Healing

[looking4light113]

I have very recently realized my mom has many of the criteria of BPD. She is undiagnosed and I think high functioning. She has always been “allergic to stress”. Even the smallest of things like ants in the house was a catastrophic event. She was a single mom so her voice is what is in my head and I desperately want to give my children a different life. I’m wondering what the process looked like for each of you in terms of healing from growing up with a parent with BPD? Any resources that have helped would be greatly appreciated.

[Turkish]

Ants in the house seemed to me like my uBPDex felt  "they're going to eat the baby's face off!" Liquid Tero (Borax) took care of that.  It was one of our last major fights where she projected hey anxiety and made me felt like I was a failure for not magically solving it overnight. 

What's the contact situation with you and your children and what are you currently struggling with?

[yamada]

There are many kind of personality disorders. look at them all

[Kwamina]

Hi looking4light113

I’m wondering what the process looked like for each of you in terms of healing from growing up with a parent with BPD? Any resources that have helped would be greatly appreciated.

The healing process can be different for everyone, yet there are often also similar elements. Are you already familiar with the Survivor's Guide for adults who suffered childhood abuse? You can find it in the right-hand side margin of this board. The guide helps us transition from survivor to thriver through 3 major stages: 1. Remembering --> 2. Mourning --> 3. Healing. When you look at the steps outlined in the guide, which ones particularly resonate with what you're currently dealing with?

When talking about healing, it can also be helpful to keep in mind what Pete Walker says about this process:

Be patient with a slow recovery process... .Real recovery is a gradually progressive process (often two steps forward, one step back), not an attained salvation fantasy.

The Board Parrot

[Harri]

Hi.  The best resource for me was this board (no I am not just saying that )  Just reading, posting and replying gave me insight to my own issues and having the support of people who get it really made me dig my heels in when I got tired or felt beaten down. 

As for what the process has looked like for me... .well it has had its dark places but they have always been followed by a degree of peace.  Healing is not a linear process and I don't think it will ever be complete but boy have i come a long way!  Just being able to say that is an improvement.  I have also watched others grow here and it makes my struggles okay.

I think Kwamina has a great idea to look at the Survivor's Guide.  It can help you to focus and sort of gives you an idea of what might happen along the way.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi again looking4light113, 

How are you doing? I know you're just coming off a very high stress, high drama time with your mom. I imagine you feel very unsettled right now. Are you seeing your T before long?

Kwamina has pointed out a great place to start, and that is by looking through the list on the side. When you first begin pondering those steps (click on any of them for a greater explanation btw), some of them may not make sense yet, and that's okay and as it should be. You may find like I did that the learning is gradual, steady and sure, with a new door opening to you when you are ready for the next step and most likely not much before. My mom was also uBPD.

The journey to recovery is a journey to discovery of ourselves and how we were affected by our pwBPD. I can recommend a favorite very helpful book that helped me get started on knowing where to look: Surviving a Borderline Parent . Don't try and look at the whole journey at once. Just focus on one step at a time.

 
Wools

[looking4light113]

Hi again looking4light113, 

How are you doing? I know you're just coming off a very high stress, high drama time with your mom. I imagine you feel very unsettled right now. Are you seeing your T before long?

Hi Wools - I’m doing ok. My husband and children got away for a few days last week which was nice to keep my mind off of everything with my mom. Today I was depressed. I spoke to my brother and he is upset about something my husband said and my brother told me he lost respect for my husband. It’s all been very difficult. I don’t know when I will speak to my mother. I saw my therapist Friday and she said I shouldn’t see my mom yet until I am not so viscerally affected by her. I agree. I am listening to the audiobook stop walking on eggshells and it is giving me some helpful tips for how to move forward with her. Thank you for checking in!

[twinklefaery]

I feel like reading, reading, reading about BPD is what empowered me.  I started with Stop Walking on Eggshells, which I ran into accidentally.  The title intrigued me, and I started to read it in the bookstore.  My mouth was hanging open, I purchased it, and read it in one setting.  The enlightenment was instantaneous.  My mouth continued to hang open in utter shock.  I could relate so much. 

I was in my early 30s and until the moment I read that book, I thought I was crazy.  Reality was never the same as what my mom described.  As a result, I 100% always just thought I was crazy. 

The next book I bought was Understanding the Borderline Mother.  Then I just voraciously researched and read everything I could possibly read. 

It is not an easy journey to embark on.  It unearths a lot of things you have buried.  We all do it, to survive.  It tests your in-touchness with reality because part of what they do is reconstruct their reality to fit their victim narrative.  It can feel extremely unbalanced and shaky to learn the reality they constructed of your entire life is actually false. 

