Hello Petipata
Thanks for sharing your story! It’s very important to talk about your experiences and bpdfamily is a very good place to do so. You’ll find that many people on here can relate to many aspects of your story.
I suspect my mother to be a borderline. During all my childhood I had the anxiety off the turn. My mother was higlhy emotional instable, depressed. We (my brothers and my fathers) were highly affraid about the turn. For any reason she can get super angry, screaming, leaving the house for days for unknown reasons.
Ah yes, the dreaded turn! I was afraid of this too, always looking for signs that would tell me if my uBPD was possibly gonna turn into the witch again. It’s very stressful when you always gotta be on guard for possible attacks by your own mother. Our parents are supposed to protect us but we actually needed protection from our parents.
During all my childhood, I needed to take care of my mother feelings. Most of the time, like once day in a week, she offered us silent treatment for several days for some reasons. I remember she refused to talk to me for 3 days because I said that the meal she cooked was cold, I was 10 years old.
I’m very sorry your mother treated you this way. It’s emotionally very draining when you always gotta take care of someone else’s feeling and basically aren’t allowed to have feelings of your own. The silent treatment is very hurtful and confusing when you’re just a 10 year old. My uBPD mom can be highly manipulative and when I was younger she would sometimes use the silent treatment to ‘punish’ me for something I had done wrong. My brother was an expert in applying the silent treatment, he could keep it up for weeks. What kind of relationship do you have with your parents now? Does your mother still treat you this way?
My father contributed to the pattern because he would say things to me like: ":)on't get your mother started. Be kind, just say positive things, never tallk about negative things."
I used to hide my feelings, my needs and my personality in order to avoid her rage.
This sounds like your father was an enabler and probably also very afraid of your mother’s behavior. The problem is that this sent the wrong message to you, it’s almost like saying it’s your fault when your mother misbehaved because you supposedly weren’t nice or positive enough towards her.
She was never diagnosed as a borderline, but she is taking antidepressant, and we knew she used to see a psychiatrist to treat her mood disorder.
This is very similar to what I experienced with my own mother. She also used to take anti-depressants and was also treated by a psychiatrist for a while. I don’t know if she was diagnosed as BPD, if so she never told us. But to me it’s clear that she has BPD.
I am in my meed 20's, trying to understand my childhood, my fear of abandonment, my lack of emotionnal expresions, and my relationships issues. I hope that sharing my feelings with you could help me understand I was not guilty about what happened, and to be able to build some kind of self confidence.
The issues you describe are very common in children of BPD parents. You’re definitely not alone in feeling this way. You weren’t guilty or at fault, remember that you were just a very young child and as children we are very dependent on our parents. In many ways we are powerless when our parents mistreat us. It’s difficult to accept this reality of our childhood, but fortunately we aren’t that young and powerless anymore. Now that you’re an adult you can try to learn new ways of dealing with your parents and also start working on healing from your painful childhood. Good luck on your journey towards new insights and healing!
