One of the hardest things for me... A question

[suzanne29]

One of the hardest things is to NOT correct my 21 y/o son's comments/behavior. He has a girlfriend (he seems to ALWAYS have a girlfriend) but I hear him making mean "jokey" comments to her. He's alienated most of his friends with his comments but he doesn't seem to have insight. In the past, I've seen it as my role to "correct" him -- though that has often meant that I've become the object of his "joking" or anger.

I know I need to walk away -- and I'm doing better with this -- but it's so disturbing. Doesn't he see how much easier life would be if he treated the people closest to him better?

Any advice about how to deal with this?

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

[Sancho]

I completely understand your dilemma. It is so painful to watch a loved one alienating everyone - you just want to be able to tell them so they can relate better to others.

BPD seems to me to overlap with many different mental health issues - ASD being one of them. The problem is that they don't seem to be able to join the dots ie what they say and how they say it can be/is insulting to the other person - or hurtful etc.

This is also apparent in some in the non-BPD population ie there are those that have no idea how their words etc affect others.

What you describe has been a really difficult thing for me, to the point where I found myself avoiding social situations with my BPD dd. I found that while others didn't like it and ended up avoiding DD, she didn't pick up on what was happening, and they weren't emotionally involved enough for it to be as painful as it was for me.

I am sure that you are doing the right thing. I think that change would only come through interaction with someone else ie a person not in the child/parent relationship. You can only try to minimise the effect on you and hope and pray that life will put someone in your child's life that will be able to help him become more aware of interacting in a different way.

But I think well done that you are holding back from being the one to try to draw his attention to this.