Just when we think it can't get worse

[mcbetsy]

Hello again. I'm so glad this community is here still. It's been a while since I've been here. Life has been a bit tumultuous, to say the least. Our adult daughter is still creating chaos and crisis every day of our lives. We had hoped by the time she was 30, she would have gotten some mental health care, but she has not. In fact, she has doubled down with a paranoid mindset insisting that the "system" is out to get her and that she will not be going to any mental health professionals.

She is delusional now. This is a new progression in the last year. She is posting personal things on the internet about herself that are very private but have to do with this long thread of conspiracy that she's developed about people in her life. An old boyfriend is a drug dealer (a man we have never even met), he has given her cancer, her grandmother (my mother) paid him to give it to her so she would die. She insists that I (her mother) am part of a drug ring in our town and that I want her to die as well. She keeps asking questions over and over again like "why did grandma write that my stars would align in my highschool graduation card? What does that mean? What is behind it?" (This was 12 years ago, and my mother is quite eloquent and wrote something to the effect of "I know all of your stars will align and lead you to a bright future" or some such thing as grandmothers do)

My mother is a psychotherapist. I am the owner of a local business for over 20 years. I have also been an elected representative. Our daughter is constantly calling the police and reporting this conspiracy to anyone who will listen.

She informs our grandson about it and calls me and screams at me about it all the time. My husband and I moved to another state because of his job, and I changed my phone number (our grandson's father and I communicate and that's how I see my grandson, so I didn't need her to have my number- all she would do was abuse me through calling over and over and texting vile messages). She realized she could call me on facebook and now abuses me through messaging there all day... .sometimes all night from midnight until 5 AM. She does the same thing to her grandmother, and, in fact, did it to her all while she was recovering from a chemotherapy allergy that nearly killed her and kept her in a hospital bed for 10 weeks. Her cruelty knows no bounds. Her rage knows no end.

We will be moving back to our home town in a week. We are at our wits end and are ready to communicate these mental health changes to child protective services and to contact the police and have a restraining order put on her. She has threatened me with physical harm and that is what the state police have always said they need to do anything about it.

Her father is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I have always thought that females carry the gene, but that they don't normally express it. However, I'm starting to think this is not the case for our daughter. Her father followed the same progression when we were younger. (I am married to someone else for the last 25 years) He was physically violent toward his mother and was arrested for beating her in her sleep with a baseball bat. He has always played the lottery and always insisted he would win. He always had a contest he was entering and told long tales about what he would do when he won. Our daughter is now doing these things.

She constantly invites men into her life that cause her great pain or live off of her. She has worked really hard to grow her own business over the last 9 years and now she is not able to keep the crazy separate from that any longer. She told me a client fired her because she told the client that the client's husband was in the illuminati. UGH! It is gut wrenching to see her hurt her reputation this way! She has a child to support and raise. She has a life to live, and just simply can't without feeling this rage and fear all the time. All the time. It never ends.

I thank you so much for just providing a space where i could say these things. The first time I came here, it was so strange to put this stuff out there and feel acceptance. It has really emboldened me to be careful with myself and to not get entrenched in the insanity myself. To not engage with anything other than the truth, if I must engage at all. Now that I've returned and things are worse I am relieved again that this space is here.

Nothing we do is good enough. Nothing we say is the right thing. No matter how we include her, she continues to rage against us and shun us, then tell us we aren't a real family because we don't do things together. (Our other 4 adult children spend time with us all the time... .we are in fact... .a very happy family. And we would love it if she could just be a part of it.) I miss her being my daughter. I miss her being part of the laughing smiling bunch that are my kids. I just can't abide having her in my daily life when she is this way.

Things will happen as they happen. We are used to that after the better part of 30 years dealing with this. It just feels good to say it. Thanks again.

Wishing all of you who feel the pain of this family trauma the love and care you need to move through it.

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

[SoSoSoTired]

Im sorry that you are experiencing an ongoing barrage of bizarre attacks.  I understand your continuous stress.  My daughter's behavior makes my family live in an ongoing nightmare too. 

Yes, your daughter may be exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia like her biological father.  Although it's not against the law to be "crazy", you can enlist the help of the police to get her transported to a psych hospital or ER for evaluation if she threatens herself or others. 

