uBPD mom only speaks to me through intermediaries

[Depression = 72% of members]

In the past it's been something I've ignored, but I don't want to anymore.  My mother will speak to me through my father or my siblings.  Ie: she wants to know what time I'm arriving in town, my brother will send the message asking me.  Generally, either my father or my brother will do my mother's bidding to communicate with me on all sorts of things.  My brother and I live in a different town than my mother.  Over christmas, I had a blow-out with my mother and left in a huff.  Since then, I've heard nothing from her.  Last weekend, she was in town visiting my brother who invited me to come do an activity with them, to which I responded I would stay home because I wasn't feeling well (I actually was really busy and had a bunch of stuff to do).   to that I received zero response.  I suppose the reason I turned down the invitation was because I am tired of the intermediaries enabling my mother, and preventing her from owning up to her own adult relationships... . I suppose I can't really expect anything more.  But, does anyone else have experience with this? How do I get others to stop being the "intermediaries" behind which my mother can keep hiding? 

On the same note, my mother also tried to get me to speak to her mother (my grandmother) to convince my grandmother who is getting old to allow someone to help her with meals every so often, which my grandmother was refusing to allow.  My mom said I should do this because my grandmother listens to me, and opens up to me.  I refused to do it.  Because it wasn't my place, and I didn't want to be the intermediary and I felt as though it was a request to manipulate my grandmother to do my mother's bidding, because my mother is incapable of speaking with others... . oh so complicated! Any advice?

[caughtnreleased]

In the past it's been something I've ignored, but I don't want to anymore.  My mother will speak to me through my father or my siblings.  Ie: she wants to know what time I'm arriving in town, my brother will send the message asking me.  Generally, either my father or my brother will do my mother's bidding to communicate with me on all sorts of things.  My brother and I live in a different town than my mother.  Over christmas, I had a blow-out with my mother and left in a huff.  Since then, I've heard nothing from her.  Last weekend, she was in town visiting my brother who invited me to come do an activity with them, to which I responded I would stay home because I wasn't feeling well (I actually was really busy and had a bunch of stuff to do).   to that I received zero response.  I suppose the reason I turned down the invitation was because I am tired of the intermediaries enabling my mother, and preventing her from owning up to her own adult relationships... . I suppose I can't really expect anything more.  But, does anyone else have experience with this? How do I get others to stop being the "intermediaries" behind which my mother can keep hiding? 

On the same note, my mother also tried to get me to speak to her mother (my grandmother) to convince my grandmother who is getting old to allow someone to help her with meals every so often, which my grandmother was refusing to allow.  My mom said I should do this because my grandmother listens to me, and opens up to me.  I refused to do it.  Because it wasn't my place, and I didn't want to be the intermediary and I felt as though it was a request to manipulate my grandmother to do my mother's bidding, because my mother is incapable of speaking with others... . oh so complicated! Any advice?

[GeekyGirl]

Has your mother given you the silent treatment in the past? Sometimes someone with BPD will feel threatened, and by not dealing directly with the person that they feel is threatening, they avoid potential rejection. Does that seem like something your mother might be doing? It can feel very invalidating to the recipient (my mother uses the silent treatment often), but it's a low-level coping mechanism that avoids conflict.

Have you talked to your brother or father about how you feel?

[caughtnreleased]

Hi, Geekygirl.  Yes she used to give the silent treatment.  Now that we don't live with her she doesn't really have the opportunity to do so, or maybe I don't notice it? ... . I have told my siblings about how I think my mother has problem, but have not asked them directly to stop speaking/engaging with me on her behalf.  Once when there was a sticky situation, I did say, "well why doesn't she call me directly?", which my mother then did, but she was distraught, and handed the phone to my sister, who then proceeded to lose it on me because I was setting boundaries.  I did tell my father, once when he was trying to bring me back into the fold after a big fight, that he could not be the one to put out all the fires she was setting, and he agreed. But I think it was a brief moment of clarity on his part which has since disappeared.  I think the rest of my family is just too enmeshed with my mother to be able to stop enabling her for a sustained period of time.  They've said many times "I'm just too tired to put up a fight".  I seem the only one with any fight left, fight for boundaries that is.  I just don't know if there is anything I can do about the intermediary thing.

[Up In the Air]

Hi Caughtnreleased!

My husband and I are also in a situation similar to yours on this and it is soo frustrating when the third party (in our case my husband's sister) is manipulated into doing the bidding for my unBPD MIL and FIL. I don't know if there's really a good way to show them what they're doing and get them to stop. So much of it has to do with their own boundaries with the BPD. Like you said, they are so completely enmeshed; blinded by co-dependency, triangulation, and also in our case, gaslighting.

I have thought about getting a white board and drawing it out for them. I know that sounds condescending, but nothing else has worked! After a terrible fight over the phone with his sister who has been manipulated like a ball of putty by their mom, my husband has tried to contact his sister with no success. It seems she's going NC with us as a form of punishment for not ending our year long NC/VLC with his parents.

Listening to her speak during that conversation really showed me how tightly wound their mother's message is to her (and others in the family who won't speak to us). Perhaps the key to breaking through the intermediary position is in figuring out what's been said to the intermediary to get them to think they must act. In my sister in law's case, it's the bleeding heart, the sad story about how terrible we have treated them and now we won't even talk to them... . ":)on't you want the family back together again? Don't you want to have a relationship with dad? Why are you so mad at dad? Did you know that he asks about how you're doing more than he asks how my daughter is doing?" then when my husband refused to tell her everything, she got aggressive. "You're lying! Mom told me everything! Dad's done everything for us and if you don't agree, I'm going to call you a liar."

