Children of BPD parents: Have you ever worried you had it?

[still_flying]

Does anyone else get really worried that they have BPD type symptoms? The combination of my anxiety/depression and the trauma of growing up with a parent who has this disorder and just getting out of a relationship last year with someone who probably did too means that sometimes I act in ways that seem to me to be on the borderline spectrum. I am fairly certain I don't have it; after my mom was diagnosed, I did DBT for a while and told the therapist I was afraid I had it. She told me she was pretty damn certain I didn't. I guess this comes down to trusting this therapist and recognizing that not only are a lot of the symptoms on a spectrum of severity (not initiating social contact with someone at some times and initiating it at others is a much less severe push/pull than people who really have this disorder would do), but also I learned some disordered survival strategies to get through a really messed up home environment and an unhealthy relationship. This doesn't make me crazy, it means that I have some stuff to work through though.

Does anybody else struggle with this?

[GeekyGirl]

It's very, very common for people who grew up with BPD parents to develop BPD traits, if not the disorder itself. We call the traits "fleas" here  . If you think about it, our parents are generally our first teachers, and we learn behaviors (healthy and unhealthy) from watching them when we're children.

While it's common, it's not a given that you will have BPD or BPD traits. You were smart to see a therapist and get some answers. It's ok to have things to work on--we can all get stronger and healthier. 

What would you change if you found out that you did have BPD? What have you tried so far to counter the disordered survival strategies that you learned as a child?

[sad4mydad]

I've experienced similar fears. After I figured out (via reading and talking with my therapist) that my mom has BPD, I was worried that I would get it, too. I must have asked my therapist 1,000 times if she thought I had it (or might get it) and she assured me that I did not.  However, even now, whenever I start to feel the least bit emotional, I get paranoid about it.  That results in suppressed feelings, which isn't right, either.  It can certainly be exhausting at times!

[Valory]

I worried that I might copy my mother's behaviors.  This is one of the main reasons I could never make the decision to have a child.  It would be so horrible to visit that pain and sadness on another innocent person.  I don't know if I definitely would have acted toward a child of mine like my mother acted toward me, but I could not move past that fear.  I'm sad now because I am past the age of child-bearing, but even if I weren't, I still don't think I would feel safe about having a child.

[emjay45151]

I question that all the time. Usually over stupid things that I associate with my mother, like sleeping too much. She would sleep for solid days sometimes when I was a child and I get paranoid now whenever I have weeks where I take too many naps. Things like that. I have to remind myself why I am doing that action. Am I using it as an escape like she was or am I simply tired? Sometimes it's enough to remind myself that no, you are not like her, but then others it feeds the sessions of depressive feedback loops I get stuck in.

It's one of the things I'm hoping to work on in a therapy session I'm starting next week. I have the habit of ignoring my own bad behavior when acknowledging it would mean that I would have to admit that I have something remotely in common with her.

[tick.tock]

I worry about this all the time. The anxiety I feel whenever I begin a relationship with someone (romantic or otherwise), the fear of abandonment — these remind me of my mother and I hate it. However, I often discuss these fears with my therapist and she assures me that she wouldn't diagnose me as BPD, just as a child who'd grown up with a BPD mother. It's perfectly normal pick up behavioral patterns from your parents; unfortunately, most of us had poor role models.

[WiseMind]

I worry about this almost daily and have asked my T on numerous occasions if she thought I had it. She does not. Like someone said earlier though, I know I've developed traits of it simply because I am the child of someone with BPD. I work every day to retrain my brain. It can be exhausting.

I am ashamed by how I have behaved in the past, knowing what I know now. I know I acted foolishly in my early relationships before I knew what was 'normal' and what was not OK to do. I did the manipulation and silent treatment. I fight very hard to remember all of what my T has equipped me with so as to act and think in a more healthy manner.

-WM

[livednlearned]

I think my grandmother was BPD, and my dad is the all-good child. He has a lot of NPD/BPD behaviors, and then he had me. I have those behaviors too. I think of them as ghosts, now that I've worked through a lot of stuff.

