Can a mother w/ BPD love her scapegoat child

[Gifthorse]

Hi everyone!
Was discussing Borderline with a friend the other day and he asked if " A BPD mother could have any love for a scapegoat child"... .I have to admit I could not give a straight answer on this because I have not really given this much thought!

Would like to hear your opinions on this!

[sewconfused]

I'm certainly no expert on this topic as I have just recently begun to grasp and begin to navigate dealing with a family member with undBPD (undiagnosed borderline personality disorder), but I did just finish reading Understanding the Borderline Mother by Christine Ann Lawson and I found it very helpful for understanding where my husband and his siblings fit in regarding their BPD mom and how she treats them all differently and sometimes the same.

Hope that is helpful.

Sew Confused

[zachira]

I am a scapegoated child and can only speak from my own personal experience. Others who are scapegoated children will certainly have a different perspective.
I find the answer to your question about whether a BPD mother can have any love for a scapegoated child quite complicated. First of all, it depends on your definition of love. For me, love is about being able to connect to another person, notice their feelings, and connect to their feelings in a heartfelt way. In my case, my mother is incapable of any real empathy for her children. Some people outside the family think my mother is a caring person, as she often has done really nice things for others, yet she really has no capacity to read the feelings of others in the moment.
My mother does feel that she owns her children, and would be devastated if anything happened to one of us. My brother who was her favorite child died and she was devastated yet she abused him so badly before he died that the social worker from the hospice had to get involved. His illness and dying were all about her, and she had no real empathy for him.
I hope others will contribute to this discussion.

[schwing]

I agree with Zachira, "it depends on your definition of love."

IMO, people with BPD (pwBPD) can express affection, give attention *but* usually only when it serves them to do so.  A key question to ask, is can a pwBPD express "love" in a way that they are able to put a loveone's needs above their own.  I do not believe that pwBPD (or any mothers unrecovered with BPD) are capable of this kind of love.

If their own needs/wants are always a higher priority than the other person's needs/wants, is this love?

Now consider this in a parent/child relationship: if a parent always prioritizes their own (emotional) needs above that of the child, is this appropriate behavior for a parent?

What can really be confusing to the child of the disorder parent, is when high-functioning disordered parents, are able to project the appearance of doing the right thing for the child especially to those outside of the immediate family.  The tell-tale behavior is when appearance is more important than what is actually happening inside the family.

[Star0009]

zachira yr Mom sounds like mine. If my Mom loves me for real as much as she says she does. Last week I got a text she missed me so much she was wearing my essential oil to smell like me. (ugh creepy and violating). I would have just preferred a healthy 'miss you'. . I used to try to figure out her motives and her ability to love and I just can't and I find myself pretty wise about BPD and reading people in general. Really how can you judge anyones mind or love. I know with a BPD parent it can be even more confusing but I don't think you will ever get to the bottom of it. I only have figured out the patterns of her behavior and how to keep the most peaceful, loving low contact relationship possible. It makes me feel bad because I've been so good at ignoring any abusive behavior and keeping the peace she rarely paints me black anymore. In fact I'm the most important thing now bc no man is around, and she just wants to send me flowers and rainbows and live next door to me forever. Boy does this lay the guilt on too.I don't know that I even want to see her the way her behavior is. I love her and there is some coziness from being around her but I often question who am I loving and how deserving is she of my love. She just loves me so much right now because I know better than to stand up to her. Since I was the scapegoat of two narcissists I'm starting to wander with what they did to me even though there were loving moments if they loved me at all. I think its an un answerable question I like to think they were really messed up but deep down they loved me.

[Highlander]

I am coming from a perspective whereby I have experienced two pwBPD express love in different ways – Unconditional and Conditional.

1/ My H of 12 years had BPD (4 years ago he officially recovered) and he has a daughter in which, even when he was extremely unwell, he never stopped loving her unconditionally.  His daughter (now 14) has always been allowed to be herself and H has never stopped deeply loving her and doing every thing he possibly can to support her.

2/  My H's mother has uBPD/NPD.  Throughout my H's life, my MIL often switched between her children.  One moment H was scapegoat and his sister the golden child and the next minute it would switch.  Her love is 'conditional'.  If her son does and says what she wants him to do or say, then she pours her 'love' or better termed 'attention' towards him.  If he doesn't... .then watch out------abuse and/or abandonment.

When I met my H, his mother had disowned him for 1½ years because he was doing amazing volunteer work but because she didn't agree with it, she stopped all contact with him.  He was 29 at the time, living his own adult life and I found out that this was a common occurrence in not only H's but his sister's life as well. 

During T for my H's BPD, he began to realise that his mother's love was 'conditional love' and this was also exhibited in his early childhood.   MIL would play the 'silent treatment' card on both of her young children if she didn't agree with them for the most silliest of things.   Once H was diagnosed with BPD in 2011, his mothers conditional 'love' was a huge part of H's therapy as his mothers games had become  life threatening – he had attempted suicide as a result of them.

