Looking for other Golden Children/all-good children

[gleek73]

Hi everyone. It's been a couple years since I looked in, but I'd like to do so more.  Quick introduction:

I'm a 42yo son of an 80yo uBPD/NPD mother, who may also have a learning disability related to logical processing (perhaps that's also the BPD, but either way, it ain't helping). My father -- they've been divorced for almost 20 years now -- possibly has Asperger's or if not actually that, then he is in some way socially compromised. (They were quite a pair... .can you imagine someone with NPD marrying someone with Asperger's?) He was basically an absence in my life growing up; when he was home, he would read or work. He coped with my mother by going deeper inside himself, having as little to do with her as he could. And since I was her golden child, she wanted to keep him away from me anyway, since in her mind he could never do anything right. (And she wouldn't hesitate to go through all of his faults to me in excruciating detail, not stopping at his sexual issues.)

In any case, I was the classic golden child. I have a sister 12 years older and a brother 17 years older. Both are my mother's children, but they both came from one of my mother's earlier husbands. My father adopted my sister when he married my mother, but by the time I was 6 or so, she had left the house and was into her adult life, so I was raised more or less as an only child, particularly as my mother's relationship with both of the older kids was fraying badly.

My situation was kind of odd, since as a golden child I was personally treated pretty well, and I learned quickly enough what would trigger her anger regarding my siblings or other people so it was easy to avoid bad topics. She eventually stopped talking to my siblings (sort of by mutual decision, not a no-contact limit from them) and shielded me from contacting them. My own relationship with her started fraying once I left for college and began to build an adult life, as I figured out how screwed up this was, what was really going on here, and developed my own lines of communication to my siblings.

Long story short (if not too late already), I coped with this by becoming powerfully angry and contemptuous of her. I spent a lot of years being a gigantic ass to her because I didn't have a good command over my emotions with her. She never understood where it came from since she couldn't understand her actions or her role in all of her conflict. She also had rarely been explicitly abusive to me, the way a scapegoated child would be, so my anger seemed to come from nowhere. It was an unfortunate reaction, in my less mature days, to combat her titanic personality.

So, while I recognize where my anger came from, and why, it certainly has played a role in the deterioration of our relationship. This isn't blaming myself so much as analyzing why the relationship is where it is. I really did treat her badly, picking apart every tiny mistake, blowing up at her over nothing, all toward asserting some power of my own in the relationship. While no relationship could've been easy with her, my behavior certainly made it harder. I have attempted to own what I'm responsible for, and apologized for that, though it's a bit of too-little-too-late, and a lot of that she'll never understand what's really going on. (The apology wasn't acknowledged, and I don't feel much need to try again.)

At this point, I've maintained communication, though there are major areas we can't (and don't) talk about, except occasionally when she wants to pick a fight. (Which, sadly, I tend to oblige.) Our calls tend to be dull, for me, but I've never been comfortable with the idea of ending contact. Nor is that my wish, at the moment.  But I really do regret having expressed the anger like that for so long, not only because it wasn't productive, but it gives me some culpability for the state of the relationship.

I'm sad because I know that for her, it must seem that this anger and contempt just came from nowhere, and she'd have no idea why she's been largely shut out of my (married) life. We don't spend holidays with her, my wife has almost no relationship to her at all.  This will change a bit going forward as we're about to complete an adoption so the child will cause us all to have more contact -- which isn't a bad thing necessarily, though I'm definitely wary, as it puts me in situations much more likely to trigger that anger. 

If there are other Golden Children out there on the board, I'd be curious to know how you navigated your own path with your parent, once you came to understand what was really going on in your family? How did you react to the parent? 

Or for anyone, scapegoat or not, who's also spent a lot of years expressing that kind of profound anger at your parent, has anyone been successful at walking some of that back?

[Kwamina]

Hi gleek73

Welcome back and thanks for reintroducing yourself

Being the child of a BPD parent isn't easy, whether you're a scapegoat or a golden child. I understand your anger and where it was coming from. I can relate to another aspect of your story too, the large age gap between you and your siblings. I am also way younger than my (3) siblings, the youngest one before me is eleven years older than me. Though I have siblings, for many years I lived alone with my mother who divorced my dad when I was a baby. After my siblings moved out, it was just like being an only child. This triggered the confusing behavior in my mother of 'splitting' me. One moment she viewed and treated me as all-good and the next as all-bad. Are you familiar with the term 'splitting'? You can read more about it here: BPD BEHAVIORS: Splitting

Learning about BPD has been eye-opening for me and also validated my experiences. Your anger is understandable and though the way you expressed it is perhaps somewhat unfortunate, once we know better we do better. Perhaps it will help you to take a look at some of the communications techniques described on this site. We for instance have some articles here about validation and things you can do yourself to end the cycle of conflict. Here's an excerpt from the article about validation:

When it comes to emotional intelligence, one of the most advanced skills is knowing how to better validate others. Validation opens people up and contributes to the feeling of comfort and safety when communicating with you.  Conversely, if you are experiencing a communication breakdown, if there is a wall between you and someone else, it most likely has been built with the bricks of invalidation.

If you are effective at validation, and learn not to be invalidating, you will have better relationships with people. This is a powerful tool. Mastering it will elevate your emotional intelligence and your "people skills".

... .

Nowhere is the communication skill of validation more important than in interfacing with highly sensitive individuals, individuals with low self esteem or individuals who are easily intimidated.  This is a very valuable tool for dealing with people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

To validate someone's feelings is first to accept someone's feelings - and then to understand them - and finally to nurture them. To validate is to acknowledge and accept a person. Invalidation, on the other hand, is to reject, ignore, or judge.

Validation of feelings is vital to connecting with others. The mutual validation of feelings is important in all phases of relationships including building, maintaining, repairing, and improving them.

Here are the links to the articles I mentioned:

Communication Skills - Validation

A 3 Minute Lesson on Ending Conflict

There is also a technique called S.E.T. specifically developed for communications with a person with BPD that could possibly help you better communicate with your mother. S.E.T. stands for Support Empathy and Truth:

The S.E.T. communication pattern was developed by Jerold J. Kreisman, MD and Hal Straus for communication with a person with BPD (pwBPD). It consists of a 3 step sequence where first Support is signaled, then Empathy is demonstrated and in a third step Truth is offered.

Few tools are easier to learn as S.E.T. and are as effective in getting across to a pwBPD. Few tools are as universal in everyday life with anyone. It is sort of an walking-on-eggshell antidote.

S.E.T. minimizes the chance of further escalation while maximizing the chance of getting through to the other person. We have a workshop about S.E.T. that you can find here:

S.E.T. - Support, Empathy and Truth

I hope that you'll find these resources of some help to you.

Take care