How Do I Help My Little Sister... And My Dad... And Me too... o

[OpalGirl]

I'm 31, my sister is 4 years younger than I.  Our mother has BPD, I being the older sibling was able to run away from mom in my early teens... .which then left my little sister, I'll call her Grace, to get more of the horrors, guilt, manipulative behavior and general anti-self esteem building nastiness from our mom. 

Both of us (Grace and I) have many similar problems in adulthood (and for as long as we can remember being alive) we have low self worth, have let others abuse and use us, we pretty much both feel worthless, lonely except for each other, isolated, and have no idea of how to be proper adults.  Our father is a kind and gentle man, our mother is very much a jekyle and hyde... .she will be soo kind one day... .and then as soon as we feel comfortable telling her our inner thoughts she uses them as ammo to tear us down.  We both want to be close to her, I love her, she is my mom!  As I am the big sister I feel so guilty for abandoning my little sister in our younger years when I pretty much ran away.  So little Grace got it worse than me. 

Grace and I are incredibly close and both of us are broken.  We have been raised to believe that we are worthless crap... .we can never live up to who we are supposed to be... .our mother feels that we owe her many things including grandchildren (Grace & I do not ever want children)  our mother screams and crys and tells all that will listen about how evil her daughters are, she uses both of us as her personal dart boards.  My dad has stayed married to her and I love him so much as does Grace so there is no way to only have a relationship with Daddy, as our mom makes his life a living hell if he tries to have any sort of relationship with us without her being present and lording over us all.  We all love my mom, but she is so cruel and does not see reality at all.  She believes that all of us are evil and hateful and are always trying to sabatoge her.  She thinks she is absolutely perfect and that the rest of us are bad. 

This is my first time posting on here, I;m not quite sure how this site works yet, so please forgive me if I have babbled on too much.  (please forgive spelling and grammar as well!)

I want to help my sister, my father (who is always being stuck in the middle, but is the best Dad in the world) and I'd like to find some peace myself - it hurts to know I cannot trust my mom.  My sister is not as strong as me and I fear for her. 

Some advise would be wonderful!  Thanks! 

[Kwamina]

Hi OpalGirl

I would like to give you a warm welcome to our online community  You are having a hard time right now as a result of what you've been through and are still going through with your mother. Being the child of a BPD parent can be very difficult indeed. BPD is quite a challenging disorder so I understand why you are having such a hard time. Has your mother been officially diagnosed as BPD?

The way your mother has treated you seems to have negatively influenced your self-esteem and how you view yourself. Something that might help you is to keep in mind that no matter what your mother says or does to you, her words and actions most likely don't have anything to do with who you really are at all. Odds are that her behavior is only a reflection of her own inner turmoil and negativity which she is projecting onto you. We actually have a workshop here about projection that you might find helpful: BPD BEHAVIORS: Projection .

I am glad that you and your sister are so close. Have you ever talked to her about your feelings of guilt about 'running away' when you were in your teens? I understand your feelings but do want to say that you were in your teens and just a child yourself. You were doing what you needed to do to protect yourself. One of my sisters was treated as the all-bad-child by our mother and also left home when she was just a teen. After she left things did become more difficult for me, but I still totally support her decision because she was treated very badly by our mother. In fact, when I was 10 I already had thoughts about not wanting to live in the same house as my family anymore, so I understand why my sister did what she did. She was my older sister, but she wasn't my mom and was still very young herself. Leaving was what she needed to do to protect her own well-being.

You say that you and your sister don't ever want to have children. Why is that? Have you always felt this way? Are you perhaps fearful that you would treat your children the same way your mother treated you? Or perhaps fearful that your mother would interfere in the lives of your children?

Take care

[AnnaofArendelle]

  Opal Girl,

I'm new too so I don't have much to say, but I'm so sorry for what you're going through and you're in the right place. The resources here are AWESOME.

Anyway, I just saw your post and wanted to stop by to give ou a little bit of encouragement  and a  .

Hang in there!