I think my mom has BPD but she won’t get help.

[Jsab13]

Hi all. I found this group through doing some extensive research after coming to a difficult impass and estrangement with my mother. She’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder but is unmedicated and not in treatment. After doing a lot of reading her behavior over the course of my life seems more aligned with BPD and NPD.

She wants to have a relationship with me but she’s verbally abusive to the point where I’m unable to be in her presence without having an anxiety attack. I have my own mental health struggles and our relationship has always been a huge source of pain for me. I’m looking for advice on helping my mother while also protecting myself because I cannot handle her on my own anymore.

Thanks you in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.

[Turkish]

How is she verbally abusive, and is she pleasant sometimes? Is your dad or any siblings in the picture, or are you enduring this alone?

[Jsab13]

Hi and thanks for your response. I moved across the country a little over a year ago, our relationship was pretty heavily strained before this due to her outbursts on family vacations, visits, and phone calls, and she had a huge melt down at me. She tells me, and told me that night, that I’m a bad selfish person, I’m ungrateful and never appreciate her. She always says  I don’t answer the phone enough and gets irate if I wait a day to call her back or basically do anything that isn’t 100% on her schedule.

Her usual verbal abuse consists of constantly commenting on my appearance from the time I was a child, not in the nicest of ways. She tells me I’m a bad person, I’m ungratefulc I’m shallow, I push everyone I love away and that I am basically just the worst daughter on the planet. She makes backhanded comments all the time. She basically just berates me constantly and forces her opinion of me onto me and it’s awful.
She loves to call me a chameleon and tell me I don’t know who I am.

She’s always taken out her anger on me. She can’t control her emotions and almost every time I’m in her presence or let her in emotionally she will rage at me eventually often with the conversation ending with a big f you coming from her, screaming, crying. She has threatened suicide in the past. She tells my wife and I that she feels like a third wheel around us, for no other reason than maybe we aren’t paying 100% of our attention to her. She kind of treats me like a jealous ex or something. She gets really mad if I visit her in her state and invite friends over from my hometown: she once cried because I spent too long speaking to my aunt over Christmas. If I ever confide in her about how I’m feeling, especially if it’s negative, it’s later weaponized. The list goes on.

I have one brother but we don’t speak. My father left when I was thirteen and I, being the oldest, ended up parenting my brother and my mom through her divorce and later when she felt like she didn’t want to deal with my brother and I. I’m 31 and married and my wife is a good support but doesn’t quite understand but she tries. My friends are kind and listen and try to understand and some come from pretty horribly dysfunctional families but in different ways.

I’ve been in and out of therapy myself since high school. I’ve pleaded with my mother to go to therapy for  literal years, more than I can count. I told her after a family trip where she turned on me so severely (it’s the first time I was actually afraid of her anger) that she needed to go to therapy or we wouldn’t be able to continue to have this kind of relationship or any relationship. That’s when she was diagnosed as bipolar and stopped going to therapy after about a month.

I always thought she was bipolar as I admittedly didn’t know enough about the illness and then I found out about BPD a few months ago. I always new it existed, kind of, but didn’t know it so accurately describes my mother.

Over the past five years her anger outbursts happen so frequently and I know she’s gotten worse. We used to be able to go a few months on “good terms” which meant me answering the phone when she called and listening to her talk for hours about herself and her problems or whatever she felt like talking about. The only reason I would answer was out of guilt and the knowledge of the inevitable backlash if I didn’t. It became a running joke between my wife and I. I would have to duck away from events and functions to placate her and calmly tell her I would have to call her back. She constantly tries to push my buttons and bait me into conversations we both know we shouldn’t be having.

I’m sorry this has gotten so long and thank you so much for listening and engaging with me. I really appreciate it. After reading through some of these message boards I’m feeling much less alone and like I’m almost relieved that other people out there are dealing with this too, not that I would wish it on anyone. G
 

[Panda39]

Hi Jsab13,

Welcome to the BPD Family    What you are describing sounds very familiar.  Have you explored the site?  I found it amazing how similar all of our stories are.  You are not alone.

She tells me, and told me that night, that I’m a bad selfish person, I’m ungrateful and never appreciate her. She always says  I don’t answer the phone enough and gets irate if I wait a day to call her back or basically do anything that isn’t 100% on her schedule.

This sounds like FOG (Fear, Obligation, Guilt) or emotional blackmail to me.  This is a big tool used by folks with BPD and I think it really helps when you can start recognizing it when it's happening.  I find when you can recognize when you are being manipulated it's easier to not take things personally and when you don't take things personally it becomes easier to set and enforce boundaries (which is a key tool to our own happiness). 

More on FOG... .
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=82926.0

My father left when I was thirteen and I, being the oldest, ended up parenting my brother and my mom through her divorce and later when she felt like she didn’t want to deal with my brother and I

This sounds like parentification... .when a child is put in an adult role (this is inappropriate).  My significant other's older daughter was put in this role by her mother once her mom and my SO separated.  She was emotionally care taking her mother, cooking, taking care of her sister... .basically filling in for her father who left.  Does that sound familiar in your case?

More on emotional incest... .
https://bpdfamily.com/content/was-part-your-childhood-deprived-emotional-incest

Since it sounds like you are new to BPD I'd like to suggest a few books that you might want to check out.

These first two are about BPD in General and I suggest getting a good basic grounding in what BPD is before reading my 3rd suggestion which is specifically about BPD mothers... .

Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul Mason MS, Randi Kreger

Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change by Valerie Porr, M.A.

Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship by Christine Ann Lawson

I'm really glad you've found us, there is a lot of information, support, tools and ideas to be had here.

I hope that I have shared something helpful.
Panda39

[Harri]

Hello and welcome! 

I can relate to a lot of what you describe here.  I think many of us can.  The verbal and emotional abuse can be quite damaging and sometimes hard to identify and certainly hard to recover from. 

Did you have a chance to read the article on emotional blackmail (fog) that Panda linked to you?  I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

Again, welcome.