Coming Back & My Take on the Borderline Parent

[Depression = 72% of members]

I have not participated on this website for some time.  I am grateful for the insights and incredible support it gave me some time ago when I was in crisis having been menaced by a fellow employee and an insensitive manager.  The support here helped me weather that incredible storm.

I am back because I have been extra depressed and isolating these days. I need to keep processing my sorrow over how much of my life was spent in denial, desperation and confusion from the conditioning of a borderline/alcoholic family. I have struggled with a lack of will and an ongoing anxiety sabotaging me from functioning with consistency, self-possession and hope for so many decades.

Below in italics is an essay I wrote and had posted here once before upon finally seriously acknowledging that I had grown up with a borderline mother and having just read Christine Ann Lawson's phenomenal book "Understanding the Borderline Mother." 

I had framed my complex-PTSD symptoms around the alcoholism of my father and rationalized that it was that stress that caused my mother's extreme behavior and if he stopped drinking she would be normal.  I let pity for her cover up my own fear -- terror -- of my mother. My borderline parent and alcoholic parent have both passed on.  My entire adulthood I have been striving to recover from the alcoholic and borderline dysfunctional conditioning of my past.

FWIW, here is my analysis of growing up with a borderline parent:

We are not ourselves in their eyes. Separate, precious and wondrous human beings. We are their security blankets, trophies or punching bags, considering the time of day or given day.

We are the trash receptacles for all the contempt they feel for themselves. Now they have us to punish and push away to escape their own inner ego-monster of perfectionism. They have us to tyrannize and push to be their perfect AVATARS or HOLOGRAMS so they can congratulate themselves for inspiring us and directing us there or get the payoff of punishing us for disappointing them when they invested so much faux-faith in us.

We are their p.r. department that promotes their impression management campaign which additionally cripples us since we are covering up their dark surreality with us. While we create the illusion of their powerful goodness all the while the profound erosion of our spirit is taking place by them.

We have been so profoundly confused by them -- confused means "FUSED WITH" -- and at times we PITY them and try not to notice how much we FEAR them. We hustle to be as convenient as possible in their world of paranoid, brittle hysteria.

We don't understand their disorder.  We don't understand the nature of their paranoia.  Trust with them is not global, not a long-standing reservoir of good will. It is specific to a limited narcissistic moment with them.  It is earned by us second by second -- one more step on a tight rope with no net.

There is no resilience and capacity with them to accept us -- even for one tiny moment to accept us -- if they don't understand us. IF THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND US WE ARE A THREAT TO BE BULLIED AND PUNISHED TO GET IN LINE.  If we take the focus off their needs, even if we must since our ignored needs are rushing in and demanding attention, we become their ENEMY and they threaten us with all they have to get us back into line.

They are disordered.  They cannot see us.  They are the PLAYWRIGHTS, DIRECTORS and MAIN CHARACTERS of their life drama and everyone else in the cast must read from their scripts and be waiting in the wings for their cue to come on stage and circle them and it is their show.  Even if you have a bit part, you must be available at all times and watching their show and participating in their show and GOD help you if you want to star in your own life.  It is treason. Improvisation is TREASON.  Invites total rejection.

If you blow your role, you are gone in a heartbeat. Banned and shunned by them and they demand that the cast and crew shun you as well.  They act out on their stage themselves as an inconsolable victim of your selfishness. They hook others to enable them and rescue them from cruel, heartless you who had been their main enabler seconds earlier.

You thought the role you had been playing at least meant something to the MAD GODDESS or GOD of the theater, enabling her or him in an oh-so-vulnerable and needy survival mode always. But there is no will or comprehension in them to communicate with you because you are not nor ever were a fellow human being. They are not capable of respect and intimacy, only affinity on THEIR TERMS.  THEY ARE WILLFULL, NARCISSISTIC TODDLERS, stuck in that arrested development.