I highly recommend you seek help navigating your way through these waters.  It can really be painful to go through therapy and unearth some of this stuff, but they can help guide you through. 

Remember something that I am not very good at, even though I know this is the truth: You can not pack away and ignore the dysfunction and pain.  You have to walk through it in order to heal.  I am terrible at taking this advice -- I love very much to pack it away and ignore it.  But it will always come out and bite you if you do that.  Do the work, heal yourself. 

Best wishes - it can be very vindicating and empowering to learn that what you went through did happen, was not normal, and was not okay.  It can also be very painful.

[zachira]

You would like to know what the process was like growing up with a mother with BPD. I have lived most of my life knowing something was terribly wrong with mom and feeling terrible about myself. I am the scapegoat of the family so I was blamed for everything. It is only in this past year and later in life, that I have come to realize that my mom has BPD. I have cried a lot the last few months, and am now in a better place where I feel like I can love myself and have intimate healthy relationships for the first time in my life. I have been to therapy for years, and unpeeling the layers of pain has been excruciating at times, yet with time, I have felt so much better.
You say you want to give your children a different life than you had, and you will, because you are aware of how you have been affected by your mother's behaviors. There are many parents on all our boards who share how they are different kinds of parents than the BPD parent/spouse that is part of their life. We are here to listen and support you. Keep us posted on how you are doing.

[looking4light113]

Thanks for your reply twinkle.

Zachira- I am asking more of how your journey of recovery has looked like?

For me I started doing EMDR which is therapy for PTSD and have uncovered that I grew up fearing my mother. She ruled me with fear, never knowing who I was going to get or how she would react. I have a core belief that my childhood damaged me beyond repair, that I am broken and can’t be fixed. Through therapy I am seeing I am capable of changing and I am learning new coping mechanisms. I want to be better for my kids. I still see so much of my mom in me and it is terrifying but like my counselor says “awareness is huge”.

[Learning2Thrive]

... .
For me I started doing EMDR which is therapy for PTSD and have uncovered that I grew up fearing my mother. She ruled me with fear, never knowing who I was going to get or how she would react. I have a core belief that my childhood damaged me beyond repair, that I am broken and can’t be fixed. Through therapy I am seeing I am capable of changing and I am learning new coping mechanisms. I want to be better for my kids. I still see so much of my mom in me and it is terrifying but like my counselor says “awareness is huge”.

Awareness is indeed HUGE!

We must be aware in order to address and correct/learn new coping mechanisms and effectively change our own behaviors. You are aware and you are resilient.

Some days will feel like one step forward and two steps back. Others will feel like two steps forward and one step back. Yet others feel like several great leaps forward. It’s all ok and part of your healing process.

Be especially good to you today. You are worthy. We’re here for you and we’re glad you’re here. 

  L2T

[zachira]

I am replying to your request to describe what my journey of healing looked like.
I am so glad to hear you are doing EMDR therapy. I did EMDR therapy and I feel it helped me more than anything. The EMDR can be terribly uncomfortable as it forces the client to stay in the present moment which can indeed by very uncomfortable as layer upon layer of repressed feelings come to the surface over a period of time. It is like peeling an onion. Many therapists do not do EMDR because the clients are overwhelmed by the process. I find the other methods  like mindfulness were not as effective at first because in the beginning I really needed a therapist to keep me in the present moment and to help me stop reliving my painful memories through flashbacks, chronic disassociation, etc.
A second step was to take a meditation class based on the work of Kristen Neff and Jon Cabot Zinn. The key to making this work for me is to spend at least 45 minutes every day being quietly present observing my feelings and then watching the uncomfortable feelings dissipate. I do not listen to any tapes or chant a mantra, as I find both a big distraction to being present in the moment. By doing the daily practice as recommended by both Zinn and Neff, I am able to process what is bothering me before it gets too overwhelming, and also to heal from past trauma. I needed to do the EMDR first to get to this point.
A third step was when my family took off on me for no reason and kicked me out of the Christmas celebration for 2017. I had the unconscious expectation that my family would some day appreciate me for who I am and stop the scapegoating. The more self confident and comfortable I became with myself and the more I refused to participate in the toxic family dynamics unless absolutely necessary, the more they attacked and hated me. I spent several months letting myself cry when I needed to, doing my meditation practice almost daily, seeing my therapist, and posting on this board.
This is a brief summary of my healing process. Send me your questions and I will do my best to answer. You will heal and feel better. Congratulations on your decision to do EMDR which is so challenging and can be so painful. After each EMDR session, do give yourself plenty of time to get back to baseline, especially before you get in your car and drive home. What works for you, will be likely somewhat different for what has worked for me.
Keep us up to date on how you are doing and what helps you to heal.