Daughter diagnosed with BPD doesn’t speak to me.

[AnotherMom]

 Hello.  My daughter who is diagnosed with BPD has spoken to me very little for about 4 years. She was velcroed to me for decades. I encouraged independence, like Uber and Lyft instead of me driving her everywhere.  She didn’t like independence.  She seems to want to make one person her entire world to filter reality through. I found it tiring.

 She has a history of boyfriends who she defines as abusive.  But then she tells them I am abusive and does her best to make them hate me. Then she asks if she should break up. If I say yes, she tells them so they think I want to sabotage their relationship.  So, when she got the current boyfriend 4 years ago and started the same behavior, I said “If you turn this boyfriend against me I do not want you to live with me. I cannot handle it again.” Well then she told him I threatened to kick her out, on top of whatever else she was saying to get him to hate me.  Well he hates mea lot.

Her boyfriend has some form of mental illness and is very protective of her.  This is her type.  When she was considering leaving him she asked me to take her to the mental hospital twice last summer for suicidal behavior.  She told me again how abusive he was and that he was a devil worshipper who called demons against me, and was chased by demons.  Honestly this seem so foolish, everyone who watches movies learns if you call on demons they trick and hurt you, so why do it?  I asked my daughter and she said there are spells to control them.  I said, so human words are supposed to protect humans from supernatural and evil entities.  This doesn’t make sense to me.  She said when I was in the hospital with sepsis from a urinary tract infection that went bad quick that she texted asking how I was, because he was casting death spells against me.  She was painting him as the bad one and herself as a victim of him…..which didn’t make sense either.  She asked if she should leave him. I said, “ This is your decision. Not mine. I respect your choices.” No way I wanted to play that game again.  She went back to him both times and stopped speaking to me again each time.  I asked friends who believe in demons to pray for her and they did.

During this whole time, I decided that I wouldn’t let her define what kind of mom I was.  So I texted her supportive things, pay for her phone and gym membership.  It isn’t much, but I think of it as me doing me and keeping the door open to her.  She says talking to me is too horrible for her.  So, do you have any other ideas?  I feel pretty powerless.

 I was really critical of myself for all of my imperfections and mistakes at first.  My mom has BPD too.  So I felt sandwiched.  I worried about developing BPD as a young person because my mom had it.  It is a nightmare that my daughter has it too.  After about a year of her moving out I decided that I need to move on in my life and heal, because if she gets better or wants to get better I cannot help her if I am hating on myself. While I made a lot of mistakes I always put her first.   Although she has made it clear that she would love me to hate myself and to even kill myself I do not believe that would increase her chances of a happy life.  It is just her illness.  

I have told her that I will go to a therapist with her.  I will not apologize or admit to doing things I didn’t do.  She has accused me of sexually assaulting her because she dreamed I did.  She also said she hallucinated that I wore an Elmer Fudd hat and chased her through a field shooting at her.   I am the biggest focus of her fear/hate.  I used to be the focus of all her love/needs.  Both situations have been very hard.

I hope to hear better ideas from you.  If not, I plan to keep paying for her phone and gym membership, and sending her loving texts every couple weeks.  

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

[kells76]

Hi AnotherMom, glad you found the group and decided to reach out.

Sounds like you've already been through a lot with your daughter, who I'm assuming is an adult. And it sounds like you've had some insights along the way about what's helpful, or, at least, what makes things the "least worst" for the situation.

I read your post yesterday and was so struck by your ability to do these things:

She asked if she should leave him. I said, “ This is your decision. Not mine. I respect your choices.” No way I wanted to play that game again.  She went back to him both times and stopped speaking to me again each time.  I asked friends who believe in demons to pray for her and they did.

During this whole time, I decided that I wouldn’t let her define what kind of mom I was.  So I texted her supportive things, pay for her phone and gym membership.  It isn’t much, but I think of it as me doing me and keeping the door open to her.  She says talking to me is too horrible for her.  So, do you have any other ideas?  I feel pretty powerless.

 I was really critical of myself for all of my imperfections and mistakes at first.  My mom has BPD too.  So I felt sandwiched.  I worried about developing BPD as a young person because my mom had it.  It is a nightmare that my daughter has it too.  After about a year of her moving out I decided that I need to move on in my life and heal, because if she gets better or wants to get better I cannot help her if I am hating on myself. While I made a lot of mistakes I always put her first.   Although she has made it clear that she would love me to hate myself and to even kill myself I do not believe that would increase her chances of a happy life.  It is just her illness. 

I have told her that I will go to a therapist with her.  I will not apologize or admit to doing things I didn’t do.  She has accused me of sexually assaulting her because she dreamed I did.  She also said she hallucinated that I wore an Elmer Fudd hat and chased her through a field shooting at her.   I am the biggest focus of her fear/hate.  I used to be the focus of all her love/needs.  Both situations have been very hard.

I hope to hear better ideas from you.  If not, I plan to keep paying for her phone and gym membership, and sending her loving texts every couple weeks. 

You're modeling calm, normal-range support and involvement -- not an extreme "I support whatever you do" and not an extreme "well if you're going to be that way, I'll never talk to you again, say goodbye to my support". You're in touch with your own values and integrity, and acting out of that, instead of a fear or worry about her perception of you.

I bet you have had the realization that nothing you can do can impact her perception of you, whether doing amazing kind things or "horrible" things... she's going to see you the way the lenses of her disorder "let" her see you, which tends to flip between "you're my world, I'm velcroed to you" and "I hate you, you're horrible".

It makes a lot of sense to do what you're doing right now -- keep a door of connection open in a low-key way with the phone and gym membership, send low-key supportive texts every now and then, and ask others to pray for her in a way that would be meaningful to her. You're modeling stability and reliability to her without it being a "we have to be joined at the hip" relationship. You're showing her a different way, and caring for yourself so that you can better care about her healthily.

Can I ask, are there other members of your immediate family -- spouse? other kids? If so, how are they doing with your D, and are they on the same page as you in terms of your approach? Are family members supportive of your path forward?

Do you have a counselor or therapist that you see in all of this? It's such a weight on you. The more support we have, when there are pwBPD in our lives, the better.

I look forward to hearing more from you about how you guys have been doing. I hope you both are able to find some moments of peace during the holidays.

kells76

[Stolen]

Dad here, two  daughters now 26 and 23 who have refused to speak to me for over 6 years.  No Dx, but they were always "emotionally sensitive" and bonded with Mom when she decided it was time (after 3 decades together) to pursue Nirvana in the lesbian community.

This is all so painful (it really hasn't gotten any better), but I have to thank you for "She also said she hallucinated that I wore an Elmer Fudd hat and chased her through a field shooting at her."  I have not had coffee come out my nose in years...

Peace.   

[ANO]

It is so good to see that I'm not alone.
My 19 years old daughter doesn't speak to me and blames me for her BPD. She is very intelligent and I know her very well and it will never change... It got to a point that I'm glad that it's my husband who now has to do everything around her. He is a great dad but was not doing much when my 3 kids were growing up and now he is an enabler - I know that I was too when she was younger. People do not understand that BPD with depression is a disease that affects whole family...