Guidance with understanding BPD traits of adult son

[Welcome]

Hello, this is my first post. I have been tearing up as well as finding strength in reading other parents' posts and the community support. I have a son who just turned 28—had alcohol and prescription med dependency since 2018. Managed to graduate from top schools with an undergrad and graduate degrees. We paid for college tuition while he received some scholarship money. We (I) required him to take a de minimus amount of student loans during grad school with the intent that he has some skin in the game. Especially, since roughly 2.5 years, under influence sometimes, or even otherwise, he would flare up, would rage,  via text messages, and incessant phone calls (30-40 rings, one after another). The anger is primarily centered around various grievances from the past - childhood, teen years, and present. He has a formal diagnosis of anxiety and ADHD. I was worried and wondered if it was intermittent explosive disorder, and was encouraging him to discuss with his Psych. Once he is done expressing rage with me, starting 1.5 years back, he would disparage and use extremely hurtful language to the younger sibling, claiming that would get my attention. Over the last 12 months, he was exhibiting classic symptoms of BPD. As I learned more about it, his symptoms - victimhood, childhood, past, suicidal ideations and attempts, became very cyclical. Every 1-2 weeks, emails, text messages (I stop picking up the phone now when he is in that state), I do not check or respond to text messages, in a way to protect my calm. This lasts for 1-3 days, then he goes back to his normal self. We have communication still via email (only) about current matters; he is respectful, says thanks, and such. During the splitting phase, the words are so offensive that I am stunned and pained that he could utter them.  The saga continues. I have encouraged him to join family therapy so he can express his grievances and listen to our side. We can all heal. It is correct, he has anger at the dad because the dad was not around, he had to witness conflicts between mom and dad as a child, and I neglected him because I was at work, leaving him with the dad during a school break. His relentless bringing back of the past and episodes in his life, we are bad parents, or you didn't leave dad, and hating me for that now. He sees a therapist and has a psychiatrist, but I'm not sure how much he truly shares about his struggles with his relationships. I do not respond to his emails when he is splitting (with threats, cursing). and briefly state that I cannot engage with him, and we can have joint therapy if he accepts it. I attend NAMI, BPD Alliance forums, read every book out there on BPD, and take care of myself. I am ok to support him financially for 2-3 specific things for a certain time period until he gets a full-time job after he gets a license. The dad doesn't know how to "manage" the onslaught, so he doesn't want to do anything with our son. Our son's grudge grows further. When our son is himself, he sees all the relationships he has lost, how lonely he is, and he appreciates that I am still around for him. As a parent, more than the FOG (because I think I have already endured those stages during the height of his addiction), my love for him, the sadness from the loss of things that could have been, his pain, and his adult journey, pull me down sometimes. I pray for his healing, I try to cultivate meaningful boundaries (which I break sometimes), and I introspect if I am a codependent and continue to fine-tune my role to the best of my ability on a daily basis.  Thanks for listening. Any words of support and sharing are appreciated.

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

[CC43]

Welcome Welcome,

You've come to the right place.  It sounds like you've been on this journey for some time, and that you have a pretty good sense of what is going on.  Yet it still hurts to see your son suffer, as well as be the target of his blame.  I imagine that by now you understand that you aren't to blame for your son's BPD, no matter how much he tries to convince you otherwise.  Here we talk about the FOG, operating in a cloud of Fear, Obligation and Guilt, which clouds our judgment.  I hope you're mostly out of the FOG by now.

Though your son is struggling, I see a few good things going on here.  First, he got undergraduate and graduate degrees--in spite of his addiction and emotional handicaps.  He might be a "high functioning" BPD type.  It seems to me that he can control his emotions and focus on the tasks at hand well enough to get the job done.  It may cost him enormous emotional energy, and yet when he interacts with you, he feels close enough to you that he doesn't have to fake it anymore, and he'll let his guard down, while letting rip his pent-up negative emotions.  Still, it sounds to me like he does have capacity for self-control and executive function, and that would be reason for hope in my opinion.

Secondly, he's young, and he's getting some psychological support.  With the right treatment, my bet is that he could learn some skills to manage his negative thinking patterns and emotional outbursts better, before negative BPD behaviors derail his entire life and become deeply ingrained.  If he's actually attending therapy sessions, that's sign he's working through some issues.  Now, sometimes I think that talk therapy might not be the best type of therapy, if he recounts negative incidents over and over again.  With BPD, the gold standard for treatment is DBT, which I understand focuses on distress tolerance, mindfulness and emotion regulation.

Thirdly, your son has YOU.  Even if he rages at you sometimes, he's still communicating with you.  And it sounds like you have some good boundaries in place, such as not responding to raging texts right away, while you keep the the lines of communication open.  I think that's a great way to handle things.  In essence you're giving him an "adult time out" whenever he has an "adult tantrum."  But you're still available to him when he calms down.  Even if he blames you for his problems, you are his greatest ally on the road to recovery in my opinion.  You sound like a savvy ally, too.  I really like that you ensured your son had "skin in the game" when working on his degrees, to keep him motivated to continue to move forward, but without making the cost of education becoming an unsurmountable obstacle.

However, your son is still raging at you, probably over ancient grievances.  My guess is that he's so fearful of the future that he regresses to the distant past, not only to deflect/distract from his current issues, but also to blame his family in the process.  My general opinion is that the farther back in time the grievance is, the more frightened your son is about the future!  And by blaming you, he's basically abdicating responsibility for himself and his own life.  That's why I think the "victim attitude" is the worst part of BPD--because it renders him powerless over his own life.  It seems to me that pwBPD spend so much mental bandwidth feeling aggrieved and angered by others, that they can't solve their own problems.  The result?  A life that looks dysfunctional, and fractured relationships all around him.  Does that sound about right?  That's classic, untreated BPD.

