Need to know more about coping with a sibling with BPD

[NotInKansasAnymore]

Hi! My 54 yr old sister has recently been definitively diagnosed with BPD, during several stays in mental hospitals. But she refuses to accept it & seems to be spiraling out-of-control downward.

She'd rather keep her self-diagnosis of PTSS from being a victim of abused as a child by me & my mother. But she worships my father who was bi-polar & was abusive when he was manic. Looking back, she had classic symptoms of BPD around the time my dad got manic, was hospitalized & when let out, committed suicide in 1973, when he was 56 & my sister was 16. But BPD would not be a disease until 1983, so the counselors all sided with my sister against me & my mom (& we were left confused & befuddled).

She did get some CBT in the '80s from a counselor to deal with her PTSS, which made it easier for all of us to get along.

In the late '90s, my sister was abusive to a psychiatrist & my mother heard him yell after her that she had BP. We know how angry she can get people, so we weren't certain whether it was a legitmate diagnosis or something said out of anger. But it caused my mother & I both read "Stop Walking on Eggshells". We found it rather vague & offering no advice, but it did match what we'd been experiencing since the '70s (she'd actually been acting this way with other kids since the '60s, but never acted out in front of any adults who could punish her).

She had gone on disability in the '90s for "clinical depression" & got public housing. But over the years, her demands from stores, delivery people & the place where she lived, got people refusing to service her. She sought out & got nursing assistance for food delivery & house cleaning. Last year, the management co. of the place where she, kept trying to evict her on trumpet up charges, until they wore her down & she moved out.

She is now living with my 87 yr old mother. And instead of being grateful, she's abusive to my mother, which was allowed in the '70s, but not nowadays. And by bringing in the nurses, she's got people, telling her she's not allowed to treat my mother that way or she could be arrested.

So her whole created identity is crashing in around her.

Plus she's nearing the age when my father committed suicide (an age she feared). But instead of doing everything she can to avoid what he did, she's mimicing everything he did but reinterpreting it. She talks about my father going into the mental hospital to recover, just like her. But my father fought against being hospitalized & committed suicide when he got out. It feels like watching the movie "Thelma & Louise" & wondering if this time, will they veer off at the last minute.  

I don't know if there is anything we can do to save my sister. But I feel as if I am going insane watching her. And my mother is so depressed by my sister's hatred toward her.

So I want to be here to ask questions.

[Surnia]

    NotInKansasAnymore

I hear your great concern about your sister! Its hard to bear when our family members suffer a mental illness.

However you can't save her. Sometimes it has even to spiral down, and than perhaps there will be a change.

It is important that we look for our boundaries. And in your case also for your mother.

Boundaries Tools of Respect

Please stay tuned, so we can assist you further on this board.

Best wishes

Surnia

[Blazing Star]

Hi NotInKansasAnymore,



Wow, it sounds like it has been and continues to be a really tough time with your sister! I feel for you and your family!   

You are in the right place to ask your questions!

Is your sister in therapy at the moment? Or would she be open to it? Does your mother have anyone else to help her? (I am glad the nurses are sticking up for her!)

We look forward to hearing from you.

Love Blazing Star

[GreenMango]

I don't know if there is anything we can do to save my sister. But I feel as if I am going insane watching her. And my mother is so depressed by my sister's hatred toward her.

So I want to be here to ask questions.

Hi NotInKansasAnymore  Hi!

Your description of the events around your sister's illness and how it is affecting you and your mom is hard to read.  She has struggled for a long time.

I felt like I was going crazy watching the behaviors of my ex especially during the spiral down.  It can be very overwhelming.  BPD can be a devastating illness.  It really does affect more than just the person who has it   .   I'm sorry to hear how sad your mom is right now. 

Did you have any specific questions you wanted to ask?  I wish the terms for how you came here were different but we are happy you found us and hopefully we can help with some guidance through this.

[united for now]

Wow. That is so tough, watching someone you love head toward self destruction.

The fear, mixed with the helplessness and frustration is understandable   

Is she being monitored by any agency for her mental status?

