my daughter has recently had a BPD diagnosis

[foenix]

It has been three or more years now of hell and grief - and I despair that I will never, ever again have a relationship with my daughter, who I used to be so close with. We would lie in bed watching Gilmore Girls together, learn Spanish on Duolingo together, make crafts and paint. She could design and whip up a dolls dress from scraps in seconds - create amazing dishes in the kitchen - or put on a hilarious performance of characters or songs she had written herself. She won the Philosophy prize at school - which shows how engaged and active at school she was. I would pick her up from school and she’d say "I feel snackyish mummy"  and we'd go have a cake at the patisserie for afternoon tea. There were so many years of good times. Ponies, ballet, parties, friends, holidays overseas and at home, a great school, love, laughter.

But then her father and I broke up when she was 10. And at 13 we had to move countries - my work had dried up at the time and also I wanted to help look after my mother who was terminally ill in NZ. Her nanna, who she adored, was dying from inoperable cancer. My daughter went from a big house with a pool and private school in Sydney to a small home in New Zealand with her grandparents - even though her pop and I built her her own ‘little house’ and she had a horse and was eventing in the countryside there I don’t think that made a dent.  And everything started to unravel for her I think.

From the age of 14 my teenage daughter's behaviour has been volatile and extremely difficult. And both her father and I have been blamed by her for everything.  But not just blame - it is like she weaponises everything and unleashes a malicious, volcanic fury at us. We are ‘liars’, ‘mentally ill’, ‘not parents’, ‘delusional’, ‘stupid’, f**ked’ etc.

After her Nanna's death she moved back to Australia to live with her father - she was bullied at her new school (but some say she was the perpetrator), they argued (her dad and her), she ran off to stay the night with a boy at school who she thought was a friend, and she alleges she was sexually assaulted. She self-harmed and was taken for psychiatric assessment via ambulance and we were told she needed counselling (which we had already tried to engage at school). I moved back to Australia and she moved in with me and things were by now at crisis. We got her back into her original private school - but she chose peers that were doing drugs and 'cough syrup' - and she truanted constantly. Missing persons reports. Violent outbursts. Screaming. She was a volcano. We tried counselling but she refused to engage.

She became friends with a very troubled girl who had dared her boyfriend to suicide over Snapchat - which he had done (words fail me how sad this all is) - at 14. This girl coaxed her into taking whole bottles of cough syrup (this, in itself, can cause psychosis) -- I remember picking her up from school thinking why can't she walk? This can't be the flu? It wasn't.

One night, after she had gone out to an adults' Halloween party (which I had begged her not to ) with this girl, she had arrived home at 2 or 3am. Beside myself with worry, I was still up... she slumped into bed (she is by now 15) and had dropped her phone on the floor. I instinctively picked it up and went through her phone as she slept, frantic with worry to try to see what she was doing (as she never went to school). It was horrifying and heartbreaking. Drugs, lots of sex, suicide pacts with other girls via texts, awful texts where she felt she wasn't good enough because boys she was with expected 'porn' behaviour. This went on and on. Many missing persons reports lodged with police. Aggressive behaviour at school etc. But just out of control anger and hostility at me.

She told us much later she had been sexually assaulted the night of the Halloween party.  She was expelled for truancy and aggressive behaviour. She demanded to go to a public school. We got her into the school of her choice and got an apartment in the area - but she ran away with a much older boy and lived in a pretty unsavoury area, refusing to go to school. She came home briefly - and would threaten me with a kitchen knife or kick doors in - she kicked the side of my car in and would scream in a repetitive torrent "f**k off,f**k off,f**k off,f**k off..." for 30 minutes straight . We tried unsuccessfully to get her sectioned ( just to get her assessed and treated) three or four times.

