BPD mother feels threatened by my independence

[kharma]

BPD mother has always been abusive to me since I was 11. Now in my 20s, I have decided to pursue career opportunities out of state. This means I will be moving out. BPD mother has tortured me, by provoking fights and being abusive. I talked to her about moving on and she is angry that I will be moving out by having childish and infantile outbursts lately.She seems to be very threatened by me having my own life, i.e. forming relationships with people outside immediate family.  Why is that? Why does she want me to live at home and rot forever? Its like she wants me to put up with her abuse until she dies on me

[Sitara]

pwBPD are very sensitive to abandonment. When I say abandonment, I don't mean like cutting off contact, or breaking up, I'm talking about anything they imagine to be abandonment. My uBPD mom had issues with me going to college, getting married, having kids, buying a house... . it doesn't take much. I wasn't leaving her, just moving on with my life.

It's more likely she's acting out due to this imagined abandonment rather that wanting to abuse you. The fear of even imagined abandonment is one of the core criteria for the diagnosis according to the DSM criteria.

[kharma]

pwBPD are very sensitive to abandonment. When I say abandonment, I don't mean like cutting off contact, or breaking up, I'm talking about anything they imagine to be abandonment. My uBPD mom had issues with me going to college, getting married, having kids, buying a house... . it doesn't take much. I wasn't leaving her, just moving on with my life.

It's more likely she's acting out due to this imagined abandonment rather that wanting to abuse you. The fear of even imagined abandonment is one of the core criteria for the diagnosis according to the DSM criteria.

That is my BPDmom to a T. A few years ago, I discussed getting my own apartment while I was picking her up from work, and she got so angry that she started physically attacking me. She also gets incredibly jealous and irrational anytime my sister spends time with her husband; they have a day where they both do couple things and BPDmom feels very threatened by this and goes on angry rants about it

[Sitara]

I can sympathize with both of the things you said. When we bought our house, my mom happened to be out of town that week, and before she left she had told us, ":)on't buy a house while I'm gone," and meant it. She was furious when I called to tell her we found one and when she came back she picked apart every little thing about it because we had decided without her.

She's also a pain for my and my husband's anniversary because we got married very close to my parents anniversary. So she got super excited saying that we could celebrate every year together. When I politely told her on our first anniversary that my husband and I wished to celebrate by ourselves, she never forgave us. And when I stopped sending anniversary cards to them (why would I want to celebrate a marriage when she did nothing but complain and talk about divorce?) she was furious, and after we "made up" she got very passive aggressive towards me about it and our next anniversary card simply said, "Your anniversary is all about you," which might be cute when coming from a healthy individual, but not when held in the light of BPD.

It can be very frustrating to deal with, especially when you aren't abandoning them, but after awhile you get so tired of it you do end up leaving... . they often create their own self-fulfilling prophesies.

[nicolin]

My experience is very similar to what Sitara and kharma said (except for the physical abuse mentioned).  I didn't get the courage to move out until I was 28.  I gave her nine months' notice and still that was cause for her to become incensed on a daily basis.  Unfortunately I thought telling her so far ahead of time would give her time to get used to the situation.  But all it did was give her more time for anger and to try to change my mind (she didn't).  Standing up to her (aka, any sign of moving on with my own life) was always the hardest thing I had to do because I knew there would be consequences.  It was all considered abandonment to her.  She admitted this to me and my sisters in counseling.  The counselor tried to explain to her that we are not betraying her by living our own lives and making our own decisions that will not always line up with what she would have done.  She said she understood this. But in the rational moment she understood everything and articulated healthy responses very well.  It's the behavior outside of that moment that revealed her own reality.

[clljhns]

