Adult Daughter With Diagnosed BPD

[Momwithdaughter]

Hi!

My 27-year-old daughter was diagnosed with BPD last December after she tried to commit suicide.  As a child, she was perfectly fine, but as a teenager she was a little troublesome--nothing I thought she wouldn't grow out of.  However, she had a baby at 21 and married the father at 22 (right after she graduated from university).  Everything went downhill from there.  She started to drink and she continued abusing prescription drugs (she had apparently started taking Adderall in college).  The marriage soon broke up.  After a few months, she ended up in rehab which, unfortunately, didn't help her kick alcohol or drugs.  After rehab, she did seem to get her life back on something of a track, but that was fairly short-lived.  She then met someone else; married him and 9 months later, she had another child.  The marriage also broke up pretty quickly, but not after she had another child.  She is now alone with 3 children under 6.  She is in therapy, but it is not dialectical therapy (which I have read is the most effective kind); she also doesn't seem to see the therapist very often.  I also believe she is drinking again (I am unsure about whether she is taking pills).  She is a good mom, but the pressure of having to look after 3 small children and cope with never-ending bills (I help her out financially as much as I can) is obviously difficult. What I really need advice about is how to get her to see her therapist more often and how I can get her to see that drinking is only a short-term solution to how to she might feel at a given moment.  I also know she's incredibly impulsive and spends money she doesn't have, and I also worry about her lying--little lies when the truth could have been just as easy. 

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

[wendydarling]

Hi Momwithdaughter 

Welcome to bpdfamily, I'm glad you found us, though very sorry what brings you here, you are not alone.   

That's tough looking after three little ones alone and focusing on recovery and treatment. Does she have a support network of friends, other Mums?  It must be difficult to prioritise treatment when she is so busy looking after the children and I can understand your concern she is struggling.

To the right are tools that help us better communicate with our BPDs, they work and overtime we become more confident as we practice, they work with everyone.  Have a look to see how you might use the tools to help you speak with your daughter, you're welcome to practice on us.

I’ve found the road is not linear and my loving support walking with my 28DD on her journey is seeing her through, she’s doing the best she can and validating her efforts (as she says double validation works for her) provides her the motivation and hope she needs and deserves during her daily struggle to recover.

How are you coping do you have support of family or friends?

WDx

[livednlearned]

My 27-year-old daughter was diagnosed with BPD last December after she tried to commit suicide.

The attempt must have been so awful  for her, and for you.

She is in therapy, but it is not dialectical therapy (which I have read is the most effective kind); she also doesn't seem to see the therapist very often.  I also believe she is drinking again (I am unsure about whether she is taking pills). 

There are other therapies that have been helpful, altho DBT seems to have been researched the most. Mentalization-Based Therapy is another (similar to DBT but designed to be less resource and time-intensive). There is also Transference-Focused Therapy (I think that's what it's called).

I would assume she is using, if only because the anxiety alone can be so intense that it is unbearable to get through the day without some kind of numbing to help cope.

What I really need advice about is how to get her to see her therapist more often and how I can get her to see that drinking is only a short-term solution to how to she might feel at a given moment.

Do you have a good relationship with her? A good place to start might be learning about validation. This can feel like a counter-intuitive skill. When my son was 8, he talked about not wanting to live. I would explain the million and one ways he was loved, what a smart and good kid he was, how funny and awesome -- this only made him feel worse. What he needed (I eventually learned), was for me to acknowledge and accept the pain he was in. As someone with codependent traits, I wanted to will him to feel better through rational explanations, whereas he needed to feel less emotionally alone.

If your D is feeling overwhelmed by daily living, not able to take care of herself much less her kids, telling her to see the therapist more, and at the same time not do the thing that is helping her cope, might create a cycle of shame out of which she can't pull herself. Validation may help prevent her from piling on the shame she is already experiencing.  

I had to completely rethink my way of parenting. This new way is not intuitive, it's very slow and requires patience, and I have to surrender a lot of my dreams, which is not easy. None of the behavioral discipline techniques have ever worked for my son. They may get him to comply in the short-term, but they don't help with the long-term stuff. For that, I've had to learn new ways of communicating like validation and set (support, empathy, truth), and assert boundaries so that at least one of us is in a healthy place, and can be a source of strength when S15 needs me to be the emotional leader.