Going LC with uBPD mom has cost me my sister

[SunshinePuzzle]

Hi Guys,

I am feeling very low today and just looking to be around people who understand I guess.  I started posting here this summer after a therapist friend told me about BPD and it was such an eye-opener.  Something that finally explained my mom's behavior over the years, something that had a name and therefore could be treated. It has given me such hope for myself, because not only am I an adult-child of a uBPD mom, but I also recognize BPD traits in myself and my siblings, and I don't want to be like my mom. I want to be healthy, to break the cycle. I'm in IC with a new therapist who specialized in BPD and DBT.  So that is helping, and I'm reading everything I can and trying to get out of this depression.

Last night threw me into a slump though.  I know this is just an ordinary bump in the road, but it still hurts like hell right now.  Essentially, over the past year - while I've been going LC with my mom - my sister at some point started getting closer with her.  My mom treated me like the 'favored' one for most of my young adult life - and what I mean by that is kind of sick actually - she'd call me and talk a lot of crap about everyone to me.  That's the way she shows intimacy with you or makes you feel special.  You "get" to be the ones she calls crying and you "get" to feel like "the good one" who is not letting her down, and you "get" to be the one to defend her against others because she is always somehow being mistreated by others (while not realizing you are actually attacking others sometimes or mistreating them, based on lies or distortions you have only heard from her). When I pulled back this year, I understand now that she filled the gap with my sister.  My sister is now the one who listens to her, who "gets" to feel special in this way, all the while being fed a steady stream of her lies and distortions. I KNOW this, and I have been there and I am trying to be empathetic but it hurts so much.

The short of it: my sister sent me several hateful messages out of the blue a few weeks ago. Not just angry, but hurtful and malicious... .the kind of mean-spirited things our uBPD mom would say - the things a uBPD person says when they are in emotional-overload and impulsive and feeling supremely justified.  I thanked her for sending, told her I didn't have the emotional capacity to respond properly but I'd come back later.  I took a couple of weeks to reply because I wanted to wait and let the emotions pass some, so I could try and be loving in my reply.  I am still trying to change the way *I* respond to things --- so this was new for me not to impulsively reply in hurt and anger.  

After I sent her a measured, loving response, she immediately hammered out 4 or 5 more messages last night - so fast she couldn't possibly have read what I said, let alone digested it.  I knew she was replying out of impulsive emotion, but it still hurt like hell.

Somehow she thinks I am being "nasty" and "cruel" to my mom, though I have not said anything about our mom to her, once I realized how close they were getting and that she has a different perspective right now.  It hurts doubly because of course I haven't been nasty or cruel - I have called my mom a handful of times this year, on holidays and her BD, and always been nice.  I was nice when I saw her this summer.  But I wouldn't fight with her.  I wouldn't engage.  And I don't allow her to talk crap about anyone to me anymore, which means we don't have all of those long calls with me listening to her toxicity.  So I know she's madder at me than ever.  And I knew she would launch this kind of attack against me, but I still wasn't prepare for how it would feel.

My husband and I have been separated for most of this year. It has been a very trying, very hard time for me, and my mother has not called or emailed me once to ask how I am or offer support or love. Not  even on my birthday. Nothing. My mother-in-law, by contrast, contacts me several times a week - just nice little gestures.  This fact alone tells me logically: that my mom is not well.  That she doesn't appear to care (even if she does) and that she does not know how to be a mom.  All things my sister and I know already.

What I can't wrap my head around is how my sister can know those things and still somehow think my mom is a victim? How does that happen? Her angry messages repeated other lies from my mother which hurt as well... .one being that I am planning a birthday party for my grandpa with my aunt, just to upset our mom.  This is so ridiculous and sad on so many levels. My aunt called me a month or so ago and asked me if I'd help plan a party for my grandpa.  I told her I'd have to think about it, because I don't want to provoke my mom and we all knew it would (in any normal family planning a birthday party for your grandpa's 95th year should not be cause for getting mad, but we are a uBPD family - my mom hates my aunt... .you know the rest... ).  I talked about it with my husband, and we thought it might not be a good idea, so in the end I did not get back to my aunt about it yet.  Somehow, of course, my mom must have heard (from my aunt? or someone else my aunt mentioned it to?) that I was asked, because out of the blue I get my sister's angry message about me planning a party.  I don't even know how to defend myself against stuff like this because it's so insane! Just typing it all out - it makes you seem crazy to even entertain the accusations or try to defend yourself because they are so silly.  Maybe I should have responded with a simple: I am not planning a birthday party with our aunt for our papa. Period.

Anyway, I am dealing with the (hopefully temporary) loss of my sister this morning.  In one of her last messages to me she goaded me that she shares "EVERYTHING" with mama now and plans to continue. She also continued to throw accusations at me that are from things my mom has said.  So I sent her a final email where I said that I can't talk with her about real things anymore, since she shares my words and feelings with my abuser, and I have to pull back for now.  And that I love her and would love to talk to her down the road someday, and am also open to a joint therapy session if she is interested, but that I have to protect myself from further harm. And I love her.

I am so sick about it.  As the oldest, I have struggled with a lot of guilt at not "protecting" my younger siblings more when we were kids.  So I know that plays into it.  I also feel massively betrayed and am cycling through feelings of anger too.  Like, how can my sister side with our abuser?  That kind of Stockholm syndrome thing.  I KNOW the answer - because we all grew up with my mom controlling all of us. Our defense mechanisms, everything - we developed them as a way to survive around her and to try and mitigate her explosions or direct her wrath in a different direction.  I am only just now pulling myself out of my mom's puppet-show, out of her manipulative web, and it's taken me all year to get this far. So deep down, I really do understand how she could do this, and I'm trying to hold on to that and to learn to love her "radically" - a term I have only heard recently, but understood immediately. I love my sister so much... .it just hurts a lot, to have her be the one that's used as a weapon against me.  that's all.  :'(

[Turkish]

Hi SP,

It sounds like you have been replaced... .and your sister enmeshed within your mother's sphere, maybe even more to the extent that you may have been in the past. RA can help initially, but it doesn't fully validate the  pain you feel. Hard enough to lose one, but even more so the other, your sis.

Children of BPD parents may all have traits. Some of us may be more emotionally resilent than there (siblings). This may be a phase for your sister, hopefully. Maybe the communication tools can help in the interim. Mom and s is (by extension, and her choice) are "victims" who have painted you the "persecutor."

It sounds like you are trying to erect boundaries, but keep yourself emotionally safe. There is nothing wrong with being kind, even from a distance. Hopefully, you will get that opening from your sister when your mom paints her black. Dealing with hurt (anger) is a really tough thing to do.

T