Seasonal or cyclical increases in BPD behavior

[AsianSon]

Hello All,

I wonder if others have noticed seasonal or cyclical repeats of BPD behaviors.  My family has picked up the following from our uBPD mother (in her 70s). 

Certain times of the year, her mood drops for a prolonged period and the BPD behaviors become particularly strong and long lasting.  For example, the year-end holiday period, Mother's Day, and the anniversary of her mother's death seem to be massive, prolonged triggers for her.  It is quite likely that her mother was uBPD as well. 

We are learning to try and anticipate these periods and bolster ourselves, but she can be quite a drag on the year-end holidays for everyone, and Mother's Day is always a challenge (because my siblings and I have spouses and families, so she is not the only Mother).

Just curious about other experiences, and I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

[Sitara]

Yes and no. Every holiday is difficult, but in general my mom tends to stay moody and miserable. To an individual she will go through periods of playing nice and being challenging, but the overall picture is that there was always someone who was dealing with her negative feelings. She would just rotate through who she liked at the moment and who she hated.

So yes, any holiday was difficult (including one time events like weddings or baby showers) but overall she going to be acting out at someone.

[AsianSon]

Hi Sitara,

Thanks for responding!  Reading your comments, I think maybe I failed to see the trees in the forest.  Maybe my mother acts out her BPD every day, but as individuals, we only see part of it.  We might have the impression that there are better days (when she seems to play nice) and bad days (when she seems more challenging), but the opposite impression can be true for someone else on the same days.

You mentioned that "there was always someone who was dealing with her negative feelings."  Does your mother have a fairly active social circle?  Your comments seem to indicate that your mother displays "splitting" (constantly?).  If so, does a social circle help or hurt? 

I guess for my mother, the main person who would know on a day to day basis would be my father because my mother has limited social interactions.  Unfortunately, I cannot easily confirm that with him. 

And thinking more, maybe my question is more about whether holidays and special days (like weddings and baby showers) are more difficult in general for pwBPD.  Those days have more emotional content, and maybe their difficulty in handling emotions is more noticeable?

But then again, it doesn't even have to be a holiday.  I just remembered a dinner party that my mother had for some "friends" her age a few years ago.  She insisted that I attend (even though I really did not fit in).  After dinner, the group gathered in the living room and started enjoying a TV program, but she was in one corner reorganizing some CDs and old video tapes!  She could not engage with her own guests.  Very sad.

[Sitara]

Your mom may still have good days and bad days, unlike my mom. I have read that some people have pwBPD that have good days where they are happy and pleasant to be around. My mom however, is such a negative person that even on her good days she's bashing someone or fixating on something negative. She doesn't often bounce all the way to happy, at best she seems to get stuck somewhere around neutral.

No, her social circle is tiny. Outside of me, my dad, and my sister, she tends to have one person that she latches onto and spends a large amount of time with. This generally lasts a couple years before something happens and she stops seeing them all together. She tends to bounce back and forth between me and my sister as to who is currently the bad child and who she's going to take out her frustrations on. My dad, who spends most of the time with her, gets the brunt of it though because he's more readily available so I think that makes him a really easy target.

I do think special events are very difficult for them to handle. My mom is so focused on things being perfect, which is impossible, so she always seems to blow up about something.

Your comment about the party reminded me of something my mom does that is similar. When she hosts holidays with meals, she always insists on doing the dishes immediately afterwards instead of spending time with the rest of the family. I agree, it is all pretty sad.

[AsianSon]

Wow, the similarities are amazing to me. 

I think my mother's happy days are decreasing in number, but the particular seasons or cycles tend to bring out an extra level of low in her. 

Your mom latching on to a person for a couple of years might be a good thing (if that person is a willing participant).  My mother can only seem to stay with a new friend for a few weeks (or months on the outside) and then they go from all good to "too bad for the friendship to continue".  The most she can do is to continue to be acquaintances with them.

Your comment about bouncing back and forth between you and your sister made me think of our description, which is my mother having a "radar" that she focuses on one of her four kids at a time.  So someone is always in the doghouse.  Interestingly, the only immunity from that is that she will not pick on the child who is in a rough patch (divorce, financial trouble, job trouble, etc.).  But the better off we are, the more likely we are to be picked on. 

I want so much to end this on a lighter note, so here's an attempt: 

A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.” The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?” The boy takes the quarters and leaves. “What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!”

Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store. “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”

The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!”

