Overcoming my own problems after BPD/NPD parents

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hi!

I'm new to bpdfamily and hope my question is not misplaced in this board. I at am at a juncture in my life where I cannot put off healing the wounds from my childhood. I thought I could bury them and, with catastrophic consequences, thought that the love in my marriage to a man who suffered emotional abuse of a different kind from his own parents would be enough to put the past behind me. It is with huge shame that I must admit that I began to repeat the abusive and aggressive behaviour that my parents displayed in my own marriage with the result that my husband left a few weeks ago, and I was hoping that there might be others here who have confronted the pain of realising that you are in danger of or have actually perpetuated the patterns from the previous generation and have some experience of the work that it requires in dealing with one's own history. I appreciate that this is a forum for those dealing with family members or significant others who have BPD, but, given the tendency for some of these traits and behaviours to be passed on, as it were, across generations, I thought some of you might have some words of advice for me. I am in therapy, but I was hoping to learn too from others who have had the courage to deal with these issues.

Some background: through my childhood and adolescence both my parents (both divorced after a long succession of unstable relationships) would scream, shout, and throw things at one another, and my father was also physically violent towards my mother frequently and to me sometimes too. A few years into my 13-year relationship with my husband (so while we were in our early 20s), I began to realise that my father had delusional and narcissistic traits and that my mother displayed a mixture of BPD and OCD behaviours, while my husband also felt that his own mother had been controlling and domineering in ways he had not previously understood, while his father (not actually his biological father) was emotionally absent. It now seems so obvious to me that we were attracted to one another because we each had these unhealed wounds, were both only children, and that the terrible mistake we made was in thinking that one another would be enough to heal those. It seems unbelievable that we did not consider the need for therapy sooner (we were from the UK, where it didn't enjoy the same acceptance at the US). In a nutshell, I'm coming to see that I got fed up at some point in my late teens with being praised for being the "good girl" and that my way of handling the abusive behaviour I'd been caught up in as a child was to be determined that I would never be a victim, that I had to be strong, and especially, while my mother increasingly positioned herself as a victim with behaviour that seemed to me increasingly manipulative and deceitful, that I would never let anyone do this to me again. This stance led, in ways that I didn't even recognise at the time, to subtly controlling behaviour or--because I was not conscious of an intent to control--at the very least to behaviour that my husband not unreasonably perceived as controlling. This triggered his own fear of being controlled, due to his own emerging realisation of his maternal enmeshment. My husband and I, though, reacted very differently to our emerging awareness of the abusiveness of our childhoods. I became openly angry, and started--to my bitter shame--to adopt the verbally abusive tactics I had witnessed in my parents whenever I feared, no doubt unreasonably, that I might up end being emotionally abused by him. My husband rarely expressed his anger outwardly and instead seemed to smoulder with resentment. I am not going to minimise my responsibility for my own terrible behaviour (I know now that's 100% down to me), but I also think there was a pattern whereby my angry outbursts triggered his fears of being controlled and led to his resenting me in the way that he resented his mother, while he also felt that same need to always say yes to me in the way that he had done to his mother. In turn, I became increasingly angry whenever I perceived this resentment when I thought he was on board with decisions and became increasingly demanding that he love me and show me that love without trace of resentment. He began to lie to cover up all kinds of little things and also began pursuing cyberaffairs with younger girls who better appreciated his efforts to please than I did. His lies and evasiveness triggered my own determination not to be subject to emotional abuse, and the whole thing got completely out of control with my constantly lashing out without recourse to professional help.

