Don’t want to sabotage myself

[KitKat68]

Hi all,

My daughter (30’s) was dx’d wBPD many years ago and aside from some limited therapy she received right at first, she remains untreated about 15 years now. She had a major splitting episode about four years ago (following a divorce and her second dui) and we’ve been estranged since that time. And by estranged I mean she used us and other relatives for money to fix her problems and when the help came to an end she weaponized our grandkids and began harassing me via email. I’ve responded only once in four years because it involved my work email. Otherwise there has been zero contact from us to her.

More recently there hasn’t been any contact from her to us directly in a year now. No harassment or anything else. I’ve  heard from others in the family she is using social media to unsurprisingly do her smear campaigns against us. I have used the last four years to get back into therapy and learn about my role in this mess and in the last year realized I used to engage in a lot of JADEing. I thought if I just kept explaining that she’d finally understand where she was wrong and I was right. I know now that isn’t ever going to happen.

Even though our daughter has done some pretty bad things to us and others, as a mom I still worry about her and I often think about reaching out to her. Logically I know this isn’t a good idea but emotionally I think I'm making up excuses as to why I should reach out, in the context of “good moms would never ….” No one else is guilting me into contacting her, not even my daughter at this point, so I think I’m doing it to myself instead.

I also think I'm more concerned about what others think than I’d like to admit some days. My other adult aged, non BPD children have made comments along the lines of “good parents would make this situation right instead of just giving her the silent treatment.” In other words, they’ve bought into at least some of what she’s told them and they don’t understand BPD. One of them has said that even though we didn’t do anything wrong that we should just make amends anyway and “put this all behind us.” They don’t understand that’s not how it works with her and this will just happen again, particularly since she has no interest in treatment of any kind.

They also don’t know about the things she’s done which are more extreme, one of which was she after becoming angry at us, she purposely vandalized the motor of the car she borrowed from us to get revenge for being angry with her for not taking care of the car. She admitted to it (threw it in our face) verbally but I could never get her to admit to it in writing or admit it to the cop who talked with her. We know she did it because she’s the only one who has access to the vehicle other than us. And doing such a thing is definitely right up her alley as she’s always been the very vengeful type. After a certain point, talking to people about the things she’s done feels like gossiping and a waste of time. Some of the stories are so outlandish and while true, I just feel defeated repeating all that crap.

My husband doesn’t care what our other kids think about us in relation to their sister at all and while he’s angry at our daughter he feels zero desire to talk to her ever again. I get that and often feel that way myself but I’m stuck in this loop now I’m having a hard time breaking out of. She’s insisting all this time I won’t speak to her over some birthday text and that I’m convincing my husband (according to her I’m conning him into not speaking to her). Totally not the case at all. She used us for about 10K, tried using my SSN to get a 25K loan, ruined our car, and a whole load of other things she’ll deny ever happened.

These loops make me feel like I’ve taken 100 steps backward.

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

[PearlsBefore]

That's a whole lot you've been through, definitely - but I'm concerned for your daughter just because I know how time often works in their heads if they have accompanying haltlose which most do, so that crazy "every day is a new day" living in the moment...and it's possible she sees you as ghosting/NCing her, not vice versa - right? While social media is such a cancer in dysfunctional families, keep in mind most (about 90% I think?) dBPDs will gradually have reduced symptoms as they age (mine sadly acknowledges her life has become more chaotic and BPD-laden as she ages), so while it's not "forgive and forget"...you should keep in mind that she's not the same person now who did those things...in a way.

[KitKat68]

It’s quite possible she sees it that way or has chosen to see it that way and it’s since become “the truth” for her. What happened was about four years ago when all this garbage took place she told me if the conversation turned argument (aka her splitting) was affecting me that much that I should just block her “for [my] mental health.” I was so angry at her that I did block her but realized much later her telling me to do that was sheer manipulation on her part. She wanted me to do the blocking so she could turn around and tell her then newish boyfriend and his family that her mom and later on both of us (mom/stepdad who’ve been married to 30 years) blocked her while leaving out the part she told me to do it. The “poor her” routine.

I am aware symptoms can decrease as someone with BPD ages but from what I’ve been told about the content of her latest smear campaign, it doesn’t sound like the decreasing has happened yet. Her last email received about a year ago was extremely unpleasant as all of them have been the last few years.

I am definitely torn. The mom part of me worries about her but she is high functioning at least on the surface (is employed, married, they have kids). The logical part of me knows if nothing else, she will want to keep the chaos going with me to keep up the house of lies she’s built with her in-laws. She’s told so many lies about us to her “new people” that she’s boxed herself into a corner. To even communicate with us more than one of her hate mails or two, she’d have to out herself and her lies to them.