[itsnotme]

Yes. I feel that every year from Nov-June she tends to be to the extreme. The last time I went nc w her was from oct-aug. This time it started in sept. Still haven't spoke to her. The holidays are awful and always have been. So have birthdays and pretty much anything the requires a celebration... weddings, proms, graduations, births etc... everything is an inconvenience. I have always wondered if having to stay mostly inside due to the bad winter is a factor. Kind of like she has nothing else to do but obsess about what ever it is that catches her attention. Idk it never adds up. I'm always running on the hamster wheel trying to figure things out.

[Legacymaker]

AsianSon,

Mine has trouble any time she is not the center of attention.  Christmas is becoming unbearable. 

Phone conversations (she lives in another state) are full of negativity and gossip. God help us all if she gets on a political roll, especially if you don't agree with her.

She hyper fixated on the OJ Simpson trial, the Jody Arias trial and the Casey Anthoney trial.  We heard about them all non-stop.

My mother is extremely opinionated about many things, politics, religion, world news etc.  These opinions usually are directly opposite of mine.

At Christmas I warned my mother that my son's new girlfriend  would be joining us for the holidays.  She comes from a super religious family and since it was the first time we were meeting her, I advised my athiest mother that it would be polite for her to keep her religious opinions to herself.  She told me that she was excited to have someone new to torture and she couldn't wait to tell her how full of s**t she was.    This did not go down well with me since I was considering that someday I might be the mother-in-law and obviously wanted to make a good first impression.

My mother doesn't have any friends.  She has a lot of people who like her, because she can appear very kind to their faces.  I wish they all knew the things she says about them behind their backs.

It is all very draining.

[PleaseValidate]

Hi AsianSon,

As Legacymaker said, mine has problems when cannot be the center of attention. ALL holidays and family get togethers for her are tough. If any of the following happens, she usually will not attend:

1. She had one idea of what to do for the day, but was outvoted by other fam members. Its her way or no way. The dialogue goes something like, "Well I wanted to do X but they all went to Z, so why should i go? They obviously don't care if i'm there"

2. She can't smoke where she is going. This includes when my Grams had lung cancer and was being taken care of by my aunt. She would not visit because she was not allowed to smoke outside because she would come in and smell like it.

3. She has been in a recent fight w any one of her siblings or her mom and that person is attending. It is a classic "them or me" type of stance. 

During all of these times, she very much plays "the victim" and cries about it to me. The facts become SO extremely disordered in her mind that i've recently wondered if there is a delusional/psychotic process involved as SS mentioned in another thread.

CHRISTMAS is the other time i could count on her to go nutty. She would get SO OVEREXCITED, literally singing "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!" every day past Dec 1 while swaying in our living room and "playfully slapping" my arms. Then the closer it came, she would get very negative w her script of, "Got uncle X a bathrobe. Boom- Done!" . . . "Got Grams undies and a sweater. Boom- DONE!"  . . ."Got aunt Y everything on her list. Boom- DONE!" Acting as if she wasn't just dancing in the living room 2 weeks ago and Christmas was really just another chore for her like grocery shopping.

I've never noticed an exact "seasonal pattern" but since i suffer from seasonal depression myself, i probably wasn't paying too much attention. If it was there it certainly wasn't as blatant as my addict uncle starting relapsing every spring.   

(of course it is my own fault that i suffer from depression in the winter because, you know, "[She] has [her] books to read to keep busy."

GGGRRRRR!

[AsianSon]

Thanks to itsnotme, Legacymaker, and PleaseValidate! 

I too get tired and drained when trying to figure out my uBPD mother.  I guess I was just trying to see if there was any pattern to her behaviors, and it now seems that any time or event that presents with a strong emotional content is a potential or actual trigger.  Too bad this means most of the significant holidays. 

Your comments did make me think how my mother might have tried to self shutdown on some of these occasions.  For example, she made it a point of not celebrating Christmas by being out of town a few times.  It was a happy thing for most of us, and so we took advantage of the opportunity when we had it. 

But looking back, maybe it was an attempt for her to see if any of her kids/grandkids would jump up and ask her to stay for Christmas.  Interestingly, and if this was the case, it backfired every time on my mother because we "honored" her decision to do something different at Xmas time!  One of the few occasions where letting her have her way works out for the rest of the family!

Too bad the other holidays don't work out as well!   

[Livestrong97]

There is most definitely a cycle and it was once suggested to me to keep a graph log of the ups and downs to help see it on a calendar.  I have seen a lot of blow ups around holidays, birthdays and vacations.  I also see a HIGH high when leaving for a vacation but a low with angry outbursts when it's time to come home or put things away.   I think it is the added stress that is a trigger.