Broken Hearted, Guilt, Anxiety and the Close of a Visit with my Aging Mother

[bucknell]

My mother has been visiting for the past week and the whole time I have felt significant anxiety, sadness and guilt. For most of my life, I had been the good daughter - my mother's confidante and best friend and when things were going okay, I felt a deep sense of connection with my mother. There were absolutely times when my mother would advocate for me, tell me she loved me, share that she was proud of me, but her unpredictability, her rage, her victimhood were never far. It was painful, but I managed and survived ... I tried to gather every piece of information I could about bpd - wanting to understand why my mother did what she did as in a weird way her own historical trauma allowed me to feel compassion for her (and unfortunately, along with that compassion, I felt a deep sense of responsibility - to make things better for her, to prove to her she was loved). In my adolescence and early adulthood I self-medicated with alcohol, but at least at moments I could feel a sense of intimacy with my mother. While things were never really okay, there was a certain manageability and odd sense of normalcy in the relationship I had with my mother.

When I got sober and married and then shortly thereafter had my daughters, the relationship shifted. I remember her saying, the night before I got married, that it hadn't been so hard for her when my sister got married, but she felt like she was losing me and my marriage made her sad, that it has always been the two of us and now she was losing me. This perhaps was the beginning of the distancing - my life could no longer be centered around my mother. The dysfunction remained, but my mother was no longer the center of my world. When my first daughter was born, my mother found "Surviving the Borderline Mother" when she was going through my things (I believe the book had been in my bedroom) - I was exhausted, I had just had a c-section, I was overwhelmed with love and nervousness as a new mother, but when she came toward me - her one eye bulging, full of rage - she had just gone through my things, but it was me who had done such a horrible thing, to read such a book,  because, in her words, she did not have bpd in fact she had something else that a counselor had diagnosed her with and she would never tell me. She broke me in that moment and while I continued to have her in my life, with visits from her or to her, our relationship changed -- the intimacy was gone, it felt like there was no chance of ever going back to any feelings of connection.

I spent a lot of time working through all of the guilt and trying to figure out how to have a healthy relationship with my mother, with counseling and emdr and I got to an okay place. However, as my mother gets older and I become more aware of the fact (that she likes to remind me) that she will not be around much longer, I feel such grief (and guilty) ... She is here visiting me, likely leaving tomorrow, and my heart feels like it is breaking - the anxiety and tension I have felt with this visit feels the most acute it has been. I cannot be vulnerable with her, I cannot share, I am always on guard, I am on edge needing to protect my daughters from her, I feel sad because she does not have much of a relationship with my children because I protect them (but also because they quickly picked up on the fact that nana is fun and loving, but she is manipulative and controling and they would rather not be around her), I feel irritable, I am not warm ... Intellectually, I know this is my response to trauma, that it is not my fault, but I feel like it is my fault. I feel horrible - like I am letting her down, further contributing to the pain, loneliness and abandonment she has known most of her life (pain that I worked so hard to try to fix). I also feel so sad - knowing that it is very likely that any of those feelings of connection and intimacy I had with her, I will never have those again. I wish I could find a way to rekindle one of those moments (one of those beautiful fragments, I held so tightly to through my life), but I don't think that is possible.

I thought she was leaving today - I was sad last night, I prepared myself for her leaving, knowing I would feel sad - but also knowing I would be able to move forward, that I could return to life as it normally is, that I wouldn't have to be on constant edge ... and then she stayed another day. I was resentful that she didn't respect my need to have a plan, resentful of her desire to be spontaneous with no thought of how that might impact me and then guilty for my resentment. I felt guilty that my resentment, my anger,  took away from what might have been a special day we could share together, one that could in fact be the last time we were together, because as much as she likes to be a victim, but also invincible, her health is failing and I do not know how much longer she will be around. Tonight, I know she is leaving tomorrow and I am rehashing every exchange, every thing I could have done differently and I feel such sadness, and guilt.

One of my friends recently lost her mother, and I know she misses her everyday and wishes she could have had more time with her. I had the chance to have time with my mom and part of me feels like I blew it. It isn't just in my head, but my whole body is overwhelmed with the anxiety, sadness and guilt - I was actually awoken by the intensity of it ...  and it is such a lonely feeling.

[Notwendy]

Yes, this is difficult. I can feel your sadness through your posts. My own situation was different in that, my BPD mother and I were not close.

Still, I tried to make the best of the relationship. I would visit, do things for her, be the good daughter, but somehow, she'd find something to be angry about and I'd drive home, in tears, for not being able to achieve what I hoped could be a better visit with her.

I also protected my children from her. She would have not outwardly abused them but, when they were older, she tried to enlist them as her emotional caretaker and confidant. It's not their responsibilty to be her emotional caretaker. There were times she had done this with me- confided in me. I think you recognize now that being your mother's confidant may have felt like a close and special bond but it also was a boundary violation to do so with a child and the closeness was not emotionally healthy for you.

