Just Reaching Out

[2muchstress]

I am reaching out as I am at a total loss and so confused on how to deal with my daughter.  I do know she has BPD.  The traits have been there for awhile and I finally managed to get her to a therapist back in May.  The therapist had not picked up on her BPD until I finally scheduled a one on one with her and shared with her the many stories.  She wanted to be the one to guide my daughter into discovering this diagnosis, but my daughter only went back one time and is now refusing therapy.  My daughter (she is 18 years old) "ran away" for three weeks and just returned home.  Our interaction did not go well last night and I truly do not know how to deal with her.  I do plan to call the therapist tomorrow and get help on how to better deal with these fits of rage.  I don't know where to begin or what to do and feel very alone in dealing with this.  Any critical first steps that can be shared would mean so much to me. 

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

[Kwamina]

Hi 2muchstress

Having a child with BPD isn't easy to deal with for a parent. Your daughter just returned home after running away three weeks ago. Did you know where she was?

Could you tel us a bit more about your daughter's behavior that led you to believe she has BPD? What would you say are the most difficult or troubling aspects of her behavior?

To help you get started here I suggest you take a look at the tools and lessons to the right of this message board. They can help you get a better understanding of what's going on with your daughter and how to interact with her. Specifically when it comes to communicating with your daughter I suggest you look into our material on validation an things you can do yourself to end the cycle of conflict. I've selected some excerpts for you:

Nowhere is the communication skill of validation more important than in interfacing with highly sensitive individuals, individuals with low self esteem or individuals who are easily intimidated.  This is a very valuable tool for dealing with people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

To validate someone's feelings is first to accept someone's feelings - and then to understand them - and finally to nurture them. To validate is to acknowledge and accept a person. Invalidation, on the other hand, is to reject, ignore, or judge.

Validation of feelings is vital to connecting with others.

Before your can make things better, you have to stop making them worse.

Someone has to be first. This means generating the motivation to stop making things worse, learning how to interrupt your own negative responses, and learning how to inhibit your urges to do things that you later realize are destructive to the relationship.

You can find the entire articles here:

Communication Skills - Validation

Ending the Cycle of Conflict

I am glad you are reaching out for support here and hope that you'll find these resources helpful. Take care and I encourage you to keep on posting to get advice for what you're dealing with

[lbjnltx]

Hi 2muchstress,

I'd like to join Kwamina in welcoming you to the Parenting Board.  I'm sorry to hear that your d18 is BPD.  I know how you feel and what you have experienced because I also have a daughter, 18 who was diagnosed with emerging BPD at age 12.

Critical first step... .be calm in the face of rage... .don't participate in an argument (justify, argue, defend, explain).  Instead validate (Kwamina gave you the link to that info).  Can you do this?  If not... .don't worry, I couldn't either until I had a sense of safety and a plan in place to deal with whatever my daughter threw at me.  I had to set some boundaries to protect myself... then I felt empowered and was able to learn new skills to help her, myself, and our relationship.

lbjnltx