Walked away from scene and feel bad. Maybe.

[steelwork]

I don't think I have a relative with BPD, but I did post here about my mother, who seems to show many traits of NPD. ( https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=289743.0 ) My brother is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, unmedicated. He hasn't worked in about 30 years. All his other sources of income dried up years ago (maxed-out credit cards, money embezzled from family members, etc), so he's been living with our elderly mother for the last 7 or 8 years. I always tell people it's like Grey Gardens without the singing and dancing over there. Seriously, though, it's pretty bad and going downhill.

My brother had an accident a few years ago. (Actually, he was caught in a tornado and a tree fell on him!) So now he is disabled as well. Broke his back and had to have his ankle pretty much reassembled from bone mash. He's worked hard to get to where he can walk with crutches and even ride a bike and do some hiking. BUT his mental state has been deteriorating. It's no picnic living with your mom as a man in your 50s, I'm sure, to say nothing of depending on her for pocket money. Also he drinks a lot. So does she, but he is sometimes pretty out of control.

My mother and I haven't been getting along great, but my brother--he has really turned on me in the last year. He's always been prone to belligerence, but it's a recent development that he's so angry at and paranoid about me specifically. There are some external reasons for this, not worth going into, but he and my mother have banded together against me quite needlessly and irrationally.

Anyhow, this is too long already. Let's just say that things are a mess over there. (The interpersonal stuff, but it is also an actual mess. Apartment is a squalid dump. My mother's papers and projects have gotten completely away from her and are spread out everywhere, stuff to trip over everywhere in the too-small apartment, etc. Also, my brother is a food hoarder. I cleaned out their fridge a couple years ago and threw out two full trashcans worth of spoiled food: liquified meat and similar horrors.)

So I stopped by today to pick something up and found my mother in an agitated state. What's wrong? I asked. I smelled something bad--like excrement. It seems my brother was on the toilet an could not stand up. Mom said his feet "lost their strength." What? Then--crash--he fell off the toilet.

I go to help him and find him wedged between the toilet and the wall in the tiny bathroom. There's ___ smeared around, and he's not wearing pants. I haul him up onto the toilet. I note that he's slurring his words. He says he's really cold. Starts explaining that he opened the window when he went to sleep because it was too hot in his room, then woke in the night freezing and closed the window, then slept another few hours. Claims he just woke up, doesn't know why his feet aren't working. Claims not to have been drinking.

He's yelling out for stuff--wants a blanket, his blood pressure cuff, a thermometer. Mom is scrambling around fetching things for him. She looks scared, like a little kid, trying to placate him. I'm starting to wonder if he's had a stroke, so I say I think I should call an ambulance. NO NO NO I'm not to do that. Mom tells me he lost his medicaid because she claimed him as a dependent on her taxes. (WHAT? There is NO reason for her to do that. She lives on about $15K a year!)

Sorry. Off topic again.

So I call my sister, who is a nurse practitioner and who they might listen to. She talks to my brother, and I get the phone back, and she says I should just go ahead and call an ambulance.

Meanwhile, my brother is trying to get up off the toilet with his crutch. He just wants to lie down for a half hour and warm up, he says. I hang up and try to help him, but he's too heavy. Somehow he ends up on his hands and knees, crawling back to his room, toilet paper sticking to his bare ass, yelling at me to leave him alone. He gets in bed and yells for his cuff and thermometer, which Mom fetches. Starts trying to take his blood pressure and temperature again, saying something about how he does not want "these numbers" to get into the hands of any doctors--that for reasons I probably don't understand he does not trust the doctors.

I get my sister on the phone again. Mom is trying to grab the phone from me, my brother is yelling from his room that he'll kill me if I call an ambulance. Sister tells me she's getting his primary care person on the phone, and that way the decision about calling an ambulance will be out of our hands. I can tell she isn't super worried, but clearly thinks something is going on and he needs medical attention. She doesn't think he had a stroke. He's yelling, so I give him the phone again. He's saying to her, "Steelwork always thinks I talk funny." What? I mean, he's slurring, but maybe he actually is drunk I don't know. Now my mother is agreeing with him that he's not talking funny.

