I have a BPD Mother

I'm an adult female and my mother has BPD. This is my story and I'm sorry for the length... . you could probably read the first and last paragraph and get the gist.

My mother takes her illness out on her kids and ex husband (my father), and hides it from everyone else. There's hardly a person in my family that doesn't have a mental illness, as well. My long-term boyfriend's mother may also have BPD. She acts scarily similar to my mother, but I can't say for sure because I tactfully avoid her. I don't need another person like that in my life and it's such a serious concern that it has actually made me hesitant to marry my boyfriend. I've been trying to stop this cycle of abuse and uncontrolled mental illness in our family by stopping it at me, because I don't feel like it's possible to help someone who doesn't want it. My mom's BPD feels like this thing living in her. It's slowly killing her and trying to jump ship into the next generation. I refuse to let it, but there are some days when I catch myself thinking like her and I get so scared. I make it a point to surround myself with positive, social people who can help reinforce appropriate interactions in my mind. It seems to work as long as my mother stays away. ... . but she doesn't stay away because she feels her only identity is "mother".

My father has his own problems but he doesn't have BPD, or aggressively intrude into my life and try to make it a living hell. My mother is probably the most mentally afflicted person in my entire family and also the only person in complete denial. When my dad left her, she got a million times worse. She doesn't trust doctors or psychologists. She doesn't work and lives off alimony (half my dad's pay). She hates people who want to be her friend, and just recently she said if someone else asks her to "get out there and volunteer" one more time she will punch them in the face. She gets gifts from people and hates them for it because that means she has to give them something back. ... . then she turns around and cries about how no one loves her and she's lonely, old, fat, ugly... . etc. She isn't even 50 and she's living in a seniors residence, alone, and does puzzles all day. She has a lot of money but thinks she is poor.

My mother had a tough time growing up. Their family was poor and my mother's father was an alcoholic wife beater. My mom had a string of bad men in her life, including my father who cheated on her after three decades of marriage. She is not without fault. She was pretty horrible to my father as well -- I distinctly remember a fight when I was a young child, where she grabbed a toy out of my hands and threw it at my dad's face while screaming at him. That was the night where their marriage ended emotionally, but they stayed together for another twenty years or so (bad idea by the way, the kids know what's up and it hurts). As a teenager I had to go into therapy because I was getting too depressed. I spent most of my days in my room where it was quiet and I could be alone.

I was attracted to boys who were emotionally like my dad... . and my first boyfriend's mother had BPD (scary woman!). I only knew because he confided in me. I started seeing a pattern in my own life. Later when I broke up with him (for unrelated reasons) was when I really started realizing things about my own life, and tried to turn it around. I started by recognizing that my parents weren't infallible and that they had some very serious problems themselves... . problems that my friends didn't have with their parents.

Therapy really screwed with my mind because my mom would also talk to the psychologist and other doctors about my progress. My mom would cry about how she was SO concerned about me and how I made her feel SO depressed, and how I was disrupting the family with my sadness and selfishness. I have no idea what they said behind closed doors, but I know she likes to project her issues onto other people. These professionals got the impression that my mom was just this sweet loving concerned parent and not the insanity I had been describing. They reinforced in my mom's mind that I was the one making my mom sad and not the other way around. I was almost committed to a mental hospital at one point, but the intake guy thought I wasn't bad enough to be there and sent me home. He was actually annoyed that I was wasting his time, and I didn't feel like I should have been there either. As a result my mom went and told a whole bunch of people that I went to a mental hospital, when I didn't. I was socially crippled. To this day my mother treats me like I'm a severely mentally ill child and am part of the cause of her pain, when really I got better once I left home and moved on. I seriously feel like a different person now that I'm out of her toxic grasp.

She is so full of bitterness and hate, but she masks it to outsiders. No one, not even her own sister, believes that my mom has a problem because she hides it so well. Behind closed doors, WATCH OUT. She will not leave me alone if I firmly but politely request it, she will insult and berate me in the most personal ways until I'm crying in the fetal position, she will scream in my face, she has hit, and will try to hit me. Any kind of retaliation (verbal, I don't ever use my fists on people), and she will use it to justify her abuse. On the other end of her emotional fits, she plays the victim... . but you can't help her. You can be comforting, encouraging, you can give her tough love, it doesn't matter. Nothing lasts, nothing gets through to her, and more often she will just spit acid back in your face.

I've been made to feel my whole life that she sacrificed everything for me and I somehow ruined her life, and thus I owe her unquestioning loyalty. My mom had ample opportunities offered by my dad to go back to school so she could start her own career and live a life outside a stay-at-home mom (which she CHOSE to do but she acts like a martyr). She never took up the offer, never got another job. I don't consciously believe that I ruined her life anymore, as I didn't ask to be born and SHE is the parent, not me, but there is a feeling of inadequacy and failure ingrained in me that doesn't ever go away. I have huge issues now contemplating having my own children.

Someone, somewhere, convinced her to go to a doctor at some point and get on an SSRI. She was so much better when she was on this medication. She stopped taking it however because she was having some pretty serious side effects (vision/hearing problems). Instead of going on another med, she said to me that she actually ENJOYS feeling her roller-coaster emotions and never wants to be on drugs again. Of course, she is back to being textbook BPD again and doesn't see the problem with her behaviors.

What has worked for me in communicating with my mom so far is using cognitive science techniques I learned from studying psychology at university, and keeping a long distance relationship with her. It sounds weird, but I started covertly training her like I train my dogs. When she writes me letters I only respond to positive correspondence and ignore the things that she sends to try and validate her victim mindset, or to try and pick a fight with me. When I started doing that consistently I noticed a massive improvement in the positive content of letters. There was much less "poor me", less passive aggression, and more regular mom stuff like pictures of kittens and pictures of her carpets.

She sends me boxes of junk. Stuff like empty cereal boxes and used chopsticks. She will spend $40 in postage on these boxes of junk and then tell me how poor she is. My boyfriend thinks it's funny but I think it's disturbing. She also sends me back gifts I've given her.

When I was still able to see her in person, when she was extremely negative I didn't react to her at all (like a robot). She would yell in my ear and I'd keep doing what I was doing, or drinking my tea. She would get so bent out of shape by this that she would threaten to beat me. Sometimes she would raise her hand as if she was going to hit me, but I wouldn't flinch. I just told her: if you hit me I'll call the cops and show them the marks. She couldn't win and would stop and go after someone else. It was terrifying though and I would break down in tears after she was out of earshot. I had no idea if she would try to knife me in my sleep.

When I was finally able to leave home, my mother went after my poor sister instead, because she knew she could get an easy response from her (that makes me feel sick just thinking about it). I tried to teach the techniques to my sister... . but again, my sister cannot put her emotions aside and see the illness as separate from our mom. She HAS to react, sometimes explosively, and it has just made it so my mother can control her. They scream and cry at each other and it goes nowhere.

For my own protection I decided that only people who want to be pleasant and respect my boundaries are allowed in my life. My mother lives in another city so I'm able to more easily set boundaries when she's there. My mother invited herself to come visit this summer however and I'm starting to get scared. My mother controls my sister and has convinced my sister to let her stay in her house for the visit. My sister is now trying to guilt me into taking my mother into my home for some of that time. I've told my sister to just say no but she isn't like me... . she will do things "for family" even if they're spitting in her face. Now I have my mother and sister both on my case, telling me I'm horrible to the family. It just... . never ends.



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