It seems like BPD is a severe splitting of the self. The behaviors that pwBPD have are like the ones we have, but we can pull back from the edge, whereas they can't -- not without intensive therapy for long periods of time.

That's how I think about BPD. It's like they just barreling for the cliff, and they keep going over it, whereas I have brakes. My ex told me I was an egomaniac, was narcissistic, selfish, self-absorbed. That was so confusing because if I ever enjoyed something for myself, or thought about myself, or got a little distracted while he was talking, I thought, wow, I must be all these bad things.

It was so confusing that I couldn't understand what people meant when they said to "love myself." Wasn't that the problem?

Turns out no! My dad, with NPD traits, didn't want me to take care of myself because that meant rocking the boat. It wasn't until working through FOO (family or origin) stuff that I was able to see that emotional maturity can be really threatening to the people who raised you, especially if they aren't emotionally mature.

I'm riddled with flaws, but I'm much more accepting of my stuff now, and that makes it easy to see just how different I am from my family. My dad and uBPD brother never admit flaws. Never apologize. They're never wrong, and when they get angry or feel afraid, they hurt other people so they don't hurt.

Glad I'm not like that.

Maybe think of the ways you aren't like your mom?

[psychik]

My mom has it.  I found the only way to be that felt right for me was to do the opposite of everything she did.  She taught me how to be a good parent by default.  I also had to train myself to not over react to every little small thing.  Life exponentially became easier as I did that.  The hardest thing for me is to deal with BPD not going away or getting better.  In my family, those with it are not wrong... .they are the saints, sane and you are the problem.  It's an every day battle where I tell myself, this really is the way it is and it's not all in my head.  It is hard to not believe what they say... .the problem is you. No it isn't.

My T assured me I didn't have it.  Over and over again.  Maybe the fact that we are willing to worry about having it is the best sign we don't!  Few in my family will even discuss it. 

[GeekyGirl]

My T assured me I didn't have it.  Over and over again.  Maybe the fact that we are willing to worry about having it is the best sign we don't! 

Great point, psychik! I've heard that too, from my T and from a few friends who work in the mental health field. Very often, someone with BPD won't realize or acknowledge how his/her behavior is affecting others.

[cheerio99]

Does anyone else get really worried that they have BPD type symptoms? The combination of my anxiety/depression and the trauma of growing up with a parent who has this disorder and just getting out of a relationship last year with someone who probably did too means that sometimes I act in ways that seem to me to be on the borderline spectrum. I am fairly certain I don't have it; after my mom was diagnosed, I did DBT for a while and told the therapist I was afraid I had it. She told me she was pretty damn certain I didn't. I guess this comes down to trusting this therapist and recognizing that not only are a lot of the symptoms on a spectrum of severity (not initiating social contact with someone at some times and initiating it at others is a much less severe push/pull than people who really have this disorder would do), but also I learned some disordered survival strategies to get through a really messed up home environment and an unhealthy relationship. This doesn't make me crazy, it means that I have some stuff to work through though.

Does anybody else struggle with this?

I think I was probably 25 or so when I realized that I wasn't going to be "crazy" like my mother. Part of the reason I always thought I might end up crazy is because I almost did end up crazy. As I'm sure is the case with many children who grow up in difficult situations, I had a lot of problems in adolescence and early adulthood. One of my problems was an eating disorder, which I now recognize was a manifestation of the black-and-white thinking and victim mentality that I learned from my mother who I think has BPD traits.

For me, I'm actually glad about the eating disorder in a way because it was a problem that could be named and thus it gave me something I had to work on actively. With my shrink I directly challenged a lot of the maladaptive thinking patterns that I think might have led me to a worse outcome in my adult life. But I think anyone--even someone who does develop BPD or another mental illness--can usually make progress in their ability to deal with life if they make a concerted effort.

That's why I don't find the "crazy/not crazy" or even "mentally ill/not mentally ill" label all that helpful sometimes. Taking myself as an example, I've definitely done things as an adult where I can look back and thing, man, I must have lost my xxxx mind, what was I thinking? That was really messed up -- how could I let someone treat me that way? Or sometimes I will even just yell at my husband or fail to control my emotions or whatever and think, oh lord I'm acting just like my mother.

