Blabbing

[Our abuse recovery guide]

I know there’s nothing I can do here without it escalating into an argument so just putting this here as a rant with people who understand.

I recently got engaged (woop!). I told my mum first which as my brother told me, was my mistake. I told her very clearly I haven’t told anyone else yet and I really want to tell my siblings in person so not to tell anyone and that I’ll let her when the cats out the bag.

Well, within an hour I started getting congratulatory messages from my siblings.

Urrrrrgh. I know I have to be the bigger person here and just let it slide because nothing good will come of confronting her about it. My brother is right, but I thought for news this big she would at least try. Oh well, safe to say she’ll be the last to know about any other big news.

[wormslearntofly]

I know there’s nothing I can do here without it escalating into an argument so just putting this here as a rant with people who understand.

I recently got engaged (woop!). I told my mum first which as my brother told me, was my mistake. I told her very clearly I haven’t told anyone else yet and I really want to tell my siblings in person so not to tell anyone and that I’ll let her when the cats out the bag.

Well, within an hour I started getting congratulatory messages from my siblings.

Urrrrrgh. I know I have to be the bigger person here and just let it slide because nothing good will come of confronting her about it. My brother is right, but I thought for news this big she would at least try. Oh well, safe to say she’ll be the last to know about any other big news.

[Notwendy]

First of all congratulations!

I understand the frustration. If I tell anything to BPD mother, I can assume it won't be kept private. This is your special moment and yours to decide how to share.

[Methuen]

My mom couldn’t keep a secret from a mosquito.  As soon as someone tells her not to say anything, she blabs it the first chance she gets.  She says: “I just HAVE to tell someone, or I’ll burst.” PwBPD have no boundaries.  So it’s not surprising they can’t keep information confidential.

I don’t know why they’re like this, but I suspect one reason is that for them, information is like currency, and if they have it, they just have to show off.

[livednlearned]

In our family my mother (adult child) is not trusted with information.

She can't even be trusted with information that we don't tell her, if that makes sense.

She'll say things that aren't true and then when someone corrects her she doubles down. Anyone who corrects her is mean.

I cannot confide anything in her. If I do, I later regret it. She'll tell other people sometimes when I'm sitting right there. She'll tell stories that I told her, about myself, but she'll distort the facts in ways that tend to be humiliating for me.

She lives for attention. There is nothing more important to her than people finding what she has to say valuable.

If she has nothing to say, she will distort something or just make it up.

[Notwendy]

If she has nothing to say, she will distort something or just make it up.

Yes! Some of the made up stuff - that one of my kids was secretly married, another one had plastic surgery (normal face changes at puberty). How she thinks up this stuff, I don't know.

[Methuen]

She can't even be trusted with information that we don't tell her, if that makes sense.

She'll say things that aren't true and then when someone corrects her she doubles down. Anyone who corrects her is mean.

I cannot confide anything in her. If I do, I later regret it. She'll tell other people sometimes when I'm sitting right there. She'll tell stories that I told her, about myself, but she'll distort the facts in ways that tend to be humiliating for me.

She lives for attention. There is nothing more important to her than people finding what she has to say valuable.

If she has nothing to say, she will distort something or just make it up.

Exactly.  The challenge us as children of the BPD parent, is to ACCEPT this fully (radical acceptance), and change OUR behavior.  We need to stop hoping they will ever change.  BPD is a disease.  We are kidding ourselves if we keep thinking THEY are unreasonable and should change, or BE better.  WE are the healthy ones.  The only possible change has to come in our own expectations.  Is this FAIR?  Certainly not. 

Acceptance is key.  This is what is different between us and our BPD parent.  We can choose to accept the situation.  We can choose to adjust our expectations of them.  My mom can't accept her age, her disabilities, the fact that she NEEDS home care to meet some of her personal and medical needs.  She just doesn't accept.  She pretends, and lives in denial.  We nons get to live with the consequences.  But the sooner we adjust our expectations of them and accept their disease for what it is, the better of we will be.  Otherwise it's like beating your own head against their brick wall.  And who does that hurt the most?

[livednlearned]

I agree Methuen, although it's a struggle, I find I am almost constantly learning and re-learning this lesson.

Last night my mother called. Sometimes I half listen, but at some point I started to realize she was in that mode where she was telling me a story connected to me.

She was telling a story about my husband (a physician) performing assisted suicide in a hospital in a state where it was illegal, then getting fired for it after the nurse told on him, telling me this is why we had to move. These are the kinds of stories that make me feel fury.

My husband never performed assisted suicide, he was never fired, and the reason we moved had nothing to do with anything she knows about.

I know it can seem like dementia but she has done this much of my life.

