adult child with unacknowledged BPD disrupting family relationships

[Shelterinthestorm]

My adult daughter seems to have a number of the characteristics of BPD. She has been destroying relationships for about 5 years, though we may have seen hints of her condition in previous years. She is in the process of seeking a divorce. Lately, she has decided that her children need to be protected from my husband and me. We have had these two children with us, now 5 and 3, a day a week since birth and we have a strong bond with them. We feel that we are a source of love, warmth and stability for them, basically a shelter in the storm of her family life. They love coming to our house and constantly ask to be with us, to have sleepovers. She is actually punishing us for siding more than she wished with her husband in the divorce process.  It is heartbreaking to consider the damage she is doing to her children.

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

[Huat]

Hello Shelterinthestorm and welcome.

Boy, can I relate to what you have written!   Our daughter is now in her 3rd marriage.  Thankfully our grandchildren are now adults but we lived through those heartbreaking divorces/custody-battles with the other 2 husbands (each a father to 1 of the grandchildren).  We, too, sided more with her ex-husbands.   Even after all these years, those men still keep in touch with us... .while at present we are in yet another period of no contact with our daughter nor our grandchildren.

Believe me, my heart goes out to you regarding those grandchildren!  Looking back I remember how we were basically held hostage by our daughter knowing that any wrong move would have us separated from them... .and, as hard as we tried not to have that hapen, it did more than once.  Anyway, they are now 26/28 and not the loving souls they were when we were their surrogate parents.

This is not going to be easy for you nor your husband.  I urge you to stay with us here as you build up your "arsenal" of how to better deal with your daughter's BPD behaviours and get the comfort of knowing that you are being heard by others who walk in similar shoes.  No one here to judge you because we all have felt our heart strings pulled.

((HUGS)  to you!

Huat

[Shelterinthestorm]

Thank you, Huat. I admire your fortitude, to endure this for so many years. We have only been in crisis for a year. We truly "walk on eggshells" when we are allowed to have the children, as she seems to fire off a nasty text message after we drop them back at her house, criticising us for "offences" that make no sense. Her husband, now separated from her, has been gracious to meet with us once a week so that we can see the kids whenever she withdraws them. We thought we were safe for a while as she needed our babysitting financially, but now she seems to have quit her job and doesn't need free babysitting. Of course no job presents a new set of difficulties.

One of the most frustrating things is that the people who were counselling her refused to believe that there is something off with her thinking and behaviour, so they pointed a finger at her home life with us. No parent is perfect, but we had a stable, happy home, and my husband and I have been married for 49 years. She has picked up the jargon of a victim, so she is quick to claim PTSD because we testified on behalf of her husband when she lied and charged him with physical abuse, in a total non-incident that should never have gone to the courts. Because of our "betrayal" she has disowned us as parents... It was painful, but we could not stand by and see her destroy her husband over a lie.

Take care,

Shelterinthestorm

[Whototurnto?]

One of the most frustrating things is that the people who were counselling her refused to believe that there is something off with her thinking and behaviour, so they pointed a finger at her home life with us. No parent is perfect, but we had a stable, happy home, and my husband and I have been married for 49 years.

Hi there

You're statement above really resonated with me. That is exactly what we went through. It's heartbreaking as it only reinforces in the BPD's mind that they are right and you are in the wrong. I bet the counsellors involved with your DD had not met you or been to your home. The ones believing our DD certainly did not meet us. I really feel for you.

[Shelterinthestorm]

Hi Whottoturnto? I hope I am replying to your comment on my post. I am just figuring out how to use this site.  Our experience has soured me on the value of counsellors who don't have clinical backgrounds who can identify mental illness. One of the things our daughter claimed was that her dad's anger had affected her growing up. Her pastor who does not know us at all, said, "I could see that coming a mile away." He immediately put her into the category of an abused child.  When she totally over-reacted to a minor incident with her husband and went to the police, the counsellor and pastor said, "She just snapped," instead of calling her out on an impulsive, costly, ridiculous decision. We went to another counsellor to see if we could chart a course of baby steps to work on reconciliation with our daughter. One hour and $140 later, she told us that there was no hope. It was the worst day of my life and I sobbed for hours. However, in some ways, it might have been good advice, as there is no human path to fixing this.

Now she has been reading Brene Brown and she has acquired all kinds of "victim" terminology.  All of this has just given her ammunition to justify her reckless, impulsive, hateful behaviours. I just want to scream, "Who is the normal one here?" One good thing is that apparently her pastor is starting to catch on. But we suspect that she has broken off her contact with him. Putting him into her "basket of deplorables", to steal a metaphor, along with us, and her sister who supports us.

[Shelterinthestorm]

I am wondering how much overlap there is between narcissistic personality disorder and BPD? We are encouraged that our son-in-law has at last acknowledged that his wife more than likely has a personality disorder. He thinks NPD fits her behaviours best. I am not sure that it really makes a difference at this point. We have been saying for months that our daughter must have a brain tumor, or a mental illness. No one seemed to be willing to look in that direction. She also has epilepsy, so I suspect there is some brain malfunction at work as part of the mix. (Her medications keep seizures at bay.)

We have a good relationship with our son-in-law, but early on he blamed his wife's irresponsible decisions and behaviours on my husband and me. So a diagnosis of NPD seems to validate his concerns that we had indulged our daughter and made her the center of our universe. (an observation with which I would vehemently disagree, but I understand his need to make sense of it all and cast blame.)

Again, I am not sure if it matters because our daughter is convinced that she is the healthy one and she has not done the math to account for all the destroyed relationships she has created in her wake. If she were willing to go into treatment, it might be important to sort out which personality disorder best fits. We are not there yet. But, baby steps, it is good that our son-in-law is considering personality disorder at all.