But really I think it's all a matter of degree and trajectory: am I better today than I was five years ago? Yes. Am I committed to being better in five years than I am now? Absolutely. So to me, that's about the best I can do. Whether that's "crazy" or not, either way I'm fine with it.

[petridish]

Yes, I've worried about it, but only since my former individual therapist decided, in the middle (literally) of our last family therapy session with me and my uBPD mother to send her out of the room and suggest I had BPD. If I had mentioned any suspicions about my mother having BPD, it had been at least a year earlier and with the caveat of really hoping it was something else because of the daunting prognosis. My T's "diagnosis" came after I'd ended individual therapy with her (but didn't yet have a new therapist) after a year and a half of feeling worse and more powerless about my situation after our sessions and no longer feeling confident in her repeated promises that it would get better if I just stuck with her.

It was incredibly devastating. I'd been in therapy for about ten years at that point, with positive experiences, and with each counselor I was more and more trusting and emotionally open (and I'd started out pretty damn open because I'd seen how being closed failed to improve things for my mother). I'm still trying to figure out why I was so hurt by it. I think part of it is that I just don't fit the criteria -- I have a healthy sense of who I am and am confident in my skills, but I also am open to criticism and seek it out because I know that I have areas of weakness to address. My moods are pretty stable, I am not impulsive, I follow through on my responsibilities, and my friendships are long-lasting and strong. Aside from the isolation of full-time care-taking for my father with dementia despite resistance and chaos being added in by my uBPD mother with no relief in sight (which is why we were in therapy), I have not felt empty inside. My T knew all this, or at least she should have if I'd been heard AT ALL in our dozens and dozens of sessions.

BUT.

After reading this board, I think she was steering me towards fitting the criteria for BPD, though probably not consciously. Over our individual counseling sessions, she kept suggesting I felt abandoned as a kid, which I never did (my father was very good about letting us know our mother loved us, despite her problems in showing it appropriately and consistently). She had a focus on talking about my childhood, stuff I'd already worked through with with earlier counselors, in ways that were less positive than my actual feelings on them and at a time when I just wanted to focus on getting through the current circumstances.

In the family sessions, she encouraged me to "let my mother be the mother". She suggested letting my mother parent me and respond to how I was feeling, rather than me validating and soothing her. She suggested being vulnerable with my mother and letting her take care of me. I didn't realize at the time (or I was in denial about) how closely my mother fits many of the criteria for BPD and how similar she is to so many of your mothers. So I tried. I stopped "being the adult" as I'd learned at an early age. I started being even more vulnerable with my mother. I let myself be more honest with her when something she said hurt me (instead of ignoring all but the most egregious). I let myself hope she would follow-through on her promises (to call me, to ask how I was doing, to not turn the conversation to her, etc.).

Needless to say, months of that did nothing to improve our already contentious relationship or my overall mental health while I was isolated in care-taking. I actually started meeting the criteria for BPD, though ONLY in relationship to my mother. I started feeling abandoned by her (before, I'd felt sadness and frustration about our relationship but never like it was her conscious choice to not be there for me); I took her lashing-out more literally and more personally than I ever had before; I raged back at her. It was all horribly painful and I didn't know what I would do without a better relationship with her and I felt powerless to improve it.

Perhaps all this would have happened regardless of counseling. I certainly was having a rough go emotionally with the slow loss of my father as my stable parent who unfailingly helped me make sense of the chaos that is my uBPD mother's love. My mother had turned to me for much of the emotional regulation/care that my father provided, but also aimed towards me much of her fear/anger as his "abandonment" of her through dementia. There were other things going on in my life that were hard (trying to be there for a close friend dealing with sexual assault, rough roommate situations, the death of a close (on my father's side) relative, an unstable work situation) and I still am learning healthy coping mechanisms for that level of stress. But I don't think I would've been willing to "let my mother be the mother" without a trusted counselor WHO HAD MET HER telling me, reassuring me it would work and be safe.

