Hi I'm new and wanted to say hi. I think my son has BPD, but I'm not sure.

[hi:)191abc]

I started seeing a therapist about a year ago because I was really struggling. After telling my therapist stories of my life, she suggested I come here to this community and also read Stop Walking on Eggshells. She thinks my son has BPD. I've been obsessing with her over what went wrong, whether I was a horrible mother, and my confusion of the past few years. He doesn't have some of the behaviors like drug abuse or harming himself. But he has others, such as he would tell everyone lies about me and that I had done horrible things to him. He constantly said mean things to me for no reason, then say he was just joking. there was almost complete defiance, had sex with girlfriends in my house.. My son was a very sweet, calm boy. When he hit puberty, he became a completely different person. He got addicted to vaping and became angry and defiant. I took him to therapy, but other than helping him with that addiction, therapy didn't work because he told each therapist that I was abusive and he never did anything wrong. The last therapist I had taken him to at least saw through it a little and diagnosed him with depression and anxiety. I have never once even spanked my children. There was never any form of abuse from anyone. He would meet a girl and fall madly in love within days and put her on a pedestal, then be absolutely devastated and fall apart when she ended it, kicking and screaming and crying like a two-year-old (he has threatened to commit suicide during these times and a few times when I said no to minor things). His recent girlfriend, they've already said they are getting married (they're both 18). He even thinks his dad is a great dad, even though his dad has only seen him once a year his entire life. But, I'm always horrible in his mind. During COVID it became unbearable. He was home every day and I started working from home. He played video games 12-15 hours a day and fought me about everything. I tried so hard to have boundaries, but he would be physically intimidating or just refuse whenever I tried to hold him to boundaries. If I gave a consequence for his behavior, he'd blow up or follow me around arguing about it, banging on my door... He posted mean things about me on social media that weren't true, he told his girlfriend and her parents horrible lies about me being abusive, he's done two illegal things (that he got caught for), he'd threaten me all the time to get what he wanted like say he'll never talk to me again or I won't be invited to his wedding or when he has kids I'll never see my grandkids,... but the rages don't seem to be the same as what I'm reading here. He didn't throw things or hurt me and he never hurt himself. I also have read people's stories on here that their BPD child drops communication, but comes back. He graduated high school last year, and right before we had a big issue where I asked him to do something minor and he wouldn't, and then blew up at me. He said horribly mean things to me. I lost my temper for less than a minute and yelled and called him a brat and gave a consequence, and he ran away, then went to college and has not talked to me since. I feel horribly guilty, I wish I'd handled that differently. I usually did handle his behavior better. But I was exhausted at that point with it. He moved in with his girlfriend and I guess she takes care of him now, so he hasn't wanted anything to do with me in almost a year. Her family tells him not to contact me (because of his abuse stories). It is very painful. I know I made mistakes, but not what he is remembering. He told my other child that unless I admit I was a horrible, abusive mom and he never did anything wrong, he never wants me in his life again. This is so long, I'm sorry. I could just really use some advice on whether this sounds like what anyone has gone through and maybe some advice on how you live 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

[Rev]

Hi 191,

Welcome!  And thank you for your testimony.  I'm sorry you find yourself where you do but am really happy you have found us.

My daughter has a bi-polar condition. And I am right with you - it can be a lot to absorb. I don't know about you, but I ran the gamut of "trying everything".

From personal experience, I would suggest that your therapist is right. Coming here and learning about your son's traits (notice that I am staying away from the diagnosis) is a way to come to terms with "what is". I think that learning to reframe everything to rethink what good parenting looks like is a great place to start. My experience has taught me the perils of second guessing my values, running the risk of negative self talk and absorbing too much in the way of challenging emotions. 

Is it easy. No. But I am convinced now after 5 years of struggle that it's the only way.

 Paradoxically, I truly believe that our children say such horrible things about us because they don't know how to tell us how much pain they are in. When they tell us that it is "our fault" it comes from a place of desperation. And that's something you will need to learn; to see the paradox in everything your son says. Regardless of the diagnosis, a mood disorder is something to be managed, not something to be reasoned with. Not sure if that makes sense?

Anyway, I don't want to flood you on your first post.

This is a really, really great place. Lot's of compassion here. Lot's of experience. ZERO judgement. Lot's of love instead.

