H and I made a list of boundaries, our responses if they are crossed, what we are prepared to enforce, etc. Sobriety, respect (ie, no verbal abuse), and family therapy as conditions of living with us are on the list
It could also be that your boundary is more nuanced. For example, perhaps your boundary is that she is welcome to stay at your place when she needs a place to decompress, but house rules are that there is to be no drinking or drunken behavior, and if there is verbal abuse, you will xyz (needs to be something you can enforce, like "walk away until the episode has passed" or some action you can stand behind). So, you recognize that she drinks to manage anxiety (dysfunctional but temporarily effective), but not at your house.
If the boundary is that she must leave, then be prepared to actually have her removed, otherwise she will see that her escalation worked to override your boundaries. If she threatens suicide, have a plan for that, too. There are two good books that walk through these kinds of scenarios -- Loving Someone with BPD by Shari Manning and Overcoming BPD by Valerie Porr (hope I'm remembering those correctly).
It doesn't help that she constantly uses that guilt against him, shredding him to the bone.
One piece of advice from the Porr book (I think... .) is, when an adult child is rehashing old wounds, to acknowledge her pain and gently and firmly refuse to dwell, either by ending the conversation (e.g. walking away, with reassurance that you will be back after your time-out) or something like, "You are hurt, understandably so -- anyone would be having gone through what you did. I hear that you are in pain, and I am willing to talk about this with a trained therapist who can help me learn how best to respond. Would you like me to try and find someone we can talk to?" Or something like that.
With my SO's D19, I noticed it was possible to validate too much, almost egging her deeper into an emotional dysregulation. I also found
validating questions helped me stay in my lane while acknowledging hers, so that I didn't overreach or enable her to dwell and become even more emotionally aroused.
Watching her devolve from abused to abuser was pretty damn scary.
I understand. I imagine it's scary for her, too There is probably a part of her that feels she deserved the abuse, that she did something to cause it, in the myopic way that children see the world. And she is probably stuck there. To avoid the catastrophic depression, she probably has to lash out in order to avoid feeling the severity of those self-loathing feelings.
We have a tough role, trying to be compassionate about the suffering, while also protecting ourselves from the dysfunctional behaviors. It's not easy, but there are useful skills that can help you stay anchored in strong winds.
I really hope the T encourages family therapy and is able to see through all the misperceptions she has painted of her family.
I wonder if the T is building a therapeutic alliance? Your SD may be in that phase of therapy, where the T is validating her feelings -- this is about acknowledging her pain and hurt, and less about agreeing on the accuracy of what she says is true. It's a subtle but important line. After the relationship is built on trust, there may be more reality testing from the T when your SD is ready. And it's also likely that therapy will reactivate strong emotion she needs to manage first before being strong enough for family therapy. Is your T helping you make sense of this? Would SD allow you to have a family session with her T?
I know that SO's D19 said mean things about me based on her distortions and it's really tough to be maligned like that.
I know what you're saying about attachment and transferring mom stuff to me, I've been feeling that hard from the beginning of our relationship.
I think anyone compassionate would feel the urge to nurture someone so traumatized. It takes a lot of strength to not be emotionally injured and drained by these relationships, so it's more about keeping your cup full -- not just preventing it from being empty. Make sure you replenish yourself, and that your relationship with your H is your priority so that the two of you have the strength to weather SD's storms.
You may be able to give more to your SD than I could with D19, there is no hard and fast line. For me, SO and I have been together 4+ years and started living together this year. I have a challenging son with a father who has a PD, so my self-care is based on those variables. And it took a lot of hard work to figure out what was too much, what was just right. I think it's great that you and your H are in therapy together and can be checks and balances for each other.
Is it possible that she is still not ready for family therapy?
It's going to take her as long as it takes her It's really brave of her to be doing this. Given her history, this might be the best she can do right now.
Is it possible she has her T bamboozled and the T really thinks we're toxic?
The T is probably acknowledging the pain and hurt SD feels, and her anger toward her dad. And, if you think about it, your H feels this, too. It's what makes him feel guilty. I don't mean that he/you are toxic, only that the intensity of the emotions are such that it's probably hard to see the situation in a fully empathic way, perhaps for both sides, his and hers. Often, we feel most hurt by things that are in some way true, but we haven't resolved it for ourselves yet, or grieved it and made peace with it.
For your H, as a dad, it's probably even harder to acknowledge the pain of not protecting a child. On the other hand, what could be more complex than protecting a child from her own parent? It's the big leagues. There are a lot of powerful emotions on both sides and while the label "toxic" is disparaging, perhaps the T is recognizing that more needs to happen with SD before she can work effectively on feelings she has about her dad.
given her animosity towards her father, living with us (with conditions/boundaries) is NOT in her best interest?
I would think that has to do with how you are feeling -- she is going to dysregulate and get triggered and lash out. That's probably a given. So what she does has to do with how much you can tolerate in both directions. And to some extent, how realistically you can enforce boundaries that are important to you.
What do we do if she crashes and burns, shows up on our doorstep, and still claims that her T says she's not ready for family therapy? My thought is to respond, "Then we're sorry but if you're not ready for family therapy then you're not ready to live in the same house with us." Is this the best response?
She is going to crash and burn and resist going to family therapy, if only to test the boundary. That would be my guess, anyway.
If you feel it's best for her to live with you, then your boundary might be that you remove yourself from the conversation when it becomes abusive and give yourself a "timeout," and let her know the conditions for having that conversation.
There is no right or wrong to what boundary you have. It's mostly about preparing for the boundary to be tested and having a plan to assert it in a kind and loving yet firm way.
My H wants to give her enough funds at that point to pay for one month's rent. Since she has not worked f/t in the last 5 months, her dad has been making her car and insurance payments for her. Her p/t job gives her spending $$. Given that she spends much of her spending $$ on alcohol, he is also going to tell her that he will only be making one more month's payments. Thoughts? We really struggle with knowing where to draw the lines. We're seeing our T in a few days, but any advice before then is surely appreciated.
This makes sense. How you say this is probably as important as what you say. For example, "Going to therapy is so brave and I admire how hard you are working. I imagine it creates a lot of anxiety and I know how alcohol numbs that anxiety. Unfortunately, it causes these other behaviors and might prevent deeper healing in your therapy. I want to support your healthy choices and giving you money for alcohol goes against that. How can we solve this so that you have a way to manage your anxiety and I don't enable your drinking?"
Also (and sorry for the giant response  , when it comes to feeling guilt about not protecting a child... .For what it's worth, I was in my son's life and not only wasn't I able to protect him, I didn't even try. I actually protected his dad Whenever my ex raged at our son, I would wait until things blew over and then explain to my son that dad acted that way because he had a hard childhood and a mean mom.
I mean, gah.
There is only one way through this stuff and that is to lean in and feel it, and grieve it, and when that happens, it will dial down in intensity so that we can allow our kids to feel their feelings without our own getting in the way. Dialectics are helpful here, two seemingly opposite things that can both be true: we did our best, and we can do better. When we step into that truth, it shows our kids that there is a way forward, that we can repair and recover these awful hurts and still be in a loving relationship with healthy boundaries.