Increasingly Unstable Father

[sorgenfrei]

Hi board,  

This is my first post here.  I am hoping to get some help seeking help for a father with BPD tendencies who refuses to acknowledge his instability and the impact it his on his adult children (myself and my brother).  Some background first.  My father is 77 and continues to work part time as a physician.  Of note, he works in drug addiction work, so has a stress at work which he manages not well, but well enough.  He lives an hour away.  My mom, a psychologist, had always been abused and overwhelmed by his behavior.  At some points, when he got really stressed and in terrible moments, he physically abused her.  

My brother and I are twins, and in our early thirties.  We lived at home for college since we went to a prestigious university in our home town, and if not coincidentally, my father became quite depressed when we actually moved in the dormitory our first semester.  He lost his job and financial situation was quite dire then.  After college, we lived at home for several years since we both had attention issues and had difficulty launching.  We moved about three years ago to a city an hour away.

My father has never really been alone as the family has always danced around his emotional needs.  He was allowed to vent his stress at work and we were often the means to get him out of his depression.  Now, he is alone.  My mother, G-d rest her soul, passed away last year after a three year battle with stage IV colon cancer.  :)uring the experience, we had an unnatural closeness and his emotional outbursts were not appropriate.  

After my mother passed, I was extremely concerned about the stability of my father.  My concern was for his interest and my own selfish reasons.  My dad has no savings and his social security will not cover his retirement expenses.  His plan is to work for 10 years, even if that only ends up being three or four that could work.  I want to start my own family, and first need to work on having a significant other and my own time.  After the family issues for the past several years, I have had very little chance to focus on myself.  It's been one stress after another.

My plan had been to try to extricate myself from the extreme emotional support role that I play.  It has been and is unreasonable for me.  Up until this past January, I had visited him for a portion of every weekend.  I didn't want him to feel unreasonably isolated or depressed.  I call him every night.  In parallel, I researched and suggested community events, community members and other ways to have social support.  Though he has tried some things, he ultimately ends up not feeling appreciated or respected. He's very reserved and most people don't naturally fawn over people they meet in the way my father seems to need.

Meanwhile, I am trying to focus more on myself.  Starting in June, I have not gone to visit him for two full weekends in a row.  I still call every night.

His mood and behavior have gotten worse over the past several weeks and really escalated this weekend.  I am not sure if I am projecting unreasonably from past experience, but I fear the more I try to have my own life, which he claims he wants me to have, the more he will feel isolated and become emotionally unstable. When he has gotten unstable, he has lost jobs, had accidents and has threatened self harm.  This past weekend he couldn't find his cat and feared he had lost her.  He tried calling and texting my brother and I, who both were busy and irresponsibly had our voicemails full.  When he couldn't reach us for an hour, he panicked and called the police who came and broke the lock on our apartment.  My brother, who arrived home hours before I did, arrived to a circus of emergency professionals and was terrified something catastrophic had happened to me.

In his new state, which is maybe influenced by the greater distance my brother and I are creating, my dad thinks that he should be able to reach me within 15 minutes and demanded a work contact as well.  He thinks that the intensity of his emotional reaction was justified.  The intensity and range of emotions he presented yesterday, which conflated abandonment, isolation, feeling stressed at work, feeling insecure about past job failures, were concerning.

My dad has seen a psychiatrist for therapy for maybe twenty six years. He refuses to see a new psychologist/psychiatrist.  At times, things get bad and he goes on medication which helps things.  But his psychiatrist lets him drive when he is on medication.  Plus, my dad is probably very selective in what he presents as a problem since he doesn't think his emotional reactivity is the issue--he thinks the issue is with everyone else.  I'd like to tell him that I won't speak with him more until he has a plan to deal with this, but I worry that will tailspin him into emotional instability.

Any thoughts on how to take the initial step of getting him to actually present this emotional lability to someone?

I am wondering how I get my father to present the intensity of his emotions to someone in a productive way. Right now, he refuses to let me come to his therapy, though he's allowed me there in the past.  I tell him he is hurting me and this doesn't get through to him. I was actually going to see him this weekend, but because of the emotional drama of the weekend, didn't get down to see him.  He doesn't and won't see that.

-Overwhelmed, distraught and disappointed.

[Faith2014]

I have no real answer, but if he doesn't see it to be a problem, I don't see how you can get him to admit it to be a problem anyone!  It's possible that even if the therapist brought his intensity up as a possible factor in his issues, that your dad might completely deny it.

People don't want to see what they don't want to see.  I think BPDs are highly skilled in this.  I've always been of the belief that I would rather see the Truth and adjust myself/learn to deal with it.  But shockingly (and I am NOT being sarcastic - I AM shocked!) most people are not like that.  Because if he DID admit it,  then the person who needed to stand up, to take responsibility, to change (!) would be him, and we can't have that, can we... .

And so here we are at a dead-end, rt?  Believe me, I'm in a similar spot with my sister.  I feel like I'm standing in front of a brick wall, scratching my head.  From what I've read about BPDs, logic and reasoning doesn't work with them - that feelings are fact.  How the heck do you reason with that?

[Mutt]

Hi sorgenfrei,

My dad has seen a psychiatrist for therapy for maybe twenty six years. He refuses to see a new psychologist/psychiatrist.  At times, things get bad and he goes on medication which helps things.  But his psychiatrist lets him drive when he is on medication.  Plus, my dad is probably very selective in what he presents as a problem since he doesn't think his emotional reactivity is the issue--

It sounds like you care a lot about your dad, it has to be stressful on you to try to manage all of this. I'm sorry that you're going through this. It sounds like your dad is attached to his ( Psychiatrist ) Read the part about attached patients, it says that patients with BPD are scared of termination from the first session with their therapist. I read that a pwBPD get attached to their therapists in the book BPD Demystified by Dr Robert O Friedel.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=UZim3OAPwe8C&lpg=PA130&ots=qBYB6tVtH3&dq=BPD%20attached%20to%20therapist&pg=PA130#v=onepage&q=BPD%20attached%20to%20therapist&f=false

Do you think he's attached to his P? You've been his sessions, do you think that his P would talk to you about attachment?