drained and afraid

[connecticutmom]

hi to my fellow parents of children with bpd,

this is my first post.
my daughter is 22, is very bright and was the sweetest young girl, my mini-me until her teens.
having a daughter after two boys was a dream come true for my husband and i - we felt so blessed.
these past few years have been full of pain, fear, guilt and self-doubt for us as parents.
she has been diagnosed with both bpd and bipolar 1 around 19 and her illness has made her younger version unrecognizable.

the behavior has been there since she was about 15-16, but i thought it was teenage girl difficulty/separation stuff.  she's a theater kid and very dramatic, likes being the center of attention, etc... so it took years of being manipulated, lied to, blamed/shamed for everything, verbally abused, publicly humiliated and financially exploited for me to realize how hard it is living with my daughter. i am terrified that this is now my life. my sister (like a second mom to my dd) spent a weekend with us recently and was shocked and appalled to see my daughter's behavior - so different from what she knew, so difficult to be around.

my husband has had blinders on because i have mainly been the target of her anger and blame, and he works even longer hours than i do. he has seen that she has lost all of her childhood and recent friends and is now recognizing her lack of empathy and self-centered, wildly inappropriate behavior as untenable. her two older brothers are clearly aware of her issues and can be supportive - but they are also worn down; they try to avoid spending time with her.

she is going to college part-time now from home, because of various mental health crises in the past few years (suicidal talk sent her home from first college, mania/med refusal and inappropriate behavior from another...) - she's on college # 3 and thinking about transfer to "an ivy", because of her grandiosity and lack of insight. (we couldn't afford it in a perfect setting - which this is clearly not.)

she's had four psych hospitalizations for suicidality or mania, always ending with early-ish discharge because she's had enough and feels abandoned at the hospital. we tried long-term residential care for less than one week as she was making everyone miserable and regrettably, we believed her promise that she would redouble her therapy efforts if we brought her home. (we were willing to spend our retirement savings on the latter, we were that desperate.)

i guess i am asking for help in acceptance and finding a way to live with this chaotic, painful and uncertain future. i was sooooo looking forward to retirement in a few years. i've worked so hard since i was a teenager and have been planning for a peaceful old age, hopefully as a grandma. unfortunately, i don't enjoy being home when she is there anymore because she's either needy, moody or volatile, etc. i cannot imagine her self-supporting; she stubbornly refuses to work for all the reasons, gets fired when she does take on a part-time job, and feels superior to minimum wage jobs and will not apply.

she's in therapy, (cbt not dbt as she doesn't accept the bpd diagnosis), i'm in therapy and my husband and i are doing marriage counseling where we mainly try to avoid letting her "triangulate" us. we try to focus on our own relationship and not hurt each other when we are at our breaking point. despite all the therapy, i feel like i'm being pulled underwater and am just trying to keep paddling and my husband is tired of talking about it.

i don't know what else to say except thank you for listening and for your posts that make me feel less alone.
xx

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

[CC43]

Hi CTMom,

Your story sounds very similar to mine, except my stepdaughter is a little older now.  Like your daughter, my stepdaughter was sweet, smart and beautiful as a child.  She did well in high school and had close friendships.  She became petulant as an older teen, but I didn't think her behavior was remarkable.  In fact, at that time, her older sister was the more problematic child, acting like a drama queen / party girl and occasionally getting in some trouble.  However, when she went away to college, she self-destructed.  She was kicked out of rooming situations but blamed her problems on others.  She was suicidal.  She dropped.  Repeatedly.  Long story short, she's in her eighth year of college, and she still hasn't finished yet.

Like you, my diagnosed stepdaughter ended up at home a few times between different colleges.  Life with her became miserable.  She was miserable too, and in and out of the hospital and residential therapy programs.  Between forfeited tuition, broken leases and health care costs, she put a huge dent in our savings, with little to show for it.  At one point, my husband deferred retirement and continued to work, so that she didn't have to!  She was rotting at home with us, while NEETT (Not in Education, Employment, Training or Therapy).  Do you know what happens when people do nothing?  They feel like nothing.  It's not good for her, or for the people around her.

You can check out some of my posts on this site to see more of the story.  I guess the upshot is, that after she hit bottom, my stepdaughter decided that she was willing to take therapy seriously to try to feel better.  She also stuck with medications.  She's still a work in progress, but she's doing much better now.  She still hasn't repaired the relationship with her real mom and her siblings, but she's close to her dad (and sort of to me).  She has some new friends.  She's in a stable rooming situation, and it's lasted for six months (fingers crossed).  She hasn't been able to handle a full-time schedule in years, but she's going to attempt it this coming fall (fingers crossed again).  I don't think she liked the BPD diagnosis, but it doesn't matter as long as she's getting the right treatment and medications to even out her moods.  She's still blaming others for her problems, but it's not the only thing she talks about anymore.  She's starting to look forwards more than looking backwards and re-hashing negative memories.  That's a huge relief.

I wish you some peace.  I think there can be an OK outcome.  But if your daughter is struggling with a part-time schedule at home, I'd be very careful about any sudden shift to a more demanding, full-time schedule with complex social dynamics far from home and her support system.  My stepdaughter thought she could handle it, but clearly she couldn't.  Distress tolerance and perseverance are sorely lacking with BPD.  I'd advise taking baby steps.  Maybe the first step is to demonstrate that she can handle a full-time schedule (perhaps combining two classes with part-time work from home), with no long-lasting meltdowns, before she moves out.  And no job is too menial, when it comes to earning money.  Maybe another baby step is to make your daughter pay for her phone and entertainment.  If she doesn't work, then she doesn't get a phone.  It's up to her entirely.  She's an adult (22!), she can decide how to spend her time and money.