First time posting

[Rationality]

Hello,

My mother has BPD. I am currently entering graduate school, talk to her weekly, but haven't seen her in almost a year. I am realizing now that her reality does not and never will coincide with mine. I have dreams that agitate me about the things she did to me when I was young, some of which my father can verify and others that took place after their divorce, so I don't know whether they're true or not. I would love to know the truth of these situations, because they feel like memories, but I can never be sure. I don't believe myself to have BPD, but I have an all too familiar issue trying to figure out what's real and what's not. In these dreams I experience physical and verbal assault (most of them confirmed), but also an incident of sexual assault that cannot be confirmed. This one cuts the deepest, is the most frequent, and causes me the most discomfort. I have been trying to reconcile this with counselors and family members, but so far, that's been ineffective. Now I turn here, because I recognize I am not mentally well, and I would like help. I don't know what to expect, nor what I am expecting, but thank you for reading my story.

[Football2000]

Thanks for posting! I was wondering, if we could start with your current conversations with your mother? How are those going? When you said that your reality will never coincide with hers, are you talking about your current conversations now?

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi Rationality,

  Welcome! So glad you reached out to us here. There are a lot of good listeners and understanding people who can really grasp what you're going through. Your story of the dreams reminds me of my own. For a long long time I had nightmares, so intense that I would wake up at night and sit straight up in bed, heart pounding, feeling like I could not escape. Here's an extra hug for you. 

I also understand the intensity of wanting to know if what you're dreaming is true or based in reality, or if it is not. I believe with time that you will know, but for now, the most important thing to know is that your dreams may be ways your unprocessed emotions are trying to share feelings with you. For example, I had dreams about tornadoes over and over. I don't know if there was a tornado in my life that caused the dreams to start, but they did share the feelings that I couldn't run away or escape the threat of danger. When one grows up with an uBPDm, fear is a constant threat. I now know that my dreams reminded me of that trapped feeling. Does this make sense to you?

I'm really glad you're in counseling. T (therapy) has been a great help to me, and to so many others here. Another aspect of growing up with a BPD parent is that we all struggle with knowing what is real and what isn't, who to trust and who to not trust. A really helpful book for me was this one, Surviving a Borderline Parent. You can read it slowly and have your T help you through things. The book just brought me a lot of validation, especially when I was grasping for straws to make sense of my life.

How are you doing today? What will your graduate studies be in?

 
Wools