I don’t know what to do anymore

[BIRD86]

My daughter not living with me she currently lives with my mom
 sister. She is threatening suicide again and also often threatening to become homeless because she refuses to rent a a place and live with roommates.

She has a full time job and makes enough money to pay for a rental room. She has her own car that she pays for as well.
At my mom’s place she’s pays $200 a month to crash in their couch but constantly the anger and moodiness and hostility had them fed up with the situation to the point where my mom and sister are considering moving to another state.
My daughter can’t live with me because she manipulates me disrespects me and doesn’t take any responsibility and follow any rules.husband not her father doesn’t want to open the doors for her anymore because she hates him and threatens him and he’s scared she will lie or make false accusations about him. My husband is the only stability and safely I’ve had in my life and without him I would be struggling financially. Me staying with him gives me the opportunity to help her out when I can. Her father is in another county and never helped her financially but it seems like they talk and she’s nice to him the
In the contrary she blames me for her problems and that’s me like I am the worst human. She refuses to live on her own and refuses to find a place to rent even tho I’ve told her help her.
She has the option to move with my mom but doesn’t want to do that because of her job and afraid to start over somewhere else.
Every single time something becomes overwhelming for her I am the one to be blamed and she threatens to mil her self or live in her car and be homeless. I am heart broken and would never want my daughter to be homeless.  Should I leave my husband and move with her to be her slave and live my life as her servant or should I let her figure it out and if she becomes homeless is her choice not mine. She has the option to move to another state with my mom another optéis to rent a room or a basement for herself or find roommates moving in with me is out of the question we have given her chances after chances.y husband is closed off and won’t give her any more opportunities due to the threats and abusive behavior toward me he refuses to see the way she treats me.me as her mother I love her and I would sacrifice a lot for her that would include my happiness and my marriage. She treats my mom poorly too but my mom ignores her and doesn’t engage in the drama to the point that my mom folds her laundry makes food for her.
I feel like she will move into her car just to see me suffer.
She attempted suicide when she found out my husband was taking me on a holiday to Mexico. I ended up canceling my anniversary trip and spent 8 days in the hospital with her.
My daughter drop out of therapy and didn’t take her medication
And refuses to seek professional help. I’ve spend a lot of money trying to help her it has put a Burden on my financial health.
She’s 20 years and is scare to be alone but doesn’t wanna move with my mom or find roommates. She wants me to be with her yet she treats me like garbage. My anxiety is thru the roof and I can’t sleep thinking soon she’s be on the streets.
She smoke marihuana and is with an afghan boyfriend that abused her physically to the point that we had to call the police on him they fight and their relationship is toxic. I think she doesn’t wanna move away because of him.
Sorry for the long post I am just lost and very afraid I only pray and ask god take the will.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[NoSOS]

Hi

I feel for you and see a lot of similarities in my situation with my 25 year old son.  My partner is not receptive to helping me to dig a larger financial and emotional hole for myself for the sake of my uBPDs. 
He is right and I have just started to realise that I cannot control, change or cure my son.  All I can do is preserve my own sanity and finances.  Please read “Stop Caretaking the Borderline/Narcissist” by Margalis Fjelstad.  This book is opening my eyes and I believe Stop Walking on Eggshells is also highly rated on here.

I don’t feel qualified to give much more advice as I am just at the beginning of my own quest for freedom.  I have had some very wise feedback to my post entitled “My adult son rules my life” so I recommend you read those replies as well as other posts and content here and take heart that you are not the only person on this journey. My best wishes to you..

[BIRD86]

NoSoS

Thank you very much for the book recommendation I am desperately in need of some advice and guidance.

I wish you all the best luck with your journey and I hope that we can the light soon.

I will pray for you.

[BPDstinks]

hi!  I, sadly, do not have any suggestion; only, that having chose my pwBPD over all others, for a very long time, only to have my pwBPD ghost me, her father, sister and nieces...all I can say is this disorder is maddening.  I have received amazing suggestions, mantras and UNDERstanding (because, let's face it, most people NOT affected this, simply do not undertand!) I pray you find peace and your pwBPD finds peace, also

[CC43]

Hi there Bird,

I understand how desperate the situation feels to you right now.  Thanks for the additional details about your situation.  I actually think you have some reasons for hope.  First, your daughter is only 20.  Clearly this is a challenging time for her, as she bumps up against the reality of adulthood, but her emotional maturity is probably lagging, and maybe only at a young child's level.  If she has BPD, it's not surprising that she's raging, making poor choices, acting impulsively and blaming everyone else, especially you, for her stress and negative feelings about "adulting."

Second, your daughter seems to be at least semi-functional to me.  She has been able to earn some money for herself.  That's a big plus in my opinion.  It seems to me like she's able to "pull herself together" well enough, and consistently enough, to perform a regular job function.  She has at least a minimal amount of motivation.  She has not indulged in her negative feelings and negative self-talk on a full-time basis--maybe she does this only part-time.  True, she's using marijuana, probably to self-medicate.  But at least she has to be level-headed enough during part of the week to perform her job.  That shows that she has some promise of being able to support herself, which helps build self-esteem, something that is usually a huge challenge for people with BPD.