Now, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how my patterns stem from my childhood and in particular to my relationship to my mother. In some ways, the one with my dad seems easier to recognise because he is quite obviously narcissistic and authoritarian when he doesn't get his way, and I recognise that the anger I felt towards my husband and sometimes towards other men who are authoritarian, cruel or inconsiderate towards women stems from my anger towards my father. The impact of my maternal relationship seems harder to work out because her own behaviour still seems difficult to pin down to me. She was treated for "depression" in her 20s before I was born and has never been diagnosed with BPD, but the patterns of splitting, fear of abandonment, impulsivity control etc. seem to ring very true. I'm told by family that she clung to me desperately as a baby and I recall her emotional dependence (wanting to live her life and unfulfilled dreams through my success, her mood being determined by me), then I was either an angel or a monster as I grew up, any expression of negative emotion being suppressed or dismissed as bad behaviour. At one point, I remember her screaming and shouting at my dad and they both appeared to give as good as they got and she would ferociously defend me from him, but, as I got older, she began to cajole and get things she wanted (moving house, new kitchens, fancy clothes) through more covert means. She would complain about my father's behaviour, only to take it all back the moment I proposed taking some action. She would also complain that they had invested so much time and money in me, with the not-so-veiled implication that she resented it because she was disappointed that I was not her good little girl and best friend anymore. She died last year from cancer: after the initial surgery and chemo, she was denied treatment because she began to reuse to eat scarcely anything, even IV, and her physical condition deteriorated rapidly. We never worked things out, so I'm trying to find a way of healing without her physical presence. I oscillate from feeling anger towards her for not getting us out sooner and then  extreme sorrow that she ended up in this situation, that, even if she did suffer from BPD, that she may also have been the victim of abuse as a child (she always spoke negatively of her own parents, feeling that they did not love her, but rarely elaborated). Although I don't openly feel very angry at the moment, but just great sadness and remorse, I know that I will have to work on coming to terms with my anger.

So, maybe there are some of you who had had experiences with the kind of issues that you confront now as adults in your own behaviour that stem from your having a BPD parent and I would love to hear from you as I begin my journey of healing. While I know, since my husband wants no more contact, I must largely now do this for myself and for my future, I would also love to hear from any of you who have had experience in trying to make amends for your own behaviour as adults. I wrote to my husband taking full responsibility for my behaviour, for the ways that I had refused to see what I had been doing and had thereby minimised and justified it, for all the harm I had done him and that I hadn't recognised it, but he says only that I could not be trusted and my apology was fake. I know now that I cannot control whether he accepts my apology, but, equally I am filled with remorse now that I can see how I let me own history drive my terrible behaviour towards the person I love, am committed to changing even if it's just for me, and also would desperately love to be able to make a full apology and amends to him for what I've done. No matter what I went through as a child or however I picked up those pattern, I am completely responsible for every time I was cruel to my husband in so many different ways, and I desperately wish that I had recognised what was going on with me sooner so that I would never have done what I did.

[wanttochange]

Hi!

I'm new to bpdfamily and hope my question is not misplaced in this board. I at am at a juncture in my life where I cannot put off healing the wounds from my childhood. I thought I could bury them and, with catastrophic consequences, thought that the love in my marriage to a man who suffered emotional abuse of a different kind from his own parents would be enough to put the past behind me. It is with huge shame that I must admit that I began to repeat the abusive and aggressive behaviour that my parents displayed in my own marriage with the result that my husband left a few weeks ago, and I was hoping that there might be others here who have confronted the pain of realising that you are in danger of or have actually perpetuated the patterns from the previous generation and have some experience of the work that it requires in dealing with one's own history. I appreciate that this is a forum for those dealing with family members or significant others who have BPD, but, given the tendency for some of these traits and behaviours to be passed on, as it were, across generations, I thought some of you might have some words of advice for me. I am in therapy, but I was hoping to learn too from others who have had the courage to deal with these issues.

