help with borerline daughter who we have gaurdianship of her teenage daugher.

[Deb Jones]

I now will gain gaurdianship of my granddaughter in a few weeks. my daughter is mentally ll,  borderline and has made our lives miserable for many years. She has blamed me for everything in her life. She does not work have any income, a car or anything that can help her raise her daughter.She has tested positive for meth 2 times this year which she denies any useage.
We are so concerned now after DHS leaves that we wil
have no support of defense with our daughter that blames me for taking her away.
I am so weary and anxious about all this that some days I cant function well. I feel so sad for her and can't help feel sorry for her. She has absolutley nothing in her life..
I am reaching out for any advice or guidance in our next few weeks and for the future as we will have her until she graduates from high school. She is 15 and is getting tired of her mothers moods and inibility to help herself.

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

[Sancho]

Hi Deb Jones
Yours is a difficult situation for sure. Does your DD and her daughter live with you? You mention DD has no financial means of support so I am assuming they are both living with you?

My Dd and her daughter both live with me – and DD is a meth user. When you say:

I am so weary and anxious about all this that some days I cant function well. I feel so sad for her and can't help feel sorry for her. She has absoluteley nothing in her life..

I can understand completely. At the moment my DD has the possibility of going to goal coming up and she is very anxious and distressed – as am I!! I find myself in the weird position of both DD and her daughter claiming that I favour the other. I find this very difficult to deal with.

I have lots of questions about how your situation works, because each person’s position is different, each child with BPD will have different variety of symptoms and severity. My DD is low functioning and has little rational capacity. So everything holds the possibility of emotional explosion. Can you tell us a bit more about your situation – ie do you work, are they living with you, how explosive is DD etc Does your grandchild go to school regularly?

I have just a couple of general suggestions in relation to the weariness and anxiety – ones that help me.

In relation to the weariness- BPD is unrelenting with the mood swings often unpredictable  and constant. Being the ‘target of blame’ is extraordinarily challenging. The thing I find most helpful is ‘timeouts’.  It might not be possible to create a regular space, but I keep my eye open for any opportunity. It could mean stopping on the way home to go to a café or a walk, establishing that a certain day is your sleep in day, making time to keep in touch with a friend, even if it is just by text.
Timeouts are vital to me.

In relation to anxiety I use the 3C mantra, which I find helpful, especially in relation to the sorrow I feel that my DD has nothing in life and I can’t see a future for her. I get overwhelmed with this feeling and the sense that I should do something about it.

When I get like this I say over and over again ‘I didn’t cause this, I can’t control it, I can’t cure it’.

It’s a mantra that helps me accept that this is the situation and I can’t direct it into a better way. It means letting go – which is hard for me to do!

There may be other ways too – for example I feel myself getting calmer as I write to you because I am writing to someone who understands, and I am putting my situation ‘out there’, out of my head. Perhaps you might find writing a journal helps to ease the interior pain?

Sometimes we have to ‘let go’ even to take a timeout. I will post this then try to find the ‘Letting Go’ poem and post that – it’s another thing I find useful.

[Sancho]

Here is the poem by Nelson Mandala. I find reading it through and then one of the lines stays in my mind. The last line is very powerful I think.

Letting go
To let go doesn't mean to stop caring: it means I can't do it for someone else.

To let go is not to cut myself off; it is the realization that I can't control another.

To let go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To let go is not to try to change or blame another; I can only change myself.

To let go is not to care for, but to care about.

To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.

To let go is not to be in the middle arranging outcomes, but to allow others to effect their own outcomes.

To let go is not to be protective; it is to permit another to face reality.

To let go is not to deny, but to accept.

To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue, but to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.

To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and to cherish the moment.

To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To let go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.

To let go is to fear less and love more.

Nelson Mandela (18 July1918 - 5 december 2013)