What to do about Mom

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hi,

So I'm the youngest in a family where our Mom has BPD. She was diagnosed when I was a teenager but she kept it a secret from me and according to my siblings believes she has healed herself. Generally speaking she does not remotely acknowledge anything is wrong whatsoever. Classic BPD with a lot of room for additional conditions yet to be determined but possibly including bipolar with narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies. I had actually guessed through research that she was probably BPD but just recently found out that she was officially diagnosed in my childhood. It's really difficult sometimes obviously. I am the only one of her three children who actively maintains a relationship with her and man it is not easy a lot of the time. Thinking of her as a permanently mentally ill child has helped me to be more compassionate, her emotional development I would gauge is around 12/13 years old though she is in her sixties.

When we were teenagers we did seek family counseling on more than one occasion but the therapist essentially indicated that unless she herself got help, that our therapy sessions were not helpful and only served to enrage her to punish us repeatedly for whatever we had talked about in that "safe space," since as you all know, BPD lives are based on fluid 'alternative facts.'

It breaks my heart that she cries when she doesn't get what she wants bc she doesn't understand why my siblings will generally not communicate with her. I get lumped in with them and punished for their non-communication as I am the only one in contact to yell at and blame. This doesn't help her fixation on me as competition for my Father's attention, I was punished for many years for being close to my Father and her seeing that as a threat to her matriarchy or whatever. I have been gone for over a decade and with the passing of her Mother decided to stay longer and spend some time with her as I am increasingly concerned about her mental health. She has been training under these personal development/life coaches and I think while there is some improvement, for the most part, she is paying people a lot of money to support her false realities which are damaging her and her family socially, professionally and personally. These coaches are not at all trained to recognize mental health issues and I suspect a couple of her "trainers" have significant mental health issues as well, one has admitted this.

So now she's going around dressing up in various costumes like her trainers do when they simulate scenarios in "class." Her offenses are growing more egregious, though stealing all of our personal information to open lines of credits, businesses, purchase properties, etc. was pretty bad especially considering she doesn't need the money... .it's certainly not the worst thing she has done. Of course upon confronting her with those issues her response was, "How dare you! I did it all for YOU!" But now, with things like telling her Mother's funeral audience that her Mom had a mental health breakdown as a young Mother and spinning her false narrative to a stunned room of people who loved and respected my Grandma, only serves to isolate her further from the family, most of whom deal with her minimally if at all. She had the man she cheated on my dying Father with, be a pall bearer at his funeral. I mean this is the tip of the iceberg. But it seems she is skating further and further into this delusional narrative and it is only driving her family further and further away.

I try to remind my siblings to be compassionate and that she is not well and would we be mad at her if she had dementia or alzheimers, of course not. But I also understand why it's so much easier for them to just block her out of their lives completely. They are both very damaged from that relationship and emotionally and mentally cannot handle interaction with her. They are both in therapy. My oldest sibling is having ongoing mental health struggles and took the brunt of the initial emotional beating. My middle sibling is generally quite stable and I thought had survived the best, but with a recent change in her romantic relationships is having a severe depressive episode and has just been diagnosed with adjustment disorder. When my Father died they left me alone with her as a 13 year old since they couldn't move out of the house fast enough before they were even 18. That's when it got much, much worse. There was no one left to protect me from her at all, and it was the most miserable time of my life except when she was thankfully absent via neglect. Her neglect probably saved my psyche from greater damage.

Anyways I'm visiting her now after a decade away and it has been mostly good as long as I do not burst her false reality bubble. There have been only maybe a dozen incidents as opposed to what I would expect to be dozens in the same time frame based on her past behavior. The good news is, her good is much better than I have ever seen. The bad news is, her lows are now among the most disastrous I have seen and she is more delusional than ever. She is now having "visions" of God telling her to do things that include insulting her deceased Mother at her funeral. I am not trained to navigate her healing, I think that's something for a highly skilled psychotherapist. But I also don't want to support her false narratives either.