Some background: through my childhood and adolescence both my parents (both divorced after a long succession of unstable relationships) would scream, shout, and throw things at one another, and my father was also physically violent towards my mother frequently and to me sometimes too. A few years into my 13-year relationship with my husband (so while we were in our early 20s), I began to realise that my father had delusional and narcissistic traits and that my mother displayed a mixture of BPD and OCD behaviours, while my husband also felt that his own mother had been controlling and domineering in ways he had not previously understood, while his father (not actually his biological father) was emotionally absent. It now seems so obvious to me that we were attracted to one another because we each had these unhealed wounds, were both only children, and that the terrible mistake we made was in thinking that one another would be enough to heal those. It seems unbelievable that we did not consider the need for therapy sooner (we were from the UK, where it didn't enjoy the same acceptance at the US). In a nutshell, I'm coming to see that I got fed up at some point in my late teens with being praised for being the "good girl" and that my way of handling the abusive behaviour I'd been caught up in as a child was to be determined that I would never be a victim, that I had to be strong, and especially, while my mother increasingly positioned herself as a victim with behaviour that seemed to me increasingly manipulative and deceitful, that I would never let anyone do this to me again. This stance led, in ways that I didn't even recognise at the time, to subtly controlling behaviour or--because I was not conscious of an intent to control--at the very least to behaviour that my husband not unreasonably perceived as controlling. This triggered his own fear of being controlled, due to his own emerging realisation of his maternal enmeshment. My husband and I, though, reacted very differently to our emerging awareness of the abusiveness of our childhoods. I became openly angry, and started--to my bitter shame--to adopt the verbally abusive tactics I had witnessed in my parents whenever I feared, no doubt unreasonably, that I might up end being emotionally abused by him. My husband rarely expressed his anger outwardly and instead seemed to smoulder with resentment. I am not going to minimise my responsibility for my own terrible behaviour (I know now that's 100% down to me), but I also think there was a pattern whereby my angry outbursts triggered his fears of being controlled and led to his resenting me in the way that he resented his mother, while he also felt that same need to always say yes to me in the way that he had done to his mother. In turn, I became increasingly angry whenever I perceived this resentment when I thought he was on board with decisions and became increasingly demanding that he love me and show me that love without trace of resentment. He began to lie to cover up all kinds of little things and also began pursuing cyberaffairs with younger girls who better appreciated his efforts to please than I did. His lies and evasiveness triggered my own determination not to be subject to emotional abuse, and the whole thing got completely out of control with my constantly lashing out without recourse to professional help.

Now, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how my patterns stem from my childhood and in particular to my relationship to my mother. In some ways, the one with my dad seems easier to recognise because he is quite obviously narcissistic and authoritarian when he doesn't get his way, and I recognise that the anger I felt towards my husband and sometimes towards other men who are authoritarian, cruel or inconsiderate towards women stems from my anger towards my father. The impact of my maternal relationship seems harder to work out because her own behaviour still seems difficult to pin down to me. She was treated for "depression" in her 20s before I was born and has never been diagnosed with BPD, but the patterns of splitting, fear of abandonment, impulsivity control etc. seem to ring very true. I'm told by family that she clung to me desperately as a baby and I recall her emotional dependence (wanting to live her life and unfulfilled dreams through my success, her mood being determined by me), then I was either an angel or a monster as I grew up, any expression of negative emotion being suppressed or dismissed as bad behaviour. At one point, I remember her screaming and shouting at my dad and they both appeared to give as good as they got and she would ferociously defend me from him, but, as I got older, she began to cajole and get things she wanted (moving house, new kitchens, fancy clothes) through more covert means. She would complain about my father's behaviour, only to take it all back the moment I proposed taking some action. She would also complain that they had invested so much time and money in me, with the not-so-veiled implication that she resented it because she was disappointed that I was not her good little girl and best friend anymore. She died last year from cancer: after the initial surgery and chemo, she was denied treatment because she began to reuse to eat scarcely anything, even IV, and her physical condition deteriorated rapidly. We never worked things out, so I'm trying to find a way of healing without her physical presence. I oscillate from feeling anger towards her for not getting us out sooner and then  extreme sorrow that she ended up in this situation, that, even if she did suffer from BPD, that she may also have been the victim of abuse as a child (she always spoke negatively of her own parents, feeling that they did not love her, but rarely elaborated). Although I don't openly feel very angry at the moment, but just great sadness and remorse, I know that I will have to work on coming to terms with my anger.

