Undiagnosed adult sister struggling with many BPD characteristics

[Depression = 72% of members]

My 30 year old sister has had many emotional and behavioral issues throughout her life which have resulted in numerous "misfortunes" as well as failed relationships. As she grew, so did her issues and their inherent consequences. The further she aged from her teens and 20's the more apparent it became that she wasn't just slow to mature. When she was a child I vividly remember her constant crying, to the point that her voice was permanently hoarse as a toddler and most of the time it was a mystery to why she was crying in the first place. My parents had taken her to many specialists and speech therapists attempting to gain some answers, but I believe dyslexia was the only answer they were given.
As she started elementary school, she also started creating false realities. These weren't normal imagination games children play at that age, this was something very different. At first the stories just seemed as though they were poor accounts of past events, but that started to change. She told her tutor that my parents starved her, beat her and locked her in the attic. We did not have an attic. See where this is going? As she went through school she only maintained one friend at a time. 5th and 6th it was this girl, 7th and 8th it was that girl and last girl was now "the worst person ever in the whole entire world"... .and so it cycled.
When she started dating her now soon to be ex-husband, she always talked about them fighting verbally and physically. They broke up for a year and then got back together and got married. That lasted less than 2 years. The last 6 months of her marriage she was back and forth between her husband and my house. The final incident was when she said that he pushed her through a window. No police report filed.
A few months into her separation, she started dating. First it was a guy that was in jail and when he was released and they spent time together, he was also an abuser. Next guy, abuser. At this point she is in her late-20's and she has 3 restraining orders out on different men. And this is where my part of the story really begins. I had been her advocate for so long, taking her into my home with my now husband (I was planning my wedding during this time). I was always on her side because that's what sisters do, but I could no longer turn a blind eye to the obvious patterns. I couldn't understand why she didn't see that the common denominator in all of her troubles was herself. I also knew that she's great to you when you go along with her narrative, but as soon as you disagree, she flips 180 and will tear you down with a vengeance.
I have never met anyone so astronomically vengeful and hateful. She's turned on me really bad a few times as she's done with everyone else in the family. She has a very nasty attitude a lot of the time, but for me about once a year there would be some incident where she felt slighted in some way and that's all it took for her to take you down. She would make up extremely hurtful lies and spread them all over the family over something like she thought I stole her cd case, when it was lodged under her seat. We wouldn't talk for a few months, the holidays would roll around and "Oh well let bygones be bygones". I decided to end that cycle 7 months ago. My sister, still not divorced from her husband because she is fighting over posters (no kids, no house, thank God), started dating a man older than our parents. When she told me about the old man I knew this was going to be "the incident". She set me up in a position that if I didn't say Oh I'm so happy for you, I can't wait to meet him, then she was going to turn and that she did. I had already known she was dating this guy before she told me because when you're dating an old man in a small town, word doesn't take long, so I had prepared myself to be calm, listen and be super vague with my answer. But that didn't work. She wanted a yes/no right then, right there. I had to validate her narrative or else she was never going to talk to me again because I didn't love her. I didn't want her to be happy. I knew it was coming and I was prepared for the outcome; I just had to get off the ride. I haven't really spoken to her since July other than a Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas and in these 7 months her life has spiraled out of control even more. She broke up with the old man in 2 months, then started dating a guy that just moved from another state. He has 2 kids in that state he doesn't support, no desire for a job other than selling drugs, and from what I can tell a liar (he cured stage 3 lung cancer by smoking pot... .). Well she gets pregnant after 2 weeks of knowing him, they break up, she carries the baby for 12 weeks confirmed by a sonogram and then 3 days later. POOF, she's not pregnant. I speculate as to what happened, since babies don't just disappear into thin air, but that's her narrative and God help anyone who would dare question.
So in her 30 years on this earth, she's racked up 4 restraining orders (1 new one on the husband and she's now trying to get another one for the last guy), 1 divorce, fired/quit? over 25 jobs (currently unemployed, living with my parents), failed community college twice and countless failed relationships both romantic and personal. And the real meat of the issue is that she believes NONE of these outcomes have had ANYTHING to do with her. She is always the victim. Always. Everyone is out to get her. They're a narcissist, abuser, love bomber, sociopath etc. She has been going to a therapist since the beginning of her separation, which I feel has only fueled her fire. She now is equipt with an arsenal of disorder names and terminology she loves diagnosing everyone around her with, because of course she's not the one with the problem. With the exception of PTSD, only because that was given to her by her abusive husband, so that's not her fault.
So I'm here because I've read a few books and many peer reviewed journals about BPD and it's like the quantum physics of psychiatry. As soon as I think I have found a way to understand, I am confused all over again. They say that pwBPD are unable to be manipulative, but she has premeditated sabotages of people's lives and I'm struggling to understand how something can be planned/premeditated, yet not manipulative. I'm not ready to have a relationship with her yet, especially without a game plan of boundaries, but I worry about my parents. They have done nothing but support and love her and she figuratively spits in their face with her hand held out for more. She lives with them because she cannot support herself, yet has no respect for them and is starting to call them abusers. When does the cycle end? And is there anything I can do to help my parents? I worry because she's trying so hard to ruin her husband's life by claiming abuse in court, but knowing all the countless lies she's told in the past it's hard to wonder if all of that wasn't a lie or a "misinterpretation of the truth" or her "emotional truth", which rarely is the actual truth. How far can she go with the delusions until the damage is irreversible? That to me is a scary question.

