Dealing with (shrugging off) the stories they tell about you

[Bonus mom]

I was thinking about a topic that I haven't seen much talk about here on this particular board. When you go to the "ending a relationship" board, there's a lot of talk about what happens when you're painted black, and how to deal with it - Frequently the advice comes down to "no contact" and just walk away.  But as parents, we often don't have the choice to walk away. Well I suppose we do have the choice, the difference is that, as we are the parents, we tend to not walk away very quickly.

I wonder, how much of this reluctance to walk away is guilt-based?  Do we feel just so much pressure to stick with our children no matter what, that we can't dream of walking away?  Is there shame behind it?  Are we very harshly judged if we do walk away?  Should that matter?

I've heard some pretty ridiculous (illogical) stories from my daughter's mouth about me and my husband. She's telling some lovely tales to our family and beyond that generate significant sympathy and attention. 

Is it even worth bothering to correct these myths?  Mostly I find I just don't care (old me would have insisted on the record being straight, but new me, I care less and less) but I do wonder from time to time which is the lesser evil; silence or speaking up?

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

[qcarolr]

Bonus mom   

You are asking some very good questions here. All of them I have asked myself over the past few years. My BPDDD is now 27. She had the BPD dx added to her mix of labels at age 23. There are so many ideas, skills, tools, etc. that I have learned here at bpdfamily.com that would have helped me when DD was younger, especially those teen years.

May I ask the age of your child with BPD?

I was thinking about a topic that I haven't seen much talk about here on this particular board. When you go to the "ending a relationship" board, there's a lot of talk about what happens when you're painted black, and how to deal with it - Frequently the advice comes down to "no contact" and just walk away.  But as parents, we often don't have the choice to walk away. Well I suppose we do have the choice, the difference is that, as we are the parents, we tend to not walk away very quickly.

I wonder, how much of this reluctance to walk away is guilt-based?  Do we feel just so much pressure to stick with our children no matter what, that we can't dream of walking away?  Is there shame behind it?  Are we very harshly judged if we do walk away?  Should that matter?

My experience convinces me that a parent of a BPD child is more complex than most of other BPD relationships. There is guilt, social stigma and blaming of parents for how their kids behave (young or adult). There are professionals that do not have current information about BPD, and they express their own type of stigma, and sometimes can make things worse. Just like sometimes I can make things worse.

I have read current physiological/neurological research that shows an attachment between a child and caregiver (most often mom in the beginning) that adds one more level to how hard it is to separate our lives from our kids lives. Raising a troubled child seems to makes this even more difficult to navigate.

I've heard some pretty ridiculous (illogical) stories from my daughter's mouth about me and my husband. She's telling some lovely tales to our family and beyond that generate significant sympathy and attention. 

Is it even worth bothering to correct these myths?  Mostly I find I just don't care (old me would have insisted on the record being straight, but new me, I care less and less) but I do wonder from time to time which is the lesser evil; silence or speaking up?

I have experienced a place in between these extremes, though find it hard still to be consistent when I am feeling stressed/overwhelmed/fearful/burned out. It has a lot to do with acceptance - Radical Acceptance. And other skills like validation and my values based boundaries (about protecting me and others in the family, not changing my D).

Building a support network that I can turn to, learning all I can about BPD and the family dynamics of all the relationships in my family, figuring out how to take care of myself to be in the best physical, mental and emotional health for my family -- these seem to be the best first steps. Then we can work on developing the boundaries to support these family dynamics in a more healthy way, become more validating in our communications within our family... . 

In the beginning, I believed it was all about 'fixing' my DD. That if only she would change, the rest of the family would be OK - me included. This has evolved over the past 4 years (maybe I am a slow learner, or have lots of my own emotional issues to figure out) to learning how to stay connected with my adult D, even as I limit my physical contacts with her. She refuses to accept treatment. I have to accept that I can be OK in my life even if she does not change. I have tried to 'walk away' -- just too much pain on all sides. I will always love my D and have hope that she can find a path toward accepting treatment. Than she can change herself.

There are others here that may be able to distill this in fewer words.

qcr

[Thursday]

Hi Bonusmom,

I wonder, how much of this reluctance to walk away is guilt-based?  Do we feel just so much pressure to stick with our children no matter what, that we can't dream of walking away?  Is there shame behind it?  Are we very harshly judged if we do walk away?  Should that matter?

