Feeling down

[caughtnreleased]

I am preparing to undergo a transition in my life, and at times like these we rely on family and friends to support us and cheer us on.  Unfortunately, I realize that my family is really quite sick (uBPD/NPD mom, uBPD sister, some kind of PD brother in law, and completely castrated father).  They recently all took a vacation together (and I was not even told about this, they just up and did it - it sounded like a complete and total disaster though so I'm probably blessed that I wasn't in that hornets nest) but I still felt really alone and left out.  I was looking forward to spending time with my sister and her kids when they returned, except when I did spend time with them the dynamics between my sister and her kids is so that bad they essentially wouldn't speak to me, look at me, touch me and when I voiced my unhappiness to my sister she told me I could leave,  then told the kids i was leaving because of them. I really had no choice but to leave, although I did my best to explain to them that we would play together another time when they were feeling better. All this has left me feeling extremely sad about the situation - feeling very insecure and sad. Worried about the kids and their wellbeing. To top it off, many of my close friends have recently moved away. I do have some friends who are around, but I would feel like a burden if I called them too often.  I essentially need a family to replace the "family" that is mine but is too self centered to actually be what a family is supposed to be.   I've come to realise that there are never any "good times", that there is no love in this family. Only rivalry, jealousy, anger, avoidance, attack, bitterness, sadness and unhappiness.  No one relates to one another.  No one has a conversation that is about relating and exchanging information and love.  It's incredibly sad.  I am struggling with this realisation, and perhaps acceptance, but it simply makes me want to cry.

[unicorn2014]

Hey you're not alone!

I blocked my mother, my ex husband, my ex fiancé and about to block my brother on my iPhone.

My brother's common law wife unfriended me and then she had her two sisters and her mother unfriend me all because I called her out for slandering my father on Facebook!

Now my uBPDwitch/NPD mother wants to bring the whole family back together for my daughter's sweet sixteen in October!

Family drama? I can totally relate.

My daughter is worried about my brother because he is overweight/obese and has a heart condition and she is worried her cousin will get overweight.

Talk about family drama!

We are another family for you.

Thank you for sharing. Please share more.

[caughtnreleased]

Hi Unicorn! I am sorry to hear about your family situation. Yes these dysfunctional families are exhausting. It looks like I've managed to extricate myself from the drama and somehow I have become the "parental" figure and they now all come running to me to complain about the other (i heard different versions from each about how terrible they were to eachother on the trip).  I managed to detach from my parents and accept them for who they are, however I guess I had not mourned the fact that I never really had a "sister".  I think deep down she despises me for having "stolen" our parents from her (i am younger and I guess when I was younger I was the golden child).  She has had episodes of extreme rage against me.  And now she does all she can to exclude me from family vacations and get togethers - treating me like I am some kind of second class citizen and if I say anything in opposition I get raged at.  My parents are afraid of saying anything to her as well as she constantly dangles removing access to the grandkids over their heads so they will not in any way stand up for me (or themselves).  I am not really sure how to handle this.  When she raged at me when we were little, my parents never said a thing to her - it was almost as though they took a bit of satisfaction in watching her do it.  In fact they enabled her rages against me.   As a result, I am in a family where someone has out of control rages, or totally excludes me and everyone else watches silently as this happens.  I am not exactly sure what my options are.  I am saddened by this mostly because I don't have a sister. Perhaps what I would think is one of the most important relationships in someone's life.  I feel really alone.

[unicorn2014]

Hi Unicorn! I am sorry to hear about your family situation. Yes these dysfunctional families are exhausting. It looks like I've managed to extricate myself from the drama and somehow I have become the "parental" figure and they now all come running to me to complain about the other (i heard different versions from each about how terrible they were to eachother on the trip).  I managed to detach from my parents and accept them for who they are, however I guess I had not mourned the fact that I never really had a "sister".  I think deep down she despises me for having "stolen" our parents from her (i am younger and I guess when I was younger I was the golden child).  She has had episodes of extreme rage against me.  And now she does all she can to exclude me from family vacations and get togethers - treating me like I am some kind of second class citizen and if I say anything in opposition I get raged at.  My parents are afraid of saying anything to her as well as she constantly dangles removing access to the grandkids over their heads so they will not in any way stand up for me (or themselves).  I am not really sure how to handle this.  When she raged at me when we were little, my parents never said a thing to her - it was almost as though they took a bit of satisfaction in watching her do it.  In fact they enabled her rages against me.   As a result, I am in a family where someone has out of control rages, or totally excludes me and everyone else watches silently as this happens.  I am not exactly sure what my options are.  I am saddened by this mostly because I don't have a sister. Perhaps what I would think is one of the most important relationships in someone's life.  I feel really alone.

