My mother may have had BPD, and I am afraid I may have some traits

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hello,
I am just learning about borderline personality disorder, and related issues like narcissistic personality disorder.  I have been in therapy for some time, and my therapist just suggested that my mother, who died about a year and a half ago, may have been BPD. I want to learn more and think about my life - whether this helps me understand things or not. I have ordered the book Understanding the BPD Mother, but it has not yet arrived. I was blown away by the comments on the Amazon site for that book, though, and felt quite a sense of recognition in some of the words there.

I was frankly shocked and unnerved to read in several online websites that BPD can be genetic and also have a physical cause as well as environmental.  It made me consider my own behavior and look at the list of symptoms... .  But maybe I am like the medical students who start feeling they have come down with each new disease they learn about? 

Looking forward to exploring this community.  thanks!  boppo 

[boppo]

Hello,
I am just learning about borderline personality disorder, and related issues like narcissistic personality disorder.  I have been in therapy for some time, and my therapist just suggested that my mother, who died about a year and a half ago, may have been BPD. I want to learn more and think about my life - whether this helps me understand things or not. I have ordered the book Understanding the BPD Mother, but it has not yet arrived. I was blown away by the comments on the Amazon site for that book, though, and felt quite a sense of recognition in some of the words there.

I was frankly shocked and unnerved to read in several online websites that BPD can be genetic and also have a physical cause as well as environmental.  It made me consider my own behavior and look at the list of symptoms... .  But maybe I am like the medical students who start feeling they have come down with each new disease they learn about? 

Looking forward to exploring this community.  thanks!  boppo 

[Naughty Nibbler]

Welcome  boppo:  

I'm sorry about the loss of your mom.  That can bring up a lot of different feelings to sort out, especially with a disordered mom.

 

I was frankly shocked and unnerved to read in several online websites that BPD can be genetic and also have a physical cause as well as environmental.  It made me consider my own behavior and look at the list of symptoms... . But maybe I am like the medical students who start feeling they have come down with each new disease they learn about?  

Most of us have a couple of BPD traits (at least periodically).  In order to gain the label of BPD, you have to qualify for a certain number of them.  I think it is common for many of us to examine our situations closely, after the loss of a parent (s), and try to make sense of some things.

What behavior do you have that you think fits into the list of BPD behavior?  Can you share more about your mother's BPD behaviors?

[boppo]

Actually, I felt as though I had been set free after my mother died. I actually was there, and spent a bit of time afterwards in the room, just so I could know she was gone. I sound ghoulish and unloving, I am sure, but this woman had arranged, when I was not 4 y.o., to have me "baby sat" at a local orphanage when my parents moved from one house to another. But I recently discovered that she had ordered my father and older brother NOT to tell me that anybody was coming back for me. 

I ran away from the place, but was found (I presume by a staffer), and returned, after I fell asleep along the road as I hiked back to our former house.  The director screamed at me and told me how angry my father would be that he had to return and fetch me because I had run away.  This, either playing into my mother's plot on purpose, or by accident, sounded as though the only reason my father came to fetch me was sheer embarrassment caused by me running away.

And my mother continued to hold the threat of the orphanage over my head throughout my life - I was always an outsider in our family, and a second class child.  Outrageous things, like, when shopping, I would express a preference for a particular pair of pants or folder, and be told all sorts of reasons why they were unsuitable. And the next week, my younger sister would be given that exact pair of pants or folder (she didn't want them or ask for them). 

If I ever showed my mother that I cared about anything, she was very quick to hurt me in that special way.  I learned the hard way to just keep a very flat affect, try to stay out of her way and just try to survive until I could escape. I made a suicide gesture, asking for help when I was 14.  This woman spent a long time explaining why they could not afford to take me to a psychiatrist (my father was a doctor & we lived in a very well to do neighborhood at a time when the doctors just gave each other professional courtesy, at least for single office visits).  Instead, my mother said, I would be taken to a community health center, where they could get a sliding fee scale.  After that build up, I was so hostile, that I am afraid I only had one visit, with my mother sitting right there.  It consisted of me promising not to try again.

You ask why I was afraid I might have BPD... .I had been looking at websites that list symptoms of BPD, and a surprising number also either fit me now or in the past.  But after I talked it over with my adult son, I think there are other plausible explanations for those symptoms. I DO have a fear of abandonment, but now think it might be understandable considering the orphanage experience, for instance.  I do NOT have a black & white view of people or values.  I definitely have problems with co-dependency, though, and am extremely alert to expressions of unhappiness or rejection (even having distortion problems with that) - but I think those are a result of my parent's BPD. 

[Notwendy]

Hi boppo,

I am sorry for the loss of your mother. I don't think what you did is ghoulish, or your feelings. My mother has BPD. I was very attached to my father. I felt he was my only parent. I was used to my mother's moods, her anger had little effect on me, but if she was angry, she would enlist my father to her side ( the classic drama triangle) and he would get angry at me. That upset me. When my father died, I felt a mix of feelings. Mostly I was despondent, and grieved the loss. I also felt like an orphan-having lost my only emotional parent. I am middle aged, not a child, but it still felt that way. Yet, I also felt a strange sense of freedom from that drama triangle, and it felt so odd to feel this way when I loved him so much.

I shared the fear that I would be like my mother. I didn't want to be like her. But a T pointed out an interesting idea.  I didn't want to be like her, so I set out to be "not her". The opposite of an extreme can also be dysfunctional. What I needed to do was learn new behaviors- learn to be more authentic to me, to understand all that my role models contributed to me- both the good, the dysfunctional. To reject them fully was taking an extreme.

When we grow up in a dysfunctional family, we learn behaviors that are functional in context of that family but not in our adult lives. It is a natural adaptation- to survive, we had to be adaptable. I guess the good news is that, since these behaviors are learned, we can learn new ones. It takes effort, but it can be done.

I think BPD and nons do share some traits- both are co-dependent to some extent. A fear of abandonment is one trait- a pwBPD can show that through push-pull behavior while a co-dependent can take on caretaking traits to manage that.  But sharing traits doesn't always mean we have BPD.

[Fie]

Hello Boppo,

I think one of the great things about this website is that members have lived similar things. No one, literally no one, will judge you for having felt relieved when your mother died. I think a lot of members can relate because we know what it is to have a BPD parent.

Please feel free to express yourself, this is a safe environment with people who don't judge and want to help.

Like you I also wondered if I learned some of the traits of my BPD mum. At some point in my life I am sure I exhibited behavior that could maybe be named as such. I don't think I had enough traits to have been labeled BPD, though.
Still it was a very frightening experience for me to suddenly realize that maybe I too was at some point behaving unhealthily enough to come close to a BPD label.
Now I have more or less peace with it. Some of my behaviors, especially in relationships, were unhealthy. I had and still have abandonment issues f.e. I have also been pretty codependent until before some years. This unhealthy behavior was not 'enough' to be called BPD I think. And even if it was, it doesn't really matter. It's only a label. The thing that's most important, is that we try to unlearn those unwanted behaviors, and be happy. If there was a label once, so be it. All what counts is now.

Please keep posting if you want.
xx

[boppo]

Thank you to both of you who replied with such supportive and kind messages.  I have been so frustrated trying to explain to friends who cannot begin to fathom my issues with my mother.  They will say, "Oh, I also have a difficult mother - she is never happy with my dinners," or such like. I don't think it's the same thing at all.  and yet it sounds as though I am making things up or whining. and now that my mother is dead, it sounds particularly ungrateful. 

I hope that I can begin to really recover, but also educate my siblings.  A lot to learn. and I am so grateful for the community!
Thank you!
boppo