The regular human being that is just me who happens to be her main target (taking the mom part out of it), I am extremely leery of her (she’s been violent with us in the past) and I know I can never trust her again and that has made me not like her I also know she hasn’t been to therapy so I doubt there’s been a ton of improvement.

I hate the fact that this situation feels so unworkable.

[PearlsBefore]

Yeah, I can understand what you're saying there - and the risk of conflict is so high because it's unlikely she will ever see the past differently than how she has it set in her mind, etc. However there might be super-vague super-conflictless ways to try to establish at least a little bit of that familial bond - for example the holidays are coming up, just mailing out a card to each of your family would remind her that you're not shunning her (though good luck getting her to ever acknowledge anything's her fault, but baby-steps here, baby-steps)

[Sancho]

Hi KitKat68
I think that you are in a state of what they call 'cognitive dissonance'. Here is a definition:

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort of holding conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes.

On the one hand you think that as a mother you should be the one to reach out and you hear the other children make comments that reinforce this and, conversely, imply that 'good mothers' would be focused on 'making it better' for a child - even an adult one. You probably have lots of thoughts that are pushing you in the direction that you need to take responsibility for reconnecting with DD, no matter what.

THEN

On the other hand your thinking takes you to what it was like in the past, to all the things that others have no knowledge of and that were very, very difficult. You are asking yourself 'Why would this be any different?' DD has not had any treatment program and she has not initiated any form of contact - so she is not taking any form of responsibility for repairing the relationship. The fact that the siblings appear to be 'on her side' in some ways can indicate that DD is still triangulating and trying to build a 'us against them' scenario.

How do we resolve cognitive dissonance?

Sometimes there is one thing that just outweighs all the factors on the other side. For example if DH was anxious to try to repair the relationship, then that might put the balance onto the 'yes contact' side.

But there is nothing really that is weighty enough to pull you to one side or the other.

My motto: When in doubt, don't.

Until things become clearer it can be a time of holding the status quo. But this can mean a state of all this going round and round in your head!

To help this can I suggest that you take time to think about this question: what is the aim of the good mother?

Surely in the long run the aim to enable our children to become independent, self reliant citizens. If they have a good relationship with us that is a HUGE bonus of course.

It has been many years since you have had contact with DD and I am assuming she has been able to find her way in the world, manage her affairs, and - a bonus - it sounds as though she is in contact with other members of the family.

You are a good mother!

[KitKat68]

Thanks, Sancho. This gives me a lot to think about ❤️..

She definitely doesn’t seem to want to repair the relationship but does want to blame me for it. She says that she’s going to a therapist (something she has lied about doing multiple times before) but not for her BPD rather to deal with being abandoned by her parents and other family members for dumping her. None of us did anything of the sort, rather many of us helped her get back on her feet and when the help came to an end she.became angry and devalued everyone involved, refused to pay back those who helped her via loans, weaponized her children and moved onto a new life while harassing me, very likely unbeknownst to her now husband/FP.. I firmly believe like all the other times she lied about therapy, she is not in therapy at all and never has been save for a couple appointments 15+ years ago.

I am in a lot of doubt about contacting her and my instinct is to not. As you mentioned, there really isn’t anything weighty enough pulling me in that direction. She has even abandoned her pattern of harassment toward me and has made no other contact with us in just about a year. She kept blaming me for this estrangement situation and on some trivial matter she wants to believe I’m upset over instead of the actual reasons, so I just went completely no contact. I realized then the 30 years or so of circular arguments and all the other behavior was getting us nowhere and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I still don’t think I can and I know I don’t want to. Therein lies the guilt.

[js friend]

Hi Kitkat68

There is certainly a lot that I havent told my family about the things that my udd has directly done and said to me over the years, so like you many of my relatives think it is just as simple as picking up the phone to sort things out, but as we know it just isnt that simple.

A few years ago I really felt torn. Once that got into my head to contact my udd I just had to act upon it. I hadnt heard from or seen udd or my gc for years, and she had cut so many people off that I thought it was time. I felt enough time had passed and there may be a change as my udd is till quite young.  It was time to reconcile with my udd and surely we could find some common ground. Well udd was having none of it and actually asked me what I had come there for.
Im glad I did it though. At least I tried. Would I do it again? Probably not. Actually she was just more confident in telling me to go away than ever before. I have to accept that she just doesnt want to see me, or to have anything to do with me, and Iam over it.

Recently a relative asked me about this feud that udd and I supposedly have going on. What???, wait....There is no  feud, but this is what  udd is obviously putting out there to explain my absence in their lives. Iam glad this rumour about a feud was brought up  between us because It tells me that udd is still telling lies to justify her behaviour and her lies was/are something I just cannot accept. In my experience you will always get family who say you havent done enough as it is easy for them to say without knowing the full ins and outs and having dealt with this on a daily basis. They seem to think that we should have this armour around us and put up with pwbpds c$%p for no other reasons than because we are mothers.

