Helping Parents

[Lppageguitar]

Hey All,
     Great that this forum is here!  Long story short I now have the luxury of being a great distance away from my family situation which involves my sister who has been diagnosed with BPD.

What I see from afar is that my parents and family do not want to understand, research or find a better way.  For me this is really hard to watch as I am a person who either does something or not and generally very decisive and I certainly won't stay in a bad situation without continuous efforts to make positive changes to it.  I've tried making suggestions about the wealth of information surrounding BPD, its treatment and outreach numerous times over the years but they seem to ignore it.

I remember being stuck in that rut, thinking it could never get better and it's really not a good place to be.  Any suggestions on how to help family take a more active role in making positive progress with a sufferer of BPD?

[Notwendy]

Although it is natural to want to help I think there is a bigger picture. Families where one member has BPD tend to have dysfunctional behavior that all members participate in. While it appears that your sister has a problem, in fact, everyone is involved, often with taking roles in the drama triangle.

Siblings can also take on roles: the scapegoat , the golden child, the hero, the child who is painted black.

Your desire to help may be due to your role in the family. This doesn't mean it is wrong to want to help, but jumping into the drama as a helper may just be jumping into drama.

Your parents are adults, they are capable of seeking help if they wish to. Personally, I'd leave it at that.

I can only draw from my own experience trying to "help" Dad with my BPD mom's dysfunction. But when I did, it was off to the drama triangle races. My father was one of the most educated people I know- widely read, had access to computers, the library, his own physician. He knew how to get all the information about BPD that he'd ever want to. My trying to help him was me taking on my own dysfunctional role in the family.

[Naughty Nibbler]

Welcome Lppageguitar:

I'm sorry about the situation with your sister.  I'm dealing with an uBPD sister.  Has your sister ever received treatment for BPD?  What are the circumstances around her diagnosis? (some crisis or self-harm?).

How old is your sister?  Does she live with your parents?  Is she a high or low-performing BPD?

My sister is high-functioning, but went into full BPD mode when our parent's health began to fail and we had to work together on family issues.  Losing my parents, within 6 months of each other, was hard.  What has been harder, is dealing with my raging uBPD sister who painted me black.

It's tough to help someone who doesn't want help.  My sister fools her church friends and gives the pretense of being an upstanding church member, but behind closed door with family, she exhibits her BPD traits.  She has taken Prozac for several years and gets her prescription from her GP.  While we were still in contact, she told me her GP suggested she get some therapy. Of course, she refused and indicated that she didn't need it.  She is painting me as the one with a problem.   

NotWendy has had more experience with BPD and she brings up some good points.  I think that many of us can relate to the fact that there is usually more than one disordered person in the family.  Sometimes, we fail to realize that "our normal" with certain family members isn't normal. 

Most of us have a trait or two that would fall within the definition of various disorders.   It generally takes a certain number of behavioral traits to get a label, but we can sure encounter a lot of problems interacting with difficult people, who just have a few traits.  Might anyone in your family, other than your sister have some dysfunctional traits (perhaps one of your parents)?

[Notwendy]

Thanks- I think we all have important experience in different aspects of BPD. Our experience is also a result of our ages as well. Being middle age I've observed how BPD affected my FOO as well as the next generation -me, sibs, relationships. But no matter what experience we have- we each add wisdom to this board.

I truly wanted to help my father as he got older, but my attempt seemed to backfire. Dads relationship with my mother was beyond my understanding- which makes sense - they were bonded before I even existed. If he didn't want to know information about BPD- he either didn't want it or knew it and didn't want it.

Our "normal" was the drama triangle. Learning about that was an eye opener. It didn't have to be just a set of three. There were more of us and the configuration changed. Mom, Dad, Me or Mom, Dad, sibling, or Mom, sibling , me. We ran on this triangle like hamsters on a wheel, having no idea that wheel was just in the same place.

If I stepped in to help Dad( rescuer)  Mom saw me as persecutor, she was then a Victim- Dad stepped in to rescue her- and I felt hurt that I was just trying to help and they were upset with me.

If your parents have been rescuers/enablers to your sister - and you step in to help- you may become her persecutor and they may rescue her from you.

This does not mean you should not try to help. Families are different. But watching for patterns can help you not feel their reaction is personal. It may just be their "normal".

[Lppageguitar]

Wow.  This is a lot to unpack. 

I stumbled across the drama triangle yesterday after posting and immediately found myself showing traits of being in the rescuer role.  It's definitely something I need to keep an eye on.