It is hard to practice radical acceptance over and over and over again. I sometimes wonder if these types of fabrications worsened the less I tell her (changing my behavior) in order to hook me. What I do now when things like this happen is try to take a deep breath and end the call, then work through the emotions.

Like wormslearntofly wrote, there's not much I can do without things escalating into an argument.

[Methuen]

It is hard to practice radical acceptance over and over and over again.

Agreed.  My coping mechanisms aren't great.  It's basically boundaries and avoidance. I practice avoidance by minimizing contact with her, even though I'm an only child, the daughter and live nearby.  Avoiding her meant coming out of retirement and returning to work.  I turned over buying her groceries and taking her to appointments, to my H who has now done these things for some time.  He's my savior, and since he attended my counselling sessions for some years now, he knows my mom and has the tools to manage her behaviors without being burdened by the emotional trauma of having been raised by her.

I sometimes wonder if these types of fabrications worsened the less I tell her (changing my behavior) in order to hook me. What I do now when things like this happen is try to take a deep breath and end the call, then work through the emotions.

Me too.  There isn't a day when there isn't some contact either through a text, an email, or through my H.  I dread every contact, and each one  causes me to suck my breath in.  I don't think ALL the fabrications are intentional and designed to hook or bait us.  I truly think the disease makes them do this.  When my mom's bf (after my dad died)  was travelling to his home city.  Somehow mom filled in the blanks to conclude he was going there to meet an old girlfriend and give her "a ring".  It was remarkable imagination.   She truly  believed it.  It was based on her fear of him "leaving her" for another woman.  It was fully fabricated. But the fabrication came out of her fears, not a motivation to hook me.  Maybe the pwBPD are all different, but that's my experience.

As much as I say we need to ACCEPT (radically accept) instead of beating our heads against the wrong brick wall, I agree it's hard, and would add even exhausting.

I am curious if it could even take years off our lives.  I kind of think it probably does, but know of no evidence for this. 

[wormslearntofly]

Thank you everyone! Talking about this with like minded people has been helpful.

It’s funny, even though I know acceptance is the only answer it doesn’t make it any easier.

I’m finding this particular betrayal hard to forgive even though it was my own naivety that caused it. I’m finding myself fantasising about petty acts of revenge like not involving her in my wedding planning which I know isn’t healthy. Just her acknowledging that she hurt me and saying sorry would make me feel so much better but realistically the risk of seeking that blowing up in my face is too high.

Having these moments of clarity, reality, emotional intelligence and self protection is a privilege people with BPD will never have.

[Notwendy]

Yes, the fabricated stuff seems to be scandalous like the doctor doing something illegal. The "secret marriage" idea was from a kids' prank as teens where they "married" their friends on Facebook and then didn't change the status back. The kids were just being silly. BPD mother assumed one my my kids got married in secret but didn't ask me directly about it. I felt sorry for her in a way- that she thought that. I would not keep something like a marriage secret from her.

When she tells me something, it includes her opinion about it. I have an aunt who got divorced and apparently this aunt didn't tell her mother about her plans and her mother found out about it. My mother has told this to me from the standpoint of her disapproval of my aunt's "not telling her mother". Surely there was some reason for her not wanting to discuss the divorce. The story about not telling her mother might not even be true.  Eventually, it happened and we all knew it. The report is often from a negative view of the person- they didn't invite someone, or they did something wrong. But people have their own reasons for what they do in their lives-and we don't know all their reasons.

This is why I assume she speaks about me like this to others. Some people have told me some of the things she has said. At the time of my father's passing, I was, understandably, upset. She told people I was emotionally unstable due to menopause hormones.

Even now- in assisted living - she makes assumptions. The staff doesn't care about her (maybe they are busy). Her doctor isn't caring enough. ( yes he is, he takes the time to call me and update me on how she is doing).

This mental illness is so odd- and sad that there seems to be some kind of filter that distorts other people's actions an intentions.

Understandably that it is hurtful to have a parent betray you this way. I have felt that way as well. What has helped change this is seeing that BPD mother is doing this with the people who help her now. Before, it was mostly with family. BPD affects the people who are the closest to them, and now that she needs assistance- I can see the dynamics with the people who are close to her in a helping situation. It is counter intuitive to not feel you can trust your mother to keep your information to herself but it's not personal to you. But with our own mother, it's difficult.

[zachira]

As we become healthier, we often long to have closer relationships with our family members, which is not possible with many disordered family members. I could never tell my mother with BPD anything about my life without knowing if she would repeat it or completely distort what I told her to somehow get her needs met by impressing others with her false narratives. It is so sad to not be able to trust your mother to keep quiet about your getting married so you could tell your siblings first.

[livednlearned]

I’m finding myself fantasising about petty acts of revenge like not involving her in my wedding planning which I know isn’t healthy.

