Tired of the beatings

[Storm cloud]

My child has BPD, and has just raged at me and my husband about how awful we were as parents, unnurturing, traumatizing and many other things. No matter what we say or do it never seems to help our 30 year old adult child.

Sick of being the bad guy and sick of hearing about 20 year old problems that aren’t even true.

Storm cloud

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

[kells76]

Hello Storm cloud and

I think anyone in your position would be tired of hearing repetition of things from decades in the past, especially when accompanied by rages and with no real sense of moving forward or resolution. Sounds like this has happened frequently; would you categorize these rages as circular arguments, or something else?

Does your 30YO live at home? Do you have any other kids (or anyone else besides you and your husband) living at home?

Has your 30YO received an official diagnosis? If so, is your child accepting of the diagnosis (or denying it), in treatment, compliant with treatment, rejecting treatment...?

What does your in-person support system look like right now? Do you have understanding family members, supportive friends, a therapist?

These are such difficult family relationships. It's no wonder you're at the end of your rope  Glad we can be here for you  -- we get it.

kells76

[Storm cloud]

My child has raged at us before, they are circular arguments revisiting childhood traumas that she can’t articulate. Usually the discussions don’t make sense- they start off with one thought and get deflected to something that has nothing to do with what we started talking about. These rages usually happen at  family gatherings. After what we think is a nice time she says she will no longer come to an event (thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday) etc. and says she wishes she had another family. Family events without her are peaceful, but I feel sad that she doesn’t seem to want to be a part of them or just doesn’t have the capacity for them. Her announcements at family events always come out of the blue, we don’t know what suddenly makes her blow.
She was diagnosed as having BPD when she was in high school (grade 10) after having attempted suicide for the second time. She has been in treatment but doesn’t talk to us about it.
My daughter is married and has a job. I don’t know how her marriage is going, but she recently had a big blowout with her husband, left the house, and threatened suicide again when he mentioned a separation from her.
She says she wants to have a relationship with us but only if we submit to her demands of endless apologizing for what we did in the past , and only if we are authentic about it and only if we are accountable for being the terrible parents that we were.(sorry for the venting).
Yes I have a support system, my husband and my sister are there for me.
We let her vent for a short time and then ask how can we move forward and how to support her but she doesn’t answer.. She keeps going back to her terrible childhood and events that either we don’t remember or never happened.
We have another daughter and they don’t have a close relationship.
It’s exhausting and traumatizing to me. I am 69 and while I am healthy if this keeps up I’m not sure how long I will be.
Today she sent a long message demanding that we apologize again, acknowledge her trauma,  feelings, be accountable and take counseling with her. Counseling in the past didn’t work and ended up making every one in the family a bad guy but her. I’m done with this. I know this is a mental illness but I have to take care of me now because this is going nowhere.
I feel guilty about thinking about walking away from this craziness but I need a break from her. I don’t know what else to do.

[CC43]

Hi Storm Cloud,

The way you describe how your daughter dredges up ancient slights from childhood when she's stressed closely mimics my BPD stepdaughter's behavior.  She relives past negative events ad nauseum.  Worse, she twists facts and invariably tells stories of abuse, always making herself out to be a victim, when the reality is, oftentimes she's the perpetrator!  Like your daughter, I think she's seeking retribution, or some sort punishment, as if that would make her feel any better.  Guess what?  It won't.  Maybe that's why it seems she goes in circles.  If you JADE (justify, argue, defend or explain), she'll just change tack and dredge up yet another story of abuse, making both of you madder in the process.

After dealing with these negative thought patterns and ruminations for years, my stepdaughter often seems "stuck."  She just can't get past the past sometimes, despite extensive therapy.  Recently, she was under some stress (because she started college full-time, after a long period of part-time pursuits and summer vacation), and sure enough, she started dredging up the ancient stories of abuse and "traumas".  Now my husband and I see right through her:  her stories of ABUSE are an EXCUSE.  She's setting herself up for self-sabotage.  She's trying to use her sister, with whom she hasn't lived for a decade, and with whom she's barely spoken for years, as the excuse for her inability to concentrate on school today.  Well, that's not going to work this time (I hope).  My husband called her on it.  He basically said, you're stressed about studying, so you're thinking about trying to blame your sister, which is a counter-productive procrastination tactic, when you need to focus on your studies, not her.  She has absolutely nothing to do with your coursework, she is not to blame here.  If you fail out of school again, you're on your own this time.  You need to get past this.  She'll typically say, Yes, but, I was ABUSED . . . and my husband will say, Yes, but, you're not being abused now, are you?  You really need to get past this.  (He said it more lovingly than I'm ever able to.)