I have spent the day researching and reaching out to specialists in her area to strategize to try to get her some help before I leave. Luckily one of the therapists who reached back was able to quickly recognize the situation and has agreed to meet with me to sort of review what kind of options I have to hopefully get her to come in for sessions. So far I am thinking to sort of sell it to her as a relationship expert that can try to help her navigate her relationships. She already pays tons of money to life coaches etc. who I think are liable for some of the exacerbation, why not get a relationship coach hmm? So far so good in terms of gaining a lot of progress today. Morally I feel obligated to try to get her some help before I go. Rough day emotionally being the baby of the family and trying to pull it together in a mental health minefield.

It's been a rough day. But after spending hours secretly on the phone with mental health professionals as I'm seeing this potentially not far from a crisis situation based on her low lows, I am confident I am on the right track. Given examples of her behavior, they have all sort of validated my concerns that her mental health is alarming and potentially quite hazardous to herself and others and I do in fact have every warranted reason to be concerned and try to get her help and secure my life from her.

I read the BPD parent survival guide from Psychology Today today. I didn't realize they had gotten transcripts from my childhood . I have to believe there's a reason for all of this and am really hoping this psychologist can help me navigate safely exiting without her I don't know, causing another fire right before I'm about to leave so I stay another week. She's projecting quite a bit, not to be selfish but she's a considerable threat to my career and future as I am in the public eye, she's a major liability, she's a threat to the mental and emotional health of my siblings, I mean, how do I protect my life from her, get her the help she needs to the best of my ability, and try to have a healthy, happy relationship with my Mom? FFs I'm just hoping you guys have way more experience. I've considering giving her an alternative fact narrative about what's going on in my life since she's so freaking fact-resistant and any information she has is liable to be twisted around and used as a weapon but I don't like lying to my mentally ill mother even if it's to manage her. Fingers crossed this therapist and I can figure out how to get her some help. It's seriously stressing me out. This family is falling apart even after a decade apart from each other by thousands of miles. Thank you for your consideration.

[rainbowstar]

Hi,

So I'm the youngest in a family where our Mom has BPD. She was diagnosed when I was a teenager but she kept it a secret from me and according to my siblings believes she has healed herself. Generally speaking she does not remotely acknowledge anything is wrong whatsoever. Classic BPD with a lot of room for additional conditions yet to be determined but possibly including bipolar with narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies. I had actually guessed through research that she was probably BPD but just recently found out that she was officially diagnosed in my childhood. It's really difficult sometimes obviously. I am the only one of her three children who actively maintains a relationship with her and man it is not easy a lot of the time. Thinking of her as a permanently mentally ill child has helped me to be more compassionate, her emotional development I would gauge is around 12/13 years old though she is in her sixties.

When we were teenagers we did seek family counseling on more than one occasion but the therapist essentially indicated that unless she herself got help, that our therapy sessions were not helpful and only served to enrage her to punish us repeatedly for whatever we had talked about in that "safe space," since as you all know, BPD lives are based on fluid 'alternative facts.'

It breaks my heart that she cries when she doesn't get what she wants bc she doesn't understand why my siblings will generally not communicate with her. I get lumped in with them and punished for their non-communication as I am the only one in contact to yell at and blame. This doesn't help her fixation on me as competition for my Father's attention, I was punished for many years for being close to my Father and her seeing that as a threat to her matriarchy or whatever. I have been gone for over a decade and with the passing of her Mother decided to stay longer and spend some time with her as I am increasingly concerned about her mental health. She has been training under these personal development/life coaches and I think while there is some improvement, for the most part, she is paying people a lot of money to support her false realities which are damaging her and her family socially, professionally and personally. These coaches are not at all trained to recognize mental health issues and I suspect a couple of her "trainers" have significant mental health issues as well, one has admitted this.

So now she's going around dressing up in various costumes like her trainers do when they simulate scenarios in "class." Her offenses are growing more egregious, though stealing all of our personal information to open lines of credits, businesses, purchase properties, etc. was pretty bad especially considering she doesn't need the money... .it's certainly not the worst thing she has done. Of course upon confronting her with those issues her response was, "How dare you! I did it all for YOU!" But now, with things like telling her Mother's funeral audience that her Mom had a mental health breakdown as a young Mother and spinning her false narrative to a stunned room of people who loved and respected my Grandma, only serves to isolate her further from the family, most of whom deal with her minimally if at all. She had the man she cheated on my dying Father with, be a pall bearer at his funeral. I mean this is the tip of the iceberg. But it seems she is skating further and further into this delusional narrative and it is only driving her family further and further away.