The normal progression for an adult child is to move out, have their own lives, own partners and family and this becomes their focus. I think mothers have all kinds of feelings about this- happy to see they are doing exactly what we want for them, and a bit of sadness for this too. But our feelings about this are not their responsibilty to manage. You did exactly what you should do as an adult- leave home, have a family. Your mother making you feel responsible for her feelings was about her own needs, and due to her BPD.

I also have friends who talk about their relationship with their elderly mothers and how much they miss them when they are gone. To me, this is a normal continuation of the mother-daughter relationship they had with their mothers but mine was different. I tried too- but I couldn't change my mother's feelings or how she perceives things. I did feel sad that my experience with my elderly mother was different from my friends'.

I also was guarded around my mother. It's not that I couldn't forgive her. I could do that.  It was that I was afraid of her. Even if it didn't make as much sense to be afraid of her as an adult, this was the foundation of our relationship- her unpredictable moods and behavior. One thing I noticed was that the last day of our visits was the most difficult- and maybe it is this way with you. Maybe the feelings about us leaving caused her to escalate. Being angry and critical of me perhaps was her projecting them. But it was also discouraging and demoralizing to have the visit feel like it was another unsuccessful attempt.

I was attached to my father and I think the feelings I had when he was getting older and eventually passed were more similar to your feelings about your mother. It is confusing because on one hand, he was the caring parent and on the other hand, even though he didn't have BPD- he was in a codependent relationship with my BPD mother and acted out on her wishes- as a sort of extention of her. The feelings were all over the place.

It was different with my BPD mother because we didn't have times of closeness or shared interests. It is, as you said, a lonely grief because it's so different from other people's experiences.

You mentioned you had counseling. I also arranged counseling towards the end of my mother's life and am doing it now. I think it is something that we need to process and maybe not something friends can relate to. It helps with the feeling of loneliness. I would recommend this for you too. It's an emotional situation for anyone.

[zachira]

It is so sad when the relationship with our mother with BPD is mixed between some actual times of closeness and then many times when she dumps how badly she feels inside on her daughter. I had a somewhat similar relationship to yours with my mother with BPD who is deceased. We have so many questions and probably the most difficult question is who is our mother, is she the one who we feel close to or the one we find unbearable to be around because how cruel and uncaring she is in many moments? I too have done EMDR and it is what has most helped me to heal more than anything else I have tried. Like yours, my mother with BPD got worse with age and much more painful to be around. Like you, I know so many people who will miss or miss their mothers after she is gone, because of the constant love and caring she provided, and wish I could have had this kind of relationship with my mother. 

[Prevail2]

Your emotion and pain is so palatable in your post, bucknell. The saying is that regret and guilt are merciless tormentors.

It seems no matter how much therapy, self-care and distance taken from a BPD member, it’s the unrelenting guilt. I feel your pain as my mother is similar to yours and yes, “there were absolutely times when my mother would advocate for me, tell me she loved me [&] proud of me, but her unpredictability, her rage, her victimhood were never far. It was painful, but I managed and survived”.

There is a lot of helpful advice on this board - we tend to share our personal stories - but I know I have read pages and pages and no matter how much good advice I read here, my angst and guilt continues. I desperately want something or somebody to stop my sense of drowning. But I can only find the strength and tools within me.

I watch my mother in the final years of her life, alone and ill, and I yearn for precious moments to spend this time sharing normal mother-daughter times. This is the constant guilt that just sits in deep in the pit of your diaphragm and the anxiety that keeps me awake at 3 am. I used to think those who had panic attacks had limited coping skills. I was strong and I could cope and survive. After all, my mother wasn't that bad - there are mothers who actually physically drown their kids. 

It took me well into my life to realize my mother had BPD. My siblings are also on the spectrum (NPD/bullying) and continue the dysfunction so I’ve had to go N.C. with them. I let time pass without having children b/c I could not possibly see how I could manage a busy professional life, the responsibilities of children and the intense needs of my (aging) mother. There is regret that I didn’t seek resources earlier in my life to understand why I feel a “sense of duty” to my mom. Like you, I made things better for her, to prove to her she was loved. I survived with “if she was okay and content, we all were okay and content”. Cue to the advice of overcoming co-dependency from @NotWendy with 12-step program.

A couple years ago, I ended up in the ER 3 times due to abdominal pain…it was stress. (I’ve never been hospitalized for any illness). I finally broke and I went LC. It was a totally unexpected for my mom as I did not visit/call.