Reading qcarolr's response and knowing my own makes me aware of the big diversity we have on this board, different ages of troubled kids, blended families vs those with original members only, only kid scenarios vs BPD kids with siblings. I think how we answer this depends on our individual situations, how the BPD is affecting the family dynamics in general is a big part of the equation.


I am step-parent to the person with BPD in my family. She is an only child. I came into her life when she was 14 and moved in when she was 15. Her Mom died when my SD was 12/13 (meaning she was 12 but within days of turning 13) I have one birth child, an adult daughter who has never lived with us and for most of our relationship has not lived in the same town.

I've never felt like walking away was an option and neither has her Dad but my SD isn't as dysfunctional as some here. I've certainly heard stories here that make me understand needing to get separation.

For me, the narrowest answer to your question is to say, as parents I think we have to do all that we can to help them. And that doesn't mean fixing or rescuing. It means learning new ways to interact, new ways of looking at the situation. I think parents and family are the constant in most BPD's lives. At least the children of the members of this board, right?

SD's teenaged years were very, very hard for me as I fumbled around with both fitting into a new relationship with her Dad and went from thinking she was a spoiled brat (on steroids) who needed the structure and discipline that I was capable of providing to figuring out that there was something really wrong with her- my structure and discipline were helping but not enough.

With the help of family therapy (a one on one session with our family therapist helped me to see that the problems had a name, that it wasn't my position in our family that was causing the trouble (yes, I thought that for a long time).

Since your SD is 17, I totally "get" where these questions are coming from. Now that my SD is 22 and no longer lives with us I can relax. Being in that tornado of her teenaged years it took a lot of unwinding.

I would hope that whoever your SD is talking ugly to about you

can see you and your actions with the same clarity they see your SD and SD's actions. 

Maybe a bit of my perspective can help you sort out some of the answers to your questions-

SD quit living with us a few years ago (she was 19/20) when she agreed to move into a sober living house. At the time she was addicted to benzos (Xanax) and knew she needed help. Once she moved out her Dad accepted that she should not live with us anymore as he was enabling her and it was a detriment to her sobriety. This was all much easier for him to see when she was not under our roof.

Once her Dad could see that his enabling was harming her he got on board with no longer doing this. Boundaries were discovered. Other people were accepted by her as mentors (this has been a huge key in our situation... .so long as I was the only one offering a different view point, her Dad's guilt over the situation kept him from being able to see that he was enabling (and not just being a dutiful, responsible father)

I don't know if SD understands this as well. We don't see much of her and I don't know if it is because she understands that more interaction with her Dad might be detrimental to her hard won better outcomes with her life OR if she is just being the young adult that she is and seeing parentals is a chore and not as much fun as focusing on her social life and work. Her focus on work is a new thing as she had previously been unemployed  with her hand stuck out for help for the last two years plus.

Also, I have the "luxury" of not caring one iota what the folks she complains to about me think of me. And then there is the fact that my SD, well before I came into the picture, had displayed enough disturbing behavior to pretty much all of her family, nobody would have believed anything she said.

My situation is that the only family in our town is SD's late Mom's family. They have all felt, at one point or another, burdened by SD's issues as they were called upon to care for SD while her Mom was ill (she fought cancer for 5 years) and briefly afterwards to help her Dad get a grip on his new situation as a widower. So, I have the step-kid but with no other parent as a part of the mix. For the most part, SD's extended family dropped her like a hot-potato after her Mom died. SD appears to have very little understanding of this (denial).

I hope my answers help. I will keep an eye out for your posts!

Thursday

[Thursday]

Another quick thought,

I always have found it helpful to vent here when my SD has done something particularly irritating or something that seemed mean spirited to me. That was a successful way for me to deal with her negative jazz as I could put it out here in order to get rid of it everywhere, if that makes sense.

[Bonus mom]

Thank you for very thoughtful replies!

And a particular  to you, Thursday, as I completely understand your comment about putting our complaints "out here to get rid of it everywhere... ." In my short time on this site, I have already found that to be very true.

It's true that all of our situations are very unique, and yet we are connected.  That's the beauty of this site, and these boards isn't it?  There's bound to be someone who shares a very similar situation to your own!