Hang in there.  Feed your soul in ways that make sense to you. That's the tank of gas you, me, all of us, need for this journey.

Reach out any time.

Rev

[hi:)191abc]

Thank you so much for your response Rev. You sound so happy and positive, it's such an inspiration. I definitely 'absorb' his emotions and need to figure out how to be happy even when he isn't. I absorb his words towards me as well, even though rationally I can honestly tell myself I was a good parent, of course not perfect, but I know I was very kind and loving. I hope I'm not the only parent on here that didn't handle their rages perfectly every time. His mean words have been so hard to hear. But, I know that you are right that I need to learn not to take his words personally and understand they are coming from his desperation.

I can't tell you how helpful it is as well to hear from another parent going through similar difficult situations. It's very hard for people in my life to understand. When I try to explain, I've been met with a lot of 'it's probably just normal teenager stuff, he'll get over it.' People that have seen his behaviors, such as my family and his teachers, the police, respond like he's a bad kid-which is also very hurtful to me. I did not go through any of this with my older child, so it's been a roller coaster of emotion and trying to learn how to respond to him differently. I thought I had tried everything. Now that my therapist suggested that it sounds like BPD, everything I'm reading has made me realize I should have done things differently as far as not trying to reason with him. I'm a very logical person, so I always tried to respond to his behaviors with reason. For instance, I thought it was logical if he kept driving recklessly and not coming home by curfew, to take away the car and try to 'get him to understand the logic of that consequence.' Setting boundaries and consequences were always just so hard with him. I have been trying to understand how to do that with him without him responding with anger or pushing me away. He feels that I'm purposefully being mean to make his life harder for no reason. I have tried several times to talk to him about things and try to make it better, but now that he's not living at home he just never responds or responds reminding me I was such a bad parent and is not willing to have a relationship. It's also hard to read and start understanding that we can't always 'make it better.' 

It's helpful to hear from others as well about things they've done to be a better parent for teenagers/young adults that struggle with these traits. I wish I got a correct diagnosis earlier, but I don't blame the therapists. I don't know how they'd see it because he didn't tell them the truth. But, that's his truth I'm starting to realize and I'm learning to accept it. You're right, that's very hard, but I like your advice of trying to see 'what is.'

How do you deal with helping your child when they aren't keeping boundaries or treating you poorly? I paid his tuition last year even though he says he doesn't want a relationship because I'm so horrible. I'm struggling with this. I know it will hurt our relationship further if I stop paying, and I want to help my child that needs help with college, but it goes against feeling like I'm setting boundaries and keeping them. It's even more difficult now that I'm understanding BPD, because if his reactions to me are because he's hurting and in pain and can't appropriately express it or tell me, then I feel I'm punishing him for that... But, I also don't want him to continue to think he can treat people a certain way and still get things from them. Is there a good answer to this?

[Rev]

But, I also don't want him to continue to think he can treat people a certain way and still get things from them. Is there a good answer to this?

Hi again.

Thanks for the kind words. You also sound like you've got some clarity around your values and what you want for yourself.

Could you say a bit more about what you.mean by "good answer"? Put another way - if an answer were to be "good", how would you know it?

Thanks - it'll save us time.

Hang in there.

Rev

[hi:)191abc]

That’s a good question

I’m sure there’s no one and only answer to these types of issues, but what I meant was, there seems to be best practices in the way of doing things with people that have BPD traits. Such as don’t try to reason. Boundaries. Validate. (Although I need to read more about that because I always thought I was validating, but as I read more it seems it’s best to always validate no matter what which I didn’t - for instance when he’s saying he’s mad at me for something I didn’t do or when I’d say no to something he’d blow up and say I was mean and I’m trying to make his life harder for no reason, etc. I’m still not clear on how to validate that without making him think I agree/it’s true/it’s not ok for someone to say no…  or when he’d throw a temper tantrum because I’d ask him to stop playing video games and do homework and he’d say video games are the only thing that makes him happy. I’d say ‘I’m really sorry you feel that way, can we think of other things that might make you happy too’ and he’d say I was being condescending and I don’t understand. So, I’m actually not sure I do have a firm grasp on validating.)

