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[JATired]

 

It has been a hellish 3 weeks.  My daughter just turned 17 and has been in a deep depression, having gone cold turkey off her depression meds.  (Said they didn't work)  Spent the past two weeks waiting for the new med to get in her system.  Then she lost the new med yesterday and I had to pay out of pocket to get a replacement.  This morning she asked where the med was and I handed it to her and she claimed that YEP, this was her lost perscription and when I explained that I just repurchased it yesterday, she got confused and threw the pill across the room.  That was just the tip of the iceburg as to the rest of the day.

I joined because I need a community of people who know my pain and struggle.  I need advice and to know that I am not alone, that I am not a horrible mother and awful human being, and I hope I can help someone else here also.  I mourn the loss of a normal mother daughter relationship that I have never had.  I grieve the loss of happy times spent as a big family because she thinks everyone around her is problematic in some way.  I struggle daily to hold on and to want to continue down this path that has seemed too long as it is now.  I feel guilt for feeling that and for feeling a lot of other feelings that are not healthy and positive.  I am hopeful that there is still hope for all that I feel she will never accomplish because she has solidified her starring role as a victim who lives in the past and refuses to move forward.

So, does this sound familiar to anyone?  My guess is that it does, and I am sorry.

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

[Surnia]

Hi JaTired

and 


I hear so much pain and struggles in your words. 

And I am very glad you found your way to this board. I can not agree more:

I joined because I need a community of people who know my pain and struggle. 

Yes, we know the pain, the confusion, the own guilt about our feelings.

So she is your only child?

Is she diagnosed with BPD?

Please keep in touch, JATired!

[JATired]

Hello, and thank you for your kind and supportive response.  Yes, my BPD is my daughter.  she was diagnosed at age 13.  She attends 1x a week therapy and is overseen by a psychiatrist for her meds.  Her father and I were together/married for over 20 years, we've been separated/divorced for over 4 years and I have been remarried for 2 years.  My current husband brought with him, 4 additional children, one of which, a sd, age 15, diagnosed with depression and ADD, also lives with us. My daughter's bio father has severe anger issues, depression, and anxiety, and I suspect he is BPD.  I have depression which I am medicated for and it is well controlled. Depression and antisocial personality traits run on both sides of her family.

I am going to look for a therapist today for me because she has been in crisis since 12/14 and I need some professional help.  I feel like I am crazy and have, infact, slipped into acting that way, a few times in the past week.  Again thank you for responding.

[Surnia]

Hi JATired

You are welcome. This is really a lot you have to deal with! Your daughter got her diagnose in a quite early age.

Reaching out for a therapist for yourself is a wise plan. It truly helps. 

You will find more support here: Parenting a son or daughter suffering from BPD board.

The members there are in similar situations, feel free to open there new threads with specific questions. Or you can read through the educational material there.

Take care, JATired.   

[PaulaJeanne]

 *welcome*JATired.  I'm kind of new here also. I totally get what you're going through. My daughter is 20 and was in & out of various psych hospitals and programs from 14 through 18. She's better now, but still has every single BPD indicator in the DSM. My sister's husband asked me the other night if I thought there was something wrong with my parenting skills. I laughed it off, but I know how you feel... .you're not an awful person or an awful mother just because you have a sick child!

Having a child like this is sad, exhausting. It's bad enough dealing with your daughter,  your own guilt over things you did wrong (real or imagined), but having other people's judgments just makes it even that much worse.

Try to take care of yourself. Therapy, exercise, have a social life. These things have helped me live through this so far.

[JATired]

CWJ17, Thank you for your kind and empathetic response.  My daughter has all 9 indicators as well and it boggles my mind.  Were the holidays hard for your family as well?  It seems to be a common theme on another thread on this site.  My daughter has a birthday on the 21 and then Christmas pops up.  She says she hates this time of the year because it has always been horrible.  I say that I have worked her entire life to make her birthday and Christmas magical, so I don't believe that at all.  However, she did manage to throw our family into utter chaos by going off her meds cold turkey and whipping herself into such a frenzy over my husband's grown children arriving to spend the holidays with us, that she was close to being hospitalized.  Luckily, and sadly, my husband's ex, and the kids' mother is completely insane, so they have a pretty high tolerance for nutty behavior.

