New member introduction

[peacebthejourney]

Hi  ,

I've joined to learn more about BPD. I hope to understand my sister better. I have been stressed since she moved into my home. I feel tired and frustrated.

Most likely, I also grew up with a BPD parent as well.

I want to understand my sister better. I want to understand my own stress. I want to figure out how to best deal with this situation in a way that honors her needs and my own needs.

I am hopeful that participating will also help me to feel less isolated.

Thanks,
peacebthejourney

[Kwamina]

Hi peacebthejourney and welcome to bpdfamily

Having a BPD family-member live with you can definitely be quite challenging and stressful. How long has your sister been living with you? Why did she come live with you?

You also mention the likelihood that you grew up with a BPD parent. What traits do you now in hindsight see in your parent that lead you to the BPD conclusion?

When it comes to BPD, like many things, knowledge truly is power. That's why I'm glad you are seeking understanding and ways to cope. What would you say are your sister's most difficult or disturbing behaviors?

Many of our members have BPD family-members, some of us have multiple. In fact, I have an undiagnosed BPD mother and older sister. I too hope that participating here will make you feel less alone

The Board Parrot

[peacebthejourney]

Thanks for the greeting, kwamina.

My sister lived with me for about a year in 2001. At that point she had attempted suicide again a couple of months before and she came to my home, considering getting a divorce and wanting to live with me and my family for support.

This time my sister has lived in my basement apartment for 19 months. She moved in at my husband's invitation. We needed to move into town (out of our mountain home) due to me having lots of health issues that had escalated into needing intense medical attention for an unknown length of time. My husband wanted us to have two renters at the new home to help make our transition affordable in a housing market that is rather expensive and crazy in our town. I objected knowing how stressful it had been on our family the first time, but ultimately gave up fighting because at the same time, my sister was asked to leave the home she was sharing with a roommate. She was asked to leave because she was taking over this woman's home with her possessions in every room except the homeowner's bedroom and she was constantly in the living room and kitchen and making the woman uncomfortable with her behaviors. The homeowner felt restricted to only one room in her own home in her attempts to keep some peace and sanity--until she finally asked me sister to leave. My sister did not have enough money saved up to live anywhere in our area with the crazy increase in rentals that our area has experienced. We had her move in with the idea that the timing was mutually financially beneficial when we both needed to move at a really bad time to move with the housing market situation.

My sister was diagnosed as BPD when she was 18, after her first suicide attempt. She started unusual behaviors that were getting attention from school teachers and school counselors at about 11 years of age.

With my mother, I do not know if she did self-injury behavior.

My mother's behaviors that seem in line with BPD:
-She was emotionally unstable
-She saw life in extremely black and white perspective
-She saw people as all good or all bad. With her 4 children this all good/all bad thing was a moving target. One moment I'd feel uncomfortable with how absolutely good she saw me and then stressed by shifts in which she then seemed to absolutely hate me. I could never figure out any obvious reasons for the shifts either. A child's behavior one day was labeled good and another day that same behavior could land you in deep trouble with my mother.
-When I was quite young, my mother had me do parenting tasks for my siblings (started when I was 3 years old)--this happened when she was angry, when she was out of patience, when she had a hangover or when she had a migraine. ------Other times my mom got quite angry with me when I was giving siblings nurturing care, telling me that it was her job. Other times she was negligent in her parenting and she and I both knew that it was then my responsibility to take care of my siblings. If she later felt I didn't do that responsibility well enough then I was screamed/yelled at or wildly spanked or glared at and given a long silent treatment.
-My mother had an "emotional break down" when I was 5 or 6. No one talked about it with us kids. I do not know if my mother tried suicide or became hysterical or went into deep depression. We kids were sent to our grandparents for months. When we returned home no one ever talked about what happened. When I was a teenager I tried to tactfully ask about the time when I'd spent a long time with my grandparents because my mom wasn't feeling well. She told me that she had a nervous break down and that she had been hearing ghosts talking in the house shortly before then. She said they treated her with tranquilizers.
-My mother's self-esteem was quite low and she said lots of negative and self-critical, sometimes self-hating statements about herself over the course of my childhood.
-At different times, throughout my childhood, my mom would talk to me as if I were an adult but sometimes even as a child I was aware of strange, faulty thinking that made no rational sense. She also had times when she sounded quite petty, childish, vindictive and revengeful. She seemed like a very old before her time, serious, responsible adult sometimes and quite childish at others and depressed, preoccupied and negligent at other times.
-My father encouraged me to take care of my mother at different times when she was emotional and irrational. It was my job to calm and soothe her.
When my mother was drunk she was very morose and wept a lot. She'd apologize for being such a bad mother at those times. When she was sober she was back to being a very strict parent with big emotional fluctuations and erratic discipline methods that felt out of control.
-When my sister was diagnosed with BPD, my mother labeled my sister as "crazy" and exhibited abandoning behaviors. Within 6 months of my sister's first suicide attempt my mom and dad left for Christmas holidays to visit their now adult children, leaving my 18 year old sister home alone for the holidays without any prior notice or explanation. I lived across the country at that point but I heard a lot of rejecting language from my mother toward my sister on phone calls. At one point my mother told me that she had nothing left to give my sister except financial aid ( it struck me as a very sad and odd/twisted rewriting of the concept of giving addicts or alcoholics your love but no more financial enabling).
-My father was always all good in my mother's view. Even though he was also an alcoholic and committed outrageous acts of abuse (emotional, sexual and physical) toward his children and he was emotionally abusive with her as well. She also was fully aware of his cheating on her with multiple women through the years because he would confess to her and she told me about it. No matter how much she witnessed or all that she couldn't have helped suspecting her view of him never seemed to alter, except once in awhile there was a 3 day or week long icy silent treatment toward just my dad or toward everyone in the home.
-One of the posts I read talked about BPD roles of the waif, witch, hermit and queen. I can look back and see my mother vascillating mostly between the hermit and the waif, and with her parenting she could become a controlling queen. She was never in the queen role when my father was around. He was the only monarch when he was at home.