You were a kind of machine that has now broken down and deserves their rage and replacement INSTANTLY. They are not capable of hearing about you and your needs because they never were really all that important.  Sometimes they convinced you they cared, but that was in the role they were playing, not in their ego-controlled and numbed out heart as director and playwright. You got suckered by the role they sometimes brilliantly performed, but, alas, it wasn't real at base. You got snookered.

You are bereft, because the only thing you have experienced was being the second-guessing security blanket, trophy or punching bag for the MAD GODDESS or GOD.  Your trauma is some Godawful baggage to sort out. Alone and confused you are with your identity so beaten up. Well beyond recognition. Your capacity for trust is shot.  And you still don't want to believe the tragedy or pathos of it all.  That is your albatross, your addiction still to the denial.

Scott Peck said it is evil to "tit suck from and control the same person" and that is what they did for years and years.  He also said recognizing "evil" -- and it is one helluva "evil disorder" this uBPD (unrecovered borderline personality disorder) -- in a parent is the hardest thing a child can do in a life time.  Most can't and stay enthralled.

"Hope was the last temptation of  Christ," it has been said.  Look what happened to HIM!  Hope has to be surrendered by you for your own survival.  "Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had" another saying goes. What a hard step that is. Processing -- accepting -- your heart-breaking reality.

We were trained by them to over-identify with them to the exclusion of our own identities and basic needs in life. They do deserve pity, but they have lost that right with us since we have been so victimized by their disorder. They exploited our pity so unbelievably much and our basic need to be loved and cherished to keep us locked in our victimization. Our sense of entitlement to our own God-given and satisfying life must be re-learned.  Somewhere back then we were hoping for their permission and blessing to build our own life, since they were playing God over us.  There is a God or Higher Power and that BEING is NOT them.  And that is the source of unconditional love for us as bereft adults now, not our lost parent.  That God is our parent's parent, too.  Not us.  Not our job ... . and it never should have been.

[bethanny]

I have not participated on this website for some time.  I am grateful for the insights and incredible support it gave me some time ago when I was in crisis having been menaced by a fellow employee and an insensitive manager.  The support here helped me weather that incredible storm.

I am back because I have been extra depressed and isolating these days. I need to keep processing my sorrow over how much of my life was spent in denial, desperation and confusion from the conditioning of a borderline/alcoholic family. I have struggled with a lack of will and an ongoing anxiety sabotaging me from functioning with consistency, self-possession and hope for so many decades.

Below in italics is an essay I wrote and had posted here once before upon finally seriously acknowledging that I had grown up with a borderline mother and having just read Christine Ann Lawson's phenomenal book "Understanding the Borderline Mother." 

I had framed my complex-PTSD symptoms around the alcoholism of my father and rationalized that it was that stress that caused my mother's extreme behavior and if he stopped drinking she would be normal.  I let pity for her cover up my own fear -- terror -- of my mother. My borderline parent and alcoholic parent have both passed on.  My entire adulthood I have been striving to recover from the alcoholic and borderline dysfunctional conditioning of my past.

FWIW, here is my analysis of growing up with a borderline parent:

We are not ourselves in their eyes. Separate, precious and wondrous human beings. We are their security blankets, trophies or punching bags, considering the time of day or given day.

We are the trash receptacles for all the contempt they feel for themselves. Now they have us to punish and push away to escape their own inner ego-monster of perfectionism. They have us to tyrannize and push to be their perfect AVATARS or HOLOGRAMS so they can congratulate themselves for inspiring us and directing us there or get the payoff of punishing us for disappointing them when they invested so much faux-faith in us.

We are their p.r. department that promotes their impression management campaign which additionally cripples us since we are covering up their dark surreality with us. While we create the illusion of their powerful goodness all the while the profound erosion of our spirit is taking place by them.

We have been so profoundly confused by them -- confused means "FUSED WITH" -- and at times we PITY them and try not to notice how much we FEAR them. We hustle to be as convenient as possible in their world of paranoid, brittle hysteria.