So my MIL and FIL have made a case to my SIL where MIL's not at fault, it must be my FIL (his dad is very confused about the VLC, he's also very proud and refuses to come talk to my DH) and she's put so much emphasis on being martyrs and playing up the guilt trip of 'everything they've done for us', it convinced my SIL that my DH is just being stubborn and has no real reason to have VLC with his parents. She's been convinced that her parents must be telling the truth. So when she couldn't convince my DH of that and he disagreed with their version the initial reasons we went VLC/NC, she became angry, almost as if she couldn't successfully do her mother's bidding.

I do think my MIL is feeling rejected and abandoned and does not know how to deal with it in a healthy way. She won't change and that's clear. We know she'll continue doing what she's doing. So until we can figure out the magic words to defuse all the fog my SIL is surrounded by, or until my SIL can draw the boundaries with her own mother and be willing to detach from the unhealthy aspects of that relationship, I don't see things getting better.

[Fremont]

I am interested in this topic as I am currently in the same situation.  my mother blew up at me last July and since then has had very limited contact.  She has been using my niece as the intermediary and then blowing up at my niece when the bidding isn't done fast enough.  And very unimportant stuff like, ":)id you know your sister's wedding is the day before Easter?"  Uh, yeah.

My niece is a young adult, so I am trying to help her back out of the situation but am not sure how to support her.  Sounds like I have a leg up, though, as my niece absolutely knows something is wrong with my mother.  But because they have a lot of contact, she also tries to avoid conflict and it feels easier to her to do the bidding than resist.

I believe the key is to get the intermediary to stop being one, but the question is - how?

[bpbreakout]

Your post rang a bell with me & but I am being "groomed" as the intermediary in this case. A very different perspective and a bit hardline but maybe it will add some value.

BPDw tries to do this with our d14 for example will interrupt phone and face to face conversations and tell me what I should be saying to our daughter, it drives me round the bend. When I set a boundary on this BPDw tells me she has every right to talk to her daughter which of course is quite reasonable though in our case what BPDw is actually doing is hijaking someone else's conversation. BPDw has a perception that when I set the boundary I am dominating her which of course is nonsense as what I'm really doing is stopping myself being dominated. I tell BPDw if she needs to say something to D14 she have a conversation direct with her but this often ends up in conflict which I guess is partly why I'm being dragged in.

BPDw's family of origin so like the ones' described in the other posts on this thread and constantly in NC for one reason or another and emneshed at the same time. My BPDw often takes on the role of intermediary with great "enthusiam" and has an uncanny ability to pour petrol on the fire by distorting things and then feeling very hard done by when everything blows up as it was only done with "good intentions".

Recently my BIL (after a major falling out) asked me to pass a message that he was going NC with my BPDw on the grounds that he had great respect for me , I couldn't believe it, I told him BPDw was his sister and as he had a relationship with her and he could do his own dirty work - he is now NC with me 

Personally I would also wonder why someone would want to take on the "intermediary" role - it's a real pain so you have to wonder what they are getting from it, also if I'm confiding with someone about a difficult familiy issue I'm only going to do it with someone who will be discreet and will listen and give opinions without interfering or passing on stuff to others, I have this situation in my FOM and I'm lucky

Good luck !

[caughtnreleased]

Thanks for your insight. I don't think my father and siblings want to be the intermediaries, but I think its just that's how things have been, and therefore they don't question the natural way that things happen... . if they do, they know there will be hell to pay. They prefer to not have conflict and do the bidding of BPDmom.  I think it's great you are resisting being the intermediary, it will save you a great deal of problems in the long run I think.  I'm going to make it clear to my family that if BPDmom has something to say to me she can tell me directly and that I will no longer take her communication through intermediaries.  In fact, as I now remember how things were when I was growing up, when my mother was angry with me(generally when I was resisting her) she would actually hiss her disapproval of me to my father, rather than tell me straight up that she didn't like what I was doing.  My father would dismiss what she was saying, and tell her to calm down, but I still heard everything she was saying, but since it was not being said TOO me, I couldn't actually respond or defend myself from it. Very hurtful and dysfunctional.  

[bpbreakout]

Assuming you wish to remain NC maybe a slightly different approach could be to tell intermediaries that you prefer not to discuss your Mum with them (hopefully there are other reasons to interact with them). That way you avoid inviting her to communicate direct if that's you want.

Thanks for your comments, helpful to know that dismissing the nasty comments doesn't necessary alleviate the hurt to the person on the other end of them.

[caughtnreleased]

thanks for the advice. I actually don't want to remain NC with my mother.  It seems to be a default situation, where I am simply receiving the silent treatment from her, which really only confirms to me that there is something pretty wrong with her.  I will let this silent treatment follow its course though as I don't plan on being the one to reach out to her.  I've actually realized that my life is quite a bit more relaxing when she isn't in it.

With regards to whether the intermediary dismisses the nasty comments or not, I think it was simply very hurtful because it happened when I was a child, and therefore my mother telling my father what an awful, horrible person I was knowing full well I was within earshot, instead of speaking to me directly, made me believe that I indeed was awful. As an adult, I know better when this kind of tactic is used. 

I think the best thing to do in that situation (when a pwBPD is trying to make you an intermediary) is to simply tell them that if they have something to say to someone else they should do it themselves.  End of story.  If my father had done that, I'm pretty sure my mother would have turned her anger on him, away from me, because really most of the time, I hadn't actually done anything all that bad.  Asking her to deal with me directly would have exposed her as being the one with the problem... . unfortunately my father never did that.