Having proof of BPD / dealing with Mum's fakeness

[January86]

Hi everyone! 

I just want to thank you for your support in my exam period crisis a month ago and update a bit my story. Also I am curious about one thing:

The behaviour of my BPD Hermit Mum that has influenced and hurt me the most is: negativity, selfishness, the world is dangerous, everything will go wrong, either you make it perfect or it’s not worth it, isolating me from my Dad and other family…

But the ones that made me realize something was really wrong were the verbal abuse, rages and occasional physical abuse. I call them “objective proof it’s not normal”. If these last ones hadn’t happened, I would have never thought there was a problem. I would have read the forums and thought that I had no problems, people were dealing with real problems and I was just overreacting. These last ones gave me the little validation I had when I started searching on internet.

In certain a way I’m happy they happened, so I found about BPD. I could have been perfectly broken inside only because of the other behavior and never found out.

Has anyone experience this feeling?



Update about my progress 

I’m living on my own this summer and it’s so good! I’m getting so much confidence and positive thoughts. Also I passed the exam I had in the middle of my crisis! It was just an ok grade –not the usual A grade- but it feels better than any other A grade I had.

Bad news is that I will have to go back to live with my parents in September for a short period so I don’t go too much into my savings as I want to make a trip abroad (flat + travel= too much money). Also my cat gets depressed without me and student flats –the ones I afford- don’t accept cats.

When I go back home to visit my cat I have polite conversations with my BPD Mum, we even talk about things on tv but barely personal stuff. My BPD Mum is…let’s say…under control. Since I disclosure my feelings a month ago she tries to not say anything inappropriate –although sometimes she can’t help it, she is so negative (an example, she insinuated what could happen if my boyfriend had a girl flatmate…, and my boyfriend is the most trusty guy I met, I have zero trust problems).

But I find that she has to make so much effort and she sounds so fake…this fakeness makes me feel so uncomfortable, I feel I am treated like a strange person. Even if she has no rages lately and tries to make her best, I still feel so bad around her, sometimes I would prefer she showed her true self. 

Even if we seem to have normal conversations, inside I am oversensitive –and I know she is too- It’s like we both overthink our words. Also I usually feel I didn’t like something she said but I don’t know what it is and start thinking about it until some hours later I know what I didn’t like but I can’t change the way I answered. It consumes me.

Plus she doesn’t clean regularly   (she makes one huuuuge cleaning a year but doesn’t make the daily cleaning and tidying). I’ve found out at 27 I am a clean person capable of having a clean and tidy flat. I thought it was me the dirty one!

I’m just venting my worry about going back home…

Thanks for reading!

[Kwamina]

Congratulations on passing your exam!   A great accomplishment considering all the things you were going through.

But the ones that made me realize something was really wrong were the verbal abuse, rages and occasional physical abuse. I call them “objective proof it’s not normal”. If these last ones hadn’t happened, I would have never thought there was a problem. I would have read the forums and thought that I had no problems, people were dealing with real problems and I was just overreacting. These last ones gave me the little validation I had when I started searching on internet.

In certain a way I’m happy they happened, so I found about BPD. I could have been perfectly broken inside only because of the other behavior and never found out.

Has anyone experience this feeling?

I have experienced this too. Because all I have ever known was this BPD reality, I often wondered if it was just me who was too sensitive and overreacting. But the extreme verbal abuse and rages were always a wake-up call and let me know that there really is something seriously wrong with my mother. The turning point for me was when both my uBPD mother and sister turned into the Witch at the same time on Mother’s Day 2010. I was shocked because back then I still believed they were normal people capable of change and bettering themselves. Now I know better though. After this episode I started looking for information about emotional abuse and after a while found an article about BPD. If this incident with my mother and sister hadn’t happened, it could well be that I would still be walking around in denial about the seriousness of the situation.

[Calsun]

Congratulations on the your success on your exam!  Yes, I can relate to this, as well.  My mother's physical and verbal abuse was the first sign to me.  She even pulled a knife out of the kitchen draw in one of her episodes, waved it at me, and screamed that she was going to kill me.  Terrifying.