If her threats begin to take concrete shape then you may need to call an agency to have her reviewed.

[NotInKansasAnymore]

Thank you Surnia, Blazing Star, GreenMango & united for now,

This is just to let you know I read all your post, but need time to absorb what you said & asked, so I can answer them (I don't see an individual reply, so I assume I have to tack on my replies to each of you to the end of this thread). 

~~~~

A question I did come in here with:

Is using a stapler on yourself in front of family members a form of self-harm?

Why I ask:

I moved in with my mom & sister after getting a corneal transplant, so my mother could help keep on schedule with the drops that prevent rejection. It had been planned for a while. We just didn't expect my sister to lose her housing & be at my mom's also. My sister demanded to stay at my condo. I was considering it prior to her bullying demands (just as well the Air Conditioning gave out & she would have made me fix it, which would have been unbearably hot for the repairmen).

After that, I was walking by her room. Normally the door is shut & she isolates herself from us. This time the door was wide open. As I walked by, she stared at me & stapled a fleshy part of her arm. I gave her no reaction (but felt was it was a dig at me "How dare you get a corneal transplant & stay at mom's!" & "I'm sicker & in more pain than you.".

Several months later, she went to a neurologist (convinced that she had a brain tumor) & they wanted her to come back for the tests 2 days later. She was furious with them (we overheard her on the phone). Next thing I know, the doorbell rings & there is a policeman there asking if someone was in danger. My sister came out of her room with her arm full of staples & repeating "I need a safe place!". She had the ambulance drive her to the mental ward of the hospital the neurologist worked at; they released her in less than 48 hrs.

She's done self harm (picking at wounds, so they get bigger & bigger) in the past, but never cutting. When I read up on self-injury years ago; I thought I'd read that this was done in secret & was an embarrassment. But those 2 incidents seemed so dramatic & public; that I don't feel they were meant to cause self-harm, but to say "Look what you made me do!" When I googled around about using staplers, I found a bunch of videos of teen boys doing it to themselves as a "punk". I actually put 1 staple in my arm & it didn't hurt.

So I'm not certain what to make of it.

[united for now]

self injury can be done for many reasons, one of them being to get attention.

Reasons for self harm:

* to calm down

* to cause pain to stop feeling numb

* to demonstrate that you don't need to rely on others for help

* to create a boundary between yourself and others

* to let others know of your extreme pain

* to create a physical sign of how horrible you feel

* to fit in with others

* to get back at someone

* to create physical pain, since that is easier to cope with than the emotional pain

* to express anger towards myself for being worthless and stupid

* to create excitement

* to see if I can stand the pain

Putting staples into your arm is shocking and done by many boys to prove themselves or to fit in. Since she choose to do it and then call for help I would imagine that she was in a lot of psychological agony, needed help and didn't know how to get what she wanted. Yeah, it is a dysfunctional way to get attention, which is why a pwBPD is considered mentally ill. They don't know how to get their needs met in healthy appropriate ways.

Picking at wounds, sticking objects into your skin

burning or scratching, hair pulling, swallowing poisonous substances or objects... .as well as driving recklessly, binge drinking, taking too many drugs, having unsafe sex - these are all variations on self injury since they are done as a way to self harm.

Being that she is 54 years old and doing this may indicate that she's been using some form of self harm for years to regulate herself. Self soothing in an unhealthy way.


I hope you are faring well in your own healing. I'm sure the stress isn't making it easy to do   

[NotInKansasAnymore]

Dear Surnia, Blazing Star, GreenMango & united for now,

I have finally returned to my own condo. In the quiet, I have finally been

able to dissect & absorb each of your posts.

But 1st, I need to clarify something that makes me feel uncomfortable:

• Surnia said "I hear your GREAT CONCERN about your sister!" &



• United for now  said  "watching SOMEONE YOU LOVE head toward self destruction"

I think you are making assumptions about my feelings. I don't know how I feel about my sister. She has hurt & abused me all my life. When she professes "love" it is so over the top, I do not know how to react to it (although I will say I love her, I don't think I am very convincing). I feel compassion for her as I would a stranger's suffering I hear on the news. But "detached" would best describe how I feel about her, because it is safest.