I hope you will use many other protection methods at your new home in addition to getting a restraining order. 

[Lollypop]

Hi mcbetsy

Thanks for sharing and I'm sorry to hear it. It's just exhausting but still somehow we can carry on.

I've deleted Facebook off my phone and iPad, including messenger. I posted before I did this, just a note to say I was off for a while. I'm still available to FaceTime, text message and call from my friends and family. Facebook got to be a habit, I was checking on my BPDs every time and I felt it wasn't healthy. Also he uses messenger to ask for money.

I feel better now. I haven't deleted the account but may do.

My BPDs is 25 and I was hoping by 30 things might have improved. But without therapy and refusal to work I'm delusional. You mentioned "truth", I'll try and focus on that.

L

[mcbetsy]

Communication devices and social media are weapons for our girl. I can't allow her to have my phone number because she sends constant messages that are miles long over and over. Scathing abuses accusing me of things that have no basis in reality, like she's in a soap opera inside of her head.

While she and I are not "friends" on facebook, I did not have her blocked, so she called me on fb out of the blue one day and ever since she realized I would respond (I thought she was in crisis so I answered), she calls me over and over again, sometimes 20 times more more in a row if I do not answer it. So, yes. These things have really made harassment and abuse by her very easy. I somethings think cyber bullying or stalking laws must apply here.

I will know better what to do once I arrive back in our hometown next week and get settled in our house there. Being back in the area and able to support my mother through this abuse will be good. She has been the one on the front lines taking it all for this time. Everyone else in the family, our other children included, have stepped back and won't engage with her. It's very sad. It hurts my brain literally to be in it. And I'm so sure so many of you feel the same way. It's like being stuck in a tornado and there's no way out. It just keeps spinning and spinning, out of control and getting worse and worse with each passing year.

I don't just post this to get it out, but to also help others by sharing one more story that helps them see they are not crazy, this sort of thing is happening with other people. Lots of other people. It isn't new and it isn't rare anymore. All families have some sort of trauma and this just happens to be ours.

Strength and confidence in yourself, commitment to your own self care, and trusting in the truth you know can help us all get through these times. May it be so.

[Slwinner]

I have an almost 19 year old daughter with BPD. At 15 she started spiraling out of control. By 16 this child who was an honor student and an athlete, a talented writer and artist was cutting and tried to commit suicide by overdose. She was diagnosed with depression and put on medication and a month later had a psychotic episode. She was hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She was medicated, continued to see her therapist but things just got worse. At 17 she sliced her arms open with a steak knife in my kitchen, right in front of me because her boyfriend had come over to tell her he was moving to Florida. This triggered intense feelings of abandonment for her. She was hospitalized again and diagnosed with BPD.

5 more hospitalizations followed, more diagnoses of adjustment disorder, anxiety disorder and then antisocial personality disorder. Things just kept getting worse. When she turned 18 she decided she would do as she pleased. I became her legal guardian . It did me little good to stop her. She went missing often, started using drugs, became addicted to heroin, got arrested for drug abuse and domestic violence and went to jail. I bailed her out of jail after a week, got her an attorney and her charges were reduced to disorderly conduct with two years of probation provided she'd go to treatment.

After almost a year of doing two rounds of partial hospitalization and many rounds of IOP she violated her probation by failing a drug test. Her case is in the county mental health docket due to her severe mental illness. The probation violation landed her in jail again and I refused to bail her out. I asked the court to mandate residential treatment which is something I had been trying to get her into for more than a year. Insurance does not like to pay for residential mental health care treatment and facilities are scarce. She aged out of one facility while on the waiting list and the one adult facility I found three hours away from home also had a waiting list which she was placed on however the court intervened before a bed was available.

So she's in court ordered county residential treatment for addiction. No one is addressing her BPD. She gets her meds but her behavior has not really changed. She's allowed to call me every other day and each call is a list of things she needs and her grandiose plan for when she gets out which is not even logical.

I refuse to have her live at home again. I love my daughter. I have turned over every stone looking for treatment. She has two psychiatrists, a therapist, done IOP, PHP. I've spent many hours fighting with insurance to get them to pay for treatment. I've looked for help in our county, out of our county, out of state. I've talked to places in Nevada and California (we live in Ohio) asking for help. I discovered the sad truth that you have to be a millionaire to get help. I also found out that some of these places pay commission to their intake specialists when they place a person in treatment. That's outrageous and would not be tolerated for a person with a physical illness however it's acceptable and commonplace when dealing with addiction and dual diagnosis.

