Mom snapped, was hospitalized but now free & delusional-tips for coping?

[finallyfaceit]

It's been a few years since I've posted on here. Hi guys. I send hugs to you all.

My mom has always been a mix of mood disorder symptoms that was hard to pin down. She was on an anti depressant recently and when she took herself off without psychiatric oversight she got manic, then had a major psychotic break. This had never happened before and after lots of imaginary chases with her getting real injuries and police involvement she was finally convinced to hospitalize herself for one night. She was so nuts that they kept her for weeks, often with a constant 1 to 1 watch because she was so violent and out of control, even the psych ward couldn't handle her. A couple days ago she got out and I got her to reluctantly agree to stay at an independent living place that does medication checks for a month in the hopes the anti-psychotic meds will work enough to get her back to her usual BPD self (head slap!). Who knew I'd miss that level of functioning? It was better than the complete fiction she lives in now. Also her Narcissistic qualities are at a new high. I can't even purse my lips without her flying into a rage. She needs me to be a bobble-head and agree and affirm everything she says at all times or she violently curses me out.

I am her only child. She lives alone and has few friends. I feel so bad leaving her alone- not one person has visited her yet, most have just called me. However I've had a lifelong pattern of sublimating my own thoughts and feelings to give her all the unquestioning dog-like loyalty she demands. Between that and the now unbridled rage she spews at me it's incredibly damaging and taxing for me to be around her at all. I am heading out soon to have dinner with her, since returning from the hospital she's pretty much avoiding human contact I think because she's scared of seeing more "criminals" (aka pedestrians).

Has anyone ever dealt with a parent who completely lost touch with reality? Any tips? Ugh. What a mess.

-FFI

[maxen]

hi FFI, and welcome back.   

i too was the only child of a mother with a thought disorder. she had paranoia, including occasional florid episodes where she was, in fact, out of touch with reality. so not BPD, but it was debilitating, because paranoia isn't about the florid episodes, which i could just ride out. it's about the endless accusation and insinuation and arrogance and snap-judging etc. and of course she lived to 101, so i got the full measure of it.

i learned, only with therapy (and in my case consultation with a priest), simply to reduce my contact with her as far as possible. that really did help. i had POA and was the HCP, so i had to deal with her a bit, and by the end i was keeping my visits to that. she got weak and there were visits to the hospital (which triggered florid episodes) so i know the stress that brings.

the hard part for me was learning not to be guilty when i ignored her manipulations. that took practice and some positive feedback. i needed to hear from the right sort of people (e.g. family members, who knew the score i was surprised to find out) that what she was doing was abusive and the fact that she's my mother made little difference.

dealing with elderly parents is a whole other level of stress.    can you maintain your own life?

[finallyfaceit]

Maxen, wow yep you get it. I am POA but not legal guardian. She's incredibly resistant to all treatment, and she's still partially floridly delusional. She's not quite 70 and pretty healthy physically so I have a feeling I am in for a long road of ups and downs with schizoaffective behavior as an unwelcome new ingredient. This current setup with her housing at the home with med checks is temporary with the hope she can return home and be independent for awhile longer. She does have savings to cover at least the first years of her own care. I technically can maintain my own life and now that the crisis is over I am returning to work which should help me re-establish boundaries with her, even though it's scary to do so because she is more vunerable than ever right now.

The biggest piece I am worried about now is her willingness to participate in her own treatment. She is in the psychiatric field and thinks she knows better than everyone and never accepts help or stays on meds so now I think she will literally be wandering the streets for years to come. Either I let her be free (which she wants), or I wait for her to break the law & get her locked up in an institution- I hate the idea of locking her up against her will and forceably shooting her with anti-psychotics but I also don't want her to get into another high speed chase in her car on the highway and endanger the lives of others, or endanger her own life. (Legally even behavior like the highway chase isn't enough to get someone locked up, at worst she could've maybe gotten a speeding ticket. She was being chased by an imaginary criminal by the way.) Oh and at least so far I've managed to keep her car away from her. I will delay that as long as I can.

Figuring out the legal end of this is going to be horrible. Did your mom willingly accept treatment and care or did you have to fight her to get her help? I guess for now I hold my breath and cross my fingers the anti-psychotic kicks in more soon... .

[gentlestguardian]

This happened to my BPDm about three years ago. I'm also an only child, and she is a single mother without any support besides me. She cycled into a major psychotic episode after she was rejected by a childhood friend whom she thought was in love with her. She flew across the country and was found on the train tracks with a "love charm" in her mouth. She was hospitilized for two weeks involuntarily and then the hospital determined she was not a danger to herself or others so they let her go. She was still totally delusional at that point and spent the next year - yes year - cycling in and out of various states of delusions. She lost her apartment, she lost a lot of her stuff, and ultimately she wound up homeless and wandering. I called every agency I could research and find to figure out how to help her and every single one of them told me the same thing: if she won't agree to treatment, and she's not a danger to herself or others, she can't be involuntarily committed. When the psychotic episode first started I was very involved and tried to take care of her apartment and her belongings even though I was living 8 hours away from her. It was extremely taxing and nearly broke me. In the end, she didn't care about any of my efforts and instead accused me of stealing her things. I tried to convince her to get treatment repeatedly but she was in total denial about everything. Finally I was forced to just let go. I stopped contacting her and returning her calls. She wandered the state for about six months and then had a "lightbulb" moment while in a homeless shelter that she didn't want to live this way. She then sought treatment for herself and got on medication. That was a HUGE step for her. The psychotic episodes stopped once she got on the meds, but she's still her horrible BPD self so I went back to NC.