[Langwidere_Kin]

My 30 year old sister has had many emotional and behavioral issues throughout her life which have resulted in numerous "misfortunes" as well as failed relationships. As she grew, so did her issues and their inherent consequences. The further she aged from her teens and 20's the more apparent it became that she wasn't just slow to mature. When she was a child I vividly remember her constant crying, to the point that her voice was permanently hoarse as a toddler and most of the time it was a mystery to why she was crying in the first place. My parents had taken her to many specialists and speech therapists attempting to gain some answers, but I believe dyslexia was the only answer they were given.
As she started elementary school, she also started creating false realities. These weren't normal imagination games children play at that age, this was something very different. At first the stories just seemed as though they were poor accounts of past events, but that started to change. She told her tutor that my parents starved her, beat her and locked her in the attic. We did not have an attic. See where this is going? As she went through school she only maintained one friend at a time. 5th and 6th it was this girl, 7th and 8th it was that girl and last girl was now "the worst person ever in the whole entire world"... .and so it cycled.
When she started dating her now soon to be ex-husband, she always talked about them fighting verbally and physically. They broke up for a year and then got back together and got married. That lasted less than 2 years. The last 6 months of her marriage she was back and forth between her husband and my house. The final incident was when she said that he pushed her through a window. No police report filed.
A few months into her separation, she started dating. First it was a guy that was in jail and when he was released and they spent time together, he was also an abuser. Next guy, abuser. At this point she is in her late-20's and she has 3 restraining orders out on different men. And this is where my part of the story really begins. I had been her advocate for so long, taking her into my home with my now husband (I was planning my wedding during this time). I was always on her side because that's what sisters do, but I could no longer turn a blind eye to the obvious patterns. I couldn't understand why she didn't see that the common denominator in all of her troubles was herself. I also knew that she's great to you when you go along with her narrative, but as soon as you disagree, she flips 180 and will tear you down with a vengeance.
I have never met anyone so astronomically vengeful and hateful. She's turned on me really bad a few times as she's done with everyone else in the family. She has a very nasty attitude a lot of the time, but for me about once a year there would be some incident where she felt slighted in some way and that's all it took for her to take you down. She would make up extremely hurtful lies and spread them all over the family over something like she thought I stole her cd case, when it was lodged under her seat. We wouldn't talk for a few months, the holidays would roll around and "Oh well let bygones be bygones". I decided to end that cycle 7 months ago. My sister, still not divorced from her husband because she is fighting over posters (no kids, no house, thank God), started dating a man older than our parents. When she told me about the old man I knew this was going to be "the incident". She set me up in a position that if I didn't say Oh I'm so happy for you, I can't wait to meet him, then she was going to turn and that she did. I had already known she was dating this guy before she told me because when you're dating an old man in a small town, word doesn't take long, so I had prepared myself to be calm, listen and be super vague with my answer. But that didn't work. She wanted a yes/no right then, right there. I had to validate her narrative or else she was never going to talk to me again because I didn't love her. I didn't want her to be happy. I knew it was coming and I was prepared for the outcome; I just had to get off the ride. I haven't really spoken to her since July other than a Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas and in these 7 months her life has spiraled out of control even more. She broke up with the old man in 2 months, then started dating a guy that just moved from another state. He has 2 kids in that state he doesn't support, no desire for a job other than selling drugs, and from what I can tell a liar (he cured stage 3 lung cancer by smoking pot... .). Well she gets pregnant after 2 weeks of knowing him, they break up, she carries the baby for 12 weeks confirmed by a sonogram and then 3 days later. POOF, she's not pregnant. I speculate as to what happened, since babies don't just disappear into thin air, but that's her narrative and God help anyone who would dare question.
So in her 30 years on this earth, she's racked up 4 restraining orders (1 new one on the husband and she's now trying to get another one for the last guy), 1 divorce, fired/quit? over 25 jobs (currently unemployed, living with my parents), failed community college twice and countless failed relationships both romantic and personal. And the real meat of the issue is that she believes NONE of these outcomes have had ANYTHING to do with her. She is always the victim. Always. Everyone is out to get her. They're a narcissist, abuser, love bomber, sociopath etc. She has been going to a therapist since the beginning of her separation, which I feel has only fueled her fire. She now is equipt with an arsenal of disorder names and terminology she loves diagnosing everyone around her with, because of course she's not the one with the problem. With the exception of PTSD, only because that was given to her by her abusive husband, so that's not her fault.
So I'm here because I've read a few books and many peer reviewed journals about BPD and it's like the quantum physics of psychiatry. As soon as I think I have found a way to understand, I am confused all over again. They say that pwBPD are unable to be manipulative, but she has premeditated sabotages of people's lives and I'm struggling to understand how something can be planned/premeditated, yet not manipulative. I'm not ready to have a relationship with her yet, especially without a game plan of boundaries, but I worry about my parents. They have done nothing but support and love her and she figuratively spits in their face with her hand held out for more. She lives with them because she cannot support herself, yet has no respect for them and is starting to call them abusers. When does the cycle end? And is there anything I can do to help my parents? I worry because she's trying so hard to ruin her husband's life by claiming abuse in court, but knowing all the countless lies she's told in the past it's hard to wonder if all of that wasn't a lie or a "misinterpretation of the truth" or her "emotional truth", which rarely is the actual truth. How far can she go with the delusions until the damage is irreversible? That to me is a scary question.