My CONCERN is over what she is doing to my mom (who I do love dearly), who did nothing wrong but unknowingly marry a man who was bipolar (he kept it secret & her away from his family, until she was married & pregnant).

The other CONCERN is for "myself" having to relive the craziness of my dad & my sister put our family thru in the 1970s (I swore back then that I would never let anyone ever do that to me ever again. That I would walk away.)

[NotInKansasAnymore]

Surnia,

Thank you for recommending "Boundaries: Tools of Respect".

The concept of "enabling" had just come out when my dad became manic & my mother was very good at NOT enabling my dad. However, after my father was dead, all my sister had to do was threaten suicide & my mom would cave. When I'd tell my mom she's enabling, my mom would say she couldn't bear another suicide in her life. I understood this, so I enable my mom.

Lately though my mother no longer says that; it has changed to "I do not want your sister's suicide on my conscience".

(Reading this article, there was much more added in the almost 40 years since we tried to practice not enabling. Like I don't remember the term boundaries & I was a psych major.) My sister & mother step all over each others boundaries (probably me too). My mother grew up in the great depression in Germany (even worse than here), so she is very frugal, especially at 87 years old. My sister knows this is another button she can push. When she maxes out her credit cards, my mother has always made borrowing contracts with her at 0% interest. My mother made similar contracts with me when say I bought my 1st new car. Difference? I have always paid my mom back. My sister never has.

When my sister moved in last year (after losing public housing), she said she just wanted a bed in my mom's garden room. That my mom could use it as she always does to walk out the sliding door to the deck. But suddenly she didn't want my mom going thru her room. And she wanted my mother's stuff out "her" room. Now she's starting to ask for being able to put her stuff outside her room. My mom said that she's been hearing my sister say "When my mother is dead" to people on the phone (my mom's not spying, that boundary she won't cross; she'll be having her nap & my sister talks extra loud).

Because this article was so helpful, I have been reading others like FOG (you guys should have an dictionary of all the abbreviations used here, like MIL, DD, uBPD, etc.

[NotInKansasAnymore]

• Blazing Star asked "Is your sister in therapy at the moment? Or would she be open to it? Does your mother have anyone else to help her?
• [/i]"
  
  united for now asked "Is she being monitored by any agency for her mental status? If her threats begin to take concrete shape then you
  
  may need to call an agency to have her reviewed.
  
  

My sister has been in therapy for decades for clinical depression & self DXed PTSS from being "abused by my mother & me". However, she was seeing counselors before BPD was defined in 1983.

If a counselor/psychologist/etc doesn't agree w/ my sister's diagnosis, they are gone. That's why they kicked her out of one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the country. She was being abusive w/ the staff.

After the Colo. movie shootings, a social worker showed up from the state wanting to offer her help. She was so hostile, he left. The next one came w/ a police escort (they have ever since, but my mother is offered no protection). Even the head of the organization came to meet w/ my sister.

But because my sister forbids anybody that helps her to talk with my mother or me, we are unable to get help for ourselves in dealing with her. We only hear what my sister tells us & I no longer believe anything she says.

I already called "Eldery Affairs" about my sister being abusive to my mother over a year ago, but my mother always seems to downplay it in front of strangers.

Since returning to my own condo, my sister has twice called the police on my mother abusing her, when she didn't get her way & the police said to my mother "Hey, lady! Why don't you just let her have her way!", because they (the police) have already dealt with my sister & want to escape, like we all do.

Luckily for me, she is not talking to me (SILENT TREATMENT" right now & says I am ":)ead to her". It does not feel like abuse -- it feels wonderful; because she is only abusive now to everyone; I am the only one spared & not always.

[NotInKansasAnymore]

The questions my mother & I have is:

1) Is there such a thing anymore such as institutionalizing a person?

She has definitely lost contact with reality & has been put in the pysch wards of several hospitals about 3+ this year alone, but they keep letting her out, because she refuses to believe she has BPD & refuses treatment for it.

I think if she stays much longer at my mom's, she'll wind up in prison for doing something to my mother, me or my mother's neighbors.

2) Is there any kind of help for the families surrounding a BPD?

When we are away from her, we get back to feeling normal. When we are around her, we feel like we also are going insane.

