Lurking here for over a year. Have troubled daughter

[LearningToAccept2]

Hello:

I have been dealing with my 30 yo uBPD dd's hostility and over the top behaviors since she started dating at the age of 16. It's been one terrible relationship after another. While separated from her second husband who put a gun to her head during a fight with her, and to whom she wanted to go back to but thankfully her cousins made her see the error in that, she got pregnant by a high school friend and lived with him for a few months while pregnant and during the first few months of the baby's life. The domestic violence with this new guy escalated to a point I had to have a mandatory reporter call CPS and the baby has been placed with me since May 2014. He is now 15 months old and my husband, 12 yo dd and myself love him to pieces. I am in the process of becoming his legal guardian but given my udBPD dd's awful behavior and words toward us and reckless actions like dating a someone convicted of soliciting murder, we had to ask her for the house key while we took a week long vacation. She is now telling everybody that we kicked her out and is staying with a lesbian friend. I am ok with homosexuals but my daughter has never exhibited gay tendencies and I am afraid she is being led into this lifestyle. She is not high functioning intellectually and extremely needy and clingy in relationships of all kinds. She is an adult and if that is what she wants I am ok with that. She has never been able to have a violence free relationship with a male. I am hoping, if she has decided to live a gay lifestyle, which I don't know 100%, that the relationship won't be volatile.

Her grandmother, my mom, asked her to move in with her but my dd has declined. I suspect she is drinking alcohol to excess as well. She has always liked to drink a little too much.

She lacks maternal instincts and has been diagnosed with ADD as a child and bipolar a few months ago. She doesn't take her meds. Her anger against me and my husband is extreme and her rages are terrible. I have to protected 15 month old grandson and 12 yo daughter. Honestly there is peace in my home for the first time in a very long time and my husband and I are loving thAt aspect of her absence. I am 51 yo and with a 12 yo of my own raising another one is not too much of a problem for us. We love him to pieces and he has no one other than us. His bio dad is out of the picture since my daughter filed a restraining order against him.

I read these boards a lot. They make me feel I am not alone. Thank you all.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Thursday]

Hi Learning and 

Sorry to hear you have all of this going on but I'm glad you have decided to post. This board can be a liferope!

It must be so distressing to know that you daughter is living with physical abuse. I hope her new living situation will be less volatile and maybe she will get a sense of what it is like NOT to have such chaos going on around her.

It sounds like your grandson is much safer and better off with you. I hope things change for the better with your daughter but at very least your gs is in a loving environment. Your 12 year old must love him to pieces!

Hope you will tell us more and ask questions if you have any. Other than that, just wanted you to know I read your post.

Thursday

[MammaMia]

Learningtoaccept



Welcome to BPDF.  Thank you for joining us.

Many of us have adult children just like your dd.  It is a very hard road to travel, but sharing our frustrations here with others in similar situations is a gift.  Bpd is a complex mental disorder, and the  "outside" world just does not understand what we are dealing with.  It is the illness others do not want to recognize or talk about. 

There is great comfort here and honest information.  Please check out the educational materials that are available, if you have not already.  I know you will find them helpful.

We look forward to hearing from you, and we will do our best to offer sound advice, compassion, and support.  

[LearningToAccept2]

Thank you for your welcomes. I have and continue to read the huge amount of material for parents this site has to offer. I am so grateful for this. I read about validation and did have opportunities to practice it while speaking with dd, and found that it makes a huge difference in the way she responds to me. I have also read about FOG since I have lived in that state for years and sometimes still do. I may go through a few hours of feeling ok telling myself that I have done everything a parent can do to help his/her child, from taking uBPD dd to therapy since she was 5 to over stretching myself financially by buying her cars, to paying for her insurance, and deductibles for her many crashes, remodeling an apt for her and her baby to live in. She has almost bankrupted me. I no longer feel guilty though. I struggled with guilt for years and years, blaming my lack of good parenting skills when she was a child and the  occasional alcoholic drinks I had before I knew I was pregnant, etc, etc. Being able to overcome the paralyzingly guilt was a result of my mindfulness practice. I have attended retreats and devour  everything about this type of meditation which I practice daily. Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now introduced me to this life saving way of approaching life, although I still sometimes catch myself imagining the worst possible scenarios such as having my dd  being taken advantage of, dying in a car accident, being murdered by a boyfriend, so nothing is really fool proof when it comes to our children. I take it one day at a time with her. Mentally I can't picture living the rest of my life the way I have lived the last 12 or 15 years, but if I break it down to 24 hrs a a time it becomes doable and very manageable. My family had a good day today, with my uBPD dd 30 and her chaos gone for now, I was able to be present for my dh, dd12 and gs1. I also had a great few hours with my mom. I took her to her chemo treatment, walmart and lunch. Life is not so bad after all. This forum is indeed a lifeline.

[Rapt Reader]

I'm really glad to hear that you are finding the information on this site helpful, LearningToAccept2, and that your first foray into Validation was a positive one 

I'm also happy that you had a great day with your Mom, and I wish her well in her chemo treatments... .I truly hope that she gets well soon.

Thanks for the book recommendation; I've never read it and it sounds very helpful. It's great to know that it has helped you with your mindfulness and taking things day by day... .Getting to that point can be really difficult, and anything that helps with that is valuable to all of the members of this site. I appreciate the heads-up 

[MammaMia]

LearningToAccept2

I am glad you had a good day!  They need to be cherished, and remembered when times are hard.  It helps. You certainly have your hands full, and I hope your mother is doing well.

When I get frustrated and stressed with life in general (and my BPDs specifically), I think of the Serenity Prayer ... .

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with Him

Forever in the next.

This prayer seems to apply to mental illness as well as substance abuse.  I find it to be a comforting reminder that with BPD things can change in a heartbeat, and as parents we do not have the ability to control or fix them ... .and misplaced guilt only makes everything worse.

Please keep reading. Information is a powerful coping mechanism, and there is so much to learn about this disorder.  I am not sure the learning process ever ends.  

Thanks for the update.  Take care.