Our daughter 17 is coming up on a month not living with us - and that transition has been amazingly smooth.  For us in the house, I mean.  Interestingly, the only person in our home who is struggling at all is our youngest son - he seems to feel guilty that we are relieved she is gone.  And it is just relief, we're not "celebrating" with a party or anything!  My husband thinks that perhaps our son is worried that if he were to leave we would feel relieved and not sad.  I will be addressing that with him :-)

Yesterday she told her dad she has absolutely no intention of doing any counselling or DBT.  Those were our conditions for her to be living as a part of our family in our home.  She is in a full-blown "I'm the victim" mode at the moment - so he wisely just gave her a hug, said let's keep in touch, and we love you.

I'm quite proud of her dad actually, for being able to say that "if I only see you once or twice a month for breakfast, that's okay."  He is arriving at a place where he recognizes that she is who she is, and all the wishing in the world isn't going to change her if she doesn't wish to make any changes herself.  And right now, she doesn't.

The stories that she tells about us? Sometimes they make me mad, but usually just for a few moments.  They're so completely illogical, that it's hard to really feel terribly wounded by them.  But it does "suck in" other people around her, and they run to her aid.  I find that as long as I remind myself that what she says, and what other people believe, is not my problem, it's much easier to keep my emotions out of it and just stay focused on the task at hand.  I am human though LOL so that sometimes fails!

So we continue to do our reading, continue to learn more about how we can be more validating and mindful, and just use those skills in our everyday life.  It is already making the limited contact that we do have with our daughter easier, even if she isn't making any attempts to change at her end.  We are letting go of the future that we had created in our minds, and learning how to embrace the future that will be our reality.

[Kate4queen]

Firstly, I had to get used to going into a situation where my BPD son had met the people first and given 'his version' of our family and our parenting. I encountered a great deal of hostility and anger from some people including teachers and therapists who were so determined to 'put the child first' that they could not or would not listen to any input from us in a non-biased manner.

In those situations I usually found that time and continuing to behave pleasantly, professionally and rationally toward those people made them rethink their attitudes sometimes.

For example, when my son was 16 and we were seriously worried about his mental state, we went in to see the school therapist to ask for her help. She was very unpleasant and insisted that from what she'd been told, we were the problem and she sent us away with books about controlling our anger... .

Of course, a month later our son threatened me with a kitchen knife, beat up his brother who tried to defend me, called the police on us and ended up in the County Mental Health facilities screaming obscenities at us.

I asked them to send a report directly to the school therapist about what they'd seen and wrote her a letter-mainly so it was on his physical record-about what had occurred.

I encountered her occasionally afterward and she wasn't quite so pro my son anymore. When she also net my dd professionally and realized how BPD son's rages had affected her, she stopped being quite so angry on my son's behalf.

So I learned just to be myself and not be defensive and just be honest about what was going on. I couldn't make them understand what we alone mostly saw but I was determined not to be treated like 100% of the problem.

And the other bit?

We eventually let him walk out last year after years of him threatening and us scrabbling around doing anything to appease him because we were terrified of letting him go.

And he went and everyone else in the house calmed down (he has 3 siblings) Youngest son closest to BPD son was very angry with us for not asking him back-very angry and still sides with his brother to this day. Oldest son was delighted, young daughter just relieved there was no more shouting. Do I feel guilty for enjoying the reprieve from years of stress? Sometimes. But when it came down to it I had to save the most people I could.

Matters are also complicated with my BPD son because he is also physically disabled, so whatever we do in some quarters we are still going to be seen as monsters for 'kicking him out' (his words) and 'not paying for college' (offered to pay community college costs so he could finish but he declined) not paying his health insurance (he's uninsurable not out choice).

I can't control what other people think about us. I know the truth.

[twojaybirds]

Over the last 1.5 years I have learned

to dump my anger and frustrations here my   

who my friends are    (they know she has a disorder and can see my love for her and learn how to love me and her without judgment)

to laugh at the 'insanity' of it all (she's bring Farmer's Insurance to court according to one of the newest fb posts)  

to take the high road without explanation to others  

to find freedom in her glimmers in her achievements and empathy in her pain

It has not always been easy, but comes easier with time.

It has not always expelled my 'guilt' but my self-care has improved

It is not what I anticipated, but then again, most of life is not the way we planned it... .