However, my H had a completely different type of BPD than his mother.

H had 'Low Functioning' BPD. 

MIL has 'High Functioning' BPD as well as NPD.

When H's Therapists told him they believe his mother also has BPD.  Although he accepted his BPD diagnosis, for a while, he then became disgusted in it.  “I am nothing like my mother” he said.  It took a little while for him to understand that BPD can be exhibited in so many different ways and when you add either NPD or many traits of NPD into the mix, you can get a very different type of BPD altogether.

After my experience.  I can clearly say that it is possible for a pwBPD to love their children unconditionally. 

So in my experience, it appears to me that there are certain types of pwBPD that's love is 'conditional' and tend to play games of 'scapegoat' and 'golden child' with their children too.

With the help of his T's, my H has comes to terms with the fact that his mother has a type of BPD that she will likely never seek treatment for let alone admit she has anything wrong with her. 

H also had to understand that even in his 40's, he can't be himself around his own mother.  In order to love someone, in the least, one must KNOW them.  My MIL doesn't know her son to love him and as long as my H has to be a different person around her, she never will.

[Harri]

If you asked my mother if she loved me and my brother, she would say yes.  Both my brother and I would agree with this.  I think people with BPD are capable of love.  Th problem comes in with implementing it and when it conflicts with their fear and feelings of shame.  The fact is, my mother loved me according to her definition of love and expressed it in the context of her mental disorder.  Personality disorders are pervasive.  As such every aspect of a person is affected, some more than others.

It is believed my mother was also paranoid schizophrenic and that influenced her abilty to see me and express her love for me. 

In keeping with what Highlander said (good to see you again!), there are 256 different 'combinations' of BPD and when you add in co-morbid diagnosis?  There are too many variations to count.

[Turkish]

Putting a child on a pedestal (golden child) represents the child being loved for what they can provide the parent rather than being loved for who they are.  The scapegoat is similar but rather the target for the internal shame a parent is incapable of dealing with. 

I talk to my ex enough to observe that after many years of being the golden child,  and her younger sister the scapegoat, that their roles have switched in their mother's eyes,  and that my ex was a victim of covert incest by her mother. 

For me being raised by a single mother,  my role alternated so much that I cut myself of from my mother emotionally early on my teens. Telling me she "sometimes" wished she'd never adopted me was a horrible thing to say (at least the "almost" told me that she may have not fully hated me  ). Shaming me for not being a strait A student was about her (thinking about grades was the least of my worries at the time and I'm glad I convinced her not to hold me back in 8th grade as she threatened, though she took me out of school then for almost 4 months).

And she mentioned once "everyone thinks you are so great,  but I know the real Turkish!" As if I were a fake person. I was called an a-hole. Ok, yeah, I did argue with her like a teen (who was living in a camper with no electricity at the time). This was around the time she was verbally and emotionally abusing me so badly that I fell to the ground and had a seizure.  The smacking I had endured as long as I could remember as a young child.  She was nicer to me after that for about a month.  Took me to get evaluated.  I didn't tell the real reason and neither did she.  Lucky I fell on a dirt road rather than pavement. It might have resulted in me not being good at math.  Oh yeah, I'm not good at math,  but I wasn't before that so I don't blame mom.  I blame the baby sitters when I was 3 who returned me to my mom with a fever of 105.5F. Brain damage territory. Or I'm just not good at math,  which my mom shamed me for since she could do long division in her head.  Her talent was quite impressive, actually. 

In high school I graduated a C+ student (I hated homework, and it affected a lot of grades despite some As in honors classes). But she showed up to take credit or pride when I cleaned up at the Tri-County academic decathlon, 3 golds, 3 silvers. My teachers got me into that not my mom. Teachers my mom disparaged when I mentioned anything positive about them.  I resented her being there.  I also placed 6th in the state of California in the essay category, higher than anybody else on my team and only one student from the high school placed higher than me many years before.  No matter. I don't remember telling my mom how I did on the away trip to State. I cared what she thought but more didn't because given years of her splitting me,  my defense mechanism was not to care at all. 

Thus, 30 years later, I still have an issue taking compliments because Little Turkish learned not to care about what people said about him because he coped by cutting himself off emotionally. 

[Harri]

Turkish, I am resisting the urge to compliment you.  You are smart and funny and ... .yeah, I failed at resisting.  I blame my mother... .just like you do yours for being bad at math! 

My question for you is, do you think your mother loves you?  Note that I am not asking you if she loved you according to your definition of love, I want to know if she acted on her definition of love. 

Mine loved me.  Her was based on dysfunction, manipulation and abuse but it was her version of love and it looked like what she knew.