So, maybe there are some of you who had had experiences with the kind of issues that you confront now as adults in your own behaviour that stem from your having a BPD parent and I would love to hear from you as I begin my journey of healing. While I know, since my husband wants no more contact, I must largely now do this for myself and for my future, I would also love to hear from any of you who have had experience in trying to make amends for your own behaviour as adults. I wrote to my husband taking full responsibility for my behaviour, for the ways that I had refused to see what I had been doing and had thereby minimised and justified it, for all the harm I had done him and that I hadn't recognised it, but he says only that I could not be trusted and my apology was fake. I know now that I cannot control whether he accepts my apology, but, equally I am filled with remorse now that I can see how I let me own history drive my terrible behaviour towards the person I love, am committed to changing even if it's just for me, and also would desperately love to be able to make a full apology and amends to him for what I've done. No matter what I went through as a child or however I picked up those pattern, I am completely responsible for every time I was cruel to my husband in so many different ways, and I desperately wish that I had recognised what was going on with me sooner so that I would never have done what I did.

[Naughty Nibbler]

WANT TO CHANGE:

Big hug!  You deserve a lot of credit for entering therapy, recognizing your behavior and having a desire to change!

In my family, I think that both genetics and exposure to bad behavior have had impact in the lives of my sister and myself.  My 92-year-old father just passed recently.  Sometimes, I wonder what life would have been like if my mom married someone else.  My mom indicated that she thought my dad was depressed when she met him, and she tried to cheer him up.  Back in their day, depression and behavior issues weren't discussed and information just wasn't available like now.

My parents were both responsible, had good moral character and took well care of my sister and I.  There wasn't substance abuse or physical abuse, but there was a lot of angry rage and yelling on my dad's part.

I was actually afraid of my dad, afraid to ask for anything, afraid to invite friends over (for fear that my dad would have an angry rage while they were there).  That didn't seem to bother my sister, probably since she has acquired the same traits over time.

I can remember angry verbal fights between my parents over the years.  I was frequently fearful that they would divorce, when I was young.  I can remember weeks of time when my dad wouldn't speak to my mother.  There was usually a huge fight around tax time, when they prepared their own tax returns.  I can remember one time when my mom packed a suitcase and drove away from home.  Thankfully, she returned by the end of the day, but I was freaked out.

I can remember coming home one day, after getting into a traffic accident with my own vehicle.  The person who hit me had run a red light. (I was completing a left-hand turn and the person running the light, caught my rear quarter panel.)  My did didn't ask if I was ok when I got home, just said it was my fault. 

Fast forward to the last 12 months.  I recognized that after my sister got a divorce, that she was always ranting about something.  It got a bit tiring after awhile and I had infrequent contact with her (nothing that I announced, but just did as much as possible). We chatted over the phone once or twice a month - generally about casual issues and nothing that we had to agree on or work together.  Sometimes, I'd offer tech assistance for her computer.

Once we had to deal with health issues with my parents,  work together on health directives, medical and financial power of attorneys and general elder care/health situations - things fell apart rapidly. WOW, my sister turned into a raging monster, would hang up the phone for the silliest things.  She lacked the ability to listen to most of the things I tried to say.  She would launch into a rant and assume I would take a certain position before I was even able to say a word.  I'd have to try and talk over her to get her to stop and make her aware that she was arguing with herself.  Anything I said or information I shared about my parents multiple health situations was preceived by her as "talking down to her" 

I started therapy about a month ago and was amazed that so many of my issues regarding my sister were spelled out in the book "Walking on Egg Shells".  I didn't know about the book until my therapist suggested I buy the book and read it. On my own, I had already describe interactions with my sister as Walking on Egg Shells or she was Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.

