Intro from Struggler

[Struggler]

Hi.  A brief into.  My daughter is 19 y.o.  She is a lovely, kind girl and quite bright but has always focused on negatives, even when she was a child.  This degenerated to nightly "d & m's" with my wife, then eventually on to counselling, then anti depressants, then checking herself into the acute care ward and ultimately a diagnosis of BPD.

Unfortunately since the diagnosis, she seems to act out the typical symptoms, almost as though she is checking them off.  There is nothing spontaneous about it, it seems to be quite calculated as though she wants to prove the truth of the diagnosis.  The time in the acute ward appears to have given her more fodder for that - she was very impressed with the other patients' war stories and now we have similar behaviours, but they also seem to be more planned than involuntary.

There seems to be quite some desperation to being diagnosed with something more serious.  I don't know how many times I've heard from her how similar her symptoms are to being bipolar and how she is on the same medication as bipolar people have.  She adores the people from the ward who had bipolar and is very excited about their tales of acting out violently.  Then she will do similar things though on a far lesser scale, but talk them up.  And there seems to be some sort of achievement by the strength of the medication - she seems to be quite put out when someone else is on the same medication and there will be comments like "but I am on a higher dose".  When she isn't paid the attention from her grandmother that she thinks she is due, she will say things like "but I was in hospital!  She should be looking after me!".  She took a similar vein with friends from university and essentially burned them off.

Then we have the suicide threats.  Essentially if she doesn't get what she wants or there is an argument, we have to be careful about a suicide attempt.  These "attempts" also seem a little staged (pills and plastic bags left strategically for us to find them) but obviously we take them seriously.  They are similar to the tantrums that a child throws to get his own way the next time, and it is really hard knowing how to deal with that.

So we are now at the stage where we are feeling blackmailed virtually all of the time.  We are constantly being provoked in different ways - as an example yesterday she asked for money for one purpose, then blew it on rubbish.  She has thrown it out there a half a dozen times to try to get me to ask what she spent it on, seemingly with the intention that we have an argument over it.  I haven't taken the bait, now she has made an appointment and asked me for more money "because I spent all of my money yesterday".  I think that the appointment was made just to have an excuse to bring it up again.  I'm waiting for good behaviour to reward it, but with us (her immediate family) she seems to be content to get the worse kind of attention.  This all came on to a higher degree after her younger sister sorted herself out and started getting good attention.  I think it made the older one threatened because she had always been the sensible one.  She doesn't realise that there is room for two good kids in this daytime drama.

I know that the literature says that this shouldn't be dismissed as just attention seeking, but really that seems to be the root of it all.  It is like an angsty teen girl but with all of the negative things supercharged.

Is this typical?

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 Struggler,

Welcome to the Parenting Board!

"Supercharged" is a good descriptive word for the reactions of our troubled children/adult children.

Emotional blackmail is difficult to deal with, especially when threats of self harm are used for gain.  It seems like what we attempt to do doesn't work and then we are left with the ultimatum. Our very strong feelings of fear can override our understanding that we should not give in and reinforce the negative behaviors... .and sometimes we do give in only to find ourselves repeating the process in the not too distant future.

What we can do to deal with all of this is learn affective communication skills, set limits, be consistent, and learn self help skills to manage our fears and  frustrations.  Empowerment is important for us, feeling helpless just stinks!   The Tools and Lessons to the right are a good place to begin to empower yourself with knowledge and skills.

One upmanship is common for pwBPD... .could it be that your daughter is using her diagnoses/illness to have a sense of self... .define who she is?  Most pwBPD (people with BPD) reject/project their diagnoses/illness onto others.  Acknowledgement that she is ill is a plus only if she also accepts that she needs to help herself. 

Is she in therapy now?  What kind?

lbj

[Struggler]

Thanks for that.  She is seeing a psychiatrist and on tranquilisers and some other kind of medication - the one that we are continually reminded that bipolar people have.  She has been seeing a psychologist as well, but she has apparently said that there isn't anything she can do and what my daughter needs is some particular course, which she is inline for.  We don't get the information first hand, she is secretive about that and only dishes out the dramatic stuff.

My daughter certainly doesn't reject her illness, assuming that she has one.  She finds a way to inject it into every conversation and continually drops hints of attempts to segue into a discussion of it.  She absolutely revels in it, and it is pretty clear that not only would she like it to be more serious for more dramatic effect, but she really isn't interested in getting any better.  She raises it as a topic of conversation, someone says "you should do [whatever]" then all of the sudden we are expected to make it happen. 

But lately it all seems to be calculated to distress the rest of the family.  Whatever we suggest is bad, anything we are against she'd be hell bent on.  She loved telling us that she wants to hurt us, we get those threats when we say no to something.  Then a few days ago she quite enjoyed reporting that he bipolar friend wanted to cut my wife's throat, but now she wont have anything to do with her.  Until yesterday of course, when she went off to spend the day with her and then dropped hints when she eventually returned about where she'd been.  When I was anti her getting a job (I wanted her to finish uni), that was a major issue.  Now I support it but she wont try, and still throws up in my face that I didn't want her to get one.  A few days ago she said she might go to a wildlife sanctuary to volunteer, I said that'd be great and virtually in the same breath she started saying all of the reasons why she wouldn't do it.  It just seems to be looking for attention through argument.  I was a teenager, I can remember doing that.  And I've been married for a long time, so I'm no stranger to that as well.  But it just seems that this is the only kind of attention she wants.

It's hard to see where it will all end up, and whether she'd be better moving out (we constantly get how much she hates it at home, though that is usually after we have said no to something - unfortunately boundary setting is pretty hard). 

[Struggler]

Sorry to vent, by the way.  I'll look at the Tools... .

[Skip]

Maybe the two of you are battling this - she has struggles, you don't acknowledge, she is making the point.  It might help to agree that she has this issues and agree that resolving them are the goal.

[livednlearned]

Hi Struggler,

I understand what it's like to have a lovely, kind, bright child who focuses on the negatives. It's tough! We see things one way, they see things completely another.

The lessons and tools here are excellent (especially validation), and so is Blaise Aguirre's book on BPD in adolescence. We are encouraged to listen to our kids with empathy, and sometimes that can be challenging, especially when comparing their behavior to ours -- people with BPD are special needs kids. Aguirre's book can help explain what, exactly, makes her special needs, what is driving her behavior, how she feels inside and why this is a different belief system than how non-BPD people perceive the world.

Your daughter is cleverly using her illness to get her validation needs met. The key is to respond in ways that validate how she feels, which is different than agreeing with her. It's a subtle difference, and that difference is everything. These two resources on validation changed my life, and the way my son and I interact (especially the validating questions):

• The Power of Asking Validating Questions

• Validation and Teens

Both are from this book:

• BOOK: I Don't Have to Make Everything All Better

[Struggler]

Cheers, that's useful I think.  I'll try to get the book. 

[Skip]

Who has her ear? Who does she trust?  Who does she feel is always there for her?

[Struggler]

No one save perhaps the psychiatrist.  My wife had always been very close with her, but daughter turned on her when we tried to stop the nightly sessions of why she is so sad - probably a few months before it got acute.  She had been good with me, but not recently.