I see the circular arguments as fighting on the one hand, and avoidance on the other.  This could be akin to the "fight or flight" response when someone feels traumatized.  The fighting manifests as arguing about the purported traumas of childhood.  The flight manifests as cutting you off, and also as avoidance of the real (current) source(s) of stress, which might be too painful for her to bear.  You see, she can't bear to take responsibility for her problems (perhaps her own role in an argument with her husband), so she's turning around and blaming others.  It may be that you're the only people left in her life who are still willing to listen.  Colleagues and friends probably won't put up with her for very long.

You mention holidays as difficult with your daughter.  The same exact thing happens with my stepdaughter.  According to her, she can't handle holidays because they trigger memories of past abuse.  I think what's really happening is that she can't bear to see others happy, when she's miserable.  I also think that she has very low self-esteem (typical for BPD), and she feels inferior relative to her siblings.  In addition, she can't bear it when others get attention, for example when they talk about what's going on in their lives, which happens at the holidays.  She probably feels "abandoned" that way, which is very triggering for someone with BPD.  So, for the last few holidays, what we've done is celebrated alone with her, and we celebrate with the extended family separately.  She just isn't ready to face a holiday with the whole family yet.  And we've avoided the usual blow-ups that way.  Maybe we're "enabling" childish behavior.  What I do is invite my stepdaughter to the family gatherings, and the choice is up to her whether she appears or not.  But I also say something like, We'll have plenty of leftovers the next day, if you'd rather stop by then, which is what she has done.  That's what's worked best of late.

Anyway, I'd advise you not to take any of your daughter's accusations personally, though that's probably easier said than done.  Take it as a signal that your daughter is emotionally dysregulated, and that she's handling some stress in her life right now.  If the accusations sound unfair and highly distorted, it's because they are.  You are not to blame, that's just BPD talking.

Finally, I've found that the best response to an "adult tantrum" is usually an "adult time-out."  When my stepdaughter rages, she needs time and space to calm down, before she's ready to process logical thought.  It's like she's deaf to anything we say when she's raging.

All my best to you.

[Storm cloud]

Thank you cc43 it was good of you to share your experience and what worked.your daughter does sound like mine.

Your husband sounds a bit like mine and we haven’t taken that tactic yet. My daughter is stressed, her mother-in-law visited. for a month and it overwhelmed her causing her to lose it.

I also like your idea about a separate visit for holidays.

When you say time out, do you mean pause any communication  until she can come back to talk about things?

It is helpful getting tips and understanding how others cope with this mental illness.

[CC43]

Hi again Storm,

To answer your question, by "time out," I mean to give my stepdaughter time and space to cool off.  What that looks like depends on the situation.  For example, if she sends a raging text, I might not respond at all.  Or I might send a short acknowledgment, like "OK," or "Got it."  But I don't JADE (that is, engage in the raging text back-and-forth, trying to show how her version of events isn't helping, that she's not being rational, etc.).  If she's raging in person, and she's riled up and/or not listening, then I might say something like, I need to take a break, or I've got to go, even though she's the one who needs a break (because I want to avoid looking like I'm blaming her for anything).  I might quietly exit the room.  But usually, she likes to storm off.  When that happens, I think it's important not to run after her, not to beg her to come back (as at a holiday dinner . . . ), and to let her make the first step towards re-establishing communications.

I try to stay calm, not to lecture and not to say anything I would regret.  I know that in the heat of the moment, this is easier said than done.  But I think the reality is that her emotions are super-sized, and she needs the time out to recompose herself.  I actually feel bad for her, because surely she laments "losing it" once again, and "ruining" yet another interaction with people who love her and are trying to be supportive.  If I'm in doubt, I don't say anything at all.

I've never "blocked" anyone, but I do let calls go to voicemail at times, and I don't check my texts for messages every second of the day and night, because I'd never get anything done if I did.  That way, other people's messages don't rule my life.  I respond with reasonable promptness, but rarely do I respond instantaneously (that might be a generational difference).  But if I get an angry message that doesn't merit a response, I don't respond, because I feel there's nothing that I could say that could make the situation better.  I delete the messages if I need to, to preserve my sanity.

If she's not in a full rage, but the conversation is getting tenser, you might try what I call the "three strikes" method.  I use this method sometimes with people who like to vent and become overbearing in a one-sided conversation.  Let's say she's been complaining about an incident from the last century.  I might suggest, "Let's please change the topic."  If she says, Yes, but . . . I might say, "We're not getting anywhere/We can't change the past, so let's please talk about something else, or I'll have to go."  And if she continues once again, that's the third strike, and I'll say something like, "This is stressing me out, so I'm going now.  Bye."  That way, she had three warnings, and she made the choice to continue even though I wasn't on board with that.  I try to be polite, but firm, and I think this approach works fairly well.  There's only so much circular talk I can take, and I actually think that treading over a well-beaten path only serves to harden the negative attitude.