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How to communicate after a contentious divorce... Following a contentious divorce and custody battle, there are often high emotion and tensions between the parents. Research shows that constant and chronic conflict between the parents negatively impacts the children. The children sense their parents anxiety in their voice, their body language and their parents behavior. Here are some suggestions from Dean Stacer on how to avoid conflict.
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Author Topic: "harm avoidance" in children with BPD mothers  (Read 528 times)
livednlearned
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« on: June 13, 2015, 07:46:45 PM »

I was reading a research article about traits in kids who have BPD mothers. One of the things they found is that these kids tend to have higher than average levels of "harm avoidance," which is a personality trait that the articles describe this way: "Individuals high in harm avoidance tend to be more tense, worried, nervous, insecure, passive, negative, or pessimistic. They tend also to be inhibited and shy in most social situations."

Do others here see harm avoidance in their kids or step kids?

The article also says, "children of mothers with BPD expressed lower levels of self-esteem, as compared with children of all other groups. In the impulsive spectrum, attention problems and behavioral problems, such as delinquency and aggression, were more pronounced among children with mothers with BPD than among children with healthy mothers."

There are fewer articles about BPD fathers and the effects on the kids, although the description of harm avoidance and self-esteem describes S13 to a T. I read how BPD parents exhibit "frightened/frightening" behaviors, which is how I would describe N/BPDx as a parent. I finally taught S13 to ride a bike, and he was doing ok given how "harm avoidant" he was. And then N/BPDx started to yell while S13 was riding his bike, scaring him about how he was riding, that he was going to get hurt. If he fell, N/BPDx would say it was his fault.

A lot of kids with BPD mothers apparently report that their moms were overprotective, or "intrusively insensitive." At least according to research. This describes N/BPDx, too, although he was not a hands-on dad so maybe the effects were deflected a little.

Still, I know his parenting style has had a long-term effect on S13.

Curious what kind of traits others here see in their kids, or step-kids who have BPD parents.


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bravhart1
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« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2015, 09:16:27 PM »

SD seems to be able to read minds. Like at the mall, teen boys want to do her harm, she tells me she fears them and all they have done is walk by her without even noticing her.

She also seems to fear vitamins
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« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2015, 11:58:11 PM »

My children's father exhibits frightening behavior, that is for sure!

Both of my young adult children (S19, D21) have lived primarily at their undiagnosed very very disordered fathers house where they were co-parented by their stepmother, who is also an alcoholic with an eating disorder and tons of fears.  Their father is a very charismatic aggressive man.  He cycles between being a total drunk to being a health and exercise nut.  He now owns a very successful business, but for years his parents supported him while he was in the downward part of his spiral- like as recently as 2 years ago.  My daughter is much like him, very aggressive in her speech mannerisms, and very judgmental- always right.  She has food issues, and struggles with anxiety and depression.  She may have even recently gotten a diagnosis of BPD from her therapist- she told me the therapist gave her info on BPD, wondering if my daughter could identify with it, which she could. My son has begun to identify more with his father lately. 

Both of my children have been deeply affected by the parental alienation, really buying into the emotional reward system, to the point where they have very little to do with me or my extended family even though we were the side of the family that made big deals of holidays, sent them to camps, took them on holiday.  I certainly think my children display avoidance, but towards my family.  Maybe being around our side of the family really sheds light on the disfunction and the lies at their dads. History gets rewritten ALL the time.  For example, just a couple days ago my daughter made a post on FB about being a healthy vegetarian for her whole life (I raised her that way) and her paternal grandmother gave the credit to herself (for buying me a vegetarian baby food prep book when I was pregnant, and to her stepmom, who fed them frozen pizzas, mac and cheese, and tator tots until she had her own babies 5 years ago). Of course my daughter didn't in anyway stick up for me, they all just like each others posts.   I'm sure, I just know that disfunction has definitely been normalized for them, and they do their best to please their father by ignoring me and blowing me off. 

So the traits I see are: verbal aggression and drama, parental alienation syndrome, rewriting history, making excuses for paternal bad behavior, verbally disrespecting my family, only being nice to me when they want something (ride from the airport, new shoe/jeans, etc), eating disorder (D21), video game addiction (S19).
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bravhart1
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« Reply #3 on: June 14, 2015, 12:46:38 AM »

You said something there about them being very critical and judge mental. It really resonated with me as just in the last couple months since SD has been identifying more strongly with her mother that she has also become extremely judge mental and critical of others.

We were working on using some reason checks all last week. She would say that cats are bad(BPDm is a cat hater FYI)  and that she hates our cat and that all cats are mean. When I would reason check that I would ask her how she knows ALL cats are mean, or how our cat has ever been mean to her, which she could only say that she just "knows" the cat doesn't like her. She's very harsh and impatient with people.

I wonder if this is why I feel like we are losing her to the dark side, as little as a year ago she was a very sweet loving child. Now she's angry and mean, well to our side of the family anyway.
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« Reply #4 on: June 14, 2015, 01:13:03 AM »

bh1~ It does feel like I've lost my children to the dark side!