I gave up at that point. I told him, "I'm sorry you're not well, but I don't appreciate you threatening to kill be because I'm trying to help you. I hope you feel better soon." And I left.

I mean, I figured the pc dr is being notified. I tried to help, but he clearly didn't want me there. I'm sick of the abuse from both of them.

Three hours later I get a vm from my mother that she finally got him "on his way to the ER" (i.e. ambulance, I guess?), and she's on her way over to the hospital now. No word from her since then. I'm sure if something was seriously wrong I would have heard, so I'm guessing he's lying on a gurney somewhere high on xanax.

I thought about it for a while and then decided to call my other brother, who's on vacation. Didn't want to worry him, but he might be upset later if he heard all this went down and no one called him. According to him, bipolar brother has been self-medicating with hallucinogens--DMT and psilocybin. Great idea, right? He was probably tripping his brains out! Apparently he was sending nonsense texts last night.

I mean, I hope he's all right, and maybe I'm a terrible person, but I am just burned out on the whole (literal in this case) sh*t show. And tired of being double-teamed by my bipolar brother and my probably NPD mother.

[steelwork]

Okay, well--he was admitted. They don't know what happened yet.

[Turkish]

What a drama. I admire you for keeping it together. (What's up with you mother claiming him on her taxes?   

It's indeed out of their hands, as you NP sister said. He's in the system and safe for now. You did the right thing.

[steelwork]

What a drama. I admire you for keeping it together. (What's up with you mother claiming him on her taxes?  

It's indeed out of their hands, as you NP sister said. He's in the system and safe for now. You did the right thing.

Thank you for saying so. So much of what goes on over there requires an attitude of detachment. I mean, it's crazytime. I could go on and on. My mother is a landlady, and she likes to do all the maintenance herself. That worked okay before she developed emphysema and got old and became obsessive about certain things (e.g. insulating) at the expense of others (e.g. rodent control). She's maddeningly self-abnegating, wants to use up as little space as possible for herself, and periodically gets snagged on ideas like moving into her basement. Sometimes that's so she can rent out her own apartment and use the $ to get bipolar brother his own place. A few years ago she said she wanted to move brother in with one of her other tenants (she has a very odd way of managing her building, and it's essentially like a rooming house), live in the basement, rent out her apartment, and give ME the money. I said no thanks! Anyhow, I pointed out that she has a formerly homeless man living down there on a cot behind a shower curtain, hoarding ancient trash-picked hard drives and desk monitors, heating up cans of chili on a hot plate. Well, she cleaned out the storage area next to the boiler, so that shows what I know about it! I realized at some point that she's far too disorganized to actually move down there, so now when she brings it up I just say, "Yeah, sounds like a good plan."

Why did she claim my brother as a dependent? It was insane. Yes. But I suspect it's part of her plan to keep the building free from liens in the event of her own serious debilitating illness. This is the reasoning: she discovered that, in the event that she goes through her Medicare benefits (say, in a nursing home after a major stroke), Medicaid kicks in. But if the Medicaid benefit cap is reached, they can put a lien on her property. It's only an issue because she dropped her supplemental health insurance a decade ago and now it would be too expensive to resume. In general she hates insurance. I fear her building has no homeowner's insurance. Anyhow, I suspect she thinks having a dependent living there would somehow circumvent the building being seized as an asset in this highly theoretical scenario.

There's a very simple solution, which is to put the building in a trust for her heirs, but she won't have anything to do with lawyers. Another solution (which she came up with herself) is to put the title in her children's names. If that happens at least two years before she dies, this also has tax advantages. But my bipolar brother can't be on the title because he has like six-figure credit card debt and won't file bankruptcy. My other brother has a child soon to enter college and doesn't want the asset to prevent her getting financial aid. My sister is not inheriting the building (she has a separate inheritance). I said it would be fine to put the building in my name but my mother keeps spinning around, saying how "something needs to be done about the building." Circular, maddening. Last year she emailed us with another alternative plan: if she ends up in long-term care, we are to have her relocated to Oregon where she can "self-destruct."