Anyway, I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I want to learn what is good parenting for my child that is struggling with BPD traits, specifically my issue right now is with the tuition,. Logically, in the past with both my kids I’d deal with issues by, if you don’t keep boundary X, you don’t get privilege Y. That never worked with him and I’m not sure now that’s what’s best (but maybe it is even if he doesn’t respond well?). 1) I don’t want him to be mean to me. 2) I don’t want him to learn that he can use people/take things from them while he’s not having a two-way relationship. 3) But because he seems to also have a problem that’s not fully in his control and he’s my child, I often feel I need to help more than I’d help someone else treating me this way. 4) I want my son to know I love him and I’ll never abandon him no matter what he does. 5) He says he’ll drop out if I don’t, which is a threat but also likely and that would make things so much worse.

So, from what experts have found and what people that have lived with this have found, is there a ‘good way’ to know how to handle these situations that are best (that won’t hurt them more by being codependent or ‘fuel the monster’ I think was the phrase in Stop walking on eggshells for parents, but also show them love and care). Frankly, I don’t think I’ll feel ‘good’ either way. I either feel used or feel like he hates me more and I’m not helping my child.

Hope that makes sense. I’m so in my head these days trying to understand what’s best for him while not allowing him to treat me so badly anymore.

Thank you, I can’t say enough how much it helps to hear from and read from posts of people similarly struggling.

[Rev]

That makes total sense...

Tell you what.

I'll work on my own list to your questions and you make yours and we'll compare notes.

On one level, parenting is parenting and it's never easy - especially after two years of pandemic living.  pwBPD tend to have issues with impulsivity and the pandemic has made impulsivity worse.

On another level, at least in my case, I knew the answers to most of my questions intuitively. What was, and still is, lacking is the ability to tolerate the discomfort of making hard decisions. Hard for me at least because they come with a cost - namely that my daughter is currently not speaking to me because I refused to pay for a cell phone in the wake of her having more than enough funds to pay for her own - and this after two years of trying to make very simple arrangements. 

So while I may sound positive, it has not come without a cost.  After 5 years, we are pretty much where my own therapist predicted we would be 3 years ago.  Not sure if that is a self-fulling prophecy or it's the nature of being the parent of an adult child. My daughter is 25 - soon to be 26.  She refuses to stick a treatment plan - even when we worked that treatment plan out together and she has had not one, but two cracks at it.

So again... I'll have a look at your list more closely and maybe you could do the same?  It will be interesting to see what we come up with.

Talk again in a couple of days?

Rev

[KBug]

191,

I'm so sorry that you are going through all this pain.  Seeing your own therapist is essential. I'm glad that you have a professional walking through this with you. My husband and I are grappling with the 'how much to support' issue.  My SD is 23. She's very intelligent but struggling to finish college. We've worked with a therapist to set boundaries with her about verbal abuse, false accusations, and taking things from us that are not hers. Boundary setting seems to be working, although setting a boundary is followed by a big blow up, ghosting us for months, and (sometimes) false accusations. Eventually, she comes back around and she mostly respects the boundaries.
.
When she turned 19, we set some boundaries around the decisions she was making.  She was making bad decisions and wanted us to bail her out. There were a lot of arguments about making better decisions. We shifted out stance to the fact that she is a legal adult who gets to make her own decisions but who is also responsible for her own consequences. We told her that we love her and that she was surrounded by people who love her and her therapist who cares about her. We said that she is ultimately responsible for her own decisions but the people around her could help her think if she wanted that kind of support. We stopped telling her what to do or managing her behavior. I'm to the point with her that even when she asks me what I think, I will ask her what has worked for her in the past or what she thinks her therapist would say. Anything I suggest or say ends up in her blowing up at me and redirects the conversation from supporting her with her dilemma to blaming me for __(fill in the blank)__.

Our goal is for her to become as independent as possible. We did set expectations for her is she lived with us, but they we very basic (no verbal abuse, no smoking in the house, no midnight strangers in the house, etc). She didn't like the boundaries, moved in with her BPD mother, and ghosted us for 6 months.  She eventually comes around again.

We pay for her college because we want to support her independence.  We never give her money directly because she will spend it on alcohol, weed, fancy makeup. etc. We pay the university directly. She has a disability plan with the university that allows her accommodations regarding attendance, late work, and being able to get incompletes for coursework. She has to complete any incomplete coursework over the summer from the previous year if she wants us to pay for the upcoming school year. She had to sit out a semester because she didn't take this seriously.