We don't understand their disorder.  We don't understand the nature of their paranoia.  Trust with them is not global, not a long-standing reservoir of good will. It is specific to a limited narcissistic moment with them.  It is earned by us second by second -- one more step on a tight rope with no net.

There is no resilience and capacity with them to accept us -- even for one tiny moment to accept us -- if they don't understand us. IF THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND US WE ARE A THREAT TO BE BULLIED AND PUNISHED TO GET IN LINE.  If we take the focus off their needs, even if we must since our ignored needs are rushing in and demanding attention, we become their ENEMY and they threaten us with all they have to get us back into line.

They are disordered.  They cannot see us.  They are the PLAYWRIGHTS, DIRECTORS and MAIN CHARACTERS of their life drama and everyone else in the cast must read from their scripts and be waiting in the wings for their cue to come on stage and circle them and it is their show.  Even if you have a bit part, you must be available at all times and watching their show and participating in their show and GOD help you if you want to star in your own life.  It is treason. Improvisation is TREASON.  Invites total rejection.

If you blow your role, you are gone in a heartbeat. Banned and shunned by them and they demand that the cast and crew shun you as well.  They act out on their stage themselves as an inconsolable victim of your selfishness. They hook others to enable them and rescue them from cruel, heartless you who had been their main enabler seconds earlier.

You thought the role you had been playing at least meant something to the MAD GODDESS or GOD of the theater, enabling her or him in an oh-so-vulnerable and needy survival mode always. But there is no will or comprehension in them to communicate with you because you are not nor ever were a fellow human being. They are not capable of respect and intimacy, only affinity on THEIR TERMS.  THEY ARE WILLFULL, NARCISSISTIC TODDLERS, stuck in that arrested development.

You were a kind of machine that has now broken down and deserves their rage and replacement INSTANTLY. They are not capable of hearing about you and your needs because they never were really all that important.  Sometimes they convinced you they cared, but that was in the role they were playing, not in their ego-controlled and numbed out heart as director and playwright. You got suckered by the role they sometimes brilliantly performed, but, alas, it wasn't real at base. You got snookered.

You are bereft, because the only thing you have experienced was being the second-guessing security blanket, trophy or punching bag for the MAD GODDESS or GOD.  Your trauma is some Godawful baggage to sort out. Alone and confused you are with your identity so beaten up. Well beyond recognition. Your capacity for trust is shot.  And you still don't want to believe the tragedy or pathos of it all.  That is your albatross, your addiction still to the denial.

Scott Peck said it is evil to "tit suck from and control the same person" and that is what they did for years and years.  He also said recognizing "evil" -- and it is one helluva "evil disorder" this uBPD (unrecovered borderline personality disorder) -- in a parent is the hardest thing a child can do in a life time.  Most can't and stay enthralled.

"Hope was the last temptation of  Christ," it has been said.  Look what happened to HIM!  Hope has to be surrendered by you for your own survival.  "Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had" another saying goes. What a hard step that is. Processing -- accepting -- your heart-breaking reality.

We were trained by them to over-identify with them to the exclusion of our own identities and basic needs in life. They do deserve pity, but they have lost that right with us since we have been so victimized by their disorder. They exploited our pity so unbelievably much and our basic need to be loved and cherished to keep us locked in our victimization. Our sense of entitlement to our own God-given and satisfying life must be re-learned.  Somewhere back then we were hoping for their permission and blessing to build our own life, since they were playing God over us.  There is a God or Higher Power and that BEING is NOT them.  And that is the source of unconditional love for us as bereft adults now, not our lost parent.  That God is our parent's parent, too.  Not us.  Not our job ... . and it never should have been.

[GeekyGirl]

Hi bethanny, and welcome back. I'm sorry that you're having a tough time right now.   Recovering from a childhood with a BPD parent isn't easy.

You made some great points on your essay, and you're right in that we were expected to give our own needs and our own selves to appease our BPD parents. As children, we had no choice. As adults, we can start to process what we've been through and heal, but sometimes that road to recovery has some very painful times.

