Please Help Dad is getting worse

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hi everyone, this in my first post. I'm writing because my siblings and I are really struggling to deal with my Dad, who we think has BPD, and last night he threatened to knock out my brother.

We lost our Mum unexpectedly six months ago, and it seems like he was held together by her. She had lots of her own issues but was exceptionally stