BPD adult daughter sabotaging relationships

[Karen56]

Hi-thanks for being here. Little history first. I have a 46 yr old daughter who has had problems since she was 2. She threw tantrums, lied constantly and played her dad and I against each other (divorced since she was 15 mo-physical, he was mentally  & physically abusive and alcoholic). He dad wanted her to live with him and new wife (didn’t want to pay me child support) but I wouldn’t let him until he was clean and sober for 1 yr. When she was 8 he agreed-I took her to Alateen to help her. In the mean time-both her dad and I had remarried and had another child. I tried to make sure she felt secure-but her lying became a huge problem. Escalated when she told her teacher I had lost a baby-I was 5 mo pregnant. Her teacher came up to me to tell me how sorry she was for my loss. I was stunned. Talked to her pediatrician again he recommended a psychiatrist. After a few months-he said let her move in with her dad and don’t leave her alone with my new baby

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]

Hi Karen56
Thanks for posting. It's been a long journey for you, starting so young! Has DD been diagnosed with any particular conditions? I notice she saw a psychiatrist at some point and wondered if he had an explanation for the lying ie was it part of a particular condition.

You are feeling the weight of this long journey and I am glad you came here. Many of us have been on a long journey too and feel exactly the same. The great benefit of coming here for me is reading posts like yours and then I know I am not alone.

There are so many questions I have about how things are now and how your life is impacted by DD currently.

I hope you will post again if you feel it is helpful for you to do so.

[js friend]

Hi karen56,

My udd would often tell lies too and it  started from a very early age. Some times I think she would tell lies for attention and other times they were half truths, some were real big exaggerations. but some werent true at all. The smaller lies were things like  people had stolen her stuff so  she could get them replaced when it later turned out that she had destroyed them herself or stealing school kids toys and hiding them in her room.

The biggest lie that I can remember udd told when she was  in her teens was that I had been kidnapped and held for ransom by an armed gang, and that there had been a police stand-off, and apparently shots were fired before I was eventually rescued.

So I asked the person if they had seen it on the news. Of course not because it never happened. At one point I thought maybe udd was experiencing psychosis. Later I learnt that udd had got herself in some trouble with a money laundering gang but she had focused it all around me and I was the culprit (as usual) Luckily she wasnt charged with a crime because of her age at the time.

[Karen56]

Hi Sancho- it has been a long journey and I only wrote a fraction. She wasn’t diagnosed with anything at that time, it was 1986 and I don’t think they had an actual label for her behavior. What prompted the dr was first after she moved in with her dad, maybe a few months later she told me she had started her period-she was 9-both my mom and I were 13-and her dad wasn’t married and had some questionable friends. I was afraid she had been sexually assaulted. Took her to her pediatrician-she hadn’t been-it was awkward-and she was mad. I tried to explain I was worried she had been hurt. Then she told the teacher about my losing the baby-thus psychiatrist.
Thing with her now are up and down, currently down. We will be fine then she brings up something that she claims happens as a child. She told me I locked her in the chicken coop and served her lunch in there. We had a rule, you lie, you clean the chicken coop-applied to all the kids. She was the only one cleaning it ever. We had a safe way out for them-if they to,d us a lie & we knew it-we would ask “for reals” and the boys would all say no, I was just telling a story, or a joke. She double downed. It’s true to this day. I never locked her in nor served her lunch in there.
Her latest thing is to tell her brothers she’s was coming up for Xmas-yet no conversations with me. Xmas is at our house

[Karen56]

I guess we only have so much room, cut off the end

At Christmas talking to our middle son (37) who is neutral said it doesn’t matter it’s her truth and for me to apologize. I think she has false memories as she has told such awful stories about her childhood, say it enough it becomes your truth & that’s what I had told her-she was mad & said I was gaslighting her. My son said the same, even if it wasn’t true, it was to her. I’m at a loss on how to move forward.

[Karen56]

JS Friend - yikes! That was a whopper! And how scared she got into criminal behavior. Mine had gone thru a really bad time when husband cheated & they split, they were so nasty to each other. She really started drinking a lot, plus anti anxiety & anti depressants -she drove her kids to school drunk, hit a curb, went to work and they sent her home. She got laid off. The she got 5150 -and lied even to that psychiatrist who looked about 20. She’s the eternal victim. It’s so hard to navigate thru this. She sober now but she is still great for a certain amount of time, then it turns.