What kind of support are you getting right now? Do you have friends, family, or a good therapist to help you through this? Many of us here know that depression and isolation, and we're here for you. 

[bethanny]

Thanks, Geekygirl.  I have drifted away from support people but they are accessible to me if I reach out I know.  I am not. I keep telling myself manana. 

It helps to be back here and to address the reality I went through.

Thanks for responding.

[GeekyGirl]

Sometimes baby steps can help. Is there something you can do for yourself today to feel better? A short walk, a funny movie, or a quick e-mail or call to a friend might improve your mood. Depression is awful; many of us have been there.

[zone out]

Bethany - my goodness, your interpretation is so apt.  Thank you - I am new on the site and it really has helped to clear up the turmoil in my own mind.  My mother is a uBPD - high functioning, very unpredictable and I am constantly at the mercy of her moods and tantrums.  I have always regarded myself as her punchbag.  I wonder do they have any idea of the pain and confusion they cause ... . I suspect not as they are so wrapped up in themselves.

You obviously have a great understanding of the disorder. I hope things improve soon for you.  My ability to deal with mother ebbs and flows - sometimes I am feeling quite positive and ready to deal with her next outburst, then when faced with it I just turn to jelly.  But I am working on it - here's hoping.

Zone out

[bethanny]

thanks GeekyGirl, baby steps is the way to go.  I did take myself out to a nice dinner tonight for a treat and wrote a couple of emails.

zone, thanks for your validation.  I am glad you have a sensibility of the disorder as I did not when I was dealing with my mother.  The more recovery work I did the more I came to the sensibility of believing in "tough love" but tough love does not work with someone who is paranoid IF the goal is conflict resolution with them. Having that hope.  It just enflames the paranoia and the annihilating anger coming back at one!  One needs to appreciate the depth of this disorder and as I said the sorrow that one has a link of affinity more than intimate love. 

Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had.  That always makes me sad, that saying.

best, bethanny

[PrettyPlease]

Hi bethanny,

Thank you for the essay, I found many sections of it poignant and powerfully worded. I'm not sure my own NPD/uBPD parents were always as extreme as your descriptions, but regardless I found I could agree with almost all of what you said, both rationally and emotionally.

Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had.  That always makes me sad, that saying.

A very interesting statement, and I felt sad also considering it. But I don't think it's the whole story -- and certainly the sadness isn't. What I mean is that there were certain parts of the 'recovery' for me that were flashes of insight -- often from things I learned on this site, or from books or articles about BPD -- that were immediately useful and freeing and don't seem to have any downside; they never made me sad. And that is part of the recovery too. So, I believe the statement really only applies to part of the recovery -- that part that has to do with the false reality that we experienced and learned to believe in, about how certain people in the world viewed us (that they were capable of empathy and respect and consistency and sharing and etc.) And letting go of that is hard.

But once we realize that those things (empathy and respect and consistency and sharing) are not a monopoly held by our BPD parent, that they in fact exist in the world, in billions of other people, then that's also not sad. It's sad that our parents couldn't be that, but in their twisted reality they affected us so that we thought we had to get it from them. But we don't. So instead of two people we can get those things from, now there are several billion.    And I think that's a net gain.  

PP

[bethanny]

PP, wow, you really get to the heart of it with this -- good going:

"It's sad that our parents couldn't be that, but in their twisted reality they affected us so that we thought we had to get it from them. But we don't. So instead of two people we can get those things from, now there are several billion."

Yes, PP how wonderfully optimistic you are for embracing engagement with healthy others post enlightenment. 

To me I see how ferocious it is for us -- me -- not to let the gentleness and capacity of trust of others come to me even if I know intellectually clearly I am afraid of healthy love illuminating what I couldn't get from my parents -- after all this time. A part of me still fights to deny the truth.  I think knowing it again just intellectually will be the antidote to my willfulness to avoid pain, but then I continue to willfully avoid stress, whether positive OR negative. I have a glass jaw I know in terms of natural give and take and conflict in relationships with others. Complex-PTSD or my own fleas of BPD or maybe even BPD (though I hope not).  But avoiding is not going to let me recover.  It keeps me blocked.

