BPD Mom

[slytherinryn]

Hello, my name is Ryn and I found this place after reading "Stop Walking on Eggshells." I thought that joining a group would potentially help keeping a relationship with my mother--which has been difficult and fraught several times.

To begin, I'm currently in an idealization phase and am waiting for the shoe to drop. I experienced emotional, verbal, mental, and physical abuse throughout my entire life. However, I still managed to fit (as much as I could) her ideal version of a perfect daughter--smart, didn't get into trouble, got a great scholarship to my dream school, etc. However, I hit my late teens/early twenties and an assortment of physical and mental illnesses popped up--bipolar disorder, anxiety, lupus, and fibromyalgia. I attempted suicide in 2011 at 22 and was forced to go on medical leave for a year from college. It was after that she split me. The violence that had been mitigated in my teens and threats to abandon me not only began again but escalated--I'd be threatened to be dropped off at a homeless shelter for not doing the dishes when my pain was bad! Finally it reached a severe point and I left home without any notice with $600 and a backpack to move in with my best friend in New York City. We've had ins and outs of trying to have a relationship but then she'd do something horrible and I'd have to distance again.

I never wanted to distance myself. My Mom and I had a very enmeshed relationship growing up and while it was abusive we were still close. We are also very similar in looks, mannerisms, voice, and in some behaviors. However, I was always calmer, more social, very logical, and would fight against her abuse (not physically but protesting behavior) unlike my stepfather who she runs over and controls.

However, despite her lack of help, disparaging my illnesses as me trying to game the system (despite not taking any social supports like disability or foodstamps), and leaving me to almost be hungry or homeless, I was accepted this summer into Columbia University to get my masters in mental health counseling.

She'd been much happier with me once I graduate and offered to buy me a couch, which was shocking (and insanely impulsive as she just bought for me and didn't tell me until the company tried to deliver it). Once I got into Columbia, however, I became her golden child all over again and I missed it. We've been talking every day, they've helped me out getting settled into an apartment (though I've been insistent that only they'd help me get started and I'd take care of the rest), we email fun and happy things to each other, and they actually plan to come to my graduation this time.

However, I know the honeymoon will fade soon and it just makes me so sad. I should be grateful that this is a sweet spot in the relationship but if anything it just makes me more anxious for when the anger and accusations come. I have been in therapy again (I couldn't get therapy when I lived with them but did during my first time in college) for about two or three years now and it's been helpful in me keeping calm when things get tense with her and dealing with the emotional aftereffects of the abuse (fear of abandonment that is less extreme than my mother's but still there, fearful of lack of security, feeling like I have to earn my friendships and anything good I do, etc). But the price of being distant from my mother was that I was somewhat removed from the ups and downs of her moods and I feel tense in a way I haven't in a long while--while also happy to have a relationship with Mom again.

Sorry if this rambling or confusing. It's hard to compress this intense and complicated relationship into a few paragraphs and I'm mainly here to feel support rather than have any specific questions. 

[DaughterOfHera]

Hello slytherinryn.  Welcome.  Gosh, you have been through so much.  You are not alone here.  While no one will have the exact same life as you, so many of us will have lived through similar situations to yours.  It's good that you have accessed councilling... .a wonderful and necessary resource for those of us wishing for a better life... .and it's good that you have accessed this site.  I too found it from reading the same book, and I am currently waiting for another one of the books recommended on this site to arrive in the mail.  Thank you for sharing your past and current situations.  This takes courage and I hope that you find what you are looking for.

I, too, have had a very complex relationship with my mother, who is undiagnosed, high-functioning BPD with depressive tendencies.  At times she could be like a real mother, reading me bedtime stories as a kid, and laughing with me over the phone when I got older.  But there was also the abuse of all types, which she could not control and seems to not have any intention of trying to control.  I think I have experienced something similar in wondering when the other shoe will drop.  Once trust has been broken, it takes a lot to re-establish it again.  When trust is broken over and over, a pattern is expected within our psyche, and this is our human way of protecting ourselves.

You are also dealing with your own symptoms on top of your family's (including your father's as a partner) and this is so much to have on your plate.  I send you gentle wishes for ease in your situation.  I send you and your family gentle wishes for ease in the future.

P.S.  Congratulations on your scholastic achievements.