Not sure how to proceed w/daughter

[ViolaUndecided]

Hi,

I have a daughter “Kim” in her mid 30’s who was diagnosed with BPD almost 20 years ago and to my knowledge has had little to no treatment. In the past she has lied about going to therapy and her ongoing behavior would indicate either no therapy has been taking place or if there is, she isn’t taking it seriously. She is high functioning enough to be on her own (married with kids from a previous marriage) but that’s not been without plenty of pitfalls. According to "Kim" it’s the rest of us who are effed up and we “just can’t see [her] for who she really is.”

Like most, the story with "Kim" is long and would be a novel if I typed it all out. She owes just about everyone in the family money, has a criminal record (shoplifting, fraud, identity theft, assault) and none of us are voluntarily in contact with her. I am very leery of her and don’t trust her at all. My other grown kids want nothing to do with her, my mom doesn’t speak to her, nor does my husband (her stepdad for 25+ years), and my ex/her dad was NC with her before he passed away several years ago.

We’ve (stepdad/me) been NC with Kim about five years now and by our choice. After the initial trauma of that I realized how much more peaceful our lives are; no more near constant demands for money and being subjected to whatever drama takes place in her life. I also realized I was not helping her at all by continually bailing her out financially and was likely making things worse, enabling etc. I’ve been to therapy and there’s only one thing I’m really struggling with and that’s the idea of long term NC with Kim .

To be clear, I don’t miss her and after what she did to us and others years back, I don’t see nor feel that there’s a way back to anything meaningful. I do feel angry if I end up in a conversation about her and talk about the things she did to us but I don’t feel angry all the time. If she were merely an ex or a friend, I would be “good riddance” and not give the person much more thought.

Yet she isn’t merely an ex or a friend and I feel guilty for feeling the way I do about my oldest child. Despite that, I’m not the slightest bit interested in even LC with her.

Kim has been sending me vile emails the last five years, usually a few times a year, and I’ve ignored all of them. She has never apologized nor expressed any amount of regret or remorse and instead blamed everyone but herself. In fact if pressed she will deny that some things ever took place.

Her emails started to slow down and we’d gone a year without hearing from her at all, which was fine by me. She has since sent an email that’s NOT 180 degrees different but it’s far less hostile while still delusional. Likely less hostile because this time she wants something or says she does.

I have not responded to her at all and I know not to JADE so to begin with that precludes most interactions. She is describing the problems between us as “differences” and to be clear, some of these so called differences involved criminal behavior on her end.

Is there a point where maintaining healthy boundaries, in this case NC, is just the silent treatment?

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 ViolaUndecided and a warm

(First off, I'll hop in and fix the aliases for you soon, no worries)

What a mixed bag with your daughter -- in some ways, she is very functional (living independently is big), but in other ways, the dysfunction remains, and in pretty impactful ways on her and you. Not easy stuff in a family system, especially for so many years.

How close (or far away) does she live? Are you in touch with her kids at all?

Interesting that the emails have toned down. Does she ask for more contact or interaction?

I wonder if in a way, she is communicating to you that occasional emails are the level of contact she can handle with her narrow emotional bandwidth.

Fill us in some more, whenever works best for you-

kells76

[ViolaUndecided]

Hi Kells76,

Thanks for fixing those aliases for me when you have a chance.

My daughter lives a couple hours drive away and we havent seen nor spoken to her kids in the entire five years we’ve been NC. Very early on we shipped them a bunch of stuff they had left at our house plus a couple small gifts. In response I received a very threatening “how dare you” type email and that I’d better not make the same mistake again. Aggressive as her response was, I accepted this as a boundary and have not sent anything since. In response to me not sending anything further, she’s gone onto Reddit (I’ve seen) and Facebook (I was told) complaining that we’re neglectful grandparents who don’t send her kids anything for important holidays. There’s a bunch of stuff like that, she does/says one thing to me/us and then tells everyone else a very edited, victim-y version of what took place.

