Dealing with uBPD MIL as a highly sensitive person

[Bbqfriend]

Hi everyone. I’m not sure what I’m looking for here, but just reading other threads about people dealing with uBPD MILs has been helpful so far.
I’m 30F, husband is the same age. His way of coping with his mother is avoidance and detachment, but he still is always worried about upsetting her. She lifes out of town but since we had our daughter she is looking into moving near us. This gives me a lot of anxiety but honestly I’m anxious about her even when she’s far away. We don’t talk often and I know she thinks we exclude her from our life,  because we do honestly, just because including her is so not fun. Anything we tell her turns into her telling us what to do in any situation or telling us stuff she has in her hoarder house that we can use for it. When we tell her no it’s always so uncomfortable.

 I consider myself a highly sensitive person. It’s extremely hard for me (basically impossible) to move on when someone has hurt me. I grew up in a loving, stable for the most part, home. It’s been extremely difficult for me to handle having a MIL that acts this way. The most recent episode that I am still caught up on happened in May 2021. I was pregnant after a miscarriage and started bleeding while on a trip with her and wanted to leave the trip and did. (yes looking back I never should have gone on a trip with her but I always keep trying because my husband just wants to keep the peace). She treated me like —- and didn’t talk to us for hours or say goodbye to us. She knew how scared and upset I was and she acted like that (she also has had 2 miscarriages herself!). She never checked up on us at all to see how the follow up appointment went and basically left us alone until the end of my pregnancy when she tried to come back and be friendly. Again, I was naive and included her more than I should have. Then when the baby was born she didn’t like the way my husband invited her to come meet baby, so she pushed off her visit for a month and it was very tense. It’s made a lot more sense to see how she acted as I have learned more about BPD, but I still just can’t get over these things. I think we are about the two worst people to be MIL/DIL to each other. I typically am very caring and loving, but with her it’s hard to even fake it. It’s so hard to let her behavior go! I am seeing a therapist but that just started and she’s coming to visit this weekend…

[livednlearned]

Bbqfriend, I'm sorry to hear about your miscarriage, that had to be so hard and then on top of it a self-centered response from your MIL to complicate a painful time in your life. It isn't surprising to hear that she was unable to provide an appropriate, caring response. It didn't happen to her so why should it bother you?  

I hear you about being a highly sensitive person. I also think it's hard to move on from these BPD interactions even when someone isn't highly sensitive. People with BPD can raid our emotions, physical spaces, and rent space in our heads and create upset as a matter of course. Like you, I'm typically caring and loving but with my stepdaughter (26) I find it hard to be myself. I'm gracious, kind externally but inside it's a tangled of complicated emotions and a lot of self-control to play a part that feels unnatural.

One thing jumps out at me about your MIL. She withdraws. That can feel painful (if it were someone less taxing), but with BPD sometimes these breaks are simply about them returning to baseline and the distance can be therapeutic for us. It's a slightly different way to reframe behaviors that in other relationships would be devastating but with BPD emotional lability the reset and distance may actually be a godsend (for us).

What you describe sounds like holding a grudge. A grudge is a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury. In most relationships, a grudge is probably not a great thing but with someone who has a persistent pattern of dysfunctional behaviors that grudge might be the basis for you to build good boundaries.

Boundaries are for you to protect yourself. You have control over them (versus trying to control her behaviors). Having control over your boundaries helps minimize the ways she can trample and raid and steam roller her way through your life.

It's great you have a therapist. They can really help us see how we sometimes sabotage ourselves and how to patch up those leaky spots so BPD behaviors aren't quite so easy to get through.