The only thing we have figured out on our own was to placate her & apologize anytime she's gotten upset at family holidays. And she learned to walk away & lie down. It made the holidays much better.

But we are all beyond that. She is in a constant rage w/ the world. And we are tired of being nice after being so extremely abused (the other day, she accused my mother of causing my father's suicide & making him crazy. My mother feels that my sister is tearing her life apart; giving it no meaning anymore, because my mom & dad truly did love each other & my dad always said my mom was the best thing to happen to him; that she brought him back down to earth).

3) Is there anyway we can have input to whatever the state is doing for her?

She has forbid them to talk to us, so it may be violating boundaries. But we only hear what my sister is telling my mother. And I think my sister is intentionally lying. I want to hear it from the horses lips.

Like she says it will be another 6 months before she can get housing. I think every public housing org. knows about her & wants nothing to do with her (she had a place say they had openings, but after she gave them her info, they suddenly had no openings, because they were renovating. She complained "Why did they make me give them all that info, when they were doing renovations & had no openings?" And I'm sitting there going ":)uh! They talked to the last place you were at & how you were always complaining & now they don't want you."

[united for now]

This may be tough for you to read... .

1) yes, most states have a way to have someone forcefully committed, based on the signatures of two people. I believe it is a court action, and each state differs in the requirements and how long they will hold them - 72 hours without a Dr evaluation, then a week if she is determined to be a danger to herself or others, and then 30 days re-eval. Forceful commitment was dismantled back in the 70's and 80's. A Dr has to really believe that she is a threat or danger or she gets to walk free. Check with you local agency for more info regarding your local laws. My real question though, if she has refused to go along with treatment in the past, then what makes you think this time will be any different?

2) Yes, there are groups to help. NAMI has org in most large cities, and TARA also has some meetings in the really big citites. Both org can be found online.  NEA BPD also conducts family skills training in person and on phone chats that you can look into, though they are more about skills training to help increase understanding so that families can cope better.

If a person can get whatever they want by yelling, threatening, and causing problems - from her perspective, why shouldn't she? it gets her what she wants. There are no consequences to her for her bad behavior. In fact, she is rewarded for her bad behavior (getting what she wants). Boundaries are the only way to survive when a loved one has BPD, since they will otherwise ride roughshod all over you. It is up to us to determine what behaviors we will and won't allow in our lives.  If you have suddenly stopped playing her game (giving her what she wants) then what you are experiencing is her going through an extinction burst (her behavior gets worse). We have a workshop explaining what are extinction bursts and how giving intermittent reinforcement makes behaviors worse.


3)No. Privacy laws prevent it unless she signed a release form. They may give you suggestions in a generic fashion (ie, you can try this), but no specifics regarding your mom's situation.


If your mom isn't willing to press charges against her for the abuse or to have her forcifully removed, then your hands are tied.

It may help if you have a chat with the local police for suggestions on how to protect your mom, especially if your sister is filing false claims against her. A DV hotline can also help in developing a safety plan for your mom so that she can get out when she sees that things are getting bad or scary. It can also help your mom feel more secure. Just knowing that you have the means to escape (if you need to) can bring peace.


I can only imagine how frustrating this all is for you. Getting your mom to do something is the key here.

[linusham]

Hi there NotinKansasAnymore

I really feel for you having to deal with this very tough situation. I am in a similar but nowhere near as bad situation - in that my uBPDsis is spiralling down badly and making life hell for everyone but mostly our mom who is now the only person she has any contact with after telling me to leave her alone.

Firstly I think you need to have a talk with some agencies. Social services, police as someone suggested to find out what, if any, help can be had for your mother. Secondly I do think that you need to talk with your mother because as unitedfor now says - without your mothers involvement and willingness to do something about your sisters behaviour then I don't see her being made to confront her actions. Right now she is getting away with it. And one thing I've learned here is that if they get away with it they'll continue to do so.