The consequence of all this has been that we don't have a close relationship with her any more. It all seems very transactional. However, it's still better than enmeshed emotional abuse and chaos. I grieve the relationship I wish we had. I also I feel guilty because I know that she is sick and suffering and I want to help her more.  The codependency people have a saying, "I didn't cause this, I can't control this, and I can't cure this." This mantra helps me to not get so entangled in her illness.

[hi:)191abc]

Hi KBug,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, yet it is comforting to know others go through this. But I am so sorry you have struggled with this as well. It's just not the relationship with my son that I thought I would have. I too feel like I've been grieving a loss. It sounds like you feel the same way and know how extremely painful this all is.

I'm so glad to hear your daughter comes around after ghosting you. That's my hope. What is the reason your daughter starts talking to you again/Does she just randomly start talking again? How do you manage being around people your daughter has made false accusations to? The situation seems to get more complicated with each passing year. Since he graduated from hs, he's been ghosting me and his girlfriend supports his version of events (very similar to what I read on here about the "rescuer"). He has told her so many horrible lies about me (I don't blame her, she doesn't have any reason yet not to believe him). So then she talks him into staying away from me further for his "own safety and well-being" because I'm so "toxic." It seems so complicated when you have an adult child with BPD traits as it is, let alone when they are in a relationship with someone that believes in their abuse stories. Have you experienced this at all?

I really like your advice/how you handle boundaries. That sounds like a good way to distance yourself from the chaos and abuse, but still show care for her. My boundaries too have distanced us-he always was so nice to me when I was giving him what he wanted (and I have to admit I miss those moments so much-even though they were brief). It was a hard reality to accept that for many years any kind of niceness/showing even a tiny bit of care for me only came when I was giving in to him/buying him things or when he was trying to get something from me (whether he consciously meant to be manipulative or not) and me giving him things without boundaries was just causing more verbal and emotional abuse, and chaos for me and not helping him in the long run. I like those three c's-I'm coming to understand I don't have much of a choice in all this. None of my choices seems to be a 'good choice,' just what will cause the least chaos for me and not feed into how he thinks he can treat people.

[Rev]

I really like your advice/how you handle boundaries. That sounds like a good way to distance yourself from the chaos and abuse, but still show care for her. My boundaries too have distanced us-he always was so nice to me when I was giving him what he wanted (and I have to admit I miss those moments so much-even though they were brief). It was a hard reality to accept that for many years any kind of niceness/showing even a tiny bit of care for me only came when I was giving in to him/buying him things or when he was trying to get something from me (whether he consciously meant to be manipulative or not) and me giving him things without boundaries was just causing more verbal and emotional abuse, and chaos for me and not helping him in the long run. I like those three c's-I'm coming to understand I don't have much of a choice in all this. None of my choices seems to be a 'good choice,' just what will cause the least chaos for me and not feed into how he thinks he can treat people.

Hi 191,

You've pin-pointed the essence of what I was going to share with you about a "good answer" - which is namely to set boundaries for our children. That is a universal principle in parenting, isn't it? And what makes parenting a child so difficult when a mood disorder is present is that parenting and setting boundaries becomes a question of firmness and consistency until, as in "if and when", our children choose to modify their behavior to suit their best own interests as opposed to continuing to feed their impulses.

Things like your tone of voice, your posture, the values that you hold as important for yourself and how to most calmly communicate that, especially in moments that your buttons are being pushed, these are things that you can discuss and work through in therapy. They are very dependent on your context.

What I'd like to add here is this: You see where I have highlighted parts of your words. I chose the places where you use the word "cause".  In one sense, I hear you saying that your boundary evokes a reaction. But I would invite you to change the word "cause" because that word implies that you are responsible for your son's reaction.

What would it mean for you to say something like this:

When I set a boundary, my son chooses to react with verbally abusive language.

Thoughts about this?

Rev

[hi:)191abc]

Thank you for your thoughts. Yes, I think most parents would agree boundaries are important. It’s just the extent of the boundary that is difficult to decide and the living with the consequence of those boundaries. And, I know therapists don’t like the word cause, because no one technically causes another’s behavior. But there is a cause/effect going on. And things we all do, does have an effect on others (even if we each can choose the behavior that follows and even if the effect is illogical or mean). But it is less blaming language to ourselves, and I could definitely be kinder to myself and not take on so much to where I’m feeling guilty for or worried about his responses. Thank you again for the thoughts.