You are completely correct. It's not bad enough that we have to go through the stuff we do with our sick kids, but then there is the judgement of others!  I am a special education ,teacher and have successfully worked with all types of students, including emotionally disturbed.  My own child makes me think I am an utter failure because I cannot do enough.  Ever.

Since you are somewhat new here, welcome to you, also.  And thank you again for responding.  I do take some time for myself to do healthy things and you are right... .it does help.  Take care!

[Mish66]

Gosh JATired I feel EXACTLY the same. We have 4 children - our BPD daughter whos 15 is the 3rd child and we have lost count how many family holidays, birthdays, celebrations she has ruined. I too mourn the loss of the relationship. I have a fantastic relationship with other 3 children (which people tell me I should be happy about) but really can't get past this loss. Our daughter has left home now to live with her loser boyfriend - we have tried every agency to help us but seems to be absolutely nothing anyone can do here in NZ. It is so soul destroying to watch your beautiful bright girl self destruct in front of your eyes. She is heavily uses marijuana because she said makes her feel better than anti depressants and has big eating issues which I can no longer monitor. I feel like I am sinking into this hole of depression with her. It just seems so unfair sometimes.

[crazedncrazymom]

Hi JATired!



I am so happy you found your way here.  I remember when I first found this site I felt so relieved to not be alone in my constant crisis.  It sounds like you've been through a lot with your daughter.  It's such a shame she hasn't gotten the appropriate treatment after all this time.  I want you to know there is help out there for your daughter and for you.  The wrong counselor is not only not helpful but can be damaging to your daughter.  I've been through that myself.  That's most likely why she hasn't responded to treatment.  :)BT is the latest type of therapy for BPD.  Although if you can't find a DBT therapist you could look for one that focuses on validation and meeting the person where they are.    

Also, please look at the TOOLS and LESSONS on the right hand side.  There's a lot of good information to get you started.  I'd also recommend reading "I Can't Make Everything All Better" by Gary Lundberg.  That book was so helpful for me.  I'm a classic rescuer and I learned to just stop trying to fix everything.  It usually doesn't work.  I was so stressed and angry because I was trying so hard and failing so badly.  

It is so easy to beat ourselves up when our children have a mental illness.  We've all done the best we can.  We all love our children.  You're here!  You're looking for help and support.  That means you care.  At this site we learn new skills to help support our kids.  Empathy, Validation and using SET (Support Empathy Truth) statements work to bring our children calm in the middle of their emotional storm.  

[BioAdoptMom3]

Oh yeah, your guess is correct!  There are so many losses to mourn when our children are diagnosed with this horrible disorder!  The other night I was looking for a picture to purchase for our newly painted walls and I saw a beautiful one which said something like family and love and this home is where it is found. DH and I have been very happily married for almost 30 years and have 2 older happy and successful college aged sons, but our DD has wrecked havoc in our lives to the point that my first thought when reading that was that it was not appropriate and would make me sad to look at it each day and read those words!  It would be like mounting false words on our wall and its all because of this illness.  Oh yes, I understand as does everyone else on this board!  We are glad you found us because the support here is amazing!   

[Googie]

You remind me of me, .  My daughter (now 16) used to come out swinging for no reason.  If I looked in her direction, she ran her mouth, if her siblings were doing something without her, she'd start a fight and end up ruining whatever they were doing.  Our family held our breath every day, not just holidays.  Holidays were very much dreaded, but on a daily basis we struggled with not allowing our guard down.  Thats no way to live.

Self care, self care, self care.  I used to go every once in a while to get my hair cut or my nails done but nothing that was for me every single day.  A bath, just chill out on the couch for an hour, a walk, whatever you can think of that is just for you... .   do it once a day.