We all get to this point however messy. I felt guilty trying to reconcile what I had done with L.C. —but I hadn’t “done anything” to my mom other than to step back and stop the madness from engulfing me entirely. My mother is in her 80's, frail, mentally ill and it tears me to pieces to see her descend into now daily, raging, distortions. I receive up to 10 texts/email per day and have been called every name under the sun, the latest being that she believes there was a baby mix-up at the hospital  (as in I am "not" her child). To stop these episodes, I would relent and get “back in line” but for the first time in my life, I did not and she has sent angry messages for 2 years, every day, non-stop - her illness and trauma is not her fault but we cannot allow others to drown us.

I thought maybe if I was JUST stronger, if I just ignored the drama and insults, I can last more years until she passes peacefully. I know if I visited her and said all the right things, life would be “normal”. I can’t. I just broke and I can't find the strength to prop up this "unit". I did everything I could do for a majority of my life to ensure my mother had everything she needed and paid for (home, expenses, word trips).

No regrets.

But now I have to find a way to git rid of the guilt and find the strength for me ..and you have to find it for you and your immediate family to live your lives, fully, healthily, and without guilt and regret.

Keep us posted. I know this week will be hard for you.

[Notwendy]

https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/mentally-ill-parent-elder-care-boundaries-liz-scheier.html

I have posted this story before. Our circumstances may not be exactly the same but I think we can all relate to common emotions and the difficulty with balancing our own families, emotional well being and the enormous needs of our BPD mothers.

[Methuen]

Bucknell.

I am going to suggest that the intensity of your feeling of guilt correlates with the intensity of having your mom under your roof 24/7 for a week.  What do you think?

Oh man.  If she is anything remotely like my mom...I don't know how you've managed for a week. I would be climbing the walls, and either left my own home to find sanity, or imploded.  Are you able to identify things she says or phrases she uses to manipulate your emotions in a way that cause you to feel this guilt?  Write them down...

It sounds to me like you are "owning" this guilt.  Do you feel, or believe, you are a failure as a daughter, or is that something your mom makes you feel like?

I really struggle with the guilt too.  I know I carry it, and I struggle with the optics of not being the doting daughter of an obviously needy and vulnerable and helpless mother that nonfamily see as a sweet helpless little old lady.  But I don't actually "believe" that I haven't done enough or am a failure because I know how much I've done and have a lifetime of stories and evidence to support it, so intellectually I can reject the idea of "not being enough" or "not being what she wants me to be", but the emotional piece is much harder. I have struggled a long time with this.  They torment us and torture our emotional strings, and that's what it sounds like is happening to you right now.

I am hoping that once your mom has departed, and you have had 2-3 weeks to get back to baseline, you will be able to see all this more analytically, and less emotionally (because guilt is an emotion).  And I am hopeful that alone will help you start to feel a bit better...

How are your boundaries with her? 

My T has been working on "guilt" with me.  Do you happen to have a T?  I have found it to be very helpful...

[Methuen]

Prevail2, I just gotta say I connected deeply with your post.  Just bang on.

Sigh.  And then this:

I thought maybe if I was JUST stronger, if I just ignored the drama and insults, I can last more years until she passes peacefully. I know if I visited her and said all the right things, life would be “normal”. I can’t. I just broke and I can't find the strength to prop up this "unit". I did everything I could do for a majority of my life to ensure my mother had everything she needed and paid for (home, expenses, word trips).

No regrets.

But now I have to find a way to git rid of the guilt and find the strength for me ..and you have to find it for you and your immediate family to live your lives, fully, healthily, and without guilt and regret.

Bucknell, I was over 55 before I hit the wall and "broke" the way Prevail2 is describing.

We can't singlehandedly fight this chaos - hurricane- whatever you want to call it.  We keep trying because we are good people and despite their chaos and hurt - still love our mothers and want a relationship with them.  But if we let their chaos (hurricane) into our lives without boundaries, we will get sucked into the eye of the storm and tossed.  So, with regards to the guilt we feel, I believe the solution is to look inward inside of ourselves, and do the necessary work on ourselves (therapy) to neutralize that guilt.  The guilt like the "fleas" we carry, thanks to our BPD mothers raising us and grooming us to be their caretakers.  We have to work on neutralizing these fleas.  That's how I've come to see it.  Just my perspective.

[bucknell]

Thank you all for your sharing ... it was a good reminder that I am not alone (and it means a lot to me). Your perspectives were also helpful! 
It was a rough visit - although it really was no different than most. I have done so much work, but there are still some times when I get caught back up in the craziness. I had a good cry once she left - just taking the time to acknowledge that the fragments of connection, were just that - fragments and giving myself some time to grieve.
At this point, I continue to try to maintain some kind of relationship with my mother, but I know by doing that I live in a sort of limbo - knowing what I never will be able to have, that the desire to find some way to connect in a loving way, to "save" my mother still haunts me, while also knowing that when my mom passes, that possibility (and I know intellectually, that is never a possibility) will be gone forever.
The pain, however,  becomes so much less acute once she leaves though ...