[Learning2Thrive]

Hi everyone!
Was discussing Borderline with a friend the other day and he asked if " A BPD mother could have any love for a scapegoat child"... .I have to admit I could not give a straight answer on this because I have not really given this much thought!

Would like to hear your opinions on this!

Yes. My opinion is yes, a BPD mother loves her scapegoat child because she NEEDS this child to offput shame and project negative emotions. BPD mother love is not so healthy, in my experience.

My mother cycled golden child staus and scapegoat status between me and my 3 younger siblings. She would elicit those IN HER FAVOR to punish who ever was the scapegoat of the moment. It was an insane way to grow up.

L2T

[Turkish]

I think she did, despite everything which turns my stomach to imagine myself doing to or telling my kids.  As she told me a few years ago,  "I did the best I could!" Despite the waifishness of that statement, I guess she did.  I strive to do better, and I hope that my kids do better than me.  The line ends here. 

[Gifthorse]

Some great answers here and I recognise something in every single answer! You have to have lived this to have any kind of understanding and even then it is confusing... .

I believe there was love but as others have stated it is not a normal, healthy love. It is more of an obsession which often left me with a feeling of disgust like ( I have every right to treat you like ___ and you are going to give me unconditional love or I am going to devalue you like the millions of times I have done before)

After I had been NC for 14 years with my BPD mum, I visited her thinking she might have mellowed but NO, She immediately demanded I do something I did not wish to do then painted me black for refusing... .In a way it was good to get the recognition that I had made the right decision because reasoning with these people is just a losing battle imo!

[Notwendy]

Zachira's description of her mother abusing her brother is similar to how my mother treated my father before he died. I also called social services about this.

I am my BPD mother's scapegoat child and I don't believe she loves me. I think she sees me as basically useful to her. I was able to do things for her as a teen- housework, run errands. She likes that I did well in school as this reflected well on her. She likes being a grandmother for the same reason- her own self image is shaky and so speaking about her grandkids is a sort of affirmation.

I don't believe my mother loves me because I don't think she is capable of loving someone fully. Sadly I think this stems from the fact that she doesn't love herself. I think her self identity is so shaky that she doesn't have a sense of self to love. If you don't know who you are, how can you love someone else?

I also think that who she thinks I am is the sum of her projected feelings. If she's feeling good and I do nice things for her, then she "loves" me. If she's dyregulating, she's feeling something else.

She isn't affectionate. Occasionally she may hug me but it gives me the creeps when she does. I don't think she ever really held me or hugged me as a kid. I think sadly, she is too affected to really connect with people. What has helped me is to understand that it isn't because I am not lovable but that she can't love someone else in the way we think of love. Perhaps she does the best she can in her situation.

I also think that over the years I have come to not trust her affection or "love", so I also don't seek that kind of connection with her.

[Panda39]

My initial (knee jerk) reaction to this question was heck no! (this based on what my definition of what love is).  I thought I can't post that, so I left it alone.  I appreciate everyone else's comments because you all moved me beyond my initial no.

I do think my SO's uBPDxw does love her children but not in the way a healthy person would love her children.

Some of her behaviors are likely tied to shame/keeping up appearances, and wanting to "win" the kids affection away from their dad,but I also think there some love too.  The love gets buried or distorted but I think it's there.

I have described her many times as over indulgent & neglectful.  So the kid needs socks and underwear and mom gets costume jewelry instead   She is doing this to win the kids affection... .there are strings... .but there is an aspect of doing something nice for her daughter.

The girls mom has been evicted 3 times because she was renting 3 bedroom town homes that she couldn't afford... .some of this is to keep up appearances, some of this was to be better than dad... .but she was also trying to give her daughters their own rooms something they don't have living with their dad and makes the girls unhappy.

The 2 worst episodes between the girls and their mother... .the one way ticket to Camp that never happened and the college Family Trust incidents both had aspects of keeping up appearances, being supermom!/being better than dad, and a strong desire to give her daughters things that she really wanted for them.

So yes a distorted kind of love is tangled in among the abuse, the strings and the neglect. In no way is her love remotely healthy but I do think it exists.

Panda39

[CollectedChaos]

Great question, and a tricky one!  I think that my mom indeed believes she loves me, but if I were to use my definition of love, it wouldn't fit.  I don't believe she is truly capable of real love.  She is not able to care for another person in a way that does not revolve around personal benefit in one way or another (control over the other person, comfort for herself, looking good in front of others, etc).  What she wanted or needed took precedent over anyone else's needs/wants, and she'd do whatever was necessary to get her needs met.  I can't imagine treating my loved ones in that manner.  I think to her, love is a game of chess and not necessarily a feeling.

Also, I believe that I was just an extension of her in her mind, not a separate person with my own thoughts/feelings.  I don't think you can truly love an extension of yourself if you don't love yourself, and it's clear to me as an adult that her self-esteem was low.

I do feel sad for her from time to time that she likely will never experience what love really is... .but not sad enough to break NC.