Mom with BPD, I’m the only care taker & feeling lost

[TT48]

My mom is 65yrs old and has received multiple diagnoses throughout the years, depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar, treatment resistant depression, etc. Most recently she was formally diagnosed with BPD and everything seems to make more sense.

She raised my sister and I as a single mom until we got taken away from her by DYFS when I was only 11 and my sister only 6 years old. At that time, my sister and I were split up to live with our fathers as we had different dates.

20 years later, I am recently married and starting my own life. My mom has alienated every single person in our family and I am the ONLY person she has in her life for support. She lives alone and I have been highly involved in her treatment, doctors, diagnoses for the last 10+ years. At this point, I’m at such a difficult position with her as everything she does is so irrational that I don’t know how to even get her the right help. I’d love to get her into a DBT program. I’ve found several good options but have been waiting until she is “stable enough” to join one. At this point I don’t know if that time will come and how to get out of this hole. People say create distance and set boundaries but my mom also lives alone and has become increasingly incapable of taking care of herself and making decisions. She makes reckless decisions when her mind is not right like taking the car out and making scenes in her community as people see her “confusion”. The community manager has no idea what’s going on and is threatening cops and legal action to address “safety” concerns. She has good days and bad days but most days seem to be on the bad side more recently. And the dissociation makes everything much more difficult.

Any words of advice or how to get out of this stagnant state would be helpful.The community conflict and consequences I guess I will just have to take as they come. In the meantime, I continue my therapy and learning how to have a relationship with her. Truthfully, cutting contact is something I couldn’t fathom as my heart still hurts with this new reality of losing the mom I once had so long ago.

[Notwendy]

Hi and welcome to our group here. There are many of us here who can relate to your experience. We may have different situations but the emotional pull- how much to help while also protecting our own emotional well being is a common one. I have posted an article that describes this well:

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

Since you were separated from your mother, it makes sense you would be longing for this wish for a mother- but also may not have formed a realistic view of the mother you do have. For many of us, even if we weren't separated from our mother, we still wish for that mother- the one we wish we have, and the one we hope to have if we are only "good enough" . Eventually though, we learn that the mother we do have is different from the one we wish for.

You don't have to go NC with your mother. I understand not wanting to. Although my BPD mother did not behave like the kind of mother I wished for, she still was my biological mother and I wanted to make the best of it. However, her emotional needs were huge and even if I were to be available to her 24/7, it would not have been enough.

As a recently married person- you want and should have, the family you have wished for - as your own family with your spouse. You will need to draw the line somewhere between meeting your mother's needs and taking care of your own needs and having the marriage you choose. Your mother may not be happy with this decision but your well being is important too.

Are you in the US? If you are, resources like Medicare/Medicaid cover some, not all, of your mother's needs. If you are in the US, I can describe these further. Even so, the system relies heavily on family members to care for an elderly person. As long as you are providing care, they will lean on you but being a 24/7 caretaker isn't sustainable in the long run.

Post your questions here (and your country so that people who are familiar with the resources can advise).

[TelHill]

My elderly mother was  diagnosed with Borderline Personality 10 years ago but has had the same symptoms ever since I remember. You can count me in as a daughter who never received mothering or parenting from her. The shoe was on the other foot. I was a 6 year old parent to a 38 year old woman.

She was abusive whenever she was in a bad mood and that seemed to be all the time. She bullied me, my brother and my dad so she would get her way. My dad folded easily and enabled her out of control behavior. 

Is it possible to take your mom’s driving license and car away for her own good? Does her community have free senior
 transportation or discounts for Uber rides?

It might be for her own good to suffer the consequences of her poor behavior. The police will see an elderly woman acting out not a thug causing trouble. She won’t go to jail but will be taken to an inpatient mental ward. It might give her incentive to seek DBT to avoid going back.

Do you have Power of Attorney for her to handle her affairs? You may want to visit a lawyer to discuss how this would work and what to say to your mother to get her to agree. It would protect her from her own poor decision making. She could decide to spend all her money at Amazon or QVC and get into financial hot water. I could be wrong but you could control her cards and bank accounts to stop this. You can make medical decisions for her in case she loses interest in looking after herself.