Brand new - first post

[Thebigyellow]

Hello. Not sure how this works. I googled support groups for family of BPD and found myself here.

How do we begin?

I need help.

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

[Thebigyellow]

So, I don’t know what happened to my post. It was a bit long but only the first couple of lines came through.

It seems the stories are very similar. I came here hoping to find... I don’t know what. I’m so lost. My daughter is 30 years old. I’m pretty much the only person she has left. Her 27 y.o. Sister won’t talk to her anymore. She has verbally abused and debased most family members before disowning them. She has no friends left.  I’m disowned daily just to get pulled back in the next day with an emergency or crisis. I try to set boundaries but she is really good at manipulating a situation and I find the boundaries I’ve set have been moved. I know we aren’t supposed to give up. I can see my precious daughter suffering. Who would ever choose to live with this much anger, rage, and loneliness? The things she says though, are so horrific and abusive. She has my 9 y.o. Granddaughter who is severely disabled and non verbal. My granddaughter cannot speak for herself. My daughter isn’t physically abusive, but it’s suspect sometimes, and... I can’t believe I just typed that. It’s a secret fear I deny.  I have listened to her screaming terrible things though. My granddaughter is the pawn that is used most often to manipulate me. Yes, there have been multiple CPS cases opened. My daughter is extremely intelligent though and has been able to get them dropped. The latest one was not so easy because the children’s hospital that made the report stated that it was my daughter’s mental health that was the problem. They claim she over medicalizes my granddaughters condition for attention and to gain respite through hospital stays. After so many times of hospital visits, my daughter finally gained financial approval for highly skilled in home nursing services. The problem, and why the hospital reported my daughter to CPS is because no one will work for her. It’s not the care of my granddaughter that is too difficult (it’s pretty difficult, however), it’s my daughter verbally abuses the help she gets and they quit or she fires them. So my daughter fled her home and came to the state where I live. She claims to me that it was to flee the coronavirus but told CPS that she was coming to help me recover from surgery. I had a tooth pulled. I am beyond smitten to see my granddaughter but I have been in my daughters service for 3 months now and disowned nearly everyday. I gave her my car, I do all their shopping, I clean, I cook, I care for my granddaughter. I’ve learned how to give g-tube feeds, the med schedule, how to clean and use the supplies, how to give O2 if needed, learned the emergency seizure protocols, etc... still no matter what I do, it’s not enough. It’s no help. I’m evil. I’m a sociopath. I’m a narcissist. I ruined her life. I’m not compassionate. I’m cold. This is all stuff I’ve heard before when she was a teenager and in her early twenties before the grand baby. I’ve lived with this madness for so long I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I’m up all night afraid of the phone call from the police, waiting for the next emergency. I made plans to visit my other daughter at the end of this month and my BPD daughter has gone ballistic. She is furious that I am abandoning them in the middle of this coronavirus pandemic. I’ve been gently reminding her for 6 weeks hoping to lessen the impact. She is getting frantic now. She has cost me jobs, relationships, friends, partners, housing etc over the past 20 years. She literal gets the lion’s share of my time and attention. Her little brother is 17. I’ve asked him for so many favors and patience. I keep promising I’ll be home soon but my daughter has so many needs. He just doesn’t care anymore. My youngest daughter hasn’t seen me in 3 years. I finally got an opportunity to go see her and I’m bringing her brother because he wants to see her too. My BPD daughter thinks it’s incredibly selfish of me to go and take him too. She wants him to fill my shoes and help her while I’m gone. She even offered to get funding to pay him as a personal care assistant. He wants nothing to do with her. I’m so sick with worry and fear. She will create a big drama while I’m gone just to show me how selfish my actions are. It’s her M.O. every time I try to set boundaries. One of these days, that big crises is going to be something I can’t cover up for her. Already I can’t intervene with this CPS case. It’s like she thinks I have a magic wand that can fix everything in her life if I just... just be different, just give more, just do more. I don’t know how she gets out of most situations. Every time, I think, this one is it. She is going to go to jail and granddaughter to an institution. She was kicked off a plane in Phoenix (no where near anyone we know) changing planes on her way to me. The pilot refused to let them back on the plane. The airport called the police. She called me screaming for me to call all the news stations and report united airlines. She did this with the audience of the flight attendants and pilot. Then she lost it on me because I told her to settle down and think of grand baby in her wheelchair alone in Phoenix. I was so scared I was going to have to scramble for last minute airfare and retrieve my granddaughter from a foster home. I’m 2 thousand miles away. How could she realistically think I could be of any use to fix her situation in the Phoenix airport? Yet, I failed her again and I’m useless, heartless, and evil again. I’m at the end of what I can bare. My younger daughter thinks I should try and take granddaughter away. She went to visit them last year and cut her trip short and said I need to intervene. That granddaughter is in a bad situation because her sisters behavior is out of control. My BPD daughter knows she is BPD. She even taught me about it and DBTs but she also has NPD so she thinks she is above all that, there’s nothing the matter, it’s everyone else that is the problem. If the whole world would just be better to her there would be no problems. She fails to see the common denominator is her. I know all this sounds like I don’t care. I do care. A lot. My heart is broken. My granddaughter and I have a special relationship. She clings to me. When her mom becomes abusive, my granddaughter has self injuring behavior. Of course, that is also my fault according to my daughter. Then she tells my granddaughter that grandmas a psycho and has to leave. That she will never see me again because I am hurtful and not helpful. I look at my granddaughter before leaving and see how upset she is. I hate leaving that way. I don’t know what to do.