How still I fear too often that letting people in close will leave me open to violation and oppression and invalidation once again.  They will turn like my parents did.  Once the people whom I enjoy and seem to enjoy me get close enough to see my non-controlled and less people pleasing persona (or I will exhaust myself keeping the mask on with them, i.e., fear of the REAL me ultimately disgusting them and that they will reject and abandon me or have contempt for me or try to control me and my life).

I know how to talk the talk of recovery, but walking the walk is hard and I often choose numbness and distance instead of the messiness of building intimacy.

This is why I am back here to keep on doing the work.

Thanks for this exchange!

best, bethanny

[Taolady]

Wow. You had me at the first sentence. I think it's great that you have such capicity to describe your experiences. Maybe you could write some more about how this has left you feeling now. I'm sure we'd all benefit. Thank you for your essay.

[zone out]

This IS a really good thread you started Bethany - will resonate with a lot of people ... .   From my own experience I always found my interaction with friends invaluable (esp for an only child).  As the saying goes you can choose your friends but not your family - I got validation and support from friends and was able to give that in return.  When I reflect on it, quite a few of my friends had serious issues with family members - possibly coincidental or we could have subconsciously 'found' each other.

However there was always that feeling of confusion and turmoil in my head - how could I have mutually beneficial interactions with my friends and not with my own mother.  As Pretty Please says it is sad that we were unable to experience empathy, respect, consistency and sharing from our own mothers.  (I for one would have settled for the consistency).   Now that I am gaining an understanding of the disorder, I can understand why and any guilt I have been carrying for fault on my part has dissipated.  If I have been at fault, it was the fault of being too accommodating and taking on the doormat persona.

Any more chapters Bethany - keep them coming.  As Toalady says, I'm sure we would all benefit.

Zone Out

[bethanny]

Note to Annie:  tried to reply but could not get thru!  will keep trying.  thank you!

Taolady, thanks so much for responding!  I learned late in my life -- now, or not long ago more accurately -- about the borderline disorder and my own mother. She had already passed on.  I wish I had known and had support in dealing with it especially during my young adulthood when it was clear becoming an adult was TREASONOUS in my mother's eyes and I did not have permission to embrace my own future for career or family, to make my own life choices and to experience joy if I could make and find it. Survivor guilt for both my parents was always so heavy on me.  I was supposed to fix them before getting my own happiness.

I had such compassion for the chronic anxiety, depression and frustration of my mother's that only her kids and husband were privy to, and wanted to ease her pain, but was in denial of how "commandeered" by her I was to do so.  And how overly controlling and toxically symbiotic she was with me.  It was something I knew on a deep subconscious level but refused to honor the realization to face it and too afraid to test it, criticizing myself for crazily fearing her on some level I could sense -- blaming that on myself not on the reality of her primitive ferocity when challenged since her social and family "image" was of a super maternal woman. I helped to promote that image.

When I was three I told my mother I hated her. I can't remember why but hey I was 3 and was going through natural emotions. One of my earliest memories.  My mother icily lifted herself off of her chair and went to the bedroom I shared with my grandmother and began packing clothes for me in a suitcase. 

I WAS THREE!

I remember gulping and watching that frozen jawed woman who would not look at me my existence disgusted her so and thinking ":)oesn't she know I am too little to go out there alone?"

I continued to study her in horror and knew she demanded I never challenge her with my will or I would be abandoned PHYSICALLY, EMOTIONALLY -- TOTALLY.  She played hardball.  And you know what?  She continued to. When I was 30 it was as if I was 3 again but I pushed this time my will and you know what, I was out of her life for the next 10 years.  Until she had a stroke. And when I showed up at the hospital she turned cold eyes on me.  Eventually she softened but I could not be real with her even then.  I had to be the good girl who picked up her cues, though I stayed on the margin of her life for self-protection, for psychological survival. Guilty but wary.