[CC43]

There are many themes on this thread, from a lifetime of volatile relationships, to substance abuse to victimhood to lying.  Alas, all seem typical behaviors of someone with BPD.  I think these behaviors are a manifestation of inadequate coping skills.  People with BPD feel so unstable, their emotions are intense, and they are volatile and impulsive.  Their emotional brain takes over and drowns out the logical brain--so they can't possibly have perspective, context, empathy or patience.  They don't really know who they are or have any vision of their future selves to guide and sustain them when life throws them a curveball or obstacles get in their way.  If they are stressed, hurting or feeling ignored, they'll feel it with such intensity that they'll do just about anything to let out the pain and try to get it to stop--even if they can't really pinpoint what's ailing them in the moment.  I think that's behind the lying, the accusations and substance abuse, and the dredging up of fabricated childhood traumas.  When they confront the consequences of their poor choices, they feel disappointment, regret and shame, but rather than process these feelings or learn from the situation, they will re-write history to blame somebody else.  In my opinion, the victim mentality might be the worst part of BPD, because it absolves the pwBPD of responsibility, and at the same time makes them feel powerless.  It also colors how she views the world--she's always a victim, and others are set on ruining her life.  She thinks everyone else should change, not her, and so she resists therapy and perpetuates her misery.  "Her truth" is painted black with negativity.  Unfortunately, that's how she tends to treat her loved ones, and so we're here on this site trying to process what went wrong and how to cope.

[Karen56]

CC43 you completely nailed it-so how do you cope….I have gone dark again with her after she once again called me narcissistic & gaslight g her as she accuses me of what she’s doing. Tried to reach out and say something nice on her Instagram…went fine then sideways, back to her so called horrible childhood (5 other kids grew up with her & had fine childhoods and none of them recall what she claims. Then she sent me a recording in this super condescending tone -said fck you 4 times to me-it was bizarre. The thing is she’s demanding I own up to my “terrible parenting” for the 20th time and I have said to her back as far as 2015 saying I had made mistake, and I was sorry if I hurt her….at this point she’s beating a dead horse. How many times do we apologize for situations out of our control? She will never be satisfied-I don’t want to tell her the reality of what happened as it will ruin the relationship with her father who turned his life around. He abandoned her, abused me and I’m the villain

[CC43]

Hi there,

Understanding what’s going on has helped me to cope. I started with not taking the accusations personally, and realizing that I wasn’t the trigger of her negativity. If she’d get mad no matter what I did, then I was done walking on eggshells and not living my life in the name of keeping her stable. Keeping her happy is impossible, and not my responsibility. So I live my life. I’m not saying I’m rude or disregard her needs.  But I’m done over-functioning for her and being a figurative punching bag.

When she’s dysregulated, I view it as an “adult tantrum,” and she needs an adult time out to cool off. So I give it to her. I don’t interrupt it, and I let her decide how long she needs. If she tries to prolong the fight, I extract myself and get on with what I was doing. Now I call this not getting on the rollercoaster with her. I don’t engage when she provokes me or makes accusations.By not doing that, the outbursts seem to fizzle faster.

I keep the door open to communication, but she is the one who decides to walk through it. If she’s mean, I don’t engage. I just take her outburst as a signal that something else is going on in her life that is stressful or disappointing. I’m typically right about that. Maybe when she calms down we can have a conversation about it. But not when she’s on a rollercoaster.

Now maybe this seems unrealistic, as the loved one with BPD in my life is getting treatment, which has made things much better.  I wish you some peace.

[js friend]

Hi again karen,

Yes my udd was scared at the time after being involved with this criminal gang but and contacted victim support with some made up convoluted story about this gang making all sorts of threats towards her if she didnt take part in this fraud. The whole thing has since effected her credit rating but im still not too sure if she has learnt anything  from it.

With the lying...... I learnt to take everything my udd said with a pinch of salt. One of her many annoyances about me as expressed to the family therapist  we had a few sessions with was that I never asked her any questions..and really why would I if it gave her the chance to lie. The family therapist said that udd felt that I didnt care, but I had been taken in so often and so easily by my udd that I truly couldnt even fake interest anymore and told her so.

I think that if you told your dd the reality of your situation between you and your ex that she probably wouldnt believe you anyway. To her you are the villian and nothing you say or do will ever change that.

To my udd Iam the  villian too who has never done anything to help her in her life and her childhood was sooo terrible that she needs to keep my gc away from me....yet her other siblings disagree with this and she was quite happy with me regularly looking after my gc  overnight and weekends until 4 years ago which she had never mentioned to her s/w who was surprised to hear this as udd had played the "lonely and abandoned by the entire family" card in all the time they had been working with her!

[Karen56]

CC43- you are lucky that your daughter is getting help. Mine just scams the therapists and think with her lying to them too so she can scam them-used to be a game with her-she thinks she’s the psychologist because she took one class in college

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