Brother's ex-wife may have BPD--nephews need help~

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hi everybody,

I am just learning that BPD may be affecting my family.

My brother just went through the most atrocious divorce I have ever even heard about.  For years we have been wondering about the bizarre behaviors of his (now ex-) wife who claimed she had an anxiety disorder.  She was explosive, came regularly to bizarre conclusions about things, and loves/hates people according to their perceived value to her.  She is on several psych meds, and drinks caffeine drinks all day, then takes downers to sleep.  Now that the divorce has gone through she is still engaging in incomprehensibly self sabotaging behaviors that cause pain to her own financial situation and to her boys.  We know that she was horribly abused and abandoned by her mom.  Her mom left her at her grandmother's house to be raised.  She thought her grandmother was her mother.  Then her actual mother abducted her and told her who she really was.  I couldn't make this up.  

Now I am seeing my brother's kids and they are doing all these strange behaviors.  They prefer to stay plugged into the screens all day long--they don't know how to act AT ALL.  They have to be coached to do the simplest things.  They don't play outside, have nearly no life experiences, and seem extremely fragile.  They have strange emotional responses--they freakout over simple things--just like toddlers. They are bizarrely dependent--the older one (11) just started bathing himself.  His mother was still washing him.  They don't seem to know how to do anything for themselves.  They don't have friends.  They don't seem to know how they are relating to the larger world.  They are afloat in some kind of fog.  They are extremely un-self-aware.

A word about my brother: he is a total enabler.   Up until this divorce he has been protecting her--which is why many things are coming into full color now.  Now we are seeing how the soup was made.  He is unusually smart and kind--but he avoids conflict at all costs.  He is not self aware at all--just like the boys.  With the boys he is loving but inconsistent--he seems solid, then you see he gets them worked up, then they take it too far because they have NO IDEA AT ALL where the boundary is, then they get in trouble (!) then he acts all sorry and wants to talk it out with them for like an hour.  Its not how we were raised.  We were raised to be simple, strong, consistent, and clear.  

The mother (my ex-sister-in-law) is not someone I ever see.  But I know she does not consider herself to have BPD.  She thinks she has anxiety issues.   Also with the older (11) she has him on a pile of meds.  My brother is not included in decisions about psychiatry for the boys.  And with the younger (8) she has barred him from going to therapy.  When my brother suggested it she said no.  We are fairly certain that she will be unwilling to concede to mutually agreed upon mental health strategies for the boys.  She is a dictator -- perhaps to avoid her own embarrassment.

Our family is getting completely rocked by this situation--after an eye opening christmas holiday, I remembered that my brother said that he personally believed that his ex wife has BPD.  So that is how I got here--I did some research (and found this eye opening gem: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3268672/)  and saw that he may be right.

The kids are clearly unwell.  They need help.  We all need strategies.  They are going to be targets for bullying--at best.  At worst they are going to be unwell for their lives.   We are worried.  My mother is at her wits end--she is a special education teacher and all her advice is falling on deaf ears.   My brother seems unaware of how totally strange everything is.  He can't see the forest--he thinks his kids are normal.  Or perhaps (because he is now newly married again!) he is busy thinking of other things.

What can we do in a situation where the original person with BPD (who has 1/2 custody now) is continually affecting her sons?  What can we do when this woman is totally unreachable?    What can we do since we have no real diagnosis of this person?  What can we do when my brother is so clueless and can't see the situation for what it is?  Should we have an intervention for my brother?  How can I help them?  

[ujalakali]

Hi everybody,

I am just learning that BPD may be affecting my family.

My brother just went through the most atrocious divorce I have ever even heard about.  For years we have been wondering about the bizarre behaviors of his (now ex-) wife who claimed she had an anxiety disorder.  She was explosive, came regularly to bizarre conclusions about things, and loves/hates people according to their perceived value to her.  She is on several psych meds, and drinks caffeine drinks all day, then takes downers to sleep.  Now that the divorce has gone through she is still engaging in incomprehensibly self sabotaging behaviors that cause pain to her own financial situation and to her boys.  We know that she was horribly abused and abandoned by her mom.  Her mom left her at her grandmother's house to be raised.  She thought her grandmother was her mother.  Then her actual mother abducted her and told her who she really was.  I couldn't make this up.  

Now I am seeing my brother's kids and they are doing all these strange behaviors.  They prefer to stay plugged into the screens all day long--they don't know how to act AT ALL.  They have to be coached to do the simplest things.  They don't play outside, have nearly no life experiences, and seem extremely fragile.  They have strange emotional responses--they freakout over simple things--just like toddlers. They are bizarrely dependent--the older one (11) just started bathing himself.  His mother was still washing him.  They don't seem to know how to do anything for themselves.  They don't have friends.  They don't seem to know how they are relating to the larger world.  They are afloat in some kind of fog.  They are extremely un-self-aware.