[strength_love]

I don't know where you read that BPD people aren't manipulative, but they are definitely extremely manipulative. It is practically the centerpiece of the disorder. I think perhaps maybe people are trying to reframe the manipulation in a less condemning way because 'manipulative' sounds very nasty (and that's how it feels, too), but as far as I'm concerned, it is what it is. Manipulation.

The distinction, though, is that they aren't necessarily consciously calculating ways to manipulate others. They do it unconsciously and instinctively in a knee-jerk way, as a means of dealing with their strong emotional reactions, their terror of abandonment and rejection, etc.

For example, a BPD person - let's call her Mary - senses that her best friend is withdrawing from her. Mary suddenly becomes extremely suicidal, emotional, in crisis and may even self-harm. This pulls her friend back in to take care of Mary while she's in her crisis. Anyone looking at that situation would see very clear emotional manipulation going on.

Most 'non-disordered' people - upon sensing that a friend was acting distant - would talk to their friend or else give them space, but Mary doesn't have those skills and she doesn't approach things rationally. She experiences rejection or abandonment as extremely painful and terrifying. She becomes overwhelmed and reacts by flying into crisis immediately. It's not that she plans to manipulate her friend, but that is the general outcome of the situation.

In my opinion it doesn't matter whether it's premeditated or not - it is still experienced as manipulation by those who are the targets of this type of crisis behaviour.

A good example of this happened very recently. My sister had applied for a job and hadn't gotten any response back. She tried calling the company to see if they got her resume but they didn't get back to her. She began to become increasingly upset until she was in such a state of pain and fear and sadness that she was panicked, crying and became physically ill. Rejection or the possibility of rejection - to her that is a huge crisis, and totally unbearable.

On the other hand a non-BPD person might be a bit disappointed, but would take it in stride.

BPD people who experience these extreme, unbearable emotional reactions will often do very irrational, dramatic things to try to bring things back into a sense of safety and acceptance, even when those behaviours appear manipulative and inappropriate.

[baylady]

   It almost sounds like we have the same sister.  Mine did eventually finish college and even got an advanced degree.  It seems like there is a blow up about once a year about something.  And she will also try to tear people down, often publicly on social media.  I have been mostly NC for about eight years now.  I try not to respond to any messages or emails.  If I don't provide any information, she has less ammunition.  Recently, I did respond and everything escalated very quickly until I stopped responding.  This has been going on for years, including many men in and out of her and her children's lives.  She is currently married and seems to be happy.  However, since I am NC, I don't really know and don't really want to know.  

I do believe that sometimes they really believe the lies they are telling to be true.  My sister tells people that she helped raise my children.  

You are not alone.  There are many others here who are struggling to figure out how to deal with BPD behavior.  Wish I had an answer.  Hopefully, just having people who understand what you are experiencing will give you some comfort.  I see a therapist who is helping me set boundaries and give me coping skills.  Have you thought about doing that?  I am not much of a therapist type of person, but it is helping me a lot to have someone objective to talk things out with.  It also keeps me from burdening my husband and adult children with my frustrations.  Take care of yourself.  

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi Langwidere_Kin! 

Welcome to our online family. 

How complex is this situation with your sister and so very sad. There's an awful lot of wounding that has taken place in so many lives. I'm so sorry.   Those with BPD take a lot of energy for us to interact with, and often we feel compelled to follow along behind and clean up.

Strength_love has made a valuable point here:

  The distinction, though, is that they aren't necessarily consciously calculating ways to manipulate others. They do it unconsciously and instinctively in a knee-jerk way, as a means of dealing with their strong emotional reactions, their terror of abandonment and rejection, etc.

And Baylady as well:

 
I do believe that sometimes they really believe the lies they are telling to be true.  My sister tells people that she helped raise my children. 

I would say that my uBPDm was often very manipulative, but did she know it? I don't know, but I sure perceived it to be that way. Other words can be substituted though, such as controlling. I would agree that quite often they are unaware of the projections and ways that they come across.

I'm glad you are in T.  It helps to have someone to help you as you walk the tightrope of having a pwBPD in your family.

Can you share the names of some of the books you've read about BPD?

 
Wools