The suffering we incur when a parent has BPD

[Cynthia Stevens]

Hi everybody, I am a survivor of having lived a childhood in which my mother had BPD. I am also a social worker with 38 years of experience in the fields of mental health and addictions, and child welfare. During my training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy and Systematic Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving and in my role as a therapist, I provided treatment for individuals over many years who had BPD. I could not help my mother as she would not accept help. Even with my years of training, my main insights about BPD came from the suffering I felt from my family situation. After my mother died, our dysfunctional family dynamics played out, and the chaos and division my mother had always sewn had broken sibling bonds. I have written a book about my story and shared insights I learned as a family member. It is on Amazon now and is called "Fractured Bonds: An Insider's Guide To Living In The Orbit Of An Individual With Borderline Personality Disorder" by Cynthia Stevens. I hope this book helps those in my  situation as it helped me. Take care everyone!

[HappyChappy]

Hi Cynthia,

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you've taken the devastating effect of the BPD dynamic and turned it into a book that can help others. That's very positivise. I hope that puts it do bed for you. We need to think of a future without that dynamic (note to myself). 

[Notwendy]

I haven't read the book (thanks for letting people know about it) but I think the title is perfect. On one hand, we need to know how best to manage the situation with the person with BPD, but the affect on relationships extends beyond that.

My BPD mother has passed away too but during her life and beyond, there are fractured bonds with other family members.

These are significant losses because, in some cases- these family members were not disordered, or didn't seem disordered to us so we had some trust in these bonds, but the dynamics still seem to have an affect.

Makes it hard to know who/what bond to trust.

This happens with aquaintances as well. I've experienced where an aquaintance who is likely disordered, has rallied mutual friends to "her side" and somehow my friendship gets fractured- even though I had no conflict or issues with that friend myself. In this situation, I have also decided that people who jump in as "rescuers" may also have some emotional need to do this, even if they themselves don't have a disorder or BPD. That they could pass judgment, believe only one side of the story (the person with BPD's) - that too is a judgement based on emotions, not all facts.

I've remained cordial to anyone who was in my BPD mother's circle but keep an emotional distance as well.