Your child's mental health

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

I am trying to work through some issues regarding my SD6's mental health.

She appears to be suffering from some serious damage due to the constant stress she is under while in the care of her bio mom who has BPD. BPDm spends an inordinate amount of time drilling into SD6's head a lot of damaging and hateful stuff. The effects are beginning to show and it's very hard to watch.

I struggle with the "how" when it comes to her mom saying and doing these awful things to and around her, how does a mother justify doing these things. She claims to love her daughter more than life itself, and yet she does despicable things.

I KNOW you will say she is mentally ill. Ya, I get that. But here's my problem with that. If she is so mentally ill, how does she hold down her job? She knows enough about boundaries and what is appropriate not to say to her co workers to keep a job for three years, granted she only works around actual people eight hours a week and the rest of the time she is pretty much alone, but seriously. The stuff she says and does with SD is nuts, how does she grocery shop without getting arrested? How is it she holds it together during court? During the CE?

Most of the therapists have said she is about as good at hiding her crazy as anyone they have met, so if she can control it, then why doesn't she control it in front of SD?

If she can "choose" when to act crazy, then is it really crazy, or is it just her selfish and mean spirited ways attacking her daughter for her own agenda? (Like alienation)

If she loves this little girl so much why can't she hold it together for the few hours a week she has left?

We keep getting back a more hurt and more damaged child after every visit. It's unbearable, and the courts are way too slow to respond to pleas for relief.

[bravhart1]

I am trying to work through some issues regarding my SD6's mental health.

She appears to be suffering from some serious damage due to the constant stress she is under while in the care of her bio mom who has BPD. BPDm spends an inordinate amount of time drilling into SD6's head a lot of damaging and hateful stuff. The effects are beginning to show and it's very hard to watch.

I struggle with the "how" when it comes to her mom saying and doing these awful things to and around her, how does a mother justify doing these things. She claims to love her daughter more than life itself, and yet she does despicable things.

I KNOW you will say she is mentally ill. Ya, I get that. But here's my problem with that. If she is so mentally ill, how does she hold down her job? She knows enough about boundaries and what is appropriate not to say to her co workers to keep a job for three years, granted she only works around actual people eight hours a week and the rest of the time she is pretty much alone, but seriously. The stuff she says and does with SD is nuts, how does she grocery shop without getting arrested? How is it she holds it together during court? During the CE?

Most of the therapists have said she is about as good at hiding her crazy as anyone they have met, so if she can control it, then why doesn't she control it in front of SD?

If she can "choose" when to act crazy, then is it really crazy, or is it just her selfish and mean spirited ways attacking her daughter for her own agenda? (Like alienation)

If she loves this little girl so much why can't she hold it together for the few hours a week she has left?

We keep getting back a more hurt and more damaged child after every visit. It's unbearable, and the courts are way too slow to respond to pleas for relief.

[Stolen]

Turkish has a good post about "compartmentalizing" and I agree - they seem to be able to arrange their brain/emotions/feelings into boxes and move from box to box, closing the door behind them.  That's how they function - and I saw it for decades with xW's FOO.  Almost all of them have the bug, and I have seen level 10 meltdown after level 10 meltdown.  Full out crazy.  Yet they are all employed, they drive, go shopping, etc.  The crazy does not show itself everywhere.   One FOO principal even gave a rambling discourse once on how he lives in different "boxes" in his head.  I had no clue what that meant then, but I do now.

And - "why does she choose to pick on SD6?"   Because they are the ultimate bullies. 

Anyhow - my $0.02   

[bravhart1]

Thanks stolen, I'll try to wrap my head around that.

What does FOO mean?

[Stolen]

Family of origin. The tree that begat the acorn... .

[Nope]

BPD mom's do not see their children as individual people. They only see them as extensions of themselves. In her mind she is simply making sure that extension of herself knows what she is going through. Since she has no ability to self reflect, everything that is happening to her is being done to her by outside forces.

Since they can at least recognize other people who are not their children as being separate from themselves they feel like they may be judged for their behavior and can often tone it down for that reason. Well, some of them can.

My kid's BPD bio mom says things no matter who she's in front of that shows her thinking is obviously flawed. She'll tell a huge whopper of a lie as easy as of she was saying "pass the salt" and then deflect if called on it with proof. It's clear that her world is not our world. Only her own pain and her own experiences have any weight and her expectation of all those close to her is that they live in her reality with her but she doesn't expect the same from casual coworkers and the guy at the checkout counter.

Right up to the end of the custody battle she kept accusing DH of stabbing her in the back. She literally said several times that he was stabbing her in the back by trying to get custody. After everything else that came before this, only in her reality would saying something like that make any sense.

[bravhart1]

That's an interesting way to see the behavior. I hadn't thought of it in those terms, so when her child has positive feelings for me it must feel quite aborant to her.

[livednlearned]

BPD mom's do not see their children as individual people. They only see them as extensions of themselves. In her mind she is simply making sure that extension of herself knows what she is going through. Since she has no ability to self reflect, everything that is happening to her is being done to her by outside forces.

This is a really good explanation!

