Intense Emotions & Radical Acceptance

[Kaitlyn]

I'm still very new to BPD and have only made the connection to how it's affected my life within the last few days. I am feeling such intense emotion about it right now. I feel like I'm mourning my childhood. I'm feeling completely powerless against a uBPD mother who can't see the pain she is causing. I am overwhelmed by all of the new information I've found in the last few days. I feel guilty for having thoughts of possibly cutting off communication with my mother in the future. I feel guilty for leaving my father and sister to deal with my mother on their own.

Is this normal? Does this fade? Am I feeling this so intensely because it's so new for me? My thoughts are completely consumed by this right now and it's hard for me to get my mind off of this and on to anything else.

I'm curious about when you achieved radical acceptance. What was the process like for you and how long did it take?

[Notwendy]

It's normal and I think it gets better over time.

Yet it is an ongoing process. I think some depends on the stage of life and development we are in. I was older than you are- it was middle age- that I was able to find BPD as an explanation of my mother's situation. The reason it took that long is that I left home at 17 for college, and didn't live at home since then. Once I had kids, my parents would visit together and my mother was highly motivated to hold it together with them. I also didn't leave her alone with them.

Visits were stressful - mom wasn't completely together- but they weren't so long that I couldn't deal with them. Then, my father got ill. I stayed with them to help out and all the BPD behaviors were apparent.

My response was total shock. My parent's pretended my mother was normal growing up. She blamed me for her behaviors. I believed that if I was "good enough" she would not be the way she was with me. Now, as a mother myself, I could see how inappropriate she was. I would not ever say the things she said to me to my own children. I realized, it was not me, she is mentally ill. Part of the shock was realizing how seriously mentally ill she is and how well my parents could present a cover for it.

It took some work, some counseling, 12 step ACA groups, but in time- and that time can vary, I can say I have accepted that she is who she is.

The harder part of this for me was dealing with my feelings about my father. I am not attached to my mother but I loved him. Like you, I felt I needed to help him in some way. This kept me on the drama triangle with my parents. My mother behaved as if I was in competition with her for my father's love an attention and there was no winning this won. He was all about her.

Like you, I had my family backwards. I thought my parents' welfare was my responsibility and that I had to work at being good enough for them to win their love. As a parent, I know that this isn't the case. It is not my children's responsibility to care for my well being ( sure I expect them to be respectful of parents). It is my job as a parent to love them and raise them, not the other way around.

If your sister is younger, you can be a support person to her. But you have to be able to stand on your own two feet, emotionally and financially, and be independent of your parents.

Your father has a choice- to be with your mother or not, and he chose to be with her. I also used to see my father as my mother's victim and I blamed her for his dilemma. Your father is an adult- he is older than you are- he has choices and he made this choice. You are not obliged to rescue him from this ( drama triangle). I naively tried this- and my mother went into victim mode- my father stepped in to rescue her, and he got angry at me.

Your first responsibility is to YOU. This doesn't feel comfortable to those of us who were raised to consider our parents first but it is important. They say on an airplane to "put your oxygen mask on first". This is the only way we can ever be strong enough to help someone else.  Take care of yourself.