How to Mange Texting with BPD sister

[Cat Parent]

Hello,
My sister with borderline personality disorder lives in another state. She is 66 and I am 64. Let's call her Bitsy (not her real name). Anyway, Bitsy and I are in touch on a regular basis via text. Long story short, about three weeks ago Bitsy got mad at me and sent me a rude text, and then I blocked her. To be honest, I really wanted to block her anyway and I was waiting for an opportune moment. Everyday I receive text messages from her about problems and chaos in her life. It's a heavy load for me to carry and I really needed a break from it. (The chaos she creates is quite literally unbelievable). How do you deal with text messages from a loved one? How do you stay involved with the story of their life without becoming bogged down by the burden of it?
I appreciate your ideas and suggestions.
Thank you!

[Pook075]

Hi Cat and welcome to the family!  Great question and I'm really glad you found us.

BPD is a mental health condition that affects close relationships.  That tells me that your sister considers you a part of her inner circle, someone she relies on to talk, rant, or whatever.  That's what close friends do, after all.  But it sounds like your sister is taking that to another level and focusing mostly on herself...not so much on you.  It's a very common problem with a BPD loved one and almost every member can relate.

For me, I have a BPD daughter that I had to distance from.  Not because I don't love her or want to talk to her, but it was important for me to get outside of that "inner circle" with the constant daily updates.  Her boss was mean to her, there's something wrong with her dog, the neighbor is a jerk, this new person they just met is the most amazing person on Earth.  It was endless and like you, I just couldn't do it anymore.  Everyone was either a saint or a demon...there was no middle ground.

So I slowly backed off, strategically.  I'd intentionally take 10-15 minutes to reply to a "rant text", and maybe an hour or two for more general stuff.  If she was in crisis, I replied quickly, but otherwise I gave her enough time to text someone else and rant to them instead.

There were many bumbs in the road in this process and currently, I'm told my daughter is back to hating me.  That's okay though, I understand what that means and I don't let it bother me anymore.  I'd rather have her bad-mouth me from time to time than be in her closest inner circle.  Like you, I just couldn't take it anymore and it caused a lot of anxiety.

I also know it's not real hate anyway.  My daughter told me ex wife recently that we had talked.  My ex was surprised because she thought we didn't talk at all anymore, like something serious happened.  Maybe it did by my kid's version of events, I don't know.  But every time I talk to my daughter, she seems to tell the entire family about our entire conversations.  So that's not someone who actually hates me, she just misses her dad (and unintentionally abusing her dad).

You have to make a choice- no matter what you do, you'll get some pushback and blame.  You can block your sister, or be much slower in repliyng, or keep having the same conversations.  But from my experience, it's much easier to be a distant relationship and not in the middle of everything.  I hope that helps.

[wantmorepeace]

Hello Cat Parent. I also have a sister wbpd and I really relate. I have been that inner circle person, the recipient of vicious communications, disconnected, a little connected, all of it.  So first want to extend my sadness that you’re going through this. It’s exhausting on every level.

What Pook says really resonates for me. I won’t repeat it but I will emphasize that you don’t need to know your whole future at this point. You can’t anyway. You need to know what u to ou want to do now. And you need to know that you can’t control the outcome, just what you do.

Take care of yourself.

[zachira]

When you are ready to reconnect with your sister, would speaking by phone be easier for you? With phone calls, you can set boundaries and hang up if the conversation gets out of hand. There is no limit to the length of a text and how hard it can be to read what is in it.

[CC43]

Hi Cat,

Many people here can relate.  It seems like you have a decent solution to the problem:  separating yourself from the daily drama by not reading the texts for a while.  If your sibling is lashing out, you are under no obligation to get sucked in, let alone to respond!  Besides, if you respond when you are upset, you run the risk of saying something you might regret.  And if you respond to your sibling when she's riled up, you're probably only going to add fuel to the fire.

There are a few ways I've thought about these emotionally-charged texts.  Typically I take them as a sign that my pwBPD is under a lot of stress, and she's "venting" her issues my way.  As she usually vents with meanness and unfounded accusations, I know perfectly well that I had absolutely nothing to do with her current distress.  Since I'm neither responsible nor to blame, I don't take offense so to speak.  Nevertheless, it's hard to witness someone become unhinged like this; it's hard not to worry.  If that happens, sometimes I give myself a break, by not reading the correspondence right away, let alone reply.  My opinion is that she doesn't want a reply anyway, not really, because she's unhinged.

Normally, what I do is wait.  I think of this as giving my pwBPD an "adult time out," i.e. time and space to cool down.  There's no clock on this.  I wait until she reaches out again in a civil manner.  If weeks and months go by, then I might lob a short, friendly greeting, something like, "Hope you're enjoying the summer!"  I don't ask anything from her though, so she doesn't feel like she's "forced" into a reply.

In the meantime, it might help to think of her messages as spam, because they ARE spam.  Why?  Because spam is designed to convey false urgency, and to get you to respond ASAP, typically in a way that you wouldn't do otherwise, because you feel undue pressure to act.  You know what you're supposed to do with spam, right?  You're supposed to delete it.  So go ahead and delete it.

Another way to think about the situation is to ask yourself, do you want to ride the emotional rollercoaster?  Just because your sibling is riding the rollercoaster, it doesn't mean that you have to ride alongside her.  Instead, you can choose to wait patiently at the exit.

By the way, I generally don't "do" texting, and certainly not as a way to convey emotionally-charged topics.  Ditto social media.  Instead, I tend to talk on the phone.  Like another poster said, it can be easier to control phone conversations, because you can hang up if things get too tense or hostile.  In addition, since the conversations are live, I think they tend to be more considerate, as well as focused.  With family members, it can be easier to establish a routine for calls, such as once weekly, while driving home from work, walking in nature or folding laundry.  That way, you stay in touch, but you're not subject to daily dumping and venting.  Sure, there's some venting, but it's limited to the duration of the call, which is under your control.  And if you combine a call with another activity, like laundry, you have some distraction that helps ratchet down the emotional intensity, as well as give you a stopping off point (oh, gotta go now, talk to you next week).

Having written all that, you might need to train your sibling how you want to be treated.  How?  By establishing firm boundaries.  One technique I've used is what I call the three-strikes rule.  If my sibling or pwBPD is talking about an overly negative, stressful, irrelevant or hopeless topic that stresses me out too much, I'll say something like, "This is stressing me out / we're not getting anywhere, let's please change the topic."  If they say, "Yes, but . . ." I'll respond with something stronger:  "If you keep talking about this/if you keep yelling at me, I'm hanging up."  That's strike number two.  If they're really stubborn and don't listen, and they continue to vent or yell, then I'll say, "Gotta go, bye."