It is quite literally crazymaking. Her physical surroundings, the contents of her mind, her accounts, her estate planning, her handling of my brother (who should be on disability!) -- all of it.

And that's the real reason I wrote the original post. I thank you for thinking me calm. I don't feel calm. I'm terrified about how all this will end.

Mother and brother are the opposite of waifs. They are like wild animals when you try to take any sort of lead to help them clean up their messes.

Still waiting for an update on brother's condition... .

Thanks for listening.

[Turkish]

I'd be wary, too, of getting your name associated with anything that could turn into a huge financial meltdown. My mom wanted to put my name on her truck (which I originally signed over to her when I bought a new car in 2009). I said no. I don't want the liability if she gets into an accident. Unlike her, I have substantial assets which someone could come after.

My mom kept claiming me as a dependent on her taxes when I was in college. She kept saying, "why don't you apply for financial aid?" I kept telling her that (at least around 1990), that they said I couldn't if she kept claiming me. Her contribution to me was about $1000/yr for 3 years. I worked part time (at first one, then second job tutoring on campus) to support myself. She claiming me wasn't legitimate at all.

When I was living with her as a kid, I remember that she  would periodically not file her income taxes, then get into trouble; fix it, then repeat. Same with her current property tax situation. It's not mine to fix, and neither is it yours. Being a dutiful child, honoring your parents goes as far as it can go before it crosses the line into unhealthy rescuing that puts our own lives or livelihoods at risk.

[steelwork]

Yeah, I wish she would stop trying to game the system and just talk to a financial planner or something, but I suppose getting involved legally is not the answer.

Update on my brother, just for thoroughness: he's still in the hospital. He did in fact have a TIA and has blockages in his leg arteries, which seem to be resolving okay on their own. Another 24 hrs in the hospital, looks like, and he's gonna have to be treated as a serious stroke risk from here on.

He doesn't remember anything that happened on Wednesday. Which is just as well.

[steelwork]

My brother is getting out of the hospital today, I think. Or already got out. I didn't visit him during his week-long stay, nor did I call. I know he doesn't want to see me.

He's 6 years older, and he kind of claimed me as his own when I was born--always trying to mentor me in some crazy way. When he was 10 he got an idea that our mother was going to (inadvertently) poison him with her bad cooking and spoiled food, so he negotiated control of $10/week of the food budget and began doing his own cooking and shopping. He tried to get me to go in with him when I was 6. I remember him saying, "Steelwork, you're 6 years old and you can't even cook spaghetti! What would happen to you if we all died?" So the next time I was by myself I tried cooking spaghetti by putting it in a colander (dry) and lighting a burner under it. Haha. Anyhow, the point is that we were very close once, and I looked up to him as much as I ever looked up to anyone. He's slid so far, and things have gotten so bad between us. I guess (this being bpdfamily) you could say that he's painted me black--mostly because of his paranoid thinking, which has settled on me as a threat or an enemy.

He's going to be on an injection of blood thinner for at least three months, maybe permanently. My sister says he's very shaken up about what he's done to his health with the drinking and smoking and now hallucinogens, plus frequent periods of running in manic overdrive for the last 35 years. That was bittersweet, hearing that. I'm glad he's taking this seriously, but also sad because, according to my siblings, he has "changed" in the last year, becoming more philosophical and taking stock, but I've seen none of that. I've only seen more hostility.

As for my mother: she sent me an update on my brother's condition the day after the incident saying, "Sorry you got caught up in that." There's the tone: it's between them, none of my business. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, I don't know. I talked to her on the phone the next day, and I'm sorry to say I was not really nice to her. I'm feelings guilty about that. Things are so hard between us: me and brother, me and mother. I need to keep my distance. But then I feel guilty for ignoring two people who are suffering physically and mentally.

[Suzn]

I'm glad your brother is ok and back home and maybe taking his health more seriously.

