adult child newly diagnosed

[bailey68]

Hi,

My 19 year old daughter has recently been given a tentative diagnosis of BPD.  I say tentative because she was hospitalized for a month for recent discovery of childhood sexual abuse and the hospital believes she has BPD. Her private therapist doesn't know enough to give the diagnosis yet and says too many people are diagnosed BPD just because there is a history of sexual abuse.  But I will say, she meets so much of the criteria.  I am looking for some advice, help, any knowledge as I don't know how to react properly to this. Cutting is tough to see and its hard to not just burst into tears when I see her arm covered in ton of cuts.

I don't know how I should act.  My daughter is completely unwilling to talk about her feelings. She lies about everything, so its hard to decipher the truth. Do I try to talk to her? Do I allow the manipulation that goes on. Do I set clear boundaries? I am seeking help from people who have been in my shoes. 

Thank you in advance for reading my post,

Bailey

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

[bpdmom1]

My daughter is also a cutter.  It is heartbreaking to see all the scars. 

I really found a lot of good information from the book "Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescents".  Also the book "I don't have to make everything all better" is helpful to learn how to react and validate. 

I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with lies, manipulation boundaries etc.  A good start I think is validation.  The trick is not to validate the invalid.  We've also been instructed by her therapist to clean up the eggshells.  Not sure how to go about that yet as they fall off my daughter.  We need to learn how to be around her with out constantly worrying about how she will react.  Not sure how that works yet.

[Rockieplace]

I too totally empathize with your pain at seeing your daughter hurting herself in this way.  My daughter too is covered in scars from what she calls 'blips'!  Hopefully she gets the right expert care and treatment (maybe in the form of medication, maybe not) to help her stop.  Take care.   

[JustAMum]

My d is also covered in scars. I think as a mum it's very confronting and disturbing when our children hurt themselves. Not all BPDs have been sexually abused. It's important to establish boundaries but be prepared to stick to them. I find that validating my Ds feelings is the most important thing for her. Wishing you all the best.

[Slipping]

Hi Bailey,  I'm so glad that you're reaching out for support.  Just getting a diagnosis, even if it's tentative, opens up a lot of possibilities for you to learn and maybe not be quite so overwhelmed by the chaos.  You'll find many parents here who will sympathize and learn with you.

My uBPDd29 also self-harms, and has made a suicide attempt.  I have the same questions that you do.  How do I show support, without unintentionally reinforcing the behavior?  My therapist has warned me that too much concern and support after the behavior can cause her to repeat it just to get my attention and sympathy.  Mind you, I'm not saying that's the reason our children harm themselves, but it can be a motivator too.  Most of what I've heard to do is to be very matter of fact and not to overreact.  

Does your daughter live with you?  My DD doesn't live with me, and she will tell me on the phone that she's about to self-injure or she will call me afterwards.  I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or not, but I try to validate the emotion that led to the injury, while avoiding any direct discussion of the injury itself.  It seems that self-injury is actually an effective way for our children to cope with their emotions.  Like so much of BPD, it 's very hard to understand.

I've learned that I have to get my own emotions under control before I can help my DD.  For instance, if she calls to talk about self-harming, sometimes I have to ask to call her back and take a few minutes to deal with my own reaction before I can respond effectively to her.  It never helps if we're both emotional.  When you say that your DD is unwilling to talk about her feelings, do you mean that she might talk about the cutting, but not tell you why she did it?  I wonder if that's b/c one of the common problems with BPD is that they are unable to even identify their feelings b/c they are simply swamped with emotion and frequently (from what I've read) don't even know what they're experiencing.  One of the helpful validating questions I've learned is to keep asking "What makes you say that?"

If you're up to it, here's a link to a recent webinar for family members on "Understanding Self-Injury in BPD."  Scroll down the page and look for that title. It's from McLean, which is a reputable source of info about BPD.  I found it helpful, hope you will too.

www.mcleanhospital.org/clinical-services/patient-and-family-resources?tab=borderline-personality-disorder-patient-and-family-education-initiative  

Looking forward to hearing back from you.