I am very sorry you are going through.

Are you in therapy at this time or any 12 step groups?

[caughtnreleased]

Hi yes I have been in Therapy but recently took a step back because I was feeling better, and wanted to move forward with my life and stop dwelling on all this hurt and terrible stuff. And BAM! they pull this crap on me.  It's like, life is difficult enough without having a totally dysfunctional family.   I have had so many of the rage-y episodes that make me so upset, I call my friends crying and some have helped me through it but I am afraid of depending too much on them and being a downer, and eventually burning bridges with them.  This is really quite difficult.  What are the 12 step programs for this kind of stuff?

[unicorn2014]

Hi yes I have been in Therapy but recently took a step back because I was feeling better, and wanted to move forward with my life and stop dwelling on all this hurt and terrible stuff. And BAM! they pull this crap on me.  It's like, life is difficult enough without having a totally dysfunctional family.   I have had so many of the rage-y episodes that make me so upset, I call my friends crying and some have helped me through it but I am afraid of depending too much on them and being a downer, and eventually burning bridges with them.  This is really quite difficult.  What are the 12 step programs for this kind of stuff?

Hi may I ask how many years of therapy you have had? Al-Anon is mentioned in Stop Walking on Eggshells. You can look them up on the net and find a local meeting. I highly recommend it. I've been a member for 12 years. Randi Kreger draws on the al-anon principle of detachment in her book stop walking on eggshells. I'm currently trying to apply it to my relationship and I'm not doing a very good job as I am one week out from a breakup. Its a lot easier to apply to it family of origin then romantic relationships.

[caughtnreleased]

It's been three years of therapy.  I thought that would be enough.  I never imagined I would need so much of it, but I've come to realize now how sick my family actually is.  I guess when you are in the FOG you aren't able to live this kind of grief because you're constantly on a roller coaster. But working through all my own anger and grief I seem to have some serious depressive phases now, where I feel really alone and incredibly sad whenever my family does what they do all the time that is rage, silent treatment, badgering, triangulation, manipulation, lie, ignore, downplay and enable.  What a horrible nightmare these people are.  I rejected a man who I think I fell in love with four years ago because I was afraid he was going to be like my family.  I don't think he is.  He is vulnerable, he has some avoidant issues, and he's immature, but I was so terrified when I met him that he would be like my family that I pushed him away.  This is something else I am struggling with.  Finally realising that I fell in love with someone but that I wasn't in a position to recognize it and let it happen. 

[unicorn2014]

It's been three years of therapy.  I thought that would be enough.  I never imagined I would need so much of it, but I've come to realize now how sick my family actually is.  I guess when you are in the FOG you aren't able to live this kind of grief because you're constantly on a roller coaster. But working through all my own anger and grief I seem to have some serious depressive phases now, where I feel really alone and incredibly sad whenever my family does what they do all the time that is rage, silent treatment, badgering, triangulation, manipulation, lie, ignore, downplay and enable.  What a horrible nightmare these people are.  I rejected a man who I think I fell in love with four years ago because I was afraid he was going to be like my family.  I don't think he is.  He is vulnerable, he has some avoidant issues, and he's immature, but I was so terrified when I met him that he would be like my family that I pushed him away.  This is something else I am struggling with.  Finally realising that I fell in love with someone but that I wasn't in a position to recognize it and let it happen. 

I've had a decade of therapy as an adult, and I had therapy as a teen too, these are serious, life long problems when you have dysfunctional parents.

I am currently breaking up with my uBPD financé. I had hoped for a TS, and that still might happen however in the meantime I have to detach. Hey, I fell in love with a man who first lied to me about being married, then lied to be about divorcing, lied to me about talking to a divorce attorney, lied to me about working with a psychiatrist, lied to me about having a drivers license, university degree, living in a foreign country.