So I don't know. I am sure that I don't have BPD (and have verified this with a few other family members and friends), unless one can have some external BPD in only one relationship, but I also feel so weird about being told I do by someone who absolutely should've known I didn't. And then sometimes I wonder if somehow I'm just so out of touch with reality that I only THINK I have a health self-confidence and stable sense of self and somewhere underneath that I DO have BPD? Isn't being upset about a diagnosis of BPD and denying it characteristic of BPD? So isn't my certainty that I don't somehow verification that I do?

Sorry for the novel! This has been weighing on me off and on and while I can shake it off most of the time, the circular logic of it that crops up occasionally is really unpleasant.

Thank you, still_flying, for bringing this up. It helps to know that other children of BPD parents struggle with the self-doubt too (though I wish we didn't!). 

[livednlearned]

That's why I don't find the "crazy/not crazy" or even "mentally ill/not mentally ill" label all that helpful sometimes. Taking myself as an example, I've definitely done things as an adult where I can look back and thing, man, I must have lost my xxxx mind, what was I thinking? That was really messed up -- how could I let someone treat me that way? Or sometimes I will even just yell at my husband or fail to control my emotions or whatever and think, oh lord I'm acting just like my mother.

But really I think it's all a matter of degree and trajectory: am I better today than I was five years ago? Yes. Am I committed to being better in five years than I am now? Absolutely. So to me, that's about the best I can do. Whether that's "crazy" or not, either way I'm fine with it.

cheerio99, that is so wise. Thanks for putting that out there -- it reminds me of things my T says. She doesn't like labels, although I sorta wish she did because discovering BPD allowed me to find resources. Understanding the disorder helped me find the boundaries between me and others. Maybe the no boundaries thing we experience as kids makes us want diagnoses so we at least know there are boundaries. By boundaries, I mean between their behavior (crazy, abusive) and our beliefs about who we are.

[livednlearned]

So I don't know. I am sure that I don't have BPD (and have verified this with a few other family members and friends), unless one can have some external BPD in only one relationship, but I also feel so weird about being told I do by someone who absolutely should've known I didn't. And then sometimes I wonder if somehow I'm just so out of touch with reality that I only THINK I have a health self-confidence and stable sense of self and somewhere underneath that I DO have BPD? Isn't being upset about a diagnosis of BPD and denying it characteristic of BPD? So isn't my certainty that I don't somehow verification that I do?

How devastating -- I can only imagine what that would feel like. And how fortunate you had your father as a sympathetic witness throughout your life, someone who could help you figure out what was crazy. That probably helped you deal with a therapist handing out a dx like that, having something solid inside you to help make sense of it.

I have read other posts by people here who were incorrectly dx'd BPD. Funny -- all of them were in some kind of couples counseling. Maybe there's something to that? The T sees the dynamic, but misinterprets the roles. Therapists are only as good as their own healing, and being able to assert yourself (whether directly or in your mind) with a therapist seems almost heroic.

Are you able to trust therapists after that experience?

[petridish]

So I don't know. I am sure that I don't have BPD (and have verified this with a few other family members and friends), unless one can have some external BPD in only one relationship, but I also feel so weird about being told I do by someone who absolutely should've known I didn't. And then sometimes I wonder if somehow I'm just so out of touch with reality that I only THINK I have a health self-confidence and stable sense of self and somewhere underneath that I DO have BPD? Isn't being upset about a diagnosis of BPD and denying it characteristic of BPD? So isn't my certainty that I don't somehow verification that I do?

How devastating -- I can only imagine what that would feel like. And how fortunate you had your father as a sympathetic witness throughout your life, someone who could help you figure out what was crazy. That probably helped you deal with a therapist handing out a dx like that, having something solid inside you to help make sense of it.

I have read other posts by people here who were incorrectly dx'd BPD. Funny -- all of them were in some kind of couples counseling. Maybe there's something to that? The T sees the dynamic, but misinterprets the roles. Therapists are only as good as their own healing, and being able to assert yourself (whether directly or in your mind) with a therapist seems almost heroic.

Are you able to trust therapists after that experience?

I just called to find a new therapist, after just over a year of going without one. I think it'll be hard, but I did mention my previous experience in the intake, so hopefully that'll help.