Her emails in the last five years have all been awful except for the most recent one. She’s always “nice” when she wants something and this time she was and she did ask me to send her something which I’m not willing to do.

She’s always wanted the contact between us to return to normal and it’s me who is the hesitant party in the situation, not her. So hesitant that I’ve never responded to anything she’s sent for the last five years. I believe that five years ago I finally had enough and something just shut off inside me. I love her and wish her well but I’ve got nothing to say to her anymore.

I feel angry if I think for too long about the things she did but otherwise I’ve got nothing and I don’t think I can chance being around her again. She refuses to get help and she’s caused a lot of harm to me and the rest of the family, mostly physical harm and financial abuse.

Yet I still feel that mom guilt. She wants me to explain to her what she did yet she knows. Explaining anything to her IMO would be JADEing and in the past that’s predictably always come back to haunt me. She twists my words and throws them back in my face ten times out of ten.

I think there’s a small part of me still sees her and/or still wants to see her as a kid who can’t be held as responsible as an adult would be while logically I know she’s an adult who’s objectively done some awful things to family and has expressed no remorse, regret, and has even tried to convince me that certain things didn’t happen. I know that can be part of BPD (not apologizing, projection, etc) but I don’t want another round of the inevitable.

But then there’s that guilt that won’t go away entirely and it’s super frustrating. Its as though I just can’t let myself be ok with the decision to remain NC

[Ourworld]

Hello Viola,

Before I talk about the details of my situation, I just want to say that my high-functioning daughter went NC with me 12 years ago, she’s 39 now.
I was a hands-off non-helicopter teenage Mom, and sometimes I think about the things she did that perhaps I should have said more and been more hovering. But then I think about how angry she would have been towards me if I had pushed the envelope, and I know there was nothing I could have done.
And even after 12 years, I would not want her to be part of my life again unless she comes out of her disordered mindset.

Here’s how things happened:
I did not understand why she cut me off since I was completely unaware of her condition and we had always been so close. But I had started seeing change in her and walking on eggshells once she became a teenager. Even though I was unaware of her mental state until last year, I had finally come to the conclusion that she had become embarrassed of a life that went downhill after her horrible college experiences. If nothing else I knew she probably had depression or PTSD-although I knew very little about things like that, and I figured she would get over it.

I found out about her behavior, thoughts, and memories this year after she left her husband in 2023. She left because it turned out that he had severe mental illnesses and went into psychosis so she could no longer communicate with him anymore. He is now being taken care of through the VA and is 100% connected with schizophrenia, C-PTSD, and agoraphobia. She cut off all contact with him as well now.

My daughter is now 39, and I looked up her LinkedIn profile to see her looking and sounding pretty normal and confident.
The ex had given me her current email address, I sent her some factual information and unfortunately what I suspected (BPD) shown through as she told me how crazy I was, that everything negative in her life was my fault, and that I needed help-she stressed EVERYTHING.
I was sad, but glad that she actually cared enough to write a lengthy letter to me.

I would recommend a wait and see approach since it says that with treatment BPD can go into submission in the late 30’s, but again, that is with treatment, and I do not know if my own daughter is getting proper treatment.
But I do think that you are blessed that she actually writes to you, that helps you see where her emotions/mindset is at.

Take Care, OurWorld

[ViolaUndecided]

Hi OW,

Thanks for your nice words, I appreciate it.

I guess I don’t feel so blessed to hear from my daughter but I get where you’re coming from. I find her emails to be more confusing and hurtful than anything else. I’m not averse to hearing the tough stuff in life but my daughter has contradicted herself and flat out lied so much that I never know what to believe. Then the sudden switch to pleasant and nice when she clearly wants something from me, I find that tactic to be obvious and really off putting.

My daughter is in her mid 30’s and was diagnosed at 18 and has never been in any treatment. Thus far I’ve seen zero sign of her mental state and subsequent behavior improving at all. I have another close relative who is now elderly and she has been to treatment and she’s not much different at all, I’d hazard to say in some ways she’s worse and more difficult to deal with. Everyone is different, of course, but I guess I don’t hold out a lot of hope when it comes to my family.

