Adult Child with BPD

[wyhes]

 

Mother of an adult daughter displaying traits of BPD. Here to learn how to help and communicate in order to give myself some peace of mind and to encourage her to seek treatment.

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]

Hi Whyes,

We are glad you are here looking for answers and support.  You came to the right place!

Having an adult child with traits of BPD can be challenging and heartbreaking as I'm sure you have experienced.  Since they are adults it is difficult to help them when they don't want to be helped.  Is this what you are experiencing with your daughter?  How old is she now?

One of the first things to get an understanding of is the disorder and the traits so that we can begin to understand the needs that drive the behaviors.  Here is a link to some basic information to help you with this:  https://bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a102.htm it also includes a video. 

The basic communication skill we all need to help ourselves and our children is validation.  Have you learned much about it yet?  Here is some info that you can use right away with your daughter:

https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating

There is much you can do to empower yourself to help find some peace, improve your relationship with your daughter and encourage her to get into therapy.  Once we have a better relationship with our children and they feel heard and understood they will be more open to our gentle guidance to get into therapy.  It can be a long road there with much to learn and it is all worth it.



lbjnltx

[livednlearned]

Hi wyhes,

I wanted to join lbjnltx in welcoming you to the parenting board. How are you doing? It can be very all-consuming to have a child exhibit BPD traits. What kind of behaviors are you seeing in your D that are creating difficulties?

LnL