Unfortunately, it looks to me like she's "upping the ante" by using suicide threats to get you to do what she wants.  My diagnosed stepdaughter did exactly the same thing.  I called it her "nuclear" phase.  When she didn't get what she wanted, she would impulsively threaten suicide, or actually make an attempt.  A similar vacation-related situation happened to us--when her dad and I were about to embark on a long-awaited vacation, she made a suicide attempt, we cancelled the trip, dropped everything and visited her regularly at the hospital.  It may be that she felt "abandoned," or maybe she just felt jealous, that it was unfair to see that we would take time off to enjoy a trip, rather than devote all our attention and spend every last dollar of our hard-earned money on HER.  We were happy, and she was not, and she probably wanted to "ruin" our happiness so that we'd understand the depth of her despair.  Maybe she wanted to sabotage our trip to "punish" us and teach us a lesson.  Whatever her convoluted and misguided rationale, she got our attention, and moreover she was relieved of all "adulting" responsibilities after her suicide attempts.

I think we might have erred by trying to clear all obstacles and stresses for my stepdaughter, in the name of keeping her alive.  But at her age (mid 20s), she couldn't avoid adulthood indefinitely.  By remaining 100% dependent on us, and by avoiding school, work and productive pursuits like volunteering, she was effectively stuck feeling like a little girl.  My opinion is that this feeling is even worse than the stress of adulting!  Why?  Because all my stepdaughter's siblings, cousins and former friends were moving on in their lives, graduating, dating, getting jobs, living in apartments, etc.  They had real adult lives, and real identities.  Meanwhile, she felt left behind, as she was rotting in her childhood bedroom, not doing anything but sleeping all day and consuming marijuana.  Do you know how you feel when you do nothing?  You feel like you're nothing, worthless and hopeless.  And that only feeds further emotional outbursts and dysfunction.

I'm not exactly sure what to tell you, but I think you need to enforce some boundaries for your own mental health.  If your daughter abused you and refused to respect your house rules when she lived with you, then that was her choice, and your response was not to tolerate that behavior and ask her to leave.  I think you're absolutely right to kick her out, as it's your home, and you're protecting your health and happiness.  If you don't protect yourself, who will?  And if you don't kick out your daughter when she refuses to respect your rules, she'll never learn a fundamental lesson about living civilly with others.  She might bounce around from couch to couch for a while longer, before she learns how to live with other people, i.e. being respectful, neat, helpful (paying rent, doing chores) and drug-free.  I'm pretty sure that even in shelters, these rules would apply in one form or another.  If she wants to live by herself, that's her choice too, whether it's in her car, a tent, motel or apartment.  If she wants government assistance, she can apply herself, and she can visit a food pantry if she needs to.  The choice is entirely hers, now that she's an adult.  I think you let her make that choice.

If she does ask for your help--I think it's highly probable that she will--it's up to you to decide whether you give it.  I know it would pain you to see her homeless.  If you could afford it, maybe you say something along the lines of, I'll have $200 of groceries delivered to you each month.  Or maybe you pay her landlord $200 per month directly.  What I'm saying is, I'd avoid giving her cash, to prevent her from using your money to buy non-prescription drugs.  In addition, you do not have to accept abuse from your daughter when you choose to help her.  If you give her support and she rages at you, accusing you of all sorts of terrible things and calling you horrible names, you have every right to withdraw your support.  You can't control how she reacts, but you can control how you react, and if you give her financial assistance and she turns around and abuses you, then it's your right to withdraw and prevent her from abusing you further, maybe by enforcing limited contact or no contact with her for a period of time, long enough so that you recover.  Does that sound reasonable?

[Sancho]

Hi Bird86
I agree with CC43 that your dd is doing well holding down a job, paying for a car etc. It's important to understand that the target of blame - in this case you - will be the focus of blame and accusation etc especially whenever the BPD person is under stress - even slight stress.

I can understand your dd not wanting to move interstate. It is a big thing that she is settled in work and any upheaval there could really set her back.
I can understand that DD does not want to live with others. She probably realises that she will be very easily triggered into anger etc by others' personalities and behaviours.

I understand that she can't live with you. I think I would look at this simply in terms that it is not really in her best interest to take a backward step - which this would be.

The issue is that she doesn't want to live alone and cannot even engage with the possibility because of her fear about this.

You have offered to help her get a place on her own - do you talk with her about the ways to address her anxiety about living by herself?

Let her know you understand why she doesn't want to move interstate, and you understand why she doesn't want to live with others. But be firm that moving back with you is not an option, but you are there to support her take this next step in taking control of her own life. Let her know she has done well in taking control so far and it is not good to go round in circles.

If she is open to talking about things, perhaps draw up a timetable for a week, putting in times when she is at work, when she would be doing other things, and when you will be in contact.

Many young people are fearful of living alone - but BPD young people just go straight to the blame game whenever they fear something or actually when anything goes wrong!

Not sure if this is any help.

Also I would take a look on youtube at how people live in their car etc I was browsing through videos of people camping in snow etc when I came across so many videos of people of all ages actually doing this by choice and it works for them. It was a very different picture to the one I had in my mind of being homeless and living in a car.

I am not saying that this is a good option for your DD. I think if it comes to that it would not be long before DD agreed to try living in a small basement or something and taking up the challenge to live by herself.

It is the next step for her on the road to independence. It is a big step but with your support I think she can do it!

Hope so!

[Sancho]

Hi Bird86
Have just been thinking of you and wondering how you are going? Reading your posts it does seem you are at the end of your rope, wondering if should go no contact etc.

Is there any chance you can have even a short break from contact with DD and all that is happening?

Been at this point many times and short breaks have been pretty helpful for me. It all rushes back of course, but a break can let the stress level settle down a bit.

Hope you are okay.