What to do next

[Parents! Get help here!]

I have an 18 year old daughter with BPD. She has done a wilderness program and then a residential program. After being home, a year later she is back to the same behaviors as before. She has terrible "temper Tantrums" and it really scares me. People say call the police and have her arrested for destroying property and such, but when the police have come and arrested her, nothing ever changed . The police laugh at us and say she is spoiled, crazy and on and on. I try to ignore her and not give in to her demands but she will not stop destroying everything in my home. Any suggestions on what next? Has anyone had this experience and made it through?

[Dreaming]

I have an 18 year old daughter with BPD. She has done a wilderness program and then a residential program. After being home, a year later she is back to the same behaviors as before. She has terrible "temper Tantrums" and it really scares me. People say call the police and have her arrested for destroying property and such, but when the police have come and arrested her, nothing ever changed . The police laugh at us and say she is spoiled, crazy and on and on. I try to ignore her and not give in to her demands but she will not stop destroying everything in my home. Any suggestions on what next? Has anyone had this experience and made it through?

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

[Slwinner]

I love to say the only way out is through. For me this means do the work to improve your situation. However this is now a joke to me. I have a 20 year old BPD daughter. She's been in some type of treatment for 4 years.

The BPD behaviors just return and we live in crisis. I am done hoping for better and just try to cope with the day to day.

What would work for her does not really exist. She needs to be in a residential treatment center long term. A place that would provide structure, life skills, transportation, medication compliance and management, client focused therapy and some yoga and meditation would not hurt either.

She's only done well when she's been is a supervised living environment. However there are good and bad ones and she's ran away from a few, gone missing, been almost human trafficked and raped.

The gold standard for BPD is DBT. The best of the best is the McLean Gunderson Center run by Harvard University. The program is a minimum of 60 days, self pay and costs $80,000. Wealthy people pay this to buy hope and sanity.

I am a middle class mother with a full time job and another child to raise. I've called the McLean Gunderson Center many times asking for help. Do they have any grants, take Medicaid, clinical studies etc... .I get referred and told no. My notebooks are full of "places" for her. The reality is she presents as normal, is a sociopath, and only those of us who have to live with her suffer her wrath.

She's really intelligent and an amazing artist although her art is dark. Like her life.

I often have to choose between keeping her alive or taking care of me or my son. Not an exaggeration.

I wish you the best. My daughter has been diagnosed with multiple serious mental illnesses so maybe she's an extreme case.

All I know is that I don't see many success stories here. The support is great but there is no happy ending.

Peace.

[Gorges]

I decided it was better for my daughter to not live with us instead of getting involved with calling the police and getting involved in all that.  It has helped the rest of us move on with our lives.  It is hard to know if it helped her.  She did get a job, quit a job, go on public assistance, do some unethical things to get money, quit that, got a job again. She recognizes she has a problem and has gone to therapy.  The therapist seems to suggest some stupid things, but this is her journey.   She has been struggling and it is hard to let go. But, I could not subject us all to the craziness that was going on.  We will pay for her apartment if she goes to school.   It makes me sad because at her age she should be with family, but she is different than the typical kid. The rest of my family is thriving now that she is no longer living with us.