Hi

[ChloeK]

Gosh hard to know even where to start or what to say. But here I sit in the same frustrating place I have always been with my BPD daughter, and decided it is time to learn as much as I can about this disorder and how to change my role in this situation. In some ways maybe it has finally become harder to deny there is an issue that keeps us returning to these same chaotic ways of relating and living and time to live different. To live better.

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

[Sadforson]

Welcome! 

[lbjnltx]

Hi ChloeK,

Welcome to the Parents Board.  We are happy that you joined and sorry to hear that you and your daughter have been suffering for a long time. 

I'm glad to hear that you are ready to make changes in the relationship dynamic to help yourself and your daughter.  How old is your daughter?  Does she live with you?

There are many skills that you can learn and put into practice that will make a difference in the way you feel, your relationship with your daughter, and even how she behaves.  When one person in a relationship changes how they respond it can have a positive affect on the other person.  One of these communication skills is validation.  Here is link to a video that explains it well and how it can lead to empowerment for you and improved behaviors for your daughter when you validate her.

https://bpdfamily.org/2013/06/validation-encouraging-peace-in-BPD.html

I'd like to learn more about your situation and what is troubling you the most. When you feel you are ready please tell us more.

We are here to help you learn about this disorder, how to handle problems, and  encourage self care. 

lbj

[ChloeK]

Thank you both for the welcome message.

I watched the video and it was very informative. I am finding a lot of very useful information on this site, which is a hopeful thing for me. I have also been reading “I Don’t Have to Make Everything All Better” which is also very helpful in seeing the ways I can validate more and discard some of the beliefs I held that made validating her difficult.

My dau is 20. She was first diagnosed with emerging borderline personality at 15 as a result of psychological testing we had done because her behavior had been getting more and more out of control.  At the time she was skipping school, running away, cutting, and had frequent intense rages. She had been to many different psychologists with no real change in any of these behaviors other than they were getting worse, and to be honest I felt like some of these therapist were more interested in blaming me than helping her. I do understand there is family dynamic and a role I have played in all this but felt like the direction they were going was not helpful. So we went to an educational consultant who recommended testing which revealed the emerging BPD, anxiety, depression, adhd.  We started a program for dbt at a nearby university but her out of control behavior escalated more if that is possible. To the point we put her into a wilderness program.  Unfortunately her NPD father, my ex-husband removed her, refusing to allow her to go to the residential school we found and he took her to live with him to try the same things we already had tried on our side of the country. We started the initial custody battle but it was too brutal and pretty hopeless so we dropped it. Then after 18 months of her living there and continuing to decline he called and said he’s done with her so if you want to put her in a school I won’t fight you.

SO even though she only had 8 months till she turned 18 we put her back into the wilderness program and a residential school which she promptly left the week after she turned 18 (thankfully she stayed the extra week because her GED exam was scheduled- so at least she left with a GED and a few more coping and relating skills then when she went in) and moved back east to live with her boyfriend. .courtesy of her father buying her the plane ticket to get there.

Then last year she asked if she could move back here with us. Her and boyfriend were a thing of the past, she was inconsistently working part time jobs… so we hoped that we would be able to help her get back on track. Part of moving here was list of expectations which she agreed to and followed initially. She worked as a caregiver for 6 months until her client and her could not work together. Then she took a fulltime job at local dept store. But then after few weeks she started having issues with co-workers and problems with her anxiety so started seeing a therapist near here she liked….still hopeful right?.

But then she started hanging out with some friends from work and started to come home less and less. Then she cut her hours at work and stopped seeing the therapist. Because if you can’t work because of anxiety of course you should stop therapy…sigh…really? No it probably just got to the point of starting to have to identify and work on herself. Can only blame everyone else for so long in therapy I assume.

So where are we now…...

She is required to pay me 100$ a week for a fraudulent check scheme her and some “different friends”

tried to pull that left her holding 2100$ owed to the bank and a direct path to her for fraud. (and yes we bailed her out of that one) Of course she stopped paying us so we instituted penalties for each week up to 3 then loses phone. Surprisingly she has gotten back on track with paying me again. But there is still the matter of the expectations of when she arrived. She is required to do work of some kind for full times hours. So she can work a fulltime job, two part time, any classes she wants with part time work, therapy 2 days a week with part time work, or volunteer hours which with proof will count towards the 100$ a week she is to pay. She can establish whatever works best for her but she has to be doing something productive. In hopes of breaking the pattern of sleeping till noon then getting with friends and coming home between 3-5 am and doing it all over again if she even bothers to come home. She has to take care of her pets and clean up after herself in the house. The room looks horrendous so told her every 2 days will throw out what’s laying on the floor. So basically she has a month to put the job situation together, with access to her car and phone tied into the expectations. SO just seeing what happens now.

[lbjnltx]

Hi again ChloeK,

Thanks for telling us more of your story.  I can see how committed you were to helping your daughter as she grew up.  It must have been so very frustrating for your efforts to have been undermined by your ex.  Consistency and commitment to treatment by everyone in the family is key for our kids to succeed.

The book "I Don't Have to Make Everything All Better" was actually required reading at the RTC my daughter attended.  I found that it takes validation to another level in how we understand it's relationship to boundaries and helping others learn to solve their own problems with our support.  I'd be interested in your thoughts about this.