I would encourage you to go to more therapy. If you have the book stop walking on eggshells I can tell you the pages to look in for the parts on detachment. Al-Anon also has a really excellent bookmark on detachment.

Let me know if I can help.

[caughtnreleased]

Thank you unicorn. I did read the book stop walking on eggshells.  I have been doing meditation, therapy, writing, theatre, arts, reconnecting with adult figures in my past who helped me.  My regret about the man that I fell in love with was that I was so terrified he would do all those terrible things to me - he was just too honest with me. He told me he had BPD and I didnt, know what it was and when I looked it up i had an identity crisis because I learned that behaviour I had accepted as normal was in fact a personality disorder! It turned my world upside down.  All the bearings I had, about what was normal and who I was were turned completely inside out.  And now here I am STILL struggling with this family.  I feel like I have a done a lot of detaching, it's just that I am now detached but I feel so alone and sad.  I am on the outside. I am not actively involved in their drama, but the stories they tell me just make me so sad.  And mostly, there are two innocent and loving children involved in this nightmare, and they are being damaged.  It makes me so sad. Thank you for your words. But when I would go to A-anon do i have to tell people I am an alcoholic? I'm not. that's the thing... .I don't know how this would work in the context of having a dysfunctional family.

[unicorn2014]

Oh no, al-anon is for friends and family of alcoholics! That is why Randi Kreger uses their principles of detachment in her book. As far as I am concerned alcoholics and borderlines are the same thing. In fact there are parents of borderlines in Al-anon. You do not have to identify yourself in Al-anon, or you can simply introduce yourself by your first name only. I find Al-Anon immensely helpful, first it helped me with my alcoholic ex husband now its helping me with my substance abusing daughter.

I am doing all the right things too but when crisis happen, in my case my daughter had surgery, while I am involved in a lawsuit, and she started her new job, I started having medication interactions and almost had to go to the ER! Then I found out I was having an anxiety attack despite my healthy pulse and blood pressure. I am starting with a new therapist in July.

Check this out, my daughter's doctor told me I HAD to get my daughter into family therapy. Well, she was seeing a psychologist who then had to close her practice because her program ran out of money. Me and my daughter's doctor got into it because she told me I was overbearing. I asked my daughter "am I overbearing?" no mom "do you want me to make amends with your doctor?" no mom.

Those are the kind of things Al-anon helps me with.

Then there's my uBPD ex fiancé ... .that's a whole different kettle of fish... .



me and men... .

I just I could find one that was right for me!

[cleotokos]

As far as I am concerned alcoholics and borderlines are the same thing.

My uBPD mother is not an alcoholic, and I wouldn't have ever considered her one - from time to time she would drink wine and call my dad up to ream him out, but I don't recall it happening all *that* often. She also didn't come from a family of alcoholics - no alcoholism at all that I can recall.

That being said, substance abuse is certainly very common among pwBPD.

[unicorn2014]

My uBPD mother is not an alcoholic, and I wouldn't have ever considered her one

Hi cleotokos, I apologize for not illustrating my point. What I mean is that alcoholics and pwBPD have very similar personalities.  I believe that alcoholism is a personality disorder and that nonalcoholics experience alcoholics the same way non borderlines experience borderlines. It actually has nothing to do with drinking alcohol. If you read SWOE you will see that Randi Kreger actually draws upon Al-Anon literature to help non borderlines detach from borderlines difficult behavior.
I will try to be more clear in the future when I say something like that so as not to confuse other members of BPD family. I'm also not trying to create controversy so with my writing please take what you like and leave the rest.

[cleotokos]

Sorry unicorn, I took your words to be saying that pwBPD were always alcoholics, my mistake! I had no idea AlAnon could help those not struggling with alcoholism.

[unicorn2014]

Sorry unicorn, I took your words to be saying that pwBPD were always alcoholics, my mistake! I had no idea AlAnon could help those not struggling with alcoholism.

No problem. Actually Al-Anon is for friends and family of alcoholics, but it also helps friends and family of those with mental illness.