Acknowledges she has childhood trauma, abandonmemt issues etc but refuses treatment. Could it be BPD, CPTSD, abandonment issues, daddy issues, combination of all 4?
Sounds like a complicated set of interconnected issues. A diagnosis is best left to the professionals. What ultimately matters to you is her behaviour and how it affects your kids. Make sure you're keeping a journal of everything in case you need to intervene on the kids' behalf in the future and seek custody - or maintain your own parenting time if she becomes threatening to you and makes false allegations, etc.
- always the victim regardless and it was like herding cats keeping her on the topic at hand.
Gerda makes a great point about your trauma being your responsibility, even if it isn't your fault. It's fine to recognize you've been a victim in the past, but there is absolutely nothing healthy about always seeing yourself as a victim. It denies your own agency -- but it also denies responsibility for your actions, which is why I imagine some people get stuck in that mindset. I used to have white knight syndrome and tried to help people who had been "victimized" too. Now when a grown adult tells me they're a victim I back far away because it's a big red flag.
She was a very attached parent though. They’d sleep with her and she’d spend every living moment with them.
- kids (both under 6) now displaying anxiety.
Being an attached parent can be a good thing, but I've read that people with BPD can see kids as extensions of themselves or use them to soothe their pain. That can become a real problem as the kids age and start to develop a sense of their own self, which someone with BPD may see as threatening. (They're being abandoned, etc.) The fact that your kids are displaying anxiety even though she is an attached parent is worrisome.
I just really want to know as we have a lot of parenting ahead of us. Thank you. Hope this made sense.
It sounds like you're not able to effectively co-parent with her and even parallel parenting will likely be a challenge. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about her behaviour and how it will affect your kids. All you can do is be the emotional rock for them, and the calm, stable one so they have a good foundation somewhere. As they age, they will likely see how disordered and unstable she is and turn to you for stability and peace. As my lawyer says, kids tend to vote with their feet as they hit the teen years and usually gravitate toward the stable parent. I'm in the process of a divorce now and my teen has requested majority time with me because my xwBPD has been so unstable through his entire life. So your role as a parent may grow as the kids age.
I recommend reading Raising Resilient Children with a Borderline, as I found it useful to shift my mindset to the long term as a parent.
Best of luck with all of it.