We get so accustomed to being treated like poo that we tend to forget about ourselves and how to be good to ourselves.  Life is hard without this crap, add the crap and life becomes something we want to hurry up and get the day over with so we can get in bed and get away from it.  At least thats how I operated for a little less than a year.  I just recently started to make myself show up to life and not allow myself to scurry off to my room or somewhere where I could be by myself.

Things change, they get better and then they go back to crazy town.  As long as I am not the conductor on the crazy train, my family is going to be better off.  I find humor in my day and that keeps me going when I feel like I have nothing left inside of me.  We are affected when they cycle, or act out without warning.  We feel their anger and try to understand their irrational thinking.  We are always experiencing their energy and for me, its sad and frustrating. 

Do something nice for yourself and a bad day gets just a tiny bit brighter.

Googie

[PaulaJeanne]

Hi JA Tired & others,

Holidays were pretty okay. We're in a good place right now because my daughter's back with her nice boyfriend & she started a job this week.

Regarding feeling like bad mothers... . My oldest daughter (non-BPD, 29) has a 5 month old baby girl. Yesterday I was telling my very sympathetic boss  what a wonderful mother my daughter is & I said "I guess she is just doing the opposite of whatever I did." My sympathetic boss practically smacked me, and told me "God gave you these children because you were the right person to raise them. You did everything humanly possible to get your daughter(s) the help they needed." and she added in some stuff about how I was able to do my job effectively while dealing with my BPDd's trauma/drama.

Point is, she rebuked me for putting myself down, and reminded me that I have to consider the challenges I've dealt with and stop blaming myself just because things don't always go the way they do in fairy tales. We need to cut ourselves a break.

OOH, just got a text from dd... . third day at job is going really well. There's something I know I modeled well... . how to be a good worker.

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

[MammaMia]

Hi all.  My dBPDs is a child in a grown man's body.  Since his teen years, he has told me what a terrible mother I am and how dysfunctional our family is.  Truth be known, he is the one who has split our family apart but, of course, he says he is just defending himself from us... . always the victim.

Sound familiar?  I knew there was something wrong with him besides his alcoholism which developed in his teens.  His father was an absent parent, alcoholic and, I suspect BPD as well. We divorced after 20 years of marriage.  While I have spent a fortune in time and money on treatment programs and support for my son, all he does is criticize, criticize, criticize.  I have been there for him every step of his tortured life, only to have him tell me I was "absent" all those years and did nothing.  This is mind blowing.  yes, I realize he is projecting his feelings for his father (who is now deceased) on to me.  However, since his death, my ex has become an absolute martyr to our son.  The father he hated is suddenly a candidate for sainthood. I do not speak ill of him.  there is no point.

I was so happy to find this site because, I too, went through the depression and anger you all have felt.  I was so frustrated.  Maybe I HAD failed him despite the fact he did nothing to cooperate and make his life better.  He just did not care.  I felt like I was banging my head against a wall. No one would listen to my fears that he was mentally ill.  He was, and still is charming and manipulative, and EXCELLENT at gaining the support of others and convincing them I am Satan incarnate.

I have learned so much here:  how to communicate with my BPDs to avoid triggering him, and how to actually get him to listen.  His rages are far less than they used to be.  He lives alone but is still not self-sufficient due to paranoia and social anxiety coupled with BPD.  While he is highly intelligent and 8 years sober, his disorder still prevents him from being all he can be.  I have learned to accept that BPD is a life-long disorder.

Remember this... . we are remarkable people who have a mentally ill child. It is not our fault and we cannot fix it, but we can learn to co-exist through the skills taught here.  Is it easy?  No.  Nothing good ever is. Our lives are filled with sadness, disappointments, and fear ... . but we keep moving forward because we love our children and we now better understand their disorder.  We have a new definition of our own sense of worth.

Thank you BPDF.  Keep up the good work.