She bit me while I was driving her because she had demanded I do so - and I had both hands on the wheel. We’d turned a corner as she bit hard into my shoulder and had inadvertently gone over a bump… her teeth had cut into her gum… like a flash, I have never seen anything so fast - she whipped out her phone and pulled her lip down and screamed into Snapchat to all her followers “Look what she did to me - look what she did!” Referring to me.. I hadn’t touched her - I had been driving at the time. She did this all the time - weaponised everything. To the point it was terrifying to be around her. I was advised by police to take an AVO out against her - if only just to get her in front of a magistrate to enforce that she see a doctor. The only good thing to come out of this was I got a DV counsellor for me - which was helpful.

She ran away and stayed with, at last count 5 families - other mothers - who she would tell terrible stories to. She told everyone her father was a paedophile (he wasn’t) and that I burned her with cigarettes (I don’t smoke). She told people I was schizophrenic and bipolar ( I am neither - but her uncle is Schizophrenic) - and she would somehow find these women that would both believe what dreadful stories she told as well as enable her behaviour.

She was picked up for shoplifting with weed and a knife in her bag. She kicked a toilet door in at school trying to beat up a girl and was arrested and suspended from her new school for 40 days (she had by this stage missed more than 6 months of school). She showed no remorse at all - and her boyfriend’s mother took her side saying she did nothing wrong by kicking the door in and going after this girl as she deserved it. So it was a losing battle for me trying to explain it was a public liability issue, that the school needed to see her as being remorse and it becomes a legal issue if they cannot guarantee safety etc etc…

The child abuse unit called at 7am one morning to tell me she was pregnant - she had been to ‘Headspace' (a teen MH and health unit) - to get advice on a termination and by law, as she was a minor, they had to call the CA unit, who had to inform me.

She lived up the hill at her boyfriends house for nearly a year - refusing to come home to my apartment - and this boy, her boyfriend, I later found out, was a Xanax abuser who also smoked weed most nights and the parents let him. Subsequently both of them smoked all the time and by now my daughter was barely going to school and unsurprisingly failing badly.

I had to pick them both up from a police station at 3am one morning as they had both been out partying in town and he had had his front teeth smashed out in a fight. (This was when she was pregnant prior to having a termination). She had been very hostile to the police and the sergeant had taken me aside and asked me if she had ever been diagnosed with BPD - at that stage she hadn’t. I said no. 

Later I pleaded with her boyfriend’s mother to not allow her to have marijuana as it was exacerbating her MH issues and not helpful - she needed sleep, a routine, school, counselling, good nourishing food - a holistic and healthy approach to life.. and by now she had an eating disorder as well - she was alarmingly thin, they both were - her and her boyfriend calling each other ‘fatty’ and encouraging each other not to eat. She had gum disease because she refused to brush her teeth ( as well as purging) and try as I might I couldn’t get her to go to a dentist. I pleaded with the boys mother to help me get her to the dentist and to see someone about her obvious eating disorder - to no avail. I wrote a letter pleading as much - and this woman threw it in the bin in front of my daughter and called me on speaker phone while my daughter was standing beside her to say she was fine.

The night before her 16th birthday she came home. The day of her birthday the school rang me while I was working  - by now I am used to calls from Police and Principals and child abuse units -  but this time it is detectives who are worried about her. It turns out that the old girl friend  who had gone to the Halloween party with her , got her drugs up on cough syrup and abandoned her( who she is no longer friends with) had taken naked footage of her one night on a sleepover. This teenage girl, my daughter - dancing around in a bathroom after a shower. These nude images have been uploaded to several porn sites - and 500 kids at her school have images of her naked on their mobile phones. One child recognised her and called the police. So now the detectives are looking into it - and they are very keen to get her into counselling to help deal with yet another highly traumatic event. But she will not go and refuses to have anything to do with them - I cannot force her.


