How to survive when adult BPD child blames you for everything

[mama808]

My 25 year old daughter has been struggling with BPD for years. She blames me for the trauma I caused each time she was out of control and I had no choice to call the police when she was younger.  Recently, I was supporting her living in a foreign country. Worth the money for the space away from her. She was doing really well, and like most BPD got into a toxic relationship with a Narcissist. It blew up and resulted in two public suicide attempts and a bad accident/injury. Not sure what happened.
Long story short, brought her back home, against her will. Was told she needed to leave the country or would be arrested as suicide is against the law in that country. As expected, it i a living hell here now. I took her away from her life, she has nothing here, I am the worst person in the world, I made everything worse, I destroyed her life.  Clearly I know none of this is true. But there is no reasoning. She knows she needs healing but besides supplements won't do the work. I want this nightmare over. I honestly pray for unimaginable things for a mother to wish. I need help. I am drowning. I am alone with no supports. She threw things the other night, police took her to hospital and two hours later released.

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

[Sancho]

Oh Mama808 what a difficult situation. You have gone from relative peace to full blown chaos and rage. (Just had to interrupt my typing for my DD raging wanting $$).

In my case the worst thing about that raging is that there is no way I can sit down with my DD and work out a plan or anything at all. I get halfway through a sentence of off she goes - raging at how it's all my fault that this and this and this happened.

My frustration level is sky high by this point and I feel so helpless. I imagine things are similar for you.

Your DD has shown that she can live independently and has done so for quite some time. She is still not in the 4th decade - which is the one when BPD symptoms can lessen - so her response was full on dysregulation with all the subsequent consequences.

You are not alone. We share the chaos and the dilemma of BPD and it is just an awful way to live.

There is no clear immediate step you can take to get back that peace. The only thing that I do when my situation is similar - as it is pretty much at the moment - is to focus on letting the outbursts go past me. I can now stop myself from the physical reaction I have to these outbursts - the feeling of anger rising up, the need to state the obvious ie none of it is my fault, and the tension in my body building up.

Most of the time I can do this now - most of the time!

I did tell DD a long time ago that I was not going to respond when she was angry because it made it worse for her. Since then I have done this and it has been a big help.

It is hard to imagine the distortion in the mind of someone with BPD. We try to respond with rational logic - but theirs is an explosion of emotion. The self is so fragile that accepting responsibility for a situation is unbearable - so the mind transfers the responsibility to another - the 'target of blame', usually the mother it seems, though it can be others.

Sorry I am not much help - but I do want you to know you are not alone, and we understand.