I am INCREDIBLY lucky to have my father. While I know he was/is co-dep, he is really emotionally stable and predictable and not prone to rages or yelling. He modeled a lot of behaviors that helped me avoid a lot of fleas (I have far more of his fleas than my mother's).

To your point that I bolded, I think this might be part of it. I don't think my mother was trying to be DIShonest with the counselor, but she certainly rarely goes into rages with witnesses (and even then, only close family) and many of the ways in which she causes pain are very subtle, based on her knowledge of specific vulnerabilities. I don't think any of this is conscious. I honestly believe her intent is not to hurt me; her core self is so defensive that I am just collateral when its extremely honed defense system starts firing.

And based on how similar others' experiences with pwBPD are, I could very well see this being the case. We nons go in to therapy (family or couples) at a point when the pain is quite high. I think we're pretty normal: we know there's something going on with the other person, but we also know that we might be contributing to this. We are open in how we feel, and by this point, in responding to years with the pwBPD, we feel unsure of how they can love us AND hurt us with very specific painful remarks, we aren't sure if they're the nice person or the lashing-out person, there is a sense of not knowing who we are WITHIN the relationship (which can be a huge part of our focus) because what's reflected back to us is so chaotic and unpredictable, and we're frustrated at broken promises, walking on eggshells, never being good enough. We have some sense of freedom to not hold back or have to be the "mature" one, perhaps, at having a witness who, we think, is trained and willing to help. But we also have very little remaining patience and we've exhausted so much energy trying futilely to be good enough or reaffirm/"prove" that we love the pwBPD. We want the pwBPD to be held accountable. We might have a sense of entitlement, in that we think we're entitled to be treated lovingly by the pwBPD.

Yeah. I can definitely see how standard multiple-person therapy would lend itself to a misplaced diagnosis of BPD.


For my own situation, I think that was part of it, but after writing my long post yesterday, I started wondering if there might not be some BPD/NPD characteristics in my T as well. I had been direct about counseling with her not working for me and my frustrations with it (though I also tried to be clear that I didn't think it was any failure on her part) for at least eight months prior to ceasing individual therapy with her.

The impetus for ending it had been a very strange scenario in a family session that included two siblings wherein she half-threatened to report me to adult protective services for my father being stinky (only, when I asked, she said she had noticed no odor from him on the multiple occasions when she'd met him while he waited in the lobby during my counseling sessions). It was very upsetting, strange, and inappropriate (I checked with siblings afterwards to see if I'd overreacted, as I had been quite stressed beforehand, and they actually felt like she was behaving like a bully). When I said how hurt I had been by this in our next individual counseling session, she was quite defensive, reiterated her threat, and changed her story, now saying that once a few months before she thought he'd smelled and that she was only telling me because she thought she should remind me of her mandated reporter status (which was unnecessary, as she'd gone over it very recently when my siblings joined for a few family sessions). That was my last time seeing her in individual therapy.

Her "diagnosis" came the next time I saw her in a session with my mother that I was attending to address a specific issue. It had nothing to do with the specific issue that we were in the middle of discussing, smack dab in the middle of a FAMILY session, and there was no warning or follow-through/follow-up or time to process. Seriously, it still seems like there was something really really "off" about how it happened.

That's why I don't find the "crazy/not crazy" or even "mentally ill/not mentally ill" label all that helpful sometimes. Taking myself as an example, I've definitely done things as an adult where I can look back and thing, man, I must have lost my xxxx mind, what was I thinking? That was really messed up -- how could I let someone treat me that way? Or sometimes I will even just yell at my husband or fail to control my emotions or whatever and think, oh lord I'm acting just like my mother.

But really I think it's all a matter of degree and trajectory: am I better today than I was five years ago? Yes. Am I committed to being better in five years than I am now? Absolutely. So to me, that's about the best I can do. Whether that's "crazy" or not, either way I'm fine with it.

cheerio99, that is so wise. Thanks for putting that out there -- it reminds me of things my T says. She doesn't like labels, although I sorta wish she did because discovering BPD allowed me to find resources. Understanding the disorder helped me find the boundaries between me and others. Maybe the no boundaries thing we experience as kids makes us want diagnoses so we at least know there are boundaries. By boundaries, I mean between their behavior (crazy, abusive) and our beliefs about who we are.