A word about my brother: he is a total enabler.   Up until this divorce he has been protecting her--which is why many things are coming into full color now.  Now we are seeing how the soup was made.  He is unusually smart and kind--but he avoids conflict at all costs.  He is not self aware at all--just like the boys.  With the boys he is loving but inconsistent--he seems solid, then you see he gets them worked up, then they take it too far because they have NO IDEA AT ALL where the boundary is, then they get in trouble (!) then he acts all sorry and wants to talk it out with them for like an hour.  Its not how we were raised.  We were raised to be simple, strong, consistent, and clear.  

The mother (my ex-sister-in-law) is not someone I ever see.  But I know she does not consider herself to have BPD.  She thinks she has anxiety issues.   Also with the older (11) she has him on a pile of meds.  My brother is not included in decisions about psychiatry for the boys.  And with the younger (8) she has barred him from going to therapy.  When my brother suggested it she said no.  We are fairly certain that she will be unwilling to concede to mutually agreed upon mental health strategies for the boys.  She is a dictator -- perhaps to avoid her own embarrassment.

Our family is getting completely rocked by this situation--after an eye opening christmas holiday, I remembered that my brother said that he personally believed that his ex wife has BPD.  So that is how I got here--I did some research (and found this eye opening gem: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3268672/)  and saw that he may be right.

The kids are clearly unwell.  They need help.  We all need strategies.  They are going to be targets for bullying--at best.  At worst they are going to be unwell for their lives.   We are worried.  My mother is at her wits end--she is a special education teacher and all her advice is falling on deaf ears.   My brother seems unaware of how totally strange everything is.  He can't see the forest--he thinks his kids are normal.  Or perhaps (because he is now newly married again!) he is busy thinking of other things.

What can we do in a situation where the original person with BPD (who has 1/2 custody now) is continually affecting her sons?  What can we do when this woman is totally unreachable?    What can we do since we have no real diagnosis of this person?  What can we do when my brother is so clueless and can't see the situation for what it is?  Should we have an intervention for my brother?  How can I help them?  

[Turkish]

Hello ujalakali,



It sounds very frustrating that your brother seems to have abandoned the healthy model.of child-rearing that your parents demonstrated. Joint custody is good, but if he's enabling their mother's parenting style , then the children spending time with him doesn't seem like a healthy shelter from the disordered storm of the other home. How old are all of the kids, and how much influence or contact do you have as an Aunt?

How long have they been split? My Ex's behaviors weren't quite so weird, but she left when the kids when my son was not quite 4 and my daughter was 1. I found myself enablng some of their mother's anxieties for quite a while until I started enacting boundaries that were stronger (almost like parallel parenting).

Turkish

[ujalakali]

Thanks for responding!  I am actually totally blown away to find all this here, and very grateful for the support.  It has been 12 years of my whole family trying to put together what is going on, and now I see that we are not alone.  Finding all the BPD resources and literature is like finding the critical pieces that I needed to understand this puzzle. 

Ok so the boys are 8 and 11.  We are pretty far along.  I don't see them all that much.  My younger brother--for good and for bad--is a person who is impressionable.  In the hands of his ex and current wives I would even call him manipulable.  This also means that my mom and I could perhaps help him see the situation.  I think that perhaps by showing all these resources to both my mom and my brother, they will be able to take a few steps to solidify his parenting.    He seems to have developed his whole new parenting method with the ex-wife.  (The new young wife has been doing the same behaviors too!--argh.)  Too much talking and negotiating is making things confusing.

How are your kids?  Did they get through it all right?  Did you?

[Turkish]

My D is 3.5, and my son about to turn 6. Fortunately, my Ex is aware of the anxieties she got from her mother. The behaviors I deal with are more annoyances than major issues thus far. The dynamics will change as they grow. I had (have) a mother with BPD, and the teen years were the worst...

It's too bad that you don't have more contact with them, to be the Healthy Auntie. If your brother is walking in eggshells not not trigger their mom, that is one thing. I get it. If he's still enmeshed within her parenting style, then that's another thing. Bathing a 10 or 11 yo is just weird, but not uncommon with a parent with BPD traits, nor is co-sleeping at that age.

Lrsson 5 to the right of the board has good material to help juxtapose a parenting style apart from the other home. 8 and 11 are hard ages at which to change, but it's not insurmountable. Pass on the lessons here to your brother. No parent has to be held hostage by the other. Detaching from the relationship dynamic is hard, but not an insurmountable obstacle.

The hardest part, of course, is that while you can encourage and support your brother, he needs to do this himself.

[ujalakali]

HI again.  I am noticing that these boards are very well moderated.  I wanted to know if we can delete my whole thread here.  I would like to be able to send my brother here for support but want him to not hear any echo of himself in here. 

I thought he wouldn't want to do it, but upon talking to him today, I found him surprisingly open to seeking new kinds of support (like those I see here, happily).

Could you totally delete my whole thread entitled

"Brother's ex-wife may have BPD--nephews need help~"

?