My children used to spend 1 week at my house, 1 week at dad's.  D21 moved into dad's full time at 16, coming to my house only every other weekend.  She got to a point where she hated uBPDexbf.  D19 made the same move at 16, about 3 weeks after uBPDexbf dumped me.  I'm sure their uBPD/aspd/BPD father was internally celebrating with glee at the level of alienation he was able to inflict on me in a very difficult time in my life.  It has been very difficult on my parents to understand why their grandchildren have so little to do with them, when they were the awesome grandparents their whole life.

I've read a book on children who grew up to understand they participated in parental alienation, but most of the parental subjects referenced were women.  I do believe it is a different dynamic with the fathers doing the alienating. Father's tend to command respect, where I would imagine that children might think they need to protect or provide for their mothers.  I completely made that up though.
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livednlearned
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« Reply #5 on: June 14, 2015, 05:54:53 PM »

You both raise a good point. About whether some of the traits are due to parental alienation or just straight due to having a BPD parent.

I found another article that summarizes some of the research about kids with BPD parents (mothers not specified, although that's where most of the research focuses):

Several fixed methods studies looked at the psychopathological tendencies of children raised by parents with borderline personality disorder. The results of these studies suggested children raised by a parent with BPD may be susceptible to an episode of major depression (Barnow, Spitzer, Grabe, Kessler, & Freyberger, 2006), ADHD, conduct disorder, disruptive behavior disorder or BPD (Feldman et al., 1995). Children raised by parents with chronic mental illness are likely to have an episode of major depression (Abela, Skitch, Auerbach & Adams, 2005; Pittman & Matthey, 2004), however the risk of depression becomes even greater for children whose parent’s axis I diagnosis is coupled with the axis II diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (Abela et al.)."

S13's dad was comorbid bipolar (undiagnosed), and there is a family history. Other studies say that kids with a BPD parent are more likely to develop BPD if they have "high emotionality" as a temperament. This is apparently much more likely to predict BPD than being exposed to the traits via a parent with BPD.
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« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2015, 11:34:18 PM »

Excerpt
Do others here see harm avoidance in their kids or step kids?

Absolutely with my daughter who is 2.

Excerpt
Individuals high in harm avoidance tend to be more tense, worried, nervous, insecure, passive, negative, or pessimistic. They tend also to be inhibited and shy in most social situations."

These symptoms have gotten worse as she is getting older, she use to be very outgoing and free to act now it takes a few days to deprogram her when I get her then its time to take her back to her mom. very frustrating
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bravhart1
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« Reply #7 on: June 15, 2015, 11:35:15 PM »

^^thanks for sharing that! I am always looking to educate myself about children of BPs but there isn't a lot out there. I wish there were some early identifiers that we could watch for and perhaps talk with the T about. My personal gut says this kids ends up BP just like her mother.

I consider trying to make sure SD does not turn put like her mom my biggest challenge. Its the only option since we can't get BPDm to stop her drama. The worst part is seeing how very unhappy and dissatisfied BPDm is with life. I do not wish that on anyone, but I really don't think SD deserves a life of misery just because she was born to a B person.
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livednlearned
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« Reply #8 on: June 16, 2015, 11:29:00 AM »

There really isn't all that much out there about how to help kids with BPD parents grow up to be resilient, sadly. I found this master's thesis:

https://dspace.smith.edu/bitstream/handle/11020/9820/Final%20Copy%20thesis%206-25-09.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

The author looks at the resilience factors of three daughters with BPD mothers, all of them memoirists. One thing I find comforting is the role of the other parent in helping the child develop a stable sense of self. That seems to be a critical piece. Some of the resilience could be temperament, as well. I think S13's temperament is more along the lines of "high emotionality" and so I've had to parent him in a very specific and careful way with a lot of validation. It's challenged me to set aside any perceived judgments that others have about how I parent. In one of the articles I read about kids with BPD parents, it said that kids with "harm avoidance" need a lot more encouragement and praise. Not empty praise, more like paying attention to when the child struggles with something, and manages to accomplish it. Praising them for working through a problem, that kind of praise.

The nice thing about that research paper, too, is that it looks at the qualities of the BPD mothers that actually helped the daughters develop resilient qualities. For example, the mothers had to be very resourceful, and often were non-conventional relative to their prescribed roles -- so they had a trailblazing quality in some ways. The daughters realized that they didn't want to be like their mothers, but also had a grittiness to achieve their goals. Writing down their story also helped them make sense of who they were because of the mother they had and that in itself helped them heal some of the fractures.

Even though I don't have a BPD mother, I can kind of identify. Having a uBPD brother made me really tough and having a narcissistic father gave me a "fake it til you make it" quality that's helpful when I feel unsure. Even in the most dysfunctional families, we learn a thing or too about resilience.





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bravhart1
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« Reply #9 on: June 17, 2015, 11:45:03 AM »

The two biggest things I believe SD struggles with due to her mom having BPD are this "harm avoidance" which looks a lot more like unrealistic fears in daily life. And the second is the enmeshment. The enmeshment prevents SD from thinking her own thoughts, using her own judgement and believing those around her whom she should trust over her mother, her other parents, her therapist, her teacher and other family members are all undervalued advocates for SD.

She would be better off if she could allow herself to trust others over her mom. Moms version of things and moms reality is just not trustworthy.

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