Hi Gladys,
Welcome, welcome. Glad you are here.
I'm glad to see you are looking at your son's future because it is your future too.
My DH and I are very fortunate that his DD, my BPDSD23, is doing much better these days.
I read your thread and sat for a few minutes with your second post, sentence by sentence. There is a lot of information in that single paragraph. Most important are the different lives affected by this mental illness. It seems like souls get trapped in this illness, suspended in time, unable to grow or move forward.
My SD's history sounds so much like what your son is experiencing now, minus the child and minus being a male.
Until recently, I haven't been able to really put my finger on what is the number one thing we needed to "fix" for her. From my little crow's nest of being a step parent who came into her life when she was a young teen I could see her Dad enabling her and it looked all wrong to me. Someone very wise, not associated with me or our family, saw the enabling and talked to him about it in no uncertain terms, told her that he needed to move her out of our home or she would not get any better. SD was, at the time, acting on an addiction to RX anti-anxiety meds (Xanax). She has since gotten sober and we've had ups and downs with her until she finally got herself a full time job and started doing better in this as well. I can give you more details if you would like I just don't want to burden your thread with too much back story of my own.
What we are seeing now is a girl whose self-esteem is building and growing and at every turn we can see she is able to take on more and more. She still gets dysregulated, still has trouble managing interpersonal relationships and a few more areas of her life. But she has managed recently, with great self-control, a bad extended family dispute where she had several of these folks angry at her for no good reason. She handled it and is feeling even better about herself. She is talking now of "wanting to grow up" whereas all we heard before was that she DIDN'T want to grow up. She isn't late to work, she has a savings account that she takes pride in adding to weekly, she has even rescued herself from a flat tire and a banking snafu. She lives peacefully with her grandmother who she respects and protects and helps (these were not qualities I ever saw from her when she lived with us) She and her Dad are rebuilding their relationship and she is not bitter or angry about having to live elsewhere. Yesterday she sent me a Happy Mother's Day card with a beautiful quote about step-parents. Gulp, big ole lump in my throat thinking of that!
I don't know all of your history Gladys and I hope you won't think I am intruding. This is my story of what has helped us and what has changed us.
The child's mother is also very difficult and demanding and certainly she makes my son feel bad about himself. He lives with us, is on benefits, is depressed most of the time, unpredictably volatile and does very little, so little that he rarely goes out and has become quite reclusive. He has a psychiatrist but he can't even get it together to go and see her unless with persuasion from me. He's affectionate towards his son but we do most of the caring.He takes no responsibility for anything, it seems. It's very difficult living with him but was even worse living apart from him because of the phone calls and the worry. His behaviour isn't dangerous most of the time, just completely passive. Any negotiation on helping around the house or taking out his son is rejected.
Your paragraph starts with an ex who makes your son feel bad about himself. My SD really cannot tolerate someone undermining the way she feels about herself. If your son is anything like my SD, when first anyone is invalidating to her she leaps to anger first but very quickly plunges into a self-loathing that is truly devastating to see.
The rest of the paragraph seems to be showing a man who is just lost inside of his own self loathing.
I know this might sound like a strange suggestion since al-anon is for family of alcoholics and you don't report any alcohol abuse by your son, but the best place my husband and I have ever found to help us to help her was al-anon. We started going before we knew she was an addict and before I joined this board. We just, in our minds, changed the words alcoholic for BPD and it fit and we learned about not blaming ourselves, not blaming her and learned so much about enabling and how it kept her unaccountable. We learned how to love her without passively watching her unravel her own life.
SD was only 19 when she got clean. She has been doing pretty well with her life in general for about a year. I don't expect she will never have problems again but she does have these rudimentary tools of better self-esteem to work with. We have them to work with too.
Your son won't gain any ground with the situation as it is now. You and your husband are filling in a lot of gaps for him, doing for him things he should be doing for himself. I think al-anon would give you some tools to help you to figure out how to help your son and in the process you will help yourself because I know this isn't the life you want for him or imagined for him and certainly this is an unfair burden for you and your husband to bear.
I truly identify with what you have to say about the worry and the phone calls when he lives away from you. We have gone through that as well. It has gotten easier... . it has been months and months and months since we've had any real worry. We never would have gotten here if we hadn't made changes. And believe me, we used to be sick with worry for months at a time. It was bad, so bad. Now, I have nothing but hope and this hope is being elevated every day!
Wishing you the best and wishing your son the best. This is hard stuff... . and I hope I don't seem unduly harsh I just know that what really made the difference in our situation and I know how much better things are now. Sure, our kids are 20 years or so different in age but I don't think your son's life is over by any means. What you describe now seems like a very sad place to be for all involved... . and I believe it CAN change.
Thursday