Kids who have a BPD parent are also much more defenseless -- if they assert a boundary, it can feel like life or death, not just physically, but psychologically. Whereas co-workers, if they assert a boundary, it might feel difficult or uncomfortable, but they aren't likely to feel an existential threat to their existence. People with BPD don't have a stable sense of self, so when they experience boundaries in someone, it curbs their behavior -- the difficult behaviors are bottled up and contained to an extent. That's why values and boundaries come up here on bpdfamily so often. In families, we tend to blur boundaries, but with someone who has BPD, that can be detrimental to our own safety. For kids, especially ones who are so young like your SD6, it is very hard for them to self-individuate with such a powerful force of nature influencing them. She needs to have boundaries to be safe, but can't because she won't be safe... .it's a lose-lose for kids, and being an only child, she probably experiences her mother as all-powerful since there are no siblings running interference.

I used to feel furious about the phrase "high-functioning alcoholic" because that's how the world sees someone who can function at work. What about at home? My ex could hold it together during the day, and he even had coworkers who adored him, but he had to bottle up a lot and when he walked through the doors at the end of the work day, it was the real him, not at all "high functioning."

What Nope described sounds so similar to what my SO's BPD-ish ex has done with their younger (intellectually delayed) teen son. In psyche terms, they refer to it as "characterologically" impossible to process negative feelings (like shame, incompetence, disappointment, guilt), and so to process those feelings, they project them onto people around them. The more intense the negative emotions, the more intensely they project. That's why validating how a kid feels is so important -- it's about making them locate how they feel, and develop a sense of who they are, instead of believing the projections coming from the BPD parent.

Validation is one of the antidotes to all this. My son's behaviors, the ones he picked up from his dad, are slowly sorting out after five years of intense doses of validation from all the adults close to him (excluding his BPD dad). S14 is still at risk for certain kinds of distorted thinking, and he has what his psychiatrist refers to as an "external local of control" which means he can be at a loss to advocate for himself. I have felt resentful at times that I had to shoulder 100 percent of the burden for turning the ship around, yet the skills I've learned apply broadly and it is no small victory to see my son adopt these skills. He has gone from being emotionally immature for his age, to having very emotionally mature insight into people. Still a work in progress, like we all are, tho on the right track.

You're in a tough situation, bravhart1. This disorder demands many of us to become fluent in BPD trauma recovery skills so the kids in our lives can develop in healthy ways, and so they don't develop  that compromise our sanctuaries.

Like Bill Eddy says, these aren't just difficult people. They are the most difficult people. And being step parent adds a level of difficult to that. 

[OutOfEgypt]

If she can "choose" when to act crazy, then is it really crazy, or is it just her selfish and mean spirited ways attacking her daughter for her own agenda? (Like alienation)

If she loves this little girl so much why can't she hold it together for the few hours a week she has left?

We keep getting back a more hurt and more damaged child after every visit. It's unbearable, and the courts are way too slow to respond to pleas for relief.

Six of one, half-dozen of the other.  I personally think that we use the term "crazy" to describe anyone who functions on an emotional and relational level in "abnormal" ways.  That's pretty broad.  That could include people who develop schizoprehnia or some other type of mental illness due to head trauma from an accident, and it also includes people who develop very regressed, very manipulative, very anti-social (almost sociopathic) relational styles and coping methods, such as people with BPD.  I remember someone on this board once referred to his ex-wife as an "evil little three-year-old in an adult's body".  While there are some who do indeed seek treatment to overcome these extremely dysfunctional ways of relating and coping, we know that many do not.  I understand, I believe to a large degree, why my ex-wife does what she does, but I don't think labeling it as "mental illness" means I cannot call her behavior deceptive or even insidious.  In other words, I don't think in this kind of situation we need to try and distinguish between "mentally ill" and "extremely selfish and deceitful".  They are one in the same, in this case.

I know your daughter is suffering, but my therapist always used to tell me, "Your children need at least ONE sane parent."  Having one secure attachment, especially a primary attachment, goes a HUGE distance in helping these children cope and grow into healthy adults.  They may learn to mimic certain regressive styles of relating and coping from their BPD parent, and they will undoubtedly have trouble letting people close to them, but if we are diligent parents we will lovingly correct them.  They will be okay.  Just be there for your child as best you can.  Listen to them.  Validate their feelings, but discipline them when they need it -your daughter won't get the right kind of either from her mom.  She'll get manipulative, conditional pleasantness one moment, and then rage or neglect the next.  And she'll get demeaning punishment one moment, and then sheer indulgence when it suits mom to look like the good guy.

As hard as it is, it is difficult to remember that the courts primarily deal with these things as *civil* matters, not mental-health matters.  They are slow to comprehend this kind of stuff.  So I understand how you feel helpless to really help your daughter.  For some reason, this is part of her story, and you can help coach and love her through it... .until the time comes for you to bring forth the truth in the form of evidence and pray that the judge sees what's really going on.

Why can't they just be good, caring parents all the time?  Well, because it really isn't about loving someone else.  They love more in the theoretical sense.  Their apparent good acts are sadly very often attempts to maintain control of a person or a situation or to control their appearance to outsiders.  They *need* to know that they can look like a good person to others, while they still do whatever it is they want in secret.  They want to have their cake and eat it, too.

Knowing this, you may find it useful.  You can, without too much difficulty, usually influence your BPD person greatly if you know how to play on these desires of theirs.  If you convince them that you believe they are a good person who is simply misunderstood, they are much more manageable.  Sad to put it that way, but it can be true.  However, it is also like playing with fire to do this.