I found this forum because there is so little else out there that is focused on BPD. I started reading the boards. What I have learned is that none of us are alone however BPD is a very misunderstood, under researched and a complicated illness. It's also devastating to the person suffering and the families. I have yet to read a "success story". At first I thought this was fixable. Now I have lowered may expectations and my focus is getting my daughter into some sort of safe housing after treatment. If she comes home it sets her up to fail. Within a day or two she will be on her phone or Facebook making bad connections and following her impulses. Social media is the devil for her.

I was hoping as she matured that she'd gain coping skills and life skills but I read here over and over again that the BPD behaviors are persistent regardless of age. My plan is to support her from a distance, take care of myself and my other child who has witnessed too much and been forced to grow up too quickly. If she can't get placed in some sort of group home then she will be in a shelter And that breaks my heart but she can't live here. I can't negotiate deals with someone who is so very ill. She will agree to the rules and then break them, lie, steal and cheat to get what she wants. I won't even go into the horrible sexual indiscretions that she engages in and I can not deal with.  Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

This place helps me not to blame myself which I did for a very long time. If I had just not put her in preschool so early (she had a hard time there). If I'd taken her to the playground more or the library more or worked less or... .

It's just hard and reading others experiences helps me to feel less alone. And that is a blessing.

I may not be able to help my daughter but I hope sharing my story helps others. Peace.





I am one person. I have a full time job and another child to raise. My husband, who has bipolar disorder is gone because he could not deal with her appropriately. They were constantly at odds to the point that she tried to stab him with a knife and I was forced to have him leave until I could figure out what was wrong with her. Well he never came back, in fact he spiraled out of control and was is a psych hospital twice.

[VegasMom]

Mcbetsy ... .I am so sorry for what you are going through and my heart goes out to you. The issues your daughter has with paranoia ... .My son talks about the same things, he trusts no one, and won't go see any mental health professionals, either. He talks about Illuminati, Anonymous, FEMA death camps and RIFD chips, Govt conspiracies ... .You name it. He rambles on and on about it - It hurts my brain. And a couple of things you said really hit home ... .That nothing you do is ever good enough and nothing you say is ever the right thing. I completely understand that ... .I feel like I can't win no matter what. And also, that you miss her being your daughter. That must be so difficult for you ... .I know because that's one of the things that hurts the most. I miss my son. My sweet, funny, smart, handsome, athletic boy ... .The one with the bright future. The one with the endless possibilities ... .That boy is gone. In his place is someone I don't recognize anymore ... .Physically, mentally, emotionally ... .He is a totally different person ... .And my heart aches for who he once was ... .It aches for what might have been. So I understand ... .I understand how you feel and how much it hurts and how stressful and frustrating it is. And, there are so many of us in the same boat ... .It helps to know that we don't have to go it alone. So many people on this board can relate and are truly helpful and supportive ... .Especially, on the really rough days.

[sadmama222]

I am so sorry for all you are dealing with and we have recently had to turn our 18 year old daughter out of our home since she refuses treatment and will not abide by our rules or structure and constantly steals, lies, and manipulates us.  Like you, I have blamed myself and my husband has as well.  We have a healthy non BPD 16 year old who has already suffered too much pain and we have to protect ourselves and her.  Life yours, my daughter is extremely promiscuous and has done absolutely horrible sexual things that we cannot begin to fathom or accept.  I fear for her life and safety everyday, but her presence in our lives is making US all sick.  Terribly heartbreaking and frustrating, but you have to do what is right for your own mental health and you cannot help someone who won't help themselves.  Things will only change when our daughters DECIDE to change them, and it is painful to accept (although I am starting to) that they may never change. 

[landslide]

Mcbetsy, your words were so helpful to me today, thank you for sharing them. 

I don't just post this to get it out, but to also help others by sharing one more story that helps them see they are not crazy, this sort of thing is happening with other people. Lots of other people. It isn't new and it isn't rare anymore. All families have some sort of trauma and this just happens to be ours.

Strength and confidence in yourself, commitment to your own self care, and trusting in the truth you know can help us all get through these times. May it be so.