Daughters driving me nuts

[Shaking my head]

Please allow me to introduce myself.  I was raised by a BPD mother (undiagnosed) until her death at 57 I was 35 at the time and after years of her mental, emotional, verbal and physical abuse I must say that it was somewhat of a relief not to have to play the game any longer.  Over the past several years my daughter (30 years old) has begun to exhibit behavior that was reminiscent of my mother but it happened gradually and without me putting together the pieces whether that was conscious or subconscious I am not for sure.  However it all blew up about a month ago and resulted in a 72 hour hospital stay and the diagnosis.  She was told that she needs to stop the smoking of marijuana, take Zoloft and start long term, intensive therapy.  It has been a month she is still smoking weed, stopped taking the Zoloft and has been to one counseling session and refuses to return.  She continues to insist that she can work through this on her own and has basically laid all blame for her continued bad behavior at my feet.  I have assured her that I will be 100% supportive of her and her journey to recovery but only if she proactively participates in the program that the doctors have set forth for her.  Since she has decided that she knows more than the professionals and specialists (her terms) about her condition she is refusing to "work the program."  I will not support her thinking she can work through this on her own as she has been doing that for ten years.  I will not stand by and be her "victim" any longer!  Been there done that and refuse to subject myself to her emotional, mental and verbal abuse any longer when there is help available to her that she refuses to accept.  She can turn this behavior on and off like a light switch and it seems to be that everything I am reading and being told is that I am suppose to just accept her bad behavior, not call her on it and change the way I deal with her but she is not to be held accountable for her own actions.  I have an extremely hard time accepting that she is not to be held responsible for her own words and actions and quit throwing a pity party so she can be the center of attention and have everyone saying oh poor baby look how awful your life is!  she has a husband who loves her more than anything in the world, got final adoption papers on the baby she has had since he was six months old and moved into a brand new home a few months ago.  Everything she has wanted her entire life finally has come to her and I have stood by for the last three months and watched her create drama, turmoil and unhappiness in her life on purpose.  I even asked her if she likes being unhappy and miserable because if everything is good she does everything in her power to make problems!  I am tired of her rollercoaster ride and I want to get off and remain off! But I feel like that makes me a bad mama but I look at it and realize it is actually self preservation.  Am I wrong for refusing to buy a ticket for her rollercoaster?

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

[Chilli]

Hi and so glad you have found this site which I have found very helpful. I have a 20 year old daughter with BPD and like you its been a long exhausting roller coaster ride since she was diagnosed 2 years ago.Initially we did everything we possibly could travelled miles and miles to access treatment for her suicidal ideation and self harming issues.We did this for a full year and she did improve eventually.But the past 6 months have been terrible again and now she is full of anger and has violent outbursts,manipulative,lies all the time,frequently abuses alcohol and recently smoking hash.She has had numerous admissions to hospital where she has gone "crazy"after drinking too much but just won't listen.We are at our with end with her and if thing don't improve will ask her to move out of family home.Her psychiatrist always says that she is capable of making good or bad choices and she continues to make bad ones.We were always encouraged not to tolerate this destructive behaviour.They say that yes she has BPD but she is capable of making good choices when she wants and there must be consequences when she doesn't. What I feel now is that we as parents and her siblings are entitled to a happy life and while we will support her when she is making good choices we won't when she is not.It's hard but the livs dover stuff just doesn't work with her. Hope that helps a little and keep in touch.

[donnab]

I don't know the answer to your question - does it make you (us) a bad mother. I know I've tried and tried and tried to help my daughter access the help I think she needs. Sounds like your daughter is much higher functioning than mine who's life is in a terrible mess. It's a question I struggle with.

I've been having some therapy recently and am doing EMDR with my therapist. We are doing some emotional strengthening therapy as she says I need to rebuild some emotional resilience and make somewhere inside me protected so I can develop some inner strength rather than pretending to be strong. So after another afternoon of my dd laying her problems at my door to sort out - after 6 weeks of behaving terribly and screwing her life up royally - I did one of the meditations. Afterwards I realised I just don't want to do this anymore. I just don't for the right or wrong of it I'm done. If she wants to get therapy and start working towards recovery great but if she doesn't and just wants to continue living a chaotic terrible life then so be it but I am not going to live in chaos as well anymore. I've been doing this a decade. If that makes me a bad mother then I guess it's a another loss I'll have to come to terms with.

I don't know if this is good or bad advice - well I guess it's not advice I'm just saying what my experience is right now. I can't take living on this rollercoaster anymore. I think we do need to know our own limits and be kind to ourselves as well

[Lollypop]

Hi shaking the head and Donna

My BPDs is 25 and we too have had 10 years of it. We were in emotional chaos as we tried to deal with the situation absolutely clueless and way out of our depth. As I look back our BPDs was too. BPDS had complex behaviours with drug abuse and we just couldn't work out what was going on but felt there was something underlying.

i decided to get help for myself after a particular horrible argument. This took place at the house where my BPDs was living at the time,  why I ever thought I could "fix" in his "space" I've no idea. I now of course realise he was full of shame as I sat in this dump and he coped as best he could and threw me out.

I got help and very soon realised I wanted him in my life. I felt it my responsibility to try and learn and find a way for this to be possible. Quite honestly, I was doing it for both of us. Still reaching out! Perhaps I should have walked away; I lost an opportunity and added more years of pain. I don't beat myself up over it. I see it all as a process and I just wasn't ready then.

What I learnt was that I need to let go and live my own life. I found it much easier to concentrate on the living my own life while learning to let go. Some people I think do it the other way round. I found myself feeling so much better. I was in control of my life and it felt great. I started to be happy while not focussing on BPDs (he started to improve, gave up everything but weed after about 4 months). This gave me the strength to eventually get BPDs out of our home but in a way that he had an opportunity to make a go of it for himself. He of course failed but... .he finally got a diagnosis and this has proved to be a turning point for us as a family. Bpds is back home but there are improvements with our changed approach. I try not to worry about the future.

I'm just throwing this comment in here because I really think it's important.  

What better way of showing our children how to live a good life than by choosing and actually living a happy life ourselves?  

I put myself first for the first time in my life, walked out of a job I hated and got myself on a part-time college course. It hurt us financially but it's had a huge positive impact on all of us. I'm healing myself, making new friends and have interests now. Emotionally this has helped me detach more. I got myself out in the real world. My BPDs can see me working towards a plan, we retire in four years, we will move and won't be having any adult children with us.

Feeling determined (today anyway!), come what may.