Help what to say to adult son?

[pzzld1516]

Hello,  I am new to this site, and my adult son after a very tumultuous year, seems to have BPD.

I am working through that and exploring "validation"  I wondered if someone could walk me through as to what to say in this situation so I can get the concept better:

My son is currently employed,  has a very good salary, after a very rocky start to life after graduation.  He has been extremely angry and variously estranged from me especially and my husband also the past year and a half.  We all participated in therapy individually, paid for his although he has a health plan, paid for his lawyer for an issue he had, special expensive workshop, etc.  Over the years he was in college we lent him money he was supposed to pay back, and he frequently disregarded the need to pay us back and also went over his budget for food.  BTW, we paid for his entire degree as well and he has one of our cars.

We have a younger son, who recently graduated.  He does not have a fulltime job yet, and we agreed to loan him his living expenses for now. No car, no special programs. He has always kept within budget, asked for extra only when he needed it etc.

My BPD son has recently asked for help with paying for a new therapist.  We decided on an amount which we thought was reasonable.  He is enraged about the "small" amount given how much we are currently supporting his brother, saying why are we so hard on him, don't we understand how he feels so alone and unsupported, etc. how can we give his brother so much etc.

I get that his truth right now is that we are giving his brother so much more than we are giving him.

Do I just let it go, accepting that he needed to rage at us and work on my own guilty sad feelings?

If I were to validate, I get stuck with what entirely I should say.  I could say "I can see that you are really angry at us.  It must be very lonely to feel so unsupported"... .but then what?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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

[lbjnltx]

And that's about it.  Being careful not to validate the invalid (that you do more for other son) there isn't much more you can say.  We don't want to JADE (justify, argue, defend, or explain) in the face of accusations.

The validation of feelings is really based in empathy (being able to put yourself in another's place emotionally and experience what they are experiencing).  The communication skill that comes into play when we must tell someone something they aren't going to want to hear (truth) is SET.  Support Empathy Truth.

A supportive statement followed by an empathy statement and ending with a truth statement.  If your son pushes this issue after you validate his feelings you may want to consider using a SET statement.

You can read more about SET here:

https://bpdfamily.com/parenting/04.htm

lbj

[pzzld1516]

What would the "truth" statement be here for my son?

[lbjnltx]

It would depend on his statement or question.

Like if he says "what are you going to do about it?"  the truth statement would be something like:  we have made our decision about how much we will pay for this round of therapy.  or Dad and I will give it some thought and discuss it again. 

[pzzld1516]

The "we have made our decision... ."  is helpful, but I think he would resent it.  What he does is tells me not to respond to his email, tells me how alone and unsupported he feels, re-states his reality of the past,  and then tells me to bring the email to  my therapist.  I feel so torn up by his accusations sometimes. :'(

[lbjnltx]

I understand, it is hurtful.  He is projecting his pain onto you.  His emotions are overwhelming him and the only way he can readily alleviate some of it is to give it to you.  Expecting our kids to like being told "no" in whatever form sets us up for disappointment.  It's ok that he doesn't like your answer.  If he is upset by your answer/choices/boundaries/decisions does that mean you are wrong?  Does that mean you need to change your answer?

The hardest part of all of this is being able to ride out the emotional storms rather than alleviate the pain we feel by giving into our kids (enabling).  Any relief we feel or our kids feel is only temporary... .until next time. 

It really helped me not to personalize the projected pain of my daughter when I got a good grasp of the disorder and what purpose her behaviors served for  her.  It also helped me to define my value based boundaries and use them as a filter in decision making.  For example:  I won't enable, no matter how difficult/painful the situation is.  I won't accept abuse.  I won't be manipulated by threats of self harm or suicide.  With each of these boundaries come consequences that I must be willing to enforce each time.

lbj

[pzzld1516]

 The idea of defining my value based boundaries is very helpful.  Thanks for that!