My goodness, that's lots of words! I haven't had lots of space to really process the stuff about my suspicions that my mother also might have been BPD.


 
 

[Kwamina]

You're welcome

It is very sad that your sister has made multiple suicide attempts. The way your mother (and father) treated her when she was just 18 likely didn't help her at all either. Is suicidal ideation something your sister still struggles with now?

It becomes clear from your post that your mother had some serious issues and was quite abusive. Do you perhaps feel that her behavior has negatively affected you also in your adult life?

You also mention your father and his abusive tendencies. You mention his outrageous acts of abuse towards his children, emotional, sexual and physical abuse. That's horrible for a child to experience. Did he abuse all his children, did your father also abuse you?

The Board Parrot

[peacebthejourney]

Hi Board Parrot,

Thanks for your interest. Writing about these things is helping me to process my thoughts and feelings at an accelerated pace.

My sister hasn't expressed suicidal ideation since she moved into my basement apartment. But the past few months I haven't been seeing her as much as I try to figure out how to honor my own needs and how to do a better job with boundaries with her. So, I don't really know where she is at right now... .other than that she is acting out more. I don't think there is any doubt left that she is angry with me for not seeing her more frequently.

My mom and dad were both abusive. My mom seemed much less so than my dad while I was growing up but after I processed all my dad's abuses I realized how difficult my mom was to live with as well. I was the oldest child of 4, all 4 of us were abused. I got some extra as the firstborn. And the two of us girls got the addition of sexual abuse perpetrated by my father.


How was I effected by the abuse part of my life? I have had lots of counseling and EMDR for trauma. I still have PTSD. I've healed quite a bit:

I now speak loud enough to be heard (without having people constantly asking if I can repeat that or speak a little louder);
I am no longer hypervigilant throughout every day and night;
I was able to marry a non-abusive, kind man on my second try (my first marriage was to an abuser who was diagnosed BPD and psychotic narrcist);
I used to be entrenched in being a codependent caretaker (I still struggle with the tendency when I am my most stressed, but I've many decisions to not behave codependently for many years now);
I can now name feelings (previously I had become so numb I had to look up feeling words in the dictionary as a young adult and practice figuring out what I might be feeling)
I can now recognize that I get angry sometimes (for many years I thought I just didn't do anger)
and I now believe, at least much of the time, that I have value, that I am enough and that I am loveable (these looked like impossible statements to believe just 8 years ago).

I think the biggest negative ways my mother impacted me was how convinced I became that I was never good enough and that I had to try to be perfect. I don't think she intended me to learn these things, but all the criticalness and harshness toward herself and towards me made a big highway in my brain labeled "Not good enough." I was also negatively impacted by her ignoring abuse toward herself from my dad, from my dad toward her children and from herself to her children. Her denial was huge. I learned well from her and it took me lots of effort to stop living daily in denial as an adult.