That three year old self was not allowed to express feelings that were inconvenient for this grown woman who was so pathologically wounded.  But those wounds wounded me in the long and short runs!

Dr. Phil talks about us all having maybe less than 10 defining moments in our lives that shape our personalities and futures.  That 3 year old one was one of mine.  A very negative one and a very conditioning one.  That trauma showed me the borderline child script.

People who don't have to face down disordered parents can't begin to know the gauntlet and the gratuitous fear and anxiety that will shadow our lives and challenge us an entire lifetime. 

best, bethanny

[bethanny]

Zone out, thanks for your validation and support.

I believe we wounded ones do need to find fellow wounded ones to mirror what we went through and support each other. To role model courage and kindness and patience and hope with each other.  To share our challenges and get support.

I appreciate what you are saying about the trauma of not being seen for who we really are by a parent!  I know all parents and children have this challenge, the child is vulnerable to the ego of a parent -- the pressure not to shame them, to fulfill their own frustrated dreams or images, whatever.  But with a borderline or narcissistic parent, this becomes so very crushing on one's spirit.  You have to become what they call a "false personality" to appease them and even then that sacrifice of your spontaneity and opportunity for you yourself ot test and discover who you are must be shelved and then shelved even longer than you anticipated.  Permanently shelved is the horrifying ultimate realization.

I relate to the doormat persona.  But as I wrote above, the borderline plays hard ball, especially with a chosen child for that role of symbiosis, and we choose to play the persona since it ensures survival and we were savvy children who were forced to sacrifice our natural stages of development from sustained trauma and fear. 

best, bethanny

[zone out]

Bethany

That incident when you were three - that is so sad!  I can hardly remember anything when I was three - the very fact that you have such a clear recall at such a young age demonstrates how traumatic an experience it must have been for you.

Your mother must have felt very abandoned and unloved at some stage in her childhood when a comment by such a young child triggered such an extreme reaction in her - packing a suitcase! Any rational adult would appreciate that a 3 year old would not even understand the meaning of 'hate'.  I am new to this site and not too clued up on the whole thing yet but from what I have read, and goodness knows where on the site I read it - there was a comment about the borderline confusing their target with the actual person who had caused them the hurt.  It seems irrational, in the case of a 3 year old child but the one thing that the borderline is not is rational so anything is possible. 

Take care - be good to yourself!

Zone out

[January86]

Bethany,   your essay describes it so perfectly, my mother put all her “family image”, life and emotional expectations in me and wanted me to feel thankful for it... . I wish I could understand my feelings as you are able to write them down (I write a diary but is a mess of ideas that come into my mind). You really get the core of the BPDmother-daughter dynamic. It’s so intense for us and invisible to others.

I don’t remember at what age, but very little I wrote in a wall of my home, hidden by some furniture “I hate you”, and I remember writing it thinking of her. Now I understand I wanted someone to see it, to help me. I guess when my father painted the wall he probably saw it but he covered it up and said nothing, like a metaphor come true.

(  I hope this time it doesn’t happen like other times that I posted a story, when after some days I couldn’t tell if that story had actually happened and felt I couldn’t tell if I had imagined it. Like if making it public was too much and my mind starts doubting. I take the chance to ask if anyone experienced this?)

I’m still a bit in denial and with a very confusing sense of my own personality, with that exhausting mask that you describe when I communicate with others. I want to take it off! But still don’t know who is behind the mask, what if I am crazy or I hurt others? Step by step I guess…

I hope you get better soon, you should know you are helping many of us with your posts and essay, you're obviously very talented and intelligent, I admire you! Keep writing! I hope your feeling down period is short. I’m starting Mindful and doing a short trip soon, maybe something like this helps? What always helps me it's a good dancing own my own session with beyonce and rihanna music mostly heh All my love