I might reframe this as self care, then work from that perspective. There is nothing petty about taking measures to care for yourself, especially when it comes to your wedding.

There are many stories of ruined wedding days on these boards. I have been married twice and couldn't figure out how to have a wedding without my mother ruining it. That meant I never had one.

I wish in retrospect that I had a private ceremony for the *real* ceremony, something intimate and meaningful. Then had a wedding that she could participate in, one that could be all about her.

There may be good suggestions here to help you navigate such a special day. You know your mother best, do you have specific concerns about what she might do?

[Notwendy]

My wedding was my mother’s party. I would not have been allowed to speak up about it. I was too afraid of my parent’s reactions to do it without her involvement but it had to be her way or none at all. I would call it self care - not revenge. It would have been constant conflict if I didn’t just let her do it her way. But me getting married was just her reason to have a big fancy party for her family and friends.

[Turkish]

First, congratulations  

I wonder about this behavior... the need to feel needed or valued?

My mother was a hermit-waif underneath rare queen behaviors which were a thin veneer over her deflated Self.

I'll never  forgive my mother for destroying my image of the man who was the closest person to a father figure in my life: the older man who gave us space on his property to park her cab over camper when we were homeless when i was 13. Helped me fix my dirt bike, told lots of stories, came to my college graduation proud of me. Then married my mom when i was 29 after he had a debilitating stroke when I was 26. My mom was an RN and could better take care of him. His wife left him for his older bother when their kids were young (then was murdered by a later lover). I assumed that's why he was a mountain hermit, severe grief. He was mostly estranged from his adult son and two daughters.

Then she dropped the bombshell a few years after he died: he had molested both of his daughters. Thanks Mom. I could have done without sharing that emotional burden.

[Methuen]

Then she dropped the bombshell a few years after he died: he had molested both of his daughters. Thanks Mom. I could have done without sharing that emotional burden.

Does it make sense to consider the source?  (Your mom)

Not much my mom says is true.  This thread has been a lot about their vivid imaginations. 

If you had good memories and he was a support/mentor for you, I would probably trust your own experience with him, over hearsay from your bpd mom.  Thoughts?

[Turkish]

I believe it. Both of his daughters were druggies and the eldest did time for cocaine dealing. The son told my mom that he didn't want much to do with his dad despite living less than 100 miles away.

He was also borderline inappropriate with a peer, the 12-13yo daughter (a grade younger than me at the time) of another family he invited to live on the property in a converted bus. They would cuddle on his bed,  nothing more that I saw when I was in the room.  Her mom and bf were worthless, not working, living on government checks for the kids. I was 13 and thought it odd.

[Notwendy]

I am so sorry your mother said that to you. It was far TMI. My BPD mother would do this about my own father- sharing things that should not be said to children- airing her own issues with him to us. Note- these were personal issues between them, not anything he did to anyone else.

She also would say things that would make you doubt the other person. We don't know if they are true or not. My father's sister was a caretaker for her husband who had sustained an injury and was taking pain medicine. My mother would say "your aunt is taking his pain medicine for herself". I don't know if it's true or not, I don't believe it but to even raise the question. She does this about me too. She's the one who called up people to tell them "NW is hormonally imbalanced" - she even said this to my husband. It was a lie. I was upset and grieving over my father.


I think this gives her a sense of power, but it causes divisions.

[Methuen]

I am so sorry Turkish. 

So if I have this right, he gave you a place to live on his property with your mom when homelessness was an issue, he spent time with you on your dirt bike, shared stories, and came to your college grad - it sounds like you had a meaningful bond with this person.  Then later on (you were 29) he even married your mom.

After he dies, your mom tells you he molested both his daughters.

I wonder when in their relationship she learned that...? (rhetorical question - no answer needed)

Gees.  I wonder what was going on that she decided she had to tell you this after he died? (Another rhetorical question - no answer needed).

I could speculate why she did this, but I don't think it would be helpful.  Not that hard to guess though.  I am so sorry she took away the grief and loss you were experiencing over a person you had bonded with as a father figure, and replaced it with anger at her.

It's such an insidious disease - the one that just keeps on giving.

Another example of "blabbing".

[Older sister]

While reading this thread, I had a Eureka moment. My sister, whom I assumed has uBPD, often complained of how our mother would dig into her wounds frequently, and would upset her to the point of severe dysregulation and rumination. She has gone no contact. Now my Mom is doing it to me! The “blabbing” is active mental illness, my waif/queen elderly mother is looking for emotional supply: triangulated support, drama, pity, a flying monkey. My family imploded after my father’s death in 2018. My mother’s behaviour is threatening the fragile bonds that remain between the 3/5 siblings still in contact with her and each other. Thank you for these posts. They have really helped bring clarity to my bewildered, frequently shocked and saddened heart and mind.