I am still scoring very highly on this and feeling very demoralised.

dibdob-

Wish I could hug you and sit with you quietly for awhile with a cup of tea. Instead I'm going to write a very long winded and opinionated answer to your post.

I am sorry you are feeling so down. I started my journey with BPDSD when she was a young teen and remember how it was so confusing and depressing and well, crazy making (as in making me crazy).

Even though I was in a new relationship with her father, he and I quickly went from lovey-dovey to being at odds with each other. The first four years of our relationship I was on high alert and under tremendous stress as I worked and worked to "help him straighten out" his parenting, to "fix" SDs behavior, to be, well, God and Jesus and Hillary Clinton (I love her) all rolled into one.

I didn't have a mental breakdown, instead, I got sick. No cancer but I did have a major abdominal issue with surgery and a major heart attack.

I found Alanon (its a 12 step program for the loved ones of Alcoholics but if you change Alcoholics for "people with BPD" it still works!) on the advice of someone here and found out a few things. It really helped me to be able to not get so worked up about my SD's behavior and since DH sat next to me at the Alanon meetings he began to hear the message about his enabling.

A couple of years after we started going to Alanon we found out that SD had a full blown addiction to RX drugs (obtained illegally) and somewhere in all of that trauma she began going to AA meetings in Earnest.

SD has improved herself. Not a fairy story by any stretch of the imagination but she has a job and is clean and sober. She is deeply involved with AA. For this girl, having a group that accepts her and 12 simple steps that guide her towards accountability, humility, truthfulness, integrity, appreciativeness, faithfulness, forgiveness, etc. has been a lifesaver. She continues to work the steps- and please hear me when I say she works them BPD style- not too deep because she still does everything she can to avoid uncovering any pain (her Mom died when she was 12 and was sick for 5 years with a devastating cancer) but her step work is like peeling the skin of an onion- a thin layer at a time.

If SD had not gotten better, Alanon would still have helped ME. It can't make it not hurt to interact with the BPD person in your life but it does help you better achieve putting things in perspective, to not be so caught up in everything to your own detriment. A weekly meeting where you hear how someone else has put their life back together along with their story which is pretty much as bad as yours or worse- it is an affirmation of life without being so overwhelmed and tools and well, commiseration. And support. And interestingly, the people at my Alanon meeting are, for the most part, very special. Like a roomful of Oprah Winfreys.

A read a great book called Feeling Good by David Burns. It can help you flip around how you think about things when your DD goes haywire. The book is subtitled The New Mood Therapy. I read it once and shook my head at myself. No wonder I was so depressed- I was looking at everything in the worst possible way and thinking I was responsible for fixing it all. You will find yourself in that book too... .he sort of figures out all of the ways that people depress themselves with their mind-set. Invaluable!

I found this site after our family therapist suggested that what was wrong with SD was BPD. He was the one who handed me "Feeling Good" too. So, therapy is on my list for beneficial things we can do to relieve our depression. So add "this site" and therapy to the list.

It was hard for me to let go of how convinced I was that I alone held the universe together. Each of us here as her/his own quirks and problems. People tell me I am an "angel" for taking on my SD... .but I was no angel. I had good intentions but no idea what I was doing. I had such mean thoughts towards her and I was so unbending about so much.

Even after her dx I was still fumbling around. I was never going to fix her- we held our line until she got sick of it and wanted to change herself. If she hadn't wanted to change herself (and surely, it could have gone that way too) we would still be holding the line and seeking self-care because it IS very hard to watch someone you love going through life like a tornado of razor blades. To give up our dreams for our children is a horrible thing. To watch your kid self-destruct... .not the way things are meant to be.

I believe we each need to have involvement in something we love- some activity that can allow us to "get in the zone"- you know, that place where we are fully involved and not thinking of anything else? Finding that sweet spot and staying there as long as we can does a lot to give us the strength to handle it when the poop hits the fan.

Hope there is something in the above that you can find to help. You do not need to feel so low my friend- you have much to offer and there are so many ways to feel better and above all else, you deserve it.

Thursday



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