Anyway, I'd encourage you to read some of the posts in this section.  I bet many themes will resonate.  If you care to share more and ask questions, we will try to help based on our personal experiences.  Granted, everyone has their unique journey.  But many aspects of BPD seem to rhyme.

All my best to you.

[Welcome]

Many thanks for your response.  Yes, worst of the addiction, rehabs, falling down and getting up, are behind him. I am grateful he is alive while several of friends and acquaintances have not which is also deeply traumatic for him (although he places the blame on me for that too when he is raging) However BPD symptoms were relatively new, approx. 2.5 years old, more classic splitting since the past year or so. With suicidal ideations that transformed Yes, has significant worries about future - license, worry about finances.  I wouldn’t call it high functional at this point due to deep emotional turmoil, and alienation he is facing due to his aggressive communications and loss of all his friends. With family, there is ancient past that anchors his rage day in and day out in the present.  With friends, spiraling out and recognizing the damage done later and regretting was the pattern over the last year.  I get curious if the BPD symptoms can remain dormant but show up during a certain growth phase and facing a certain environment. If that is logical, hope to believe with the right work he could overcome. Understand DBT is the key for self growth but is joint therapy with me to help heal the old wounds helpful? Or, is it more critical that right now he needs to focus on gaining skills for extreme emotional dysregulation? Thanks

[CC43]

Hi again,

Much of what you write mirrors what happened to my adult stepdaughter with BPD.  Though she was always a sensitive, moody, (over)reactive and hesitant/avoidant child, her BPD behaviors and general dysfunction didn't emerge until she went away to college.  She lost all her friends.  She self-medicated with marijuana.  She'd get into trouble (with eviction, failing classes, quitting jobs, dropping out of school), but lacked resilience and couldn't find solutions by herself.  She had suicidal thoughts and attemped suicide multiple times.  She had raging outbursts directed at her family, blaming them for a terrible childhood and all her current problems.  Like your son, she's obsessively worried about finances; the irony is, she took on zero student debt, so technically she started adulthood financially much more comfortable than most people, myself included.

I'm going to repeat parts of a prior post here about a BPD daughter to help explain what I think was going on.  In essence I think it's a combination of immature emotional skills, unrealistic expectations (rooted in black-and-white thinking), plus shame and fear about "adulting": 

I have a few theories about BPD behavior, and they might clash with some of the classic recommendations on these boards (e.g. validate the feelings, not the facts).  First is that your daughter is blame-shifting.  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, finishing college and/or working, whereas she completely falls apart.  This induces in her a deep SHAME.  Rather than take setbacks in stride (failing a class isn't so bad--she can retake it; having a fight with a roommate can happen, but apologizing goes a long way; getting fired isn't the end of the world, there are a million other jobs out there), and rather than take some responsibility (I'll never make any money or friends if I stay lying in my childhood bedroom all day), she regresses in AVOIDANCE.  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 are making her dysfunctional.  This thought pattern makes her MAD, because she doesn't have what she wants today.  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.  If you try to validate her feelings, then I think you're giving credence to the notion that a terrible childhood is the central problem.  However I think it's not--I think it's just blame-shifting.  The accusations against the family serve to AVOID dealing with current problems 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 still 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 pines for the amount of leisure time she had as a child--long summer vacations, ample holiday breaks, a life mostly devoid of responsibilities and pressures.  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, which sets her up for constant disappointment.  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, all of it.

Anyway, I have some thoughts about your last post.  First, the license--is that a driver's license?  If it is, my guess is that your son feels shame about not having one yet.  He can't put things in perspective (maybe he didn't have a car available to practice on?  maybe he was busy with other things?  maybe he was saving up for classes?).  Perhaps he thinks "other people" will think less of him for not having a license already?  He lets all these negative, extraneous, irrelevant thoughts inhibit him . . . when the central issue is probably just fear of failure.  That would be indicative of BPD black-and-white thinking.  So what if he fails at his first attempt?  Millions of people fail their driver's test, and so what?  They just have to get more practice and try again.  I'd say, if he has a graduate degree, he's probably way smarter than the average driver.  But his negative thinking gets in his way.  If he's like my adult BPD stepdaughter, the go-to coping tactic is AVOIDANCE.  But avoidance just delays the problem and often seems to make it worse in the long run.

Second, you ask about family therapy.  My gut feeling is that therapy with you might become a raging blame-fest.  Like I stated previously, it might lend credence to the notion that his "horrible" childhood is the source of all his problems.  Whilst he might have some unresolved issues there, my gut tells me it's not the main issue for him right now.  I think that therapy sessions which revive ancient grievances might only serve to magnify them, and not help him get past them.  Maybe I'm off base here, but I sense that repairing the parental relationship is more likely to happen if he addresses his core BPD issues first--emotional reactivity, fragile sense of self, feelings of worthlessness, etc.  If his life is looking really dysfunctional right now, my sense is that he might not be "ready" to repair things with you yet, and that he might need to focus on therapy for himself right now.  I'm not sure, but my sense is that there would be a better chance of relationship repair if your son had gotten his act together and had a more stable, positive adult "identity."  I think a sign of that would be repairing some relationships with friends first, where the stakes are lower.  I don't know if that perspective helps?  At any rate, I'd recommend that you do not try to arrange any therapy for your son.  If he wants you to attend a therapy session, then he should be asking you.

Just my two cents.