tired of feeling sad and helpless

[Sad Mother]

Since she was about 17/18 my now 32 year old daughter, who is 8 months pregnant with her 2nd child has had episodes of explosive anger, Usually directed towards me.  At times what she has said to me, accused me of, both to my face or told others about me have threatened my sanity.  My heart is so heavy at times it feels unbearable. In order to cope with this, when I am allowed to be in her life I have become what her partner has referred to as submissive. But if I want to see my grandkids that's the only way.

A couple of days ago I dared to enter into a discussion with her privately online (she professes to be too busy to speak on FaceTime (we live 3000 miles apart) and only because it involved the health of my unborn grandchild.  The next day I found she had unfriended me on FB.  Why? I phoned her and text her asking her to call which I knew she would due to her grandma's precarious health.  She asked if grandma was ok, I politely, jokingly asked her why I had been unfriended? And she screamed at me about being too busy as she was working.  This was a lie.

I have done so much searching and reading about this type of behaviour and am convinced it BPD but knowing and dealing with it is so hard.

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

[lbjnltx]

Hello Sad Mother,

Welcome to the Parenting Board!  We are glad to have you join us.  

I'm sorry to hear that your relationship with your daughter is so terrible.  Making concessions to keep in touch about grandchildren and how she is doing is a hard.  Sometimes we feel like we have to make so many sacrifices just get a tiny bit back.  Having access to grandchildren would definitely be worth making sacrifices for... .though still painful.

Dealing with the verbal abuse and troubling behaviors will take a toll on us.  The best we can do is learn to communicate in the most healthy way possible with our BPD children/adult children.  Have you come across any information on validation in your reading?  We have some good resources available here that can teach you how/why validation is important to your relationship with your daughter and for yourself.

Here on this board in the side bar menu we have tools and lessons with a great deal of info to help us.  Here is one of the validation resources:  https://bpdfamily.org/2013/06/validation-encouraging-peace-in-BPD.html

lbjnltx