Your story serves as a reminder to those like me who think all our problems would be solved if we could get a diagnosis that this is not always the case and that often it doesn't really change things. I am so sorry that right now you're having such a hard time. I truly believe that the changes to how mental health issues are addressed by the health and social care teams are bad things. All too often now people who are damaging themselves and others are not treated and are not helped. We did used to lock people away far too easily, now we seem to ignore them far too easily and leave families to struggle.

As for this:

I think you are making assumptions about my feelings. I don't know how I feel about my sister. She has hurt & abused me all my life. When she professes "love" it is so over the top, I do not know how to react to it (although I will say I love her, I don't think I am very convincing). I feel compassion for her as I would a stranger's suffering I hear on the news. But "detached" would best describe how I feel about her, because it is safest.

I understand so much where you are coming from here. I unfortunately don't feel detached from my sister but am working towards that. I fear that what I feel is some sort of twisted bit of love mixed in with actual hate, which makes me feel very guilty. I try not to hate her because I know now she is ill but the years of vile abuse make it hard. And I am now witnessing her abusing mom and playing mind games and it makes me want to scream. I also totally understand how you feel when she professes love. If myb uBPDsis isn't raging or cold she's over the top sickly sweet. Things like 'my sweet sweet lovely sister' and other yucky stuff that makes you feel sick.

Again I am so sorry you're going through this and do keep us posted on how things go. But I def think talking to mom is the way to go with this. Make her understand how serious it is and that she needs to protect herself. Then with her consent you can hopefully get some agencies involved in helping keep everyone safe.

[noseinabook]

Hello NotInKansasAnymore and linusham,

Firstly, I want to thank you both for the personal stories you both shared.  Family can be challenging, and revealing something so close to home, literally, is never easy.  I wanted to reach out and maybe we can help each other find answers though speaking about this.  I don't have any answers or advice.  I just wanted to connect because I have a sister with BPD.  To sum up the twenty years I've known her:

She is three years younger than I am and we never got along.  The beginning of our more serious issues began when I was in the third grade.  Gosh, that sounds younger and younger every time I think about how old we were then.  My brother has Schizophrenia and Autism and about this time he became violent and psychotic (he never meant it maliciously).  My sister and I handled this very differently.  She wanted to get angry and blame everyone, I wanted to help everyone to understand that his admittance into a group home would be healthy for everyone and he could be happy in a structured environment.

I don't blame her for getting upset, it was a horrible time for us all.  I do blame her for abusing my parents and I ever since.  She used to only verbally and physically bait me into a fight when my parents weren't around.  She would steal from me, destroy my things, and incessantly put me down.  I don't think anyone believed me for a long time; she is able to charm a lot of people.  After a while my parents caught on and didn't see her as a victim anymore.

That all seems like a long time ago now, since I haven't lived with her in 5 years.  My problem now is that she is now abusing my mother.  My dad likes to placate her and travels with his job, but my mom has to live with her because she is taking a break from college.  She will be moving out soon, but her inability to handle or make money reliably make her a huge financial burden.  I don't know how long my parents can shell out thousands of dollars not only for her basic necessities, but spending sprees and intensive therapy sessions at a DBT center.

What I am wondering is when are the family members allowed to say that enough is enough?  How long does a family member have to try before they need to live their own life?  How responsible are my parents when they are making every effort and she doesn't change?

Just to let you know, when I read your posts I felt a sense of relief.  I think people judge me because I don't like my sister.  They don't understand that I can never love her again, that it only puts me in danger emotionally and mentally to try any longer.  I can walk away as her sister.  I can choose to think about her or not, but my parents, my mom, is stuck.  I just want to find her a way to be free of my sister so she can live a life of her own. 

I know I mainly just took your time to get out my story, and I thank you for reading.  I hope people like us can connect more and that talking will lead to answers eventually.

Hope this finds you well!

Noseinabook