I really think this makes a lot of sense. I feel like labels are categorization and categorizing things helps us make order out of chaos, which is a large part of growing up with a parent with BPD. Being able to understand my mother's behavior in part under a label doesn't dehumanize her for me; rather, it helps me better understand how her mind works, how my own behaviors might have developed in response to hers, and allows me to more easily identify and try to change no-longer-helpful coping mechanisms. With a label, I can find resources (like this website) to learn better, healthier ways of living with having a loved one who isn't herself predictable, but whose cluster of behaviors nonetheless are common enough to have some best practices for dealing with or making sense of them.

[livednlearned]

For my own situation, I think that was part of it, but after writing my long post yesterday, I started wondering if there might not be some BPD/NPD characteristics in my T as well. I had been direct about counseling with her not working for me and my frustrations with it (though I also tried to be clear that I didn't think it was any failure on her part) for at least eight months prior to ceasing individual therapy with her.

I saw a T and, looking back, I now wonder something similar. I was in group therapy with 9 other women, and started to realize that those women had been in the group for years. One of them for over 8 years. Another one kept saying she was going to leave, and then would come back. A third announced she was going to leave, and at the therapist's urging, everyone gave the exiting person "feedback", and I found that process to be really strange and not very supportive. People would kind of unload on the "leaver" and basically tell her, "You aren't ready to leave. Here are all the reasons why."

I thought the therapist leading the group acted like a bully, making it awful for the people who were trying to leave... .that didn't seem ethical to me. I told a friend about it who is a professor that teaches in our local university's social work program. She knew about the therapist, and relayed a similar story about a friend who tried to end her therapy because the therapist was never on time, and twice had double-booked this woman. Instead of acknowledging her own faults, the therapist said the woman/client had issues, that it was all about the woman's problems with her FOO, etc. Instead of just admitting that yeah, she (therapist) was not very good at the administrative part of her job.  

When I realized I couldn't afford to meet for 3 hours in the middle of the day for group therapy (it never started on time or ended on time, and lasted 1.5 hours, and you paid whether you attended or not), I got ready to get out. I prepared myself for the "feedback" from the group, and boy did it ever come hard and fast. A couple of times people attributed comments to me that others had made weeks before, and I realized that the "leaving" process is sorta like a giant projection fest. So I listened to everyone, and took it in, kept what felt right and discarded the rest. And left. The T told me I appeared "numb" and "checked out" and felt I wasn't "present" and was being "passive-aggressive" with the group, etc. Um, no. I just can't afford to be in group therapy for 8 years and don't want to be afraid to leave a group that never starts on time.    I have a job, people.

Looking back, I can see some really unhealthy behaviors in the therapist, and a tendency to keep people "stuck" so that no one really moved on. She was very effective in some ways, and in other ways not at all. Especially not taking direct feedback well from anyone in the group. I have a very vigilant radar for people saying one thing and then saying another (hello FOO), and she kept doing that, and then not taking responsibility. Why not just admit you might've made a mistake? BPD maybe?

I really think this makes a lot of sense. I feel like labels are categorization and categorizing things helps us make order out of chaos, which is a large part of growing up with a parent with BPD. Being able to understand my mother's behavior in part under a label doesn't dehumanize her for me; rather, it helps me better understand how her mind works, how my own behaviors might have developed in response to hers, and allows me to more easily identify and try to change no-longer-helpful coping mechanisms. With a label, I can find resources (like this website) to learn better, healthier ways of living with having a loved one who isn't herself predictable, but whose cluster of behaviors nonetheless are common enough to have some best practices for dealing with or making sense of them.

Well said! I think some Ts don't like to get hung up on the labels because they know how the sausage for the DSM is made, and it's not exactly pretty when you look super close at it. And I think some Ts worry that people get stuck on the OTHER people and their dx's, instead of working on themselves.

But for me, it was exactly like you describes. It was the key that unlocked everything, including my own healing. It allowed me to stabilize the chaos enough that I could start working on myself in a more purposeful way.