviors.  As a parent, if you tolerate abuse, the pwBPD will think it's OK to be abusive.  The long-term consequence is that she makes your life miserable--perhaps leading you to be afraid of your own kid in your own home, which is supposed to be a sanctuary.  Perhaps worse, your stepdaughter will think it's OK to treat everyone around her badly.  Before long, she'll destroy all the relationships she has with family and friends, and she'll become even more miserable, alienated from everyone, when what she craves is love, companionship and understanding.

Sadly, for as long as your stepdaughter lives with you, isn't getting therapy and has her meltdowns, she's going to blame her family for all her problems.  I bet she's saying that you're horrible and ruined her life, correct?  She blames you for all her bad choices, right?  She's all take and no give, right?  She's miserable, and yet the status quo is working for her.  As Pook wrote, she probably feels more and more entitled to demand free housing, money and and retribution for all the horrible things you've supposedly done to her.  Does that sound about right?

Look, my BPD stepdaughter was allowed to be NEETT--not in eduation, employment, training or therapy--for an extended time by her dad.  My stepdaughter thought she liked this, because she was basically on vacation and had no responsibilities.  She thought this was "working" for her, and in a perverse way, it was.  But the reality is, that if an adult is NEETT, she's doing nothing, contributing nothing.  And doing nothing eventually feels like BEING nothing.  Life seems sad and pointless.  She doesn't know who she is, let alone how to move forward.  As a result, she's always looking backwards, ruminating endlessly on negative childhood experiences, and spewing hatred towards her family for causing all her distress and ruining her life.  Does that sound about right?

My stepdaughter has lived with her dad and me, on and off, for most of her adult life.  In recent months, the deal with her was that to stay with us (for free), she had to be nice, clean up after herself and work full-time (or work full-time on finding full-time work).  Well, she did that for a few weeks, but then she got frustrated and started with her old habits of sleeping most of the day, acting passive-aggressive and avoiding us, especially at mealtimes.  She and her dad fought a few times because she wasn't holding up her side of the bargain, and her dad said, he thought it was time she should leave.  He didn't say that very nicely--they were arguing after all--but I think she wanted to leave because she couldn't stand feeling judged when she wasn't holding up her side of the bargain!  She found other living situations and has been doing her own thing for a while.  She blocked her dad, which is sad, but I think it's temporary and not a bad thing that she left.  Our home is peaceful now, and she's doing her own thing.  Baby steps.  Anyway, I think that "real life" is often a better teacher than parents when it comes to BPD, because parents come with so much negative emotional baggage.  In the "real world," she gets to experience the natural consequences of her decisions.