My adult daughter has BPD traits

[Jude3]

Hi This is my first post.  I am looking for support, information anything to navigate and help me get some serenity back in my life. I've been trying to figure out what has been going on with my daughter for the last 7 years.  Its been a roller coaster. She doesnt stay long enough with therapists treatments centers for them to say what it is.  They treat her symptoms is what they tell me, Or she is depressed and has anxiety. Dealing with her most of the time is like walking on eggshells. She seems very depressed these days isolates herself. This makes me feel absoltuly awful for her. I wake up at night thinking about her same thing in the morning she is the first thing I think about. I'm trying to take care of myself, because honestly I have gotten so wrapped up with sadness, guilt, anger & frustration. She can be impulsive, she is jealous, very insecure, sees black and white and goes into rages and can be very very mean at times. Has some odd thinking too, like the cat isn't getting the best food and puts out extra water and food for her.  Now her bed is too big for her room (its not)! She doesnt like me too much these days and seems to favor her dad at this time.  So she is living with him.  She also had a dependency on pot and ectasy, some alcohol (which landed her in a co occurring facility five different times).   Her new therapist seems to think it is a personality disorder yet they wont label it just are looking to treat her symptoms.  Glad I found this space. Im hoping I can learn some things so we can have a better relationship and feel less alone in this confusing place !

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

[PearlsBefore]

 

To all the other newcomers who stumble across the thread, this is the way to write an introduction, lots of relevant info, no whining about the co-parent, no six-word "my kid has BPD, now what?" introductions...good solid intro, 9/10.
 
(missing a point for not giving an approximate age. (We usually refer to d10 if daughter is 10, d27 if she's 27 - and we encourage you to fudge the age a tiny bit just for anonymity purposes) - but seven years of symptoms I'm assuming she's 19-24 range.)

"We're not interested in the diagnosis, we treat the symptoms" is a surprisingly common thing to hear, and it's frustrating every time we hear it...because we think "If I come in with tuberculosis and you're just going to give me cough syrup to treat the symptoms that's a terrible medical facility and we're never going to fix this!".

The truth is in the middle though, I dislike those professionals and prefer those who recognise the importance of understanding whether the under-developed self-identity is a result of Haltlose, Borderline, or Asthenic personality disorder...but unfortunately it's one of those thought experiments. Realistically there is no "cure" for BPD - personality disorders are a psychopathy that is particularly long-lasting, so even if they make the official determination that it's BPD, there's no magic pill to help it.

Where anxiety or fits of rage are an issue then they'll likely give her an anxiolytic (different users have different experiences with the different types), and in your case it sounds like an anti-depressant although my own not-technically-a-doctor-but-still-pretentious opinion is that alcohol and marijuana are depressants...kill them and you don't need an anti-depressant. Anti-psychotics are not uncommon for other symptoms, but definitely have more side-effects - anti-convulsants I've never experienced with BPD though I'm told they're also used (and I'd  love to hear from those who have)

The impulsivity, insecurity, anxiety, splitting black/white and rages are definitely major signs of BPD. The jealousy and meanness I'm not actually sure, I've heard yes and I've heard no. The "weird thoughts" do not really sound like BPD to me, but possibly something else (bipolar springs to mind, latent schizophrenia is possible although the other symptoms suggest not the most likely, drug-induced psychosis always a possibility...oh God, why do we let our children ever experiment with alcohol and drugs?)