Mom is scrambling around fetching things for him. She looks scared, like a little kid, trying to placate him.

I've seen this look on my mother's face and seen her act this way in similar situations with my brother. In fact I'm pretty sure I'VE had that look and acted this way around my brother in the past.

"Sorry you got caught up in that." There's the tone: it's between them, none of my business. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, I don't know.

This really stood out for me. I know that tone well and those exact words. I don't know that you are being oversensitive steelwork, it doesn't feel very good to feel left out in your own family. This is what enmeshment looks like to me and it fits my mom and brother too.

I talked to her on the phone the next day, and I'm sorry to say I was not really nice to her. I'm feelings guilty about that. Things are so hard between us: me and brother, me and mother. I need to keep my distance. But then I feel guilty for ignoring two people who are suffering physically and mentally.

I could have written this on several occasions. I may have finally let go of the guilt or at least the biggest part of it. The distance can help us get back on a level footing. The tools work well when we feel we have that footing back. 

[steelwork]

Suzn, thanks for your response.

"Sorry you got caught up in that." There's the tone: it's between them, none of my business. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, I don't know.

This really stood out for me. I know that tone well and those exact words. I don't know that you are being oversensitive steelwork, it doesn't feel very good to feel left out in your own family. This is what enmeshment looks like to me and it fits my mom and brother too.

It really means a lot that you get what I'm talking about. This is a classic example of how I end up feeling like the crazy one. Like, WHY did I feel so lousy about that? It's one of those things that seem harmless to outsiders.

I talked to her on the phone the next day, and I'm sorry to say I was not really nice to her. I'm feelings guilty about that. Things are so hard between us: me and brother, me and mother. I need to keep my distance. But then I feel guilty for ignoring two people who are suffering physically and mentally.

I could have written this on several occasions. I may have finally let go of the guilt or at least the biggest part of it. The distance can help us get back on a level footing. The tools work well when we feel we have that footing back.  

My worry is that time is slipping by. My mother is 82, and not in good health, and I feel like I should be able to do more for her. I know she was very attentive to her father in his last years, and she deserves the same. But he was pretty happy to have people fuss over him, and she's quite prickly about it--to say the least. She needs to be the caretaker. But she refuses to take care of herself. It's painful to see the way she lives. Her apartment is frankly very unhealthy for a person with worsening COPD. She has a bad cough all the time now, and her oxygen is getting lower, but but she swats away any attempt I make at helping her out. She would not even let me take over insulating in the basement, which is REALLY something she should not be doing.

I just wish at least now as our time together draws shorter that she would let me be a normal daughter to her. But it's all so bunged up, it's too late. I'll have to live with that guilt, too, and forever feel like I should have tried harder.

Sorry. Blah blah.

[Suzn]

WHY did I feel so lousy about that? It's one of those things that seem harmless to outsiders.

Comments like the one your mother made are not harmless. If you've heard these types of comments all your life it's had an effect on you. I know how you feel about feeling like the crazy one and not really knowing why you feel lousy. It hurts, there's a gut feeling there and it's not a good one. My T has stopped me in conversations we were having when she would hear me share one of these types of statements and ask if this was something I heard often growing up. These comments have gone over my head most of my life until as an adult I learned more about BPD/npd behaviors.

My worry is that time is slipping by. My mother is 82, and not in good health, and I feel like I should be able to do more for her. I know she was very attentive to her father in his last years, and she deserves the same. But he was pretty happy to have people fuss over him, and she's quite prickly about it--to say the least.

I just wish at least now as our time together draws shorter that she would let me be a normal daughter to her. But it's all so bunged up, it's too late. I'll have to live with that guilt, too, and forever feel like I should have tried harder.

It's not your fault your mother is who she is. When I speak of distance I'm referring to emotional distance. It's best to wait if you are upset about something she's said and give yourself time to recoop.

This tool has helped me have more successful conversations. It would be useful in both situations you've shared.

COMMUNICATION: D.E.A.R.M.A.N. technique

Let me know what you think.