Hello?

[Gregory55]

My first post here.
I am a parent of an adopted daughter that meets most of the criteria for BPD.  She has not been formerly diagnosed with that but does have the diagnoses of ADHD and Autism.
I am an American living overseas, and though I have lived here many years, I don't have the support network nearby of family and close friends that most people have, so I was just looking for a place to make contact with some others who might be in similar situations.

I am married with two kids, my daughter is the oldest and is 16 years old.  Hard to sum up what it is like in words but basically things are very unpredictable at our house. My daughter is very explosive so plates and other objects being thrown across the room are not unusual. There is a lot of daily verbal abuse that gets very bad towards us parents and her younger brother. She hates us and wants a new family at the same time as she needs to have my wife with her at all times and even a bathroom break is often accompanied by yelling and wondering where her Mom has gone.

I get that as hard as we have it, my daughter seems to have it worse.  I get that.  Like I said impossible to describe everything but that is probably enough for starters.

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

[Resiliant]

Hi Gregory,

I believe you have come to the right place.

The abandonment issues are pretty clear.   As well as the lack of emotional control.

Have you looked at the post that says "How to Get the Most out of this Site"?   It is right above your post.

The good news here is that you have figured this out when she is only still 16.   I wish I knew when my son was 16.  I didn't even know what BPD was until less than 2 years ago and he is now 32.   Maybe things would have turned out differently.  The skills that I have learned since I realized what is really going on have help but I sure wish I had them sooner.   I think that if I knew sooner then I could have prevented the full-blown BPD that has reared it's ugly head.  Maybe.

I'm glad you are here.   This is not only a place where we offer support to one-another.  There is such a valuable library of information here.  It would have taken me years of therapy to learn what I have learned in the last year or so of being a member of this site.

I know that more will chime in soon.   Stay posted.

Hugs

R

[beatricex]

hi Gregory55,
Hello and welcome.

My stepdaughter (suspected BPD) is about 10 years older than your daughter.  She is married and has two kids (1 and almost 3).

The three year old's birthday party was today, and we were not invited.  My husband and I haven't had any contact with his daughter in the past 9 months as she disowned him because he wouldn't divorce me at her request.

Weirdly, at first we were sad to be excluded, but as the day wore on...we started thinking "let's not look a gift horse in the mouth?" 

Kind of calming for us getting a break from her and the constant drama.  It always seems that every interaction, if we don't act exactly how she wishes...later, yup, we pay the price.

She is extremely judgemental, always right, doesn't think she has a problem, is severly depressed from what I can tell.  Most holidays before now we listened to her complain about her bio mom.  I guess this one, her husband and his family get to listen to her complain about bio mom, bio dad and stepmom (me!).  lucky for them (NOT)

Anyway, this isn't the first time she has disowned us.  I'm wondering how it will end this time...  The last disowning was much shorter, she didn't have kids yet, and she found an excuse to call her dad months later, that I'm still questioning.

basically, back when my husband and I were only dating and not married yet, she told her Dad to leave me.  He said no, so she disowned him.  Several months later, she re-initiated contact  Apparently, a lunatic man came into her workplace (she worked at a mall at the time), came up to her counter and started choking her to death.

Yup, that is her story. 

So, she reinitiated contact with her Dad that day.

To this day I'm still asking questions like 1) why weren't the police called 2) why did she not tell a manager this happened? 3) did this really happen at all?

Anyway, I can really relate to the chaos you are experiencing, and it doesn't go away when they get married and have kids.  If any, the pain becomes greater as you watch them self-destruct, and there is a lot of guild thinking "I really like this break, wonder how long it will last?"

 

b

[Sancho]

Welcome to a place where people understand completely what your life is like. I am wondering whether your daughter is on any medication for ADHD? It's just that your comment about her anxiety just going to the bathroom made me wonder whether she is being treated in any way for anxiety? So there are a lot of questions in my mind about whether she is on any medication; if yes, then has the anxiety increased since starting medication; if yes, have you looked up the side effects of the meds and can you recognise these effects in your daughter.

So I ended up with lots of questions! Whatever the answers are to these questions, you are undoubtedly going through a very tough time - and the people that come here are on the same page as you! I hope you find a way forward.

[Gregory55]

Thanks for your responses.  One question came up about medication.  She has ADHD medication but no longer takes it. There are a couple of reasons for that, one is that she has some kind of eating disorder and the ADHD medication makes it easier for her to not eat.  She does have an anxiety medicine (which my understanding is just a mild anti histamine) that she we sometimes can convince her to take when the anxiety gets to be high in the evenings, that seems to help temporarily.

In the pas she took ADHD medication every day.  She was able to go to school and with hours of help primarily on my wife's part she got through school up to last year but then things just broke down. To make a long story short she stopped going to school about a year ago.  Since then we tried a new school which had a program for kids with autism but never got that going for more than a few isolated times when my wife was with her the entire time.  I think even small interactions with other people are so anxiety inducing that she just can't cope. We have tried getting help from various sources but her unwillingness/inability to go to or voluntarily participate in any therapy limits options.  No one really knows what to do.

We have one thing going for us that she still does basically every day -- horseback riding.  We invest a lot in that since like I said it is basically the only time she is out of the house.  She is there (with her mother) several hours basically every day.

I know that sounds positive and we are glad we have that, but it doesn't really capture the situation.  She certainly doesn't see a future for herself (has taken one overdose of medicine once before and often says things about future events to the effect that she won't live long enough to be there.  She also self harms a lot).  It is also more and more difficult for us to see a future for her either, maybe when she gets older she will be capable of going into therapy but she certainly isn't now.  Hard to see a path where she is able to have some semblance of a "normal" adult life.  So right now a best case scenario would be some kind of group home I guess?  It is tough for me to think about since all the alternatives seem depressing.



 

[Sancho]

It sounds as though you are dealing with quite a mix of possibilities. Yes it is good that your daughter has the horse riding but as you say, that doesn't take away all the other issues that you are dealing with every other moment of every other day.

The anxiety issue seems to be very bad and needing your wife to support her for minor daily things - eg going to the bathroom. Interesting that, when on the ADHD meds she did manage to get to school - so they seem to have helped at some level in relation to her social anxiety issue at least.

Not sure how long it is since you had the ADHD and autism assessments. I am just wondering whether it would be possible to have another assessment and perhaps ask if there were other meds that could be tried to at least lower the anxiety level?