Longtermism seen as Nagging Guidance & Invalidation

[Dogdays]

Hi there,

This is my first post. I live in the UK. My 15 yr old has recently been diagnosed with BPD (emerging). This was after a suicide attempt after a break up with her first boyfriend & bullying at school. She is seeing a psychiatrist, & psychologist and is taking Prozac. She is intelligent funny & beautiful. We are educated & fairly affluent and she could potentially have a good life. She is about to embark on dbt.  

This is the current issue:

Her exams are coming up very soon. My focus’s on the last 6 weeks has been to keep her alive, make her want to live. I monitor her smart phone use, but give in to a lot. She is back at school. She does no revision & misses some classes still. Despite the psychiatrists instruction for her not to drink alcohol or form romantic relationships she has been doing both. She has also been self harming again. She had her best friend come round recently and they had weed cookies. She lies to me by insisting she needs a lift to her friends house for a sleepover, (which is really a party - She somehow even gets her friends parents to lie that it is just a sleepover).  Have no control over who she strikes relationships up with. She gets drunk and snogs boys. Sleeps the whole next day after being picked up. I feel I am facilitating the bad choices she makes. She says that I am nagging if I question her or try to impose conditions and boundaries. She gets immediate pleasure and gratification out of her choices. Clearly I want her to work towards recovery, meaningful life and avoid full blown BPD.
 

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

[Feeling Better]

Hello Dogdays, welcome, I hope that you quickly realise that you have come to the right place for lots of information and support.

I am so sorry to hear that your daughter is causing you problems at the moment, it can be a minefield at times trying to work out what to say, what to do and then being too scared to do anything in case you end up doing the ‘wrong’ thing. I am really pleased for you that your daughter will soon be embarking on dbt. How does she feel about that?

You clearly love your daughter very much and want her to have a happy successful life. Those teen years can be bad enough at the best of times without the added stress of a BPD diagnosis. We are all here to help and support you x

[Mutt]

Hi Dogdays,



Id like to join Feeling better and welcome you to bpdfamily. I’m sorry to hear that your D15 is giving you a hard time. I can see how distressing that would feel when your D15 is making undesirable choices it’s important rather we take really good care of ourselves to cope with the stress and handle the load. What do you for self care? What’s your support network like?

Setting Boundaries and Setting Limits

Supporting a Child in Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder