Dealing with allegations

[Bbyro]

I would really appreciate it if you can share some thoughts on how to deal with untrue allegations. My adult daughter is accusing me of fabricating her mental health issues during childhood in order to get attention for myself and boost my ego (she was diagnosed with Aspergers age 12 and other conditions as an adult on her instigation). She is stating that unless I publicly state that she doesn’t have and has never had a mental illness and that her difficulties are from trauma caused by me, she will permanently remove me from her life.

I hope I don’t need to defend myself against the accusations here and the truth is the opposite of what she is alleging.

This is a recurring narrative that is not going away by me ignoring it.

My first thought was fine! Goodbye I don’t need this.

My so is suggesting i to try to find common ground, remind her of timelines and find a way to agree with the allegations without actually agreeing.

All is over messaging. She won’t see me and I don’t think I could face seeing her with the seriousness of these allegations. Do you think she actually believes what she is saying? She is an intelligent person with a good memory?

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

[Leaf56]

Hi bbyro,
The way I dealt with this when it first arose was to shut it down completely and not give it any air whatsoever. I think I started with "yeah, that never happened," then "nothing even remotely approaching what you're saying ever happened," and "that unequivocally did not happen. You know what a good memory I have and unlike you, who was a child at the time, I was an adult who remembers and WAS THERE." Then I listed hundreds of things to refute whatever was brought up. Eventually he backed down and never tried that again. Anything that did happen (like raising my voice at him a few times) I will always own up to immediately and apologize for. My advice is to NEVER give in to any of it if it didn't happen. Does she believe it? Probably. That's why you need to be extra firm. And if my son said the words your daughter said to you ("She is stating that unless I publicly state that she doesn’t have and has never had a mental illness and that her difficulties are from trauma caused by me, she will permanently remove me from her life"), I would say "go ahead," and I would mean it. If you give in, the terrorist wins.

[Sancho]

H Bbyro
This is a common topic here, and I guess the reason for that is because it is part of the BPD 'picture'. It doesn't seem to make a difference if a child is super intelligent or not, this symptom of blaming a target person with accusations that are clearly untrue is part of the illness.

In the case of my dd I know she was telling people stuff that happened to her which was similar to something that was a news item at one time. The huge problem is that it is 'real' for them and entering into discussion about it to try to dislodge this seems fruitless (though there may be people here who have been able to do this).

Part of the illness is the sort of 'blackmail' ie if you don't xxxx then I will yyy. It is very childlike in it's huge emotional content and lack of rationality.

I think these things point to the battle going on in her mind. She is trying to prove to herself that all this is bunkum and you are to blame for it.

I don't believe accepting responsibility for the unreal stuff is helpful. Perhaps you could focus on one particular things eg the first diagnosis and write a long email outlining the steps that occurred under the heading 'My recall'.

After that i wouldn't enter into any discussion - just keep reiterating That's not my recall. Ultimately you don't have control over what dd does from then. All you can do is calmly hold the line while whatever happens happens.

BPD is just the pits!

[WorkingOnItToo]

Hi, I’m new here, but this is something I’ve had to deal with my son, who is 22 and recently diagnosed BPD (we’ve definitely been dealing with those gnarly BPD traits for many years). He has made some pretty incredibly outlandish accusations over the years e.g saying we left him and his sister outside a supermarket alone, hungry and thirsty for many hours (nothing even remotely like that happened and his non-BPD sister can vouch for it, so it’s puzzling why he insists it happened), and he talks about the “trauma” I put him through, but when I’ve pressed him on specifics, there’s been talk of me calling him a “martyr” once and he now has PTSD because of that……
I have freely owned up to any mistakes I made, yelling at times, not always being as sensitive as I should have been, the awful divorce between his father and I.
But “trauma” is a very specific thing. I do NOT think we should be validating outright fabrication as that helps nobody! We can validate the FEELINGS, which are so hard for them - and I actually think a lot of the fabrication and lies come from their very visceral and overwhelming feelings that they then create a story around and almost come to believe? - but we have to set a hard boundary and not accept fabrication.
I went into bat for my son many times over the years when he’d come home and tell me about horrible names various teachers called him and other things they said. Most of the time he’d wildly exaggerated (other kids vouched for it) and it all just created so much trouble and difficulty…..

[Leaf56]

Workingonittoo, yes, that's exactly it. DO NOT validate fabrications. Ever!