In a different world I wouldn’t mind being LC with my daughter, even with her having these issues, but I can’t even trust her in email correspondence. She takes screenshots of our conversations and puts them on social media, she has used an app to make up text correspondence we never actually had, and minimally will twist my words and argue with me just for the sake of arguing.

After all these years I don’t feel blessed, I just feel tired.

[js friend]

Hi viola,

First of all I have to say that I love your honesty.

I have been Nc and estranged from my udd for 4years now. 2years ago I went to her  home. It was more in the of hope of seeing  my grandchildren rather than hoping for any form of reconciliation with udd, but deep down I did wonder(even hoped that  udd may have changed in those years). I wondered if she would  be happy or relieved to see me knowing that I hadnt  given up on her.....So many thoughts came to mind.Well it didnt go too well. Udd was hostile, refused the gifts I had brought for my gc and sent me on my way pretty quickly. It seemed that she hadnt changed or even mellowed at all, if anything she seemed even more confident in telling me to go away. Now I have heard that she has been telling people that we are in a feud!!! A feud about what I do not know. I dont even ask these days.

My approach now is to sit back and wait. I wont be contacting her again as it seems she just isnt ready for it. She has always been all about being in control and I guess if it does ever happen it must be on her terms. I also know to be wary of any manipulation  if it were to suddenly come out of the blue. IF she decides to contact me Iam open to it but at the moment Iam no longer her scapegoat and that feels good.

[ViolaUndecided]

Hi JS,

I am glad you are no longer your daughter’s scapegoat and I don’t blame you for leaving the ball in her court, you tried! Unfortunately it didn’t work out the way you hoped for. Frustrating.

My daughter, she is always open to contact but it’s never the kind anyone hopes for. She wants to take control back and pull my husband and I back into her cycle of abuse, no thanks. Theoretically but based on previous situations like these, she could be nice at first or maybe even just go straight to her normal mean but I’ve finally accepted she does not have good intentions.

When she took the grandkids away before, they were mostly too young to remember now who we were. Maybe the older one a very little bit but the younger one likely has no memories at all. Five years have gone by and knowing my daughter, she’d let them get reestablished with us only to yank the rug out from underneath us later on. I can’t know that about her and simultaneously throw caution to the wind and give her a shot. Not now that they’re old enough to remember and to be told lies we’ll have no way to defend ourselves from. It’s a long shot but the only reason I haven’t changed my number is the idea they may find my number one day and it’s the only number their dad (my daughter’s ex husband) has for me. I don’t hear from her ex but if he or his current wife ever put two and two together that we don’t see them, then one day if they want to they can call us, etc.

I also never used to be this honest with myself nor anyone else about my daughter but her last stunt forced me to see her for who she really is and I couldn’t go backward. Therapy has also helped me to see all of this with eyes wide open. “Kim” has intentionally endangered my safety because I once asked her to slow down while driving. Instead she became very angry, sped up, and got us into an accident. Another time it was in a vehicle of sorts, not a car, and she refused to take us back to where we started from so we could leave. It’s a hard story to explain but doing so with detail would be too specific for a public forum. Then there’s the financial abuse of is and others in the family, the smear campaigns which at times have involved her trying to contact people I work with.

Anyway, I just won’t put myself through it again. I’ve been dealing with the difficulties since she was about 5yo when my ex decided to punish me for the divorce by doing what is now commonly known as parental alienation. While children can’t be diagnosed with BPD, her behavior as a child equated to what a child would probably act like if BPD was possible in young children. She’s now in her mid 30’s so it’s been like a major splitting episode for well over 20 years with mostly me as the target. I don’t hold her childhood against her but after 15-20 years of her adulthood, I’m out of gas and I don’t have desire to even hope. I wish her well but no more.