Past wrongs

[mamalynn]

My adult daughter (30 y.o.) has said she was mistreated by me as a child. I was by no means perfect, but she was never physically abused, and as a parent I made a point to never call my children names, and tried to be positive, affirming and encouragng. Love was expressed verbally every day and often. I'm sure I sometimes spoke from frustration, impatience, exasperation, erc.  I know I made mistakes and sometimes lost my temper.
Today she used an example of how I mistreated her: When she was four she was very petite. We called her our little peanut. We moved to a different city, and a year later, a family friend came to visit. Privately, she expressed concern because in one year, Jessica had gained a lot of weigh5 and she asked if I had taken her to a doctor to have her thyroid checked. I had not particularly realized quite how much she had gained - she was not overly bese, but she was defintely no longer petite. I didn't know anything about how the thyroid could affect weight, so I took her to a doctor to see if there were any issues.
Tonight, she told me that I had mistreated her by taking her to a doctor because she had gotten too fat for ⁵me and I was unhappy about it. She refused to listen as I tried to explain the actual reason. I know our BPD kids often have skewed memories from their childhood.
My question is, do I need to ask forgiveness for something I did not do? I absolutely did not care if my daughter was on the heavy side or not! It absolutely was not important to me except in so far as her health was impacted by it, or if it was an indication of a health issue that as a parent I should know about. If her perception is what is wrong, not something she claims I did that I know I didn't do, am I supposed to just suck it up, beat my breast and claim "Mea Culpa"? I can't honestly believe taking her to a doctor, even if it was because of a concern related to her weight.
I'm really struggling and annoyed about this. My conscience is clear that I never made fun of her, or called her names, or said she was fat. I seems ludicrous that I should apologize for her false memory.

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

[CC43]

Hi Mama,

My observation with pwBPD is that validation, especially validation of a highly distorted memory, generally backfires.  Why?  I think it's because your daughter is clinging to a victim narrative, which means blaming you for messing up her life.  She's creating this narrative, compiling "evidence," dwelling on it and getting more and more riled up about how terrible her childhood was.  She might do this to get attention sometimes, but I think it's mostly to DEFLECT and BLAME.  Deflection entails not dealing with issues of the present.  Blaming means not taking responsibility for her own life.  And so if you validate her, I think it actually makes things worse.  She'll probably see any admission of guilt as an invitation to demand additional "confessions," "atonement" and "reparations" for even more wrongs and ancient grievances.  You see, she's not looking to repair past misunderstandings, move on or reconcile with you.  If you apologize, she won't accept it.  She won't accept that parents aren't perfect, but they did the best they could the overwhelming majority of the time, including taking their children to the doctor whenever they thought something was worrisome.  No, she's trying to paint you as a terrible mom who is responsible for ruining her life.  And I think that is dangerous, because when she blames you, she's basically abdicating responsibility for her own life and happiness, and she's giving up on herself.  She is demanding that you are responsible for her life and for fixing all her problems.  But you can't live her life or make her feel better, no matter how much you'd like to.  Does that sound about right?

Most people here will advise to validate feelings, and say something like, "I'm sorry you feel that way, I never meant to hurt you."  There's a chance that might work, but in my experience, it just doesn't.  In addition, I think it's a good idea not to JADE, short for justify, argue, defend and explain (eg "I took you to the doctor because I wanted to ensure you were healthy"), because when you JADE, you're dealing with facts, not feelings, when feelings are your daughter's currency.  While I do like this advice, and I follow it often, I don't think it necessarily works all the time when it comes to past wrongs that are highly distorted in your daughter's memory.  Because anything that "indulges" a victim narrative, which isn't even true, is counter-productive in my humble opinion.

Instead, I tend to say something like, "We can't change the past," or "We never get anywhere with this conversation, it's too stressful" and try to turn the conversation to the present.  If that doesn't work, I try to exit the "conversation" (aka blamefest) completely.  In other words, I don't "reward" her routine of dredging up ancient grievances with my attention.  What I reward is talk about trouble-shooting current issues where something can actually be done about them.

All my best to you.

[ForeverDad]

My question is, do I need to ask forgiveness for something I did not do? ... It seems ludicrous that I should apologize for her false memory.

The problem with apologizing is twofold.

One is that it may not stop her from insisting upon repeated apologies.  It is often reported here that making apologies does not end the pwBPD complaints.

Another is that it may enable even more perceptions of {whatever} for which other apologies will be demanded as well.

I think a legally safe but general response that might work is "I'm sorry you feel hurt in that way."  In the past no court would convict you for hurting someone's "feelings".  (I'm reminded of the old children's rhyme, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me."  However, as a disclaimer, in today's woke world there are some countries starting to move in that direction, where people might be fined or imprisoned for their observations.)

Before I eventually separated and divorced there was a period of several months when I purposely did apologize for anything and everything.  It did not stop the demands, in fact she started insisting I repeat my apologies in the words she wanted to hear.  I finally set a firm Boundary: I would henceforth only apologize when I deemed I ought to apologize.  As you can expect, that didn't go over well.