We dont really know if they have BPD or npd, do we?

[WakeMeUp123]

As crazy as my family has been, and no doubt it is dysfunctional, I am uncomfortable calling them uBPD or unpd. Are you uncomfortable doing that? None of us are really capable of diagnosing our problem people. They could have other mental health issues or just maybe be jerks. Right?

Because of my family, I have mental illness of my own, including having to fight anorexia and having PTSD and anxiety. Am I not as damaged as they are? The only difference is, I do try hard to be kind to other people, even them. But I still have serious mental health issues too.

I did start therapy and feel a little better. I do feel comforted by your support.

[Harri]

Hi!

You are right that we don't always know what our family member has/had.  That said, I do not have a problem labeling behaviors or even my mom as undiagnosed BPD or even undiagnosed schizophrenic as it helps me to process what happened to me as a result and understand my own behaviors both in relation to hers and my very own diagnosis (PTSD and anxiety).

Looking within at my own behaviors and even thought processes is why I am here.  My mom's possible diagnoses serve as a framework for me to give context to what happened in my life but do little else for the work I am doing on me now. 

BTW, I do think we forget about the jerk factor a lot of the time. 

Glad to hear that therapy is helping.  Can you tell us more about it?

[Notwendy]

My BPD mother meets every single criteria for BPD. I am not a therapist, but I can read and have also known her for decades.

To me though, the benefit of the label is for me, not her. Unless she chooses to seek help for her issues, no label can help her. The "BPD" mother label allows me to look at the effects and to seek help for that.

Until recently, I had no access to her medical records or to her health care workers. Now that she is elderly, she has signed for them to speak to me. One of the social workers has confirmed my suspicions. I think it helps her caregivers to know, but not her-she doesn't seek help for this herself.

But uBPD or BPD- the label hasn't changed how I relate to her or how her behaviors affected me and my family or origin.

[WakeMeUp123]

Okay, I think I get it. The label is for us. That makes sense.

I still think of my family as jerks above all else ! I don't need medical training to know that.

My mixture of unkind family members have so many differing, yet hostile behaviors that it is hard to put any of them into one box with a label. They are each nasty in unique ways. Some are not that nice but quiet and punish others with silence and even ghosting. Others drink and get mean. None are too nice sober though ! Some, the worst, are critical, demeaning, humiliating, hateful to me, yet are nice to others in the family. That hurts the most. It is like I am a misfit. I shouldn't care, but I do. BPD? Npd? I dont know or really care. It hurts, regardless.

On the wedding front, I am close to not inviting my family. I know that this will cause everyone to cut me off, at least until they need a scapegoat again, but I talked in a heartfelt way to my fiance and his parents and they were so sweet and told me that they understand if I don't want to invite them. It is so weird that I can talk to my in laws and tell them my deep thoughts, but I can't make peace with my own family. It should feel good that I will have his family, but in a weird way that just makes me sadder that I don't have my own family's love. I do love and appreciate my fiance's family, but I wish my own family loved me. Does that make sense? My family wanted to ruin my life. In a way, they have really succeeded. I am so devestated over being treated like trash by them. I feel like they would be so happy if they knew how much they affect me.

I definitely need more therapy. If not, I feel as if I will always think of myself as some kind of  "bad" since my own mother doesn't love me.

Thanks for listening and God Bless You.

[CautiousHopeful]

Hi WakeMeUp123,

I agree we may not know for sure what our family member has. I'd known about BPD for a while but avoided fully allowing myself to acknowledge that this may fit my mother. Recently I realised that the descriptions I keep reading reflect so many of the behaviours she has presented with. So thinking of her as uBPD gives me something to work with, but I also keep my mind open so I am not viewing her only via a singular category.

She is not diagnosed, and I don't believe the diagnosis would be of any use to her. It most likely would be experienced by her as invalidating and dysregulating, and actually impede things improving with her, and probably even make them worse.

I fit the C-PTSD category, but I don't think of myself as a label, but work with what I am learning about C-PTSD to work towards healing myself as much as I can. Some of the things I struggle with are the same as my mother (we both had very damaging mothers!) but I have gone down a different path, and like you, I strive to always be kind to people. I don't outwardly attack others if I I'm not feeling good, but am more likely to go inwards and harm myself (but doing my best to unlearn this).

I think us humans seek to categorise things all the time. It is how we try to make sense of the world. The psychology and psychiatry professions change definitions all the time, as they are always still learning and trying to figure out better ways of understanding things. So I think labels are like a general guide, and we can use them where they are useful and help us solve and work through things.

I understand about feeling unloved. I often felt my mother wanted to hate me out of existence. It is ongoing work trying to learn that I am not an unlovable, 'bad' person, and to recognise the good qualities I have. The fact you are reaching out for help here, that you care for others and aim to be kind to others, already shows you are not 'bad'. I think labels applied to us early in life by family members can be unlearned, but it is a process that just takes a bit of time, and support from other caring persons (partners, friends, therapists etc) in our lives can help. Take care 

[WakeMeUp123]

Thank you for this lovely, well thought out reply. My self esteem is so low that I was actually shaking the first time I posted here, expecting to be told I am a bad person. I am always surprised when people are nice to me. I tried pushing my fiance away because I didn't think I deserved him, but thankfully he would not leave.  I don't tend to.trust people and keep friends at a distance too. I had a group of friends at college, but none of them really knew me, if you know what I mean. I put on a happy smile and was quiet even in a group. I never tell anyone anything except my fiance. And even he had to wait. I am so ashamed and I am not sure why.