What I didn't come to understand until recently was that that was the tip of the iceberg.  That my mother portrayed me as the "black sheep" and my brother as the good one, the splitting that borderlines do, her complete inability to even remember things she did or said, the cognitive difficulties that create that lack of awareness, the splicing that everyone in my family did of painful experiences to basically erase them from the story, the dissociation that I engaged in as a defense from the painful trauma, the terror of abandonment that led her to undermine my sense of competence and inner confidence.  Not just rage, but annihilating rage, the witch, Medea rage, and a complete inability to see me as a separate person. The constant depression she was in. Her blaming me for her painful life, saying things like she never had anything nice in her life because of me, never did anything because of me. And the confusion of being taught as a backdrop by society that I was supposed to love my mother, be devoted to her, trust her and that mothers love their children.  And my own terror of abandonment because I grew up with this.

I saw the tip but I experienced Titanics in my life because I didn't see the mass of BPD ice underneath it.  I saw the physical and emotional abuse, the rage,  just didn't know that it was a whole dynamic beneath it, and that there was no curing it for my uBPD mother and no way of redemption for me through relationship with it. That is a rather recent epiphany for me.

Thanks again for your sharing.  This site continues to be so helpful to me.  I've gone to Alanon and ACOA which has helped, but the shares on here are so on point.  I feel like I'm finally understood and that my experiences are being validated and finally make sense.  That helps with some of the utter aloneness I felt growing up with my uBPD mother, witch, and still often feel, when no one in the family validated that reality and the messenger, me, felt the terrifying reality that I was a target for annihilation by both the uBPD and more subtly from the deniers.

Calsun

[GeekyGirl]

Congrats on passing your exam! Sometimes a hard-earned B is much more fulfilling than an easy A.

That fear and dread that comes with going home is awful. I remember it well. Your mother might be self-aware enough to know that her behavior is disruptive and hurtful to others. She might try to hide that behavior and her rages, which might still be lurking under the surface. That's probably why you feel like she's being fake--because she very well may be pretending. Are you worried that by holding in these feelings that she's building up to more severe rages?

How long will you be living with your parents? What can you do to make that stay more enjoyable?

[gloveman]

     I can relate to everything you are experiencing.

     I didn't realize my family (father, mother and younger brother) had uBPD until I was 63, so it has been difficult for me to finally start getting over the misconceptions I had about myself and the world around me because I have had them for so long.

     You have realized it is them not you that is the problem at an young age. You will get over it.

     

 

[January86]

Thank you for your replies! 

Kwamina, mother and sister…you must be really strong. I send you a hug.   Ironically my turning point wasn’t one of my Mum rages but the shock face my boyfriend showed when in a conversation it popped up that my Mum called me bhit several times. I was so shocked at his shock-face! Like... . isn’t it normal? And when he said it wasn’t... . what a relief. Such an important moment for me.

Calsun, I love all your posts.  In my case I wasn’t the black sheep always, as an only child I alternated from golden child to black sheep. So confused, I was always in fear and at the same time felt privileged. She used all the time that very same sentence you mentioned “she never had anything nice in her life because of me”. It’s like all of them bought “how to be a BPDMother for dummies” heh. She told me that I thought I was “queen of saba” (wherever that Saba country is :D ).

I finally found an affordable flat so I will only live with my parents for a month (all seems to be good news when you get out of the crazy atmosphere heh). I hope with distance with them I can get in the right track as I still feel a bit disoriented.  :'(

[KateJuly2013]

Congratulations on passing your exam!    So impressive in the midst of all you were discovering.  Also, good for you for moving out and getting some physical distance.

I hear you about the fakeness.  I am hopeful that perhaps it will get better over time.  You are both having to adjust to the new rules you are setting.  It doesn't mean it will feel like this forever, I bet.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.  I too started to really see how different my family was though my boyfriend's (now husband's) eyes.  For me, it is so helpful when someone cares about my feelings first.  I'm glad you have that in your life too.

I agree with Geekygirl- I hope you will think about ways to make the time you stay wiht your family less difficult.  Looking forward to traveling abroad will probably be very helpful I bet