[incadove]

Hi bigYellow - that is such a tremendous weight you are under!

I'm glad you are here - this is a place you can share and express any feelings and worries and yes, even suspicions you have.  What is most helpful to you right now?

One quick thought - if your bpd daughter realizes that her tantrums won't have an effect on you, yet you will still take care of her and your granddaughter *to the extent you yourself choose to* she may over time calm down. 

You sound very deeply caring and I am guessing that you do want to care for your daughter and granddaughter - to an extent!  and that you also want to care for your other children.  And I would just encourage you to do exactly that, to decide to when, where and how much to do each thing and then proceed to do it.

Your bpd daughter's reaction is not under your control, so the best thing is not to worry about it, but just be consistent and positive yourself (much easier said than done!) and let her own her responses to you.  And all the tools and books on this site are very helpful, in planning how to sort of talk and respond in a way most likely to be effective. 

Hugs to you and please good take care of yourself, if you get completely exhausted you won't be able to help.  Do you need legal advice on how to protect your vulnerable granddaughter?

[Thebigyellow]

Thanks, incadove. You words are kind. After reading some stories and browsing around the resources, I think I need to learn communication skills. I thought I was learning some but I can see how I might not be getting it right. My daughter is constantly telling me that I invalidate her. I honestly don’t want to do that. In the past few years I’ve learned not to be in a defensive place but it’s hard not to be at times. It really is especially when the very personal attacks come. There is no taboo nor sacred ground she won’t cover if she is angry with me. In high school, I recall one parent was furious and stating their daughter wants to die because of the things my daughter said to her.

I am listening to the podcast: Validation:
Encouraging Peace in a BPD Family by Alan Fruzzetti, Ph.D that I found on this site also. Seemed a good place to start.

As for my amazing granddaughter, it’s sticky. I, myself called CPS when she was 2. It didn’t go over well. It’s still a “crime” that comes up today. I didn’t know how to intervene and they were living on a different island from me at the time. My daughter told me that she was going to drive into oncoming traffic. It was 2 am and raining where she was. It was not the 1st, 2nd, nor 3rd threat like that in a weeks time. I felt cornered to intervene.

At this point, I am going to let the chips fall where they may. I will take my granddaughter if that becomes necessary. But why? Why can’t my daughter accept help and have a great life with her daughter? I know she loves her daughter tremendously. I’ve tried talking about voluntarily placing her in a medical care facility but there are real fears there too. There are a lot of abuses in those places and no background checks in the state they live in. My granddaughter is very beautiful and vulnerable. She can’t defend herself nor tell anyone if something happened to her. Her cognition is between 18 months and 3 years old. Also, they are on public assistance so it’s not like she could just pick a posh private facility. I’ve been told that she may end up what is called a border at the hospital. It’s where some medically complex but otherwise currently healthy children live for extended periods of time because they are too complex for a mixed residential care facility. I don’t know. I leave for 2 weeks and then have to quarantine for 2 weeks when we get back. That’s a month I won’t be able to get food for them or help care for granddaughter. She needs to go home where her medical teams are, her house, and access to nurses and home health aides except she won’t because of Covid fears. And that’s legit too. Except she lives in a city where delivery of anything imaginable under the sun is at your fingertips. The granddaughter goes to school at a hospital and they are opening August 1st. She needs to be back in her routine there.

And last confession. I really really don’t like my daughter as a person. I love her. She is my first born. I doted on her tremendously as a baby. We were so close until she was about 9 years old. But she isn’t a nice or kind person. It’s to the point that even the sound of her voice grates on me. If I get a text message, I’m scared it’s going to be her. I’ve set a special ring tone so I know when it’s her calling. My heart races and I go into full panic mode before I even answer. Never once have I gotten a call that just says hi, how are you, mom. It’s yelling and ranting and monologuing the second I say hello. I brace myself for the inevitable drama she is about to unleash. Maybe if I learned the right words to say to make it stop. To bring her back down to reality. I almost want to videotape some interactions so that later she can see how it looks to others? So she can have some self reflection about how she treats people. Does that ever help? I know if I saw myself acting like that, it’d stop real quick.

Thanks, again

[Thebigyellow]

And #rettsyndrome