You are all very kind.

[sklamath]

I have spent a lot of my time in T stuck on this very conundrum. Compared to a lot of the people on this board, my mom isn't so bad. She doesn't display impulsive, self-destructive behaviors (aside from verbal/emotional ones) or engage is self-harm. So maybe she's NPD, and not BPD? Or maybe it's just extreme co-dependence, or rooted in her being the adult child of an alcoholic who has been unwilling to seek therapy for herself?

For me, it's about how I interact with her based on past experience, whether I can have hope for a "normal" relationship, and how to move forward. I recognize that if nothing else, my mother has been an unreliable narrator in how I should feel about myself--and I need to heal from that. When I have attempted to address things with her in a rational manner, or ask for what I need, she has demonstrated that she cannot "hear" me. So from that perspective, employing the strategies for interacting with and healing from a relationship with a BPD or NPD person is the best framework I have to understand and move forward.

[once removed]

the label(s) can lead us to tools that can help us in our relationships.

one of the most important of those skills/tools is empathy, and listening with it. understanding our loved ones (not necessarily agreeing with them). understanding what motivates and drives them. understanding how they see things and where they are coming from, in order to support them, or to navigate difficult behavior. all of those things can differ between the personality types. they can differ in terms of the uniqueness and individuality of our loved ones, personality type aside. so as a sort of guide, distinguishing between those personality types can actually be very valuable to us.

its not helpful if we are over pathologizing, if every behavior we dont like means our loved one is a malignant narcissist psycho and sociopath hell bent on our destruction. its not helpful if we use it to dismiss anything our loved ones say as valid. its not helpful if we dont see our role in the relationship, and take both control and responsibility over our lives.

psychology can be empowering if we use it as a tool.

[WakeMeUp123]

Honestly, I wish I can do the same. Nothing works with my family, sister and most extended relatives. They gang up on me and always have.

I think my job is to accept this pain, grieve it, and make a great family with my fiance who is wonderful. That will be my family and our kids will have his family as grandparents, aunts and uncles. My problem is learning to accept that my family will never be nice to me. I spent most of my life doing all I could to gain acceptance and every time I tried, my intended good deeds were twisted into negativity in which I was just being nice to get favors, like money. This was never true. But that is what they told me, whether they believed it or were just making it up to hurt me. I have read much on psychology including BPD and npd and none of the tips on how to get along with them best did any good. I think my relatives are just mostly mean. The few who are nicer are afraid to treat me good. I dont blame them. I have a much younger brother and he is sweet, but he keeps his distance from me. It hurts to see him hugging everyone else.

[zachira]

I really resonate with the idea that understanding the BPD and NPD behaviors that hurt us so badly is what helps us to realize that we are not at fault for how badly our family members with BPD and/or NPD have treated us. Certainly for years, we have felt that something was wrong with us after being so badly scapegoated by the family. It takes time and the courage to look at how we have been affected by the hurtful behaviors of our family members with BPD and/or NPD and to heal though we will never totally get over the pain of being rejected by the family that was supposed to love and support us. Understanding and grieving the losses can be the first step in healing. For the long term, we need to grieve from time to time, as this is a permanent wound which can be less hurtful as we remake our lives and realize we are lovable and indeed can give to others like our children and spouses, the kind of love and respect every human being deserves.
Diagnosing a person with BPD and/or NPD probably is not helpful to that person in most cases, as the major symptom of a personality disorder is the inability to grow and change. The behaviors are pretty much entrenched for life for most people with personality disorders.

[zachira]

Wakemeup123,
You are struggling with accepting that certain family members will never be nice to you. Your family sounds a lot like mine. In both my father's family and mother's family, certain children are chosen to be the scapegoats, sometimes even before conception or at birth, and others are the favorites. It has helped me to heal to see that I have aunts and an uncle who were scapegoats, and relatives from my generation and two other younger generations who are also scapegoats (not that I would wish this on anybody, yet it helps to see that I could not have done anything to avoid being a scapegoat). Do you have anybody in your family who has been treated similarly to you?

[once removed]

I have read much on psychology including BPD and npd and none of the tips on how to get along with them best did any good.

what have you tried?

[WakeMeUp123]

My mother was one of two and least favored. i dont know much about extended relatives or Dad. He never talked about his past, even when asked. My mother could be very mean to my grandma and at other times she was nice to her.

I tried being overly good, forcing negative attention on me, using I statements, setting boundaries that were laughed at, and lots of anything I could think of. Nothing changed anything.

I think it is futile. I am now LC and after the wedding I am sure it will be NC. It will break my heart, but so would continuing to be scaoegoated.

I just wish the wedding were over or that my fiance's family wasn't so set on a regular wedding. I would rather elope. i think I could talk my fiance into it, but I don't have the heart to do that to my fiance's parents. They have been so kind to me.

[Harri]

The tools won't necessarily work on everyone but then i don't think of using them for the other person, rather I use them for me.

To me, boundaries are about me taking control of my behaviors, acting on my values and protecting myself.  Sometimes that means ending a conversation politely, sometimes that means taking a break from contact, sometimes that means not answering multiple phone calls a day.  For the most part they will be who they are.  If I put the responsibility for implementing and enforcing the boundary on myself, they do not fail me.  I don't even state them to the person.

What do boundaries look like to you?  Where and how would you set one if you wanted to try it again?