My advice is do what you think you need to do kitkat. People can change but it is often unlikely in the case of pwbpd. My udd is emotionally stunted and I now believe that no matter of time is going to change that, so prepare for the same behaviour you have received in the past from your dd if you do reach out to her. I reached out to my udd and dont regret it. Life is short and for me it is best to live a life without regrets no matter what they entail.

[KitKat68]

I definitely see your point about no regrets.

I believe if I ever do reach out that my daughter will react much like yours and she will either wonder out loud why I bothered or find more of my words to berate me with. I’m still considering doing it but there is certainly a part of me that knows that it’ll get me nowhere and probably ruin a day or two of mine. Several years back there was a time where contact from her would have (and did) traumatize me for a straight month or so.

What’s interesting about my other kids is they have at times had a lot to say about what we should or shouldn’t be doing with her while neither or them have a close relationship with her at all. They have not seen her in person since 2021 when she spent the weekend with one of them and let her kids tear up their house while she drank. He’s never invited her back and I’m not sure why either of those kids think anyone should be saddled with the BS my daughter dishes out when they won’t deal with it themselves. I also don’t think she bothers with them other than keeping them on social media so she knows what they’re up to and so they’ll see her smear campaign posts. I don’t blame them for not wanting to be around her but they shouldn’t have to wonder why we feel the same. I suppose it’s likely holding parents to higher standards.

[CC43]

Hi there,

I'm sorry you're going through this and that there seems to be no way out of the impasse.  Sometimes with severe BPD, I think that the victim attitude is a core part of their identity.  Your daughter might "identify" with being "abused," down-trodden and wronged by everyone.  Changing her outlook would mean changing her identity, which is tenuous to begin with for people with BPD.  Counterintuitively, this identity might be "working" for your daughter, and so she really has no incentive to change.  I bet at some level the siblings understand this, but by the same token, it's easiest to blame parents when family dynamics are dysfunctional.

I think that at this juncture, your daughter's attitude might be so negative that she'll find something wrong with whatever you do.  If you remain no-contact, then you've abandoned her, or you're giving her the silent treatment.  Yet if you reach out, she'll probably lash out in response.  So my advice would be to do what makes YOU feel best.  Since the holidays are coming, maybe you send her a standard holiday card, but avoid any emotional content.  Yet if that doesn't feel right to you, then don't do it.

I suspect that beneath it all, your daughter knows that she has wronged you and continues to do so.  When you contact her, she can't help but be reminded of the guilt, and her brain goes into overdrive making up all sorts of reasons she's mad at you, or blaming you for her transgressions.  Her pain is so great that she convinces herself that you are to blame, and you are the ones who made her make mistakes.  The worse the mistakes, the worse the guilt and the more difficult it is for her to begin to heal.  That's my humble opinion.

[KitKat68]

Your description of my situation with my daughter is likely very close to dead-on. She’s been telling anyone who will listen that we abandoned her (aka she started cutting us off after we wouldn’t help her financially beyond the 10K we did provide) yet became very hostile and abusive toward me the two times I was forced to make contact with her during this estrangement. 

I believe she’s got a whole host of lies to maintain to her newish in-laws who’ve never met us but she’s turned against us while having an identity you very aptly described. A few years ago I returned some of her kids’ belongings via mail and some birthday gifts that wouldn’t fit in her car when they previously left our house. The vitriol she sent me via text in response to the box was super abusive and her level of anger was off the charts given the unremarkable situation. My guess is her husband was probably home when the box arrived and it didn’t add up to and align with whatever lies she’d been telling back then. She made sure to tell us to never mail her or the kids anything again and that sending email only to her was the only acceptable correspondence. When much later I had to send an email telling her to stop using my work email and work cell to contact me, she blew up about that too.


For years she’s been telling people in the family the only reason we’re all estranged is because I demanded a happy birthday text from her while one of her kids was in the hospital undergoing surgery. No such thing ever happened and worse yet, none of her children have ever had surgery for anything. What she did was text me happy birthday about a week after my birthday, I texted back “thanks,” she demanded to know why I didn’t appreciate her text more, I told her I didn’t think was required to say anything more than thanks and ’d that she was a week late anyway. Then off she went and that’s been a large part of her narrative about this since. What’s bizarre is people actually believe this trope or at least told her they do.

Sometimes I wonder why it ever occurs to me that I should make contact with her about anything. It seems like all I ever end up describing is a bunch of dead ends.