I am in total agreement that we all have a dose of a disorder in us, there's no doubt about that. 

Just for anyone who might stumble across this post, I would highly recommend mindfulness practice, I was really interested to see that it had become a large part of recovery for BPD and I have found it, as a sibling, incredibly therapeutic and effective as well.  I practice what's called Vipassana Meditation (Where mindfulness comes from). 

Thank you for the feedback here, I'm so happy that as time goes on, more extensive info and support becomes available to those who are effected by this disorder.

[Lppageguitar]

Just went in for my 2nd read... .yeah this is eye opening for sure.  There were numerous times when I'd take some sort of action, as a kid and as an adult, to try and help or to protect one of my other family members and it just backfired every time.  From my perspective I saw this as getting blamed for my sister's outbursts and this destroyed my self esteem.  It took years to recover it back, I was fortunate to move out and go to college and that's when the recovery started because I was finally free.

I think it's a big part as to why I choose to live abroad (I'm a teacher).  I feel the mindfulness has been a huge help in getting back to baseline but I feel like I want to add in Counseling on top of it, has anyone had positive experience with counseling? 

Thanks again everyone!

[Notwendy]

I felt that counseling and also 12 step groups- co dependency and ACOA ( deals with dysfunction even without alcohol abuse) - but of the groups- working one on one with a sponsor was essential. I have heard that mindfulness is helpful- have not tried it. I am glad that there is help for families and people dealing with BPD.

I think it is important to keep in mind that the dysfunctional patterns we learned in childhood were important adaptations. We don't need to blame ourselves for that. Children are dependent on their families and we needed to deal with them, and cope. This ability to cope is a good thing.

It is when we take these adaptations into our other relationships and adult lives that they become dysfunctional. At this point, we do have choices and are responsible for our behavior.The good news is that, we can unlearn them and learn more emotionally healthy ways to relate to people. This can take some work, but it's well worth it.

[Naughty Nibbler]

I would highly recommend mindfulness practice, I was really interested to see that it had become a large part of recovery for BPD and I have found it, as a sibling, incredibly therapeutic and effective as well.  I practice what's called Vipassana Meditation (Where mindfulness comes from). . . .I feel the mindfulness has been a huge help in getting back to baseline but I feel like I want to add in Counseling on top of it, has anyone had positive experience with counseling?    

HEY LPPAGEQUITA:  
Therapy helped me learn about BPD and that my uBPD sister likely suffers from that.  It helped me realize that I wasn't crazy and that there was a label that likely applied to my sister.  It became apparent that my sister had split me black.

Mindfulness, guided meditation and TM meditation are helpful to reduce stress and clear the mind.  I've learned there are a lot of mindfulness and meditation opportunities.  We just need to find what is a good fit for each of us.

I'm glad that counseling and mindfulness have been so helpful for us.  I truly join you in acknowledging their importance for us to heal and move forward with a healthier life.

[Lppageguitar]

Thanks for your responses here!  I can definitely see how Therapy helps us come face to face with the stories we tell ourselves about what we experience and what we feel, this is a really important aspect of getting better.

What I really think is cool and interesting about Meditation (in my experience with Vipassana) is that it's not an intellectual experience at all, the teachers don't encourage any sort of speculation about what you're experiencing and you're not allowed to talk for the entirety of the retreat (usually 10 days). 

We would meditate intensively for nearly 10 hours each day, which was really intense!  I was not really sure how I was benefitting from that but I stuck it out because I made the commitment to finish the retreat before I started.  I can say that the results were really magnificent, I had a pretty intense emotional release following the conclusion of the course (they say that this release is not unheard of and to be ready for it).  It was nothing like I had experienced before, it wasn't negative, or positive it was just this neutral release, which I'm sure is a result of the "Non-judgemental observation" skill set that you strengthen with mindfulness.

Regardless I felt more clean, clear and peaceful than I ever had in my entire life, it was a truly remarkable experience!  It also gave me a toolkit to navigate emotional life with, the training is a reconditioning, of sorts, towards the way you react to your own thoughts and emotions.

So that is that.  As effective as Vipassana is for me, Therapy, I think, would also be very helpful to me to get at this from a different angle. 

I'm curious as to how you all deal with day to day life with family members, I was unable to find a way that worked so, I moved away and honestly that has been the best solution.  Is there anyone who has had success in being apart of the everyday lives of their family members with success?