In an effort to try to get her back on track I took her and her boyfriend on a luxury Christmas holiday to a resort in Bali. We all had a lovely time - or so I thought. They had been laughing and playing in the pool - eating healthy food - getting sleep - like any other teenagers. But within a week of getting home my daughter and her girlfriend ( she only had two close friends - this boy and girl) had posted a menacing photo wielding a huge knife and iron bar in the girl’s bedroom - on social media - saying something along the lines of :“when ur best friends psyco ex comes to your house because she won’t speak to him after months of abuse”… so now this boy, who she had been pregnant to, who she had declared she loved, and who she had run away to live with, was an ‘abuser’.  One week after the Bali holiday she takes an AVO out against him and threatens to charge him with rape. She tells her father and I that he raped her and I have his mother on the phone - this woman who had previously rung her school saying she was her mother - asking for my help. That sounds snippy - it wasn’t meant to. I was happy to help. After all they are kids. A hot mess of raging hormones and ‘jangly’ brains not helped by taking drugs - with no ability to read nuance or emotion. I advised counselling with both of them to unpack this - but it wasn’t to be.

She got a ‘new boyfriend’ - this lasted for a month or so and she was at home for the first time in a year - going to school and being well behaved - almost.

Then she got back with her ex - the boy that had come to Bali.  This lasted several months.

I tried to entice her with a  lovely17th birthday present - a lovely dress, a lunch out with her boyfriend, a hotel room by the harbour with a hamper of face ‘spa’ good for her and three girlfriends for a ‘pamper party’ overnight — but after I had booked it she refused to use it because I had said as there were no 18 yr olds as parents her dad and I would have to check in.  She refused - yelling and screaming - and organised her own party. Then saying it was her worst birthday yet and that we had done nothing for her - we were ‘failures’ as parents.

Her schoolwork was spiralling and her behaviour worsening. Until she finally came home. It was revealed this boy was about to be charged with dealing drugs - and as if that wasn’t bad enough - he had a modified firearm with ammunition. I couldn’t believe this smart kid, from a wealthy family, with everything going for him could be caught up in all of this.  My daughter was extremely worried about him - the police had said he would go to prison. I helped out as his mother was distraught - and at this stage I knew nothing of the firearm - so I asked a criminal barrister friend to help. I mean, at 17 the last thing a sensitive child needs is a long term sentence - enforced drug rehab and therapy surely a better fit?

So yet again, she came home. But within weeks was either staying with her girlfriend - or seeing a new boy she had met online.  She dropped out of high school.

And now she was seeing a boy 2 years her senior who was living in transitional housing - with genuinely homeless people and drug addicts. His father about to go to trial for commercial quantities of drugs, firearms, five charges of alleged rape, one of grievous bodily harm. Her and this boy visiting his father - after he had been reported in every newspaper.

She is still there - in this halfway house. Dropped out from school and having nothing to do with her father or I - but every second day texting and asking for money.

I am now refusing to give her money (I have never done this before) - saying to her that when she wants to be a part of a loving family - and share her life with us - that she can come home any time. There is food in the fridge, all of her clothes, her laptop, everything she owns is here. But she will not come. I have offered to give her and her new boyfriend a weekly delivered box of fruit and vegetables ( enough for the week) and pay her transport costs - but she refuses. And I only do this beach I don’t know what the money wild be spent on.

I have asked repeatedly for the past three years to go to counselling with her - to do family therapy - but she adamantly refuses.

She calls me a monster, has threatened my life and regularly tells me to f**k off. Every now and then - very rarely - she texts to say “I really do love you”.

And so it has been three years or more of realising that as a parent I have absolutely no say at all in my daughters life. Even though legally we are supposed to until they are 18.

It has been a revolving door of police and social services doing absolutely nothing leading to a terrible current situation where she will have nothing at all to do with her father or I.

This fun loving, exuberant, bright, creative and totally gorgeous girl who loved equestrian eventing and dance, had many friends and was adored and cherished and loved  - is now like the polar opposite. 

It is utterly heartbreaking and gut wrenching -  a huge hole of grief and I just cannot reach her. It is a terrible terrible thing to lose a child. This is something I would never have imagined.