I try to remind my siblings to be compassionate and that she is not well and would we be mad at her if she had dementia or alzheimers, of course not. But I also understand why it's so much easier for them to just block her out of their lives completely. They are both very damaged from that relationship and emotionally and mentally cannot handle interaction with her. They are both in therapy. My oldest sibling is having ongoing mental health struggles and took the brunt of the initial emotional beating. My middle sibling is generally quite stable and I thought had survived the best, but with a recent change in her romantic relationships is having a severe depressive episode and has just been diagnosed with adjustment disorder. When my Father died they left me alone with her as a 13 year old since they couldn't move out of the house fast enough before they were even 18. That's when it got much, much worse. There was no one left to protect me from her at all, and it was the most miserable time of my life except when she was thankfully absent via neglect. Her neglect probably saved my psyche from greater damage.

Anyways I'm visiting her now after a decade away and it has been mostly good as long as I do not burst her false reality bubble. There have been only maybe a dozen incidents as opposed to what I would expect to be dozens in the same time frame based on her past behavior. The good news is, her good is much better than I have ever seen. The bad news is, her lows are now among the most disastrous I have seen and she is more delusional than ever. She is now having "visions" of God telling her to do things that include insulting her deceased Mother at her funeral. I am not trained to navigate her healing, I think that's something for a highly skilled psychotherapist. But I also don't want to support her false narratives either.

I have spent the day researching and reaching out to specialists in her area to strategize to try to get her some help before I leave. Luckily one of the therapists who reached back was able to quickly recognize the situation and has agreed to meet with me to sort of review what kind of options I have to hopefully get her to come in for sessions. So far I am thinking to sort of sell it to her as a relationship expert that can try to help her navigate her relationships. She already pays tons of money to life coaches etc. who I think are liable for some of the exacerbation, why not get a relationship coach hmm? So far so good in terms of gaining a lot of progress today. Morally I feel obligated to try to get her some help before I go. Rough day emotionally being the baby of the family and trying to pull it together in a mental health minefield.

It's been a rough day. But after spending hours secretly on the phone with mental health professionals as I'm seeing this potentially not far from a crisis situation based on her low lows, I am confident I am on the right track. Given examples of her behavior, they have all sort of validated my concerns that her mental health is alarming and potentially quite hazardous to herself and others and I do in fact have every warranted reason to be concerned and try to get her help and secure my life from her.

I read the BPD parent survival guide from Psychology Today today. I didn't realize they had gotten transcripts from my childhood . I have to believe there's a reason for all of this and am really hoping this psychologist can help me navigate safely exiting without her I don't know, causing another fire right before I'm about to leave so I stay another week. She's projecting quite a bit, not to be selfish but she's a considerable threat to my career and future as I am in the public eye, she's a major liability, she's a threat to the mental and emotional health of my siblings, I mean, how do I protect my life from her, get her the help she needs to the best of my ability, and try to have a healthy, happy relationship with my Mom? FFs I'm just hoping you guys have way more experience. I've considering giving her an alternative fact narrative about what's going on in my life since she's so freaking fact-resistant and any information she has is liable to be twisted around and used as a weapon but I don't like lying to my mentally ill mother even if it's to manage her. Fingers crossed this therapist and I can figure out how to get her some help. It's seriously stressing me out. This family is falling apart even after a decade apart from each other by thousands of miles. Thank you for your consideration.

[Rock Chick]

Welcome to the forum rainbowstar! There are some excellent resources on this site one should check out. Id also like to say that as I read your post that my bf and I can totally relate it was almost as if you were talking about my bf's severely BPD mother. I would gauge my bf's mother emotional and mental development etc as varying between 5 and 13 yrs old. She def. doesnt have the mind and emotional development of someone her age which is 53 she doesnt even have that of a 35 or 20 yr old. It def. is very difficult to deal with her as it sounds like with your mom it was and is difficult too. Have you set boundaries yet? Did it work at all? Many hugs. Hope others will post a reply to your post and that their info will be most helpful.