Long time listener, first time caller

[Til3005]

Hello, all -

This is my first post and I’m sure a lot of people who find this space start out saying the same things. They are a little (or a lot) lost and just want to contextualize all the things they are experiencing. They just want to know there are other people who are feeling and living through some of the same experiences. It can feel very overwhelming and isolated to be treading these waters. I’m not going to be any different in that I have so many questions and want so much to just know that this isn’t just me living through the mental and emotional exhaustion.

I adopted my niece (my husbands side) when she was 16, almost ten years ago. She had a mother who struggled with addiction and a father who ended up in jail when she was very young.  She was basically living alone and some of the things she was getting into were not safe. No one was stepping in to help her and I felt like I had to before I watched something really tragic happen. We brought her to live with us hours from where she was living. It meant a lot of change for her. I immediately got her into counseling and attempted to wade through her trauma.  Previous to adopting her, we had adopted two other children through foster care so we weren’t totally in the dark about the challenges that lie ahead. Her growing into adulthood was rocky. She constantly had somatic complaints. She was always sick. She was constantly saying she didn’t know if she could refrain from killing herself. She would beg to go to the ER at midnight because she wasn’t sure she could keep herself safe.  She was diagnosed as bipolar at that time and we began medication which really helped things for the rest of her high school career. It wasn’t perfect but it was better. When she moved out to go to college I thought we had hit a good stride. She had done well in high school and was in a program that was challenging in college. We got her an apartment close by but as soon as she moved out we stopped hearing from her unless she needed money or a favor. She rarely called toncheck in. She eventually dropped out of college, stopped taking her medication, began dating a totally abusive drug dealer, and began her experiment with drugs. She ghosted us for quite awhile. She would resurface when she needed something.  She eventually hit some sort of rock bottom and accepted our offer to get her into job corps. She stayed long enough to get a certification that would lead to a decent job but she couldn’t seem to hold one very long. She was evicted and the police called many times for domestic violence in the apartment she was sharing with this man.

Years passed. She was committed several times and she would always leave the hospital with medication and a plan but she would stop taking it, fail to keep a job, find awful people to live with and only contact us for requests. She ended up getting pregnant and decided on her own to reach out for counseling. We thought maybe we were rounding a corner but it was then that she was diagnosed with bpd with narcissistic features and bipolar disorder. The therapist recommended dbt and medication. Neither of those things happened for reasons I’m not clear about.


She had her baby. Raised her in total chaos. Domestic violence again. Self harm now. Cutting her arms and legs. Blood all over the house. An alcoholic boyfriend. Lots of dysfunction and I thought if I responded when she called she could find her way to something more stable. It felt wrong to leave her child to try and grow up in that without an anchor. I learned pretty quickly that my presence had no positive impact on her decision to find help. She instead leaned hard on me and on her bfs mom to take her daughter. She outsourced parenting and got to step away when she was too overwhelmed. Honestly I didn’t know what to do because I was afraid that if I didn’t give her that she would kill herself. She called frequently to tell me she was done living and it always felt so urgent.

Eventually I untangled myself a little. Got into counseling. Realized that I could do little to change her and that should she decide to end her life - she will. My actions will only delay a plan to do so if she’s that serious.  Only she can really save her life. In the midst of this she got pregnant again. By this time I could not extend myself any further and was going through some things in my own personal life that needed my attention. I spent so much time worrying about her that I didn’t stop to attend to things that were important for my own health and well being. I felt that cold sweat when my phone would ring and it was her. I would brace myself when I saw her texts because I knew it was not anything positive. Either it’s the end of the world or she needs something that should come above anything else. My therapist started helping me to detach from the chaos and start to choose myself. I learned to grey rock her demands and drama.  It gave me some peace but my instant reaction to her is anxiety.


Finally after this Thanksgiving it sort of came to a head for me, and her lack of concern about anything but her needs really began to do something different in my mind and my heart. I was tired of it. I was tired of being made to feel like the enemy.  I was tired of my actions always being interpreted as malicious. I was tired of defending myself. I was tired of advocating for my own peace. I was tired of disputing actual delusions about events we all lived through. I was tired of the emotional blackmail. I was tired of the police calling me because there’s been another incident and someone needs to come get the baby. I was just tired. Exhausted. Hurt. Emotionally depleted. The final straw came when i got injured at work and I had to cancel babysitting for her. I had a concussion and couldn’t even lift the baby if I wanted to. I told her that was the situation and she launched into this hateful and disrespectful rant about how I was not there for her or supporting her and this is just another example. That I’ve never been dependable and that I’m always overextending myself. I had heard her be hateful to other people but not me. Then again, I’d always done what she asked, in part to keep out of the chaos. But since I had begun to grey rock and just not be as available - I was not as useful as i once was. The exhaustion hit a new level. I detached at that moment.

After talking to my therapist I sent my niece a letter at Christmas. I worked with my therapist to write her in a way that didn’t point out any particular instances or sound accusatory. I simply wanted to convey to her that I needed something different in our relationship. I felt as though she was interested when I was useful and when I wasn’t I didn’t feel that connection come from her end. I told her I loved her very much and that if she wanted to work on this I always was willing. She didn’t write back immediately but texted me yesterday to tell me that our relationship was over. She cited many reasons, half of which were bent reality, as to why and said my lack of reponse to her calls or texts sent a clear message. I could tell for her it read as abandonment.  She then pointed out that she had blocked me back in October but said she had discovered how little I cared because I hadn’t found another way to reach out to her. I didn’t exercise any care or consideration for her as a new mother and the support she needed. At first i was blindsided. I didn’t know that facts could be contorted so much to make someone’s reality make sense but there it was. As time has passed I realize i can’t say or do anything about that will change this or make her realize I am not this horrible person she needs me to be. I let it go.


I’m struggling with what I do now. I miss her oldest daughter a lot. The younger one i purposely couldn’t bond with because I worried a day would come that they would be used as emotional pawns and I needed to be able to let that go with as little heart ache as possible. My husband says I have to keep reaching out to her. She has a mental illness and she still needs people. I said I agree that she has a mental illness but I can’t justify setting myself on fire to keep her warm. He also comes at this from the perspective of not being the person who gets the calls or handles her. That has really solely been me.

What do you do when you’re in this situation?  I know her response was probably a feature of being very deregulated and feeling that chaos from reading abandonment in  my letter even if it wasn’t there. She is protecting herself. I get all that. I just don’t feel like her abusive behavior is the price I have to pay to have her in my life.  Am I wrong?  I feel like chasing her just reinforces that game she is playing, whether knowingly or unknowingly. That she will be awful and I will still be there. Just like being blocked was a test. As a healthy adult I see those things as boundaries and when I see someone’s boundary I respect that. For her it’s a test of loyalty and I apparently failed. I am prepared to let her go and I was when I sent that letter. I knew it wouldn’t help things and would maybe make them worse but it felt really good to say what I wanted to say and held in for so long. I didn’t say it for her. I said it for me.

I just need to let her go but I want to know what others have experienced and what’s on the other side of this feeling.

If you read this far, bless you. I just feel like I haven’t had anyone to talk to about this and now I feel like at least one person will know what I’m going through.

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