I read books about this disorder, I pour over forums  - but it doesn’t bring much solace. And I think I have reached the end of my tether.

I recognise this feeling that my mother must have had, this deep pain that never abates - as she had to deal with losing my brother to Schizophrenia. Fear. Guilt. Shame. Love. Hurt. Pain. It was my greatest fear in having my own child - wondering about the genetic predisposition to MH issues as my brother is so ill mostly. I don’t know if that had any bearing on this situation. I guess I have to accept all of this - that the absolutely delightful daughter I had may never return…

How do you all deal with this terribly difficult and sad diagnosis in children?

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

[Swimmy55]

Welcome!  In my case I am still not 100% accepting of my adult BPD , substance abuser son.  It takes a while.   
This is a tough time   , especially for those with under 18, soon to become adults, there is pressure for parents to act.  What is your gut telling you , though?  From what you say, she is living with bf and doesn't want to hear anything about therapy..

I am not so sure it would be a success forcing 17 nearly 18 year old into therapy ( imo) and I see that you are wise to send fruit over as opposed to $$.  This is a good boundary. 
The personality change  of mental illness it totally heartbreaking as we have to learn to love a stranger.  There is a genetic component to mental illness.

While I don't have the one answer , I do know you are on the right track of getting help for yourself by way of adding us to your network of support.  You have mentioned you've read up on BPD( good) . In order to learn how to deal and get to some type of acceptance ,I have needed additional help that included going to 12 step meetings for families ( like co dependents anonymous) where the focus is put on ourselves and to learn how to detach with love .  I have even gotten my own therapist for a while in order to process and cope.  There is no one right way to do this, but know you are not alone, we are here for you.

[Oceanfish]

My heart broke as I read your entry. My story is different in a lot of ways, but my beautiful daughter who I enjoyed completely seemed to snap after a series of traumatic events that included a rape. She, too, accused me of things that I didn't do and has estranged herself from me because I am the cause of her suffering.
She was in her early 30s when she was hospitalized for being extremely intoxicated in a public setting. Fortunately, she continues to communicate with her brother, so I have some idea as to how she's doing and last I heard, she is in therapy again. The grief has been debilitating at times. Your question is "what helps?"
Therapy for me has helped, but it isn't a cure. I've gone through EMDR therapy for PTSD. I've read everything I can find on BPD and watch Youtube videos by various experts on the subject. Understanding the disorder helps considerably. I take care of myself. I take good care of myself, actually, because if I get worn down, I tend to slip into worry and grief. I walk daily and am sure to get enough sleep. I've read books on Buddhism - I'm a devout Christian, but have found that Buddhism is a great complement as a philosophy because there are exercises I've learned in order to manage my own suffering when it comes. I meditate and I pray. I take bubble baths and get an occasional pedicure or massage.
I've come to terms with the fact that I can't fix this and there is a possibility I will never see my daughter again. I am also extremely aware that there are individuals who trigger the trauma this has caused and  avoid them. Being selective about who I socialize with is a definite form of self care.
My closest friends know much of my story and while I don't expect them to understand it, they know that my expectation is that they respect the situation. Their well-meaning advice is based on their experiences and none of them have experience with BPD so the advice fits like a bad dress.
EMDR was probably the most helpful for me. If you aren't familiar with it, Google it for information. There is peace to be found. It just comes in waves, as does the grief. I wish you all the best.

[foenix]

Thankyou @swimmy and @oceanfish for your replies, advice and kind words. It certainly helps to share thoughts, knowledge and experiences. I hear you both - this is not easy, by any means - when you want, so much, to take your child's pain away - but are unable to. I hear you also about choosing who you tell as there seems to be so much misunderstanding and judgement.  Boundaries are not yet working for my daughter - I'm hoping they will at some point. And I agree, self care is a must. I feel like this is going to be a very long road.  I wish you both the very best - and I hope your children and yourselves have great  success in managing and navigating BPD.