In short, I can relate a lot to your situation. Family friends were supportive of me but didn't want to touch her with a ten foot pole otherwise. That made me angry initially, but I've realized since that they did nothing wrong. She isn't their responsibility, and ultimately she's not mine either. That was the hardest realization to have because I too was raised to be extremely loyal and forget about myself so that I could always help her.

I wish I had more of a solution but the only solution that's worked for me over and over again is NC. It's painful to watch your own mother go through this kind of hell, but it's her hell to go through, not mine, and not yours.

[Harri]

Hi finallyfaceit and welcome.  Sending a hug right back to ya.  I have no practical input for your situation but I did want to say hello and offer what support I can. 

I am hoping along with you that the meds will help her regulate over the next 30 days and maybe then she will agree to a longer stay in a care facility.  If not, it may be best for you and her to let her be free.  It is hard for me to write this, so I can't really imagine how this must feel for you, but letting her deal with the consequences of her own poor self-care (not taking meds) and behaviors may be the only way she can get help from the system.  For sure, this does not sound like a situation you can control for her. 

Please keep us posted.  As you can see there are a few people here who have dealt with similar situations and the rest of us can certainly support you so please keep posting.

[maxen]

Did your mom willingly accept treatment and care or did you have to fight her to get her help?

real paranoia is rare and there's no treatment for it, apart from meds (haldol) which can moderate the psychotic episodes but would dull her overall in the process. i was unwilling to go that far. and for paranoiacs everyone else is the problem and i never suggested to her that she was disordered and needed help, fearing the consequences. she was also high-IQ and aggressively independent, and died in her apartment, as she wanted. all i could do was step back as far as possible, which was hard sometimes as her mates were pestering me to call and visit and i almost had to cut some people off. it was a test with them of my newly-learned (from this site!) communication techniques. they worked! but i was dealing with sane people  

so i haven't much advice in this area. what gentlestguardian wrote is a scary prospect but in her case worked, to a point. with the POA though you can't go NC, i imagine. i didn't try that, i just went as-low-as-possible-C. how far LC do you think you can go? and btw, are you talking this out with anyone, like a counselor?

[finallyfaceit]

Gentlest, your story gives me some hope- I am so sorry you went through it, sounds incredibly traumatic but you are a strong soul to be able to make such healthy decisions. It is their crisis, not ours, and we must protect our own lives. I do think it is going to have to be my moms lightbulb moment which she hasn't had yet, and going LC is probably best. She has to hit her own low and make her own decision to get help. All I can do is cheer her on when she makes healthy choices and back away when she doesn't.

Harri, thank you for the encouraging words. For sure any attempt I make to control her will fail. I have written a draft of a "limited contact" letter I will send her when she continues attacking me in this vein (which she will). The only leverage I have with her is I am the only support she has and she will lose my presence in her recovery process if she doesn't keep accepting help. I might have to let her crash and burn if she is dead set on handling it that way.

Maxen, glad you had sane support. My mom is slick and only her brothers suspected she was bipolar or something, she snowed everyone else, so only my wife and I knew the depth of her BPD behavior. So I do not have much support, her friends and the rest of my family all seem shocked and thought she was fine until this happened which makes me feel even more isolated. Hard to believe they didn't know she was dealing with more mental illness than just depression. I am working on getting a therapist for myself ASAP.

[sparrowfarfrom home]

Finally,

I really feel your pain. It is so frustrating when they resist help. For my uBPDmom

it took a major depressive /psychotic episode with major paranoia for her defenses to go down to zero so she could really get help. We found an excellent psychopharmacologist  who even took medicare to figure out the best mix of antidepressants and antipsychotic(  Risperidal).

Mom also stopped some of her meds later and would not be reasoned with, going manic, paranoid  and very BPD.

One day after taking some percosets she fell and broke her shoulder which landed her in the hospital where they asked the family, "So, what medications is she on?"

We got her back on the meds.

Later she was switched from Risperidal to Seroquel  & she became a lot nicer . When she was here for a visit last month just having upped it by half a pill made her even more mellow, and less cantankerous. No arguments for the first time in forever.

I saw this in another pwBPD  in reaction to that drug. Nice as pie.  Somewhere on this board i saw alist of meds and their functions. For seroquel it said, " lessens interpersonal sensitivity "

That being said YMMV, and I am in no way endorsing one med over any other for anyone else.

Just letting you know what helped in our case. Risperidal was helpful for her as well, but made her more drowsy and loopy. And her BPD Features were more prominant.

Drowsy & loopy&non paranoid  was fine with me, but I really wished for the BPD to be affected.

There was a difference between the meds for that.

Sounds like your mom has tons of energy which makes it all the more challenging as they can come with such creative ways to get in trouble.

[maxen]

my stbxBPDw also takes seroquel (and clonazepam). as with SFFH, not an endorsement, but it does seem to be mentioned often in connection with BPD. NB she had a 6 month manic episode when she got the dose mixed up.