Currently I notice that this journey with my sister is more difficult because of our abusive past:

I am under stress and that makes the old guilt about being required to be my sister's caretaker more difficult to silence.
I am struggling with the message that I "should" be "strong enough" to continue living with my sister for the rest of my life (which is her stated desire). I am realizing though that it has been taking tremendous energy for me, and I have physical problems that make energy a very real issue.
I am struggling again with truly believing and acting as if my needs are as important as my sister's needs.
I struggle with knowing that my sister struggles so much with feeling unloved and feeling abandoned. I can relate and want to help her have a better life. But is a tricky tightrope. I want to be healthy. I want a healthy relationship. I don't want to be her rescuer... .and yet part of me still struggles. I feel guilt that I couldn't save her or my other siblings from abuse.
I am struggling with wishing that any of my siblings would feel compassion for my physical health (but they are strongly influenced by our parent's negative views of people who are ill and they haven't invested much time or energy into recovery work). It has been a pleasant surprise that my sister is the only one who shows some understanding of what I'm going through. My sister does say supportive words about me taking care of myself--as long as it doesn't interfere with me meeting her needs of me spending a certain amount of  time with her.
I am fearful of my sister's temper/mood shifts--it reminds me of abusive people.
My PTSD has increased since my sister has lived in our apartment. I don't want there to be a connection between the two--but there probably is.
I have processed memories since my sister moved in that I had ignored for a long time. The brother closest to me in age used to try to beat me up sometimes (I always neutralized the efforts by pinning his arms so he couldn't keep hitting/punching me). Several times in our childhood, all three of my siblings attacked me together. I was never seriously hurt due to dodging, pinning and running on my part, but it was frightening. It felt like yet another level of insanity in our home. I asked my sister why she was hitting and kicking me and I remember her smiling face as she told me "because

[her oldest brother] told her to. There was no sign of regret or empathy on her face. I ended up talking all 3 of my siblings out of the behavior, encouraging them that we needed to help one another and be a team. I knew our life was crazy and that they were stressed. But recently, I've had to look at those memories and acknowledge how it felt and how lopsided the relationships with my siblings were and still are. I was a semi-parent--a child parent who gave them more emotional support than our parents could (but still so lacking as I was a child, an abused child, who had never received nurturing from her parents either. As an adult I've worked hard on recovery and I've made huge progress in resisting caretaking siblings. But they don't seem to like it. They, like my parents, seem more comfortable with the old arrangement. It has been painful to work through grieving what I never had with my siblings and to see a sibling's car in my driveway everyday and have her current borderline behavior to deal with.

I am surprised by how many words I keep writing. I am thankful for this website and the opportunity to share openly so that I can see myself and my situation with more clarity.
Thank you.

[Kwamina]

Hi again peacebthejourney

I am very sorry you experienced all this abuse. It is very good though that you sought help for your issues. Are you currently still getting counseling?

I now believe, at least much of the time, that I have value, that I am enough and that I am loveable (these looked like impossible statements to believe just 8 years ago).

You've come a long way indeed  Many of our members (including me) have struggled with an internalized negative inner voice. Learning to talk back to that negative inner critic is crucial, yet also something that can take quite some time.

How is the situation with your sister now? It makes total sense to me that her behavior would be quite triggering to you considering what you've been through.

I have processed memories since my sister moved in that I had ignored for a long time. The brother closest to me in age used to try to beat me up sometimes (I always neutralized the efforts by pinning his arms so he couldn't keep hitting/punching me). Several times in our childhood, all three of my siblings attacked me together. I was never seriously hurt due to dodging, pinning and running on my part, but it was frightening. It felt like yet another level of insanity in our home. I asked my sister why she was hitting and kicking me and I remember her smiling face as she told me "because
[her oldest brother] told her to. There was no sign of regret or empathy on her face. I ended up talking all 3 of my siblings out of the behavior, encouraging them that we needed to help one another and be a team. I knew our life was crazy and that they were stressed. But recently, I've had to look at those memories and acknowledge how it felt and how lopsided the relationships with my siblings were and still are. I was a semi-parent--a child parent who gave them more emotional support than our parents could (but still so lacking as I was a child, an abused child, who had never received nurturing from her parents either.

These are difficult memories indeed. Your siblings were still children then, but now that they are adults it definitely is time for them to take responsibility for their own lives. It's unfortunate that they prefer to remain in denial and keep repeating the same old dynamics, but that's their choice to make. You've made great progress in resisting the urge to be a parent to them Yet having your sister living in your basement of course can make it more difficult to maintain a healthy centre position and stay out of any Karpman Drama Triangles.

Take care

The Board Parrot