Right now, I'm still trying to understand and decide about my future interactions with my sister.  I've minimized my involvement with my sister currently, but we have to work together to some degree in regard to my parents estate (both died within the last 6 months.)

My sister's most recent rant pushed me over the end. My sister went into a raging attack mode, called me names and proceeded to tell me everything she hated about me.  No apology.  I finally decided I can't go through this again and just resume interaction as usual, as if nothing ever happened (and keep repeating the situation over and over again).

I know that grief and what we have been through has an impact on both of us, but I recognized right away, that my sister started her behavior towards me as soon as we had to work on something together.  Before this, my mom would frequently mention that my sister was very irritable or crabby when she was at their home.

Hope sharing this info. helps you in some way

[tortuga]

Hi wanttochange.  I guess I could share where I am at on this, as well.

I have been in therapy for over 5 years (maybe 6), I have a uBPDw, and I am a codependent.  I think I didn't really accept this for years, but I did work through the treatment, and the John Bradshaw book. I always normalized my parents' behavior, and never really tried to deal with anything that may have happened when I was a child. I thought that my upbringing was pretty much "fine". I guess I accepted that my brother was kind of a big abusive bully. But I always thought that this was basically normal.  When I accepted that he had bullied me, and the pain that that caused, it helped me to dig into the hurts and this helped my treatment to progress.

About 2 years ago, my brother had a divorce, and we believe that his ex-w was NPD. (in retrospect).  She alienated his son from him completely, and tried with his daughter.  My brother had a pretty severe depressive breakdown from this - but it's apparent that he was also abusive throughout the r/s.  And recovering from that, a lot of things that were hidden, have come to light.  A lot of severe enabling behaviors. I think that this is when I really began to accept that I was codependant.

Then, I began to look at the relationship (now) between my parents.  And I see codependent behavior on my father's part. . . all over the place.  And maybe my mom is a bit on the harsh side. I was also told that she suffered depression, and there was a lot of stress and turmoil in the family, around the time I was born, surrounding a relocation, and career issues with my dad. I am guessing (but will never know for sure), that there was some attachment dysfunction between my mother and I in my first year.  Of course, now she has alzheimers - there's really no way to go back and pick apart what her specific issue was.  And I've got to accept that.  I still remember the good times with her, and the parts where she was a wonderful mother, and how she taught me about accepting myself, and tried to bolster my self-esteem.  It's very difficult to connect the dots.

At a certain point - some of these memories are buried, or lost to the narrow perspective I had as a child.  Bradshaw's book has a lot of cool little techniques for trying to access your "inner child" and get at their point of view.  Not all of what I got from that work makes sense.  (and it's not necessarily supposed to; the goal is to find that inner child and give it the validation he/she needed - through various stages of your development). 

Given the recent crisis I've gone through (dBPDd19's suicide attempt, and diagnosis as BPD) - I am re-examining everything.  I am looking at my childhood experiences with a new light, and my own behavior (even RECENT behavior) of enabling and controlling, and perhaps the role it may have played in my daughter's condition. (obviously, there's a genetic component, BPD does not just run in my uBPDw's family, it practically gallops. But I must OWN my part of this.)

"Walking on Eggshells" is good for dealing with a specific, present-day issue, that's in your face, every day: how to live/deal with a high-conflict person in your present-day life. (I have not read it - but I have skimmed through it).  John Bradshaw's "Codependent No More" is more about how to examine yourself, and how to recover from your own FOO issues.  It is a great tool, because as you work on your pain, and begin to regain your identity, you also learn to listen to the part of you that's saying "hey this is not okay, I need a boundary here", which is a huge deal when dealing with a high-conflict person or relationship.  When you begin to put your boundaries out there, and enforce them, it changes the whole relationship dynamic.

[wanttochange]

Hi

Thank you both for your supportive comments, for sharing and your suggestions!