feeling helpless on how to communicate with my adult child

[lunabelle]

how can I talk to my 22 yr old child without setting him off and getting upset with what or how I say things?

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 lunabelle

Welcome to bpdfamily

Could you tell us a bit more about your son? Do you believe he has BPD and if so, what would you say are his most difficult or troubling behaviors?

As far as communicating with your son, there are certain tools described on this website that might be of help to you, I've selected the following two for you:

Communication Skills - Validation

Ending the Cycle of Conflict

Here are some excerpts:

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.

[AVR1962]

I'll share something one of my counselors told me and this is merely an example. If I told my daughter she needed to clean her room, very calmly with no expression in my voice whatsoever my BPD daughter may have heard me screaming at her to clean her room.

I have done alot of listening, alot of cheer-leading but not telling my daughter he is wrong or how to live. That doesn't mean all has been good. I have still been blamed and gossiped about. She sees everything in black and white, there is no in between and she puts people high on a pedestal or they are nothing to her. If you are nothing to her she probably isn't speaking to you. That hasn't changed my way of communicating with her.

I have had to learn that each person's life is of heir choosing. We want to help our children but really we are doing them injustice when we make choices for them or tell them ho to live. If we tell them what to do they have us to blame. They still might blame us regardless but if we do not contribute to their choices but to listen and let them know the choice is there's and you will be behind them regardless then they really have to examine themselves (which with BPDs it's hard to say if they ever look at themselves) but if you do not contribute then you can not be responsible.