One of the initial pieces of information I received when I first came here was that I needed to lower my expectations to relieve myself of some of the suffering I was having... .until my daughter learned the skills to cope and succeed she simply wasn't able to reach the benchmarks of her peers.  As she learned and grew the expectations grew with her.  It's good that you have left the decision making about how to meet expectations in her hands.  Have you talked with her recently about what actions she is taking to meet the goals?

You wrote that she wanted to move back with "us".  Who else is in the home?  Other children? Step Dad?

I look forward to working with you here and supporting you as a parent to an adult child with BPD.  My daughter is 18 now and living independently from me so I am  in a similar situation as you.

lbj

[livednlearned]

Hi ChloeK,

I wanted to join lbjnltx and sadforson in welcoming you here, and to say hello. I'm in the process of learning exactly what lbjnltx said about "I Don't Have to Make Everything All Better" taking validation to another level. It's been a process and a learning curve, and I'm figuring out how to stay in this validation sweet spot where I am the coach instead of the rescuer, and S13 is learning from consequences.

I had to overcome my reluctance to be what felt to me like being "mean" and after the initial resistance from S13 when I set and enforced boundaries, the ship slowly turned around. I think S13 forgets how it used to be, and assumes it's always been this way, where he experiences consequences directly and we observe the occasional trainwreck like two scientists studying the disaster, breaking it down into parts to understand it better, and hopefully avoid a similar situation.

Instead, it used to be a lot of acting in for S13, where he would have these episodes of learned helplessness and self-loathing that completely stumped me. They still happen, although a lot less, thankfully.

It sounds like you have thought through the conditions for her being able to live with you very carefully, with a lot of consideration for your boundaries. Is this also an ongoing list of criteria? I like how it provides options, so that if she loses her full-time job, she could enroll in classes, or find volunteer work.

[madmom]

Welcome ChloeK.  I think you have done a super job of setting up expectations and keeping it very reasonable and giving your child avenues to succeed.  I see a lot of similarities in our stories.  My daughter is doing well now, and like you it was really hard to do things and not feel mean and cruel.  My husband and I supported each other, as we learned new skills such as SET.  Together we decided on boundaries we were both willing to keep.  I will tell you that for awhile things seemed worse instead of better, but we kept to the plan and started seeing results.  I also started really taking care of myself and that helped also.   There is lots of support here, so don't be afraid to let us help you along the way.  Best wishes.

[ChloeK]

Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

Yes, we tried to give her options- different ways to meet expectations, including working very little (part time) to clear the hours and emotional energy needed for twice weekly therapy, should she wish to pursue that. She could work for pay or volunteer, school or work - anything but endless unstructured time. Her pattern has always been that she will go to the level of the lowest expectation, and for her the less expected the worse she does.

And when I say we I mean me and my partner. We've been managing this together for 6 years.

This was not a good weekend. Daughter's car broke late on Saturday, no chance to fix it until Monday. She hung in there Saturday night, but woke up this morning ready for a fight. Angry, irritable, calling out all the old comments - you were never there for me, you are a terrible mother, you should pay for me to have an apartment. Just a big fat load of irrational entitled abusive junk. I tried hard to validate, I can hear how frustrated you are at not having your car. But validation, or my current skill level with that, seemed to only irritate her more. She feels patronized if I try to validate. Eventually I got tired of being abused so I just left, which seemed to shock her. At this point she's not home, she managed to get herself to wherever her friends are.

I was proud that I was able to stay present and I tried to not react, tried to validate. But it went very poorly. So I'm not sure what to do, clearly I need to read more. It is hard in the middle of her attacking me to not pull back, or defend myself. I'm still not sure if it was right to leave. But it felt like not a discussion, just her attacking.

It might be that some of her acting out stems from us attaching consequences to failing to meet expectations.

In the course of her tantrum she said "I can make more money if I don't work full time," which confirmed a suspicion that we'd had that she is doing SOMETHING illegal - too much clothes make up jewelry gas money eating out happening to be accounted for by her very part time minimum wage job.

So where does that leave us. We think we should yank the car and possibly the phone, if those are enabling illegal activity. Cutting the phone scares me as then there will not be a means of communicating with her. But the reality is, even with the phone she only communicates with us when she wants to, often when she needs something.

But we can't ... .do nothing. Dealing drugs or whatever other illegal activity she has going on is a serious thing.

Feeling quite sad and lost and unsure of "where to from here."

[lbjnltx]

Sorry the weekend went poorly Chloe... .it happens.

When our kids are frustrated their ability to manage their emotions goes way down... .which means our ability to manage our responses needs to go up. 

The sincerity of our validation is paramount to it's success... and even then there are no guarantees.

I think that walking away in the face of abuse is a healthy option.  I had set a boundary with my d that if she raged at me I would:

state that "I need to take some self time and get in wisemind" (which is a signal to her to do the same) and "we will discuss this again when we are both in wisemind"

and then I would walk away to another area of the home.  There were times she was so dysregulated that she would not leave me alone and I would have to get in the car and leave... .oven turned off and food left sitting... .


Regarding the  consequences of not meeting expectations... .might it help to reframe this first in your mind and then communicate to your daughter that having a car, cell  phone, allowance, etc... .are privileges.  Privileges are earned by being responsible.  It is not that you are taking away these things... .it is that she did not earn them.  This puts the responsibility for the loss of or retention of these things on her... not you.


Validation, validating questions, boundaries, limits, teaching moments, and privileges need to be working in conjunction consistently. It's a lot to hold in our minds and put into practice on the spot.  Practice is the key word here... .we all continue to work on it.

lbj