Kharma,

I can relate to what you are going through. When I first went to college and joined a Baptist Student Union, my mother freaked out and thought that they were going to shave my head, put me in toga, and send me off to some foreign land to hand out flyers in an airport! I could not convince her that these were normal college kids. She insisted that I stop going. I didn't, and so she would show up at my dorm room at any given time, unannounced, and insist that I break any plans that I had to go shopping or to lunch with her. If I didn't then she would tantrum and tell me how much I didn't love her, and then hit me with how much money they were spending on my college. When I left college and broke contact with my parents, I received a letter from my dad through one of my sisters telling me how hard this was for them, and that my mother was having nightmares and crying all the time. I re-established contact, only to be verbally berated for my misdeeds. When I was getting my divorce and selling my home, many years later, my mother called me to tell me that I should move to the same county my oldest sister lived in. When I told her that I didn't need to do that because I had established myself in the county I lived in and had the same job for the past eight years, it didn't make sense for me to move an hour away. My mother told me how stupid I was and that I was being childish. She told me that I lived in a fantasy world and would very definitely be harmed if I lived on my own away from any immediate family. She went on to tell me how nothing I ever did worked out, and that generally I didn't know how to manage my life. I was 37.  I stayed and bought another house in the same town I lived in. She would still invite herself to my house, show up without being invited and criticize my home, my friends, and my daughter. I finally went NC because nothing I did pleased my parents, and I couldn't take the abuse any longer. My life did not belong to me, because they would not let go.

I can tell you that nothing I did or said ever made my mom feel secure in our relationship. She always felt threatened by everyone that entered my life, and the decisions I made for my life. I eventually moved 1400 miles away, so that there would be no chance of them popping in on me, even though I went NC, I didn't trust that they would honor this.

I know that you are just now starting to assert your independence, which should be a time of celebration for you by your mom. I am very sorry that you are not receiving this, but I want to send out a kudos to you and a hearty "carry on!" I am proud of you for the steps you are taking to establish your independence, as this is a natural progression in growing up!

When my daughter first moved out on her own, I was sad, but happy for her that she wanted to move forward and learn to take care of her own needs, without depending on me. I did not invade her space. I allowed her to call me when she wanted to spend time together. Now, she has moved to another country to pursue her dreams, and I am so proud of her!

Much peace and many blessings to you!

[kharma]

The environment that I'm in is completely dysfunctional. My mother is argumentative, abusive (physically, mentally) controlling and overbearing. However, when I talk about leaving she gets very angry and defensive, as if I'm being "mean" for wanting a life of my own away from her. Why would I want to stay in an environment that stifles me? I have a very hard time sympathizing with her issues regarding abandonment. It makes me angry just thinking about it. If I stay, she'll spend the rest of my life tormenting me ie starting arguments, threatening me with objects, invading my personal privacy, jealousy and the list goes on.  it's as if she gets fulfillment out of the drama and craziness.

[MyLifeNow]

This sounds *exactly* like my dad. I grew up about 5 blocks from the university I went to so I didn't trigger the abandonment fears until much later, when I moved into residence for the final year. I was only a 10 minute drive away but he acted as if I had gone to the moon. I went through an incredible amount of fighting over my education. First he wanted the password to my university account, so that he could check on my grades (and it wasn't even as if he was paying a dime for my tuition, I graduated $55,000 in debt) and then later on there was a two week long fight over my degree. I did computer science, and one of my history professors who thought I was doing extremely well was surprised to learn I was in CS. He talked me into adding a year on to complete the BA requirements as a concurrent degree.

Dad insisted this was a huge mistake and that I should do a business degree with my CS one (a concurrent degree program that didn't even exist, but he decided that this wasn't a valid reason for not doing it). He even threatened to kick me out, which was a huge deal because the student loan program wouldn't give me a living allowance if I had any family in the same city as my school. Then when I graduated there was no work here so I had to move across the country to a larger city, where my mom was. Holy cow... . a whole month of fights over it. Years later he starts asking me how he was as a father, and insisted that he was completely supportive of my education and career choices. We're not living in the same city anymore, but for years I've been wanting to move further away to a larger city where most of my friends are now and the social opportunities are more varied. The fights that has created have made it so that I can't even tell him anything about my life without triggering him, not that I have a whole heck of a lot to tell.

At the very least he isn't physically abusive toward me now. That stopped when I was fairly young, and now I'm too big / he's too old for him to be able to get away with it. The mental abuse though is just out of this world. The way I described this before is that I felt as though I was an appendage he used to experience the world and sooth himself, and making any decisions for myself was very threatening to this. It was like I never had my own life until I was living thousands of kilometers away.

It makes me so furious sometimes that I'm in my 30's and still having these fights over controlling my own life. Have you ever confronted her about the abusive behavior. The flat out denials that he was ever anything but an angel to me have probably been the most infuriating part of this entire experience. I recently wrote down a list of all the different kinds of abusive things he did to me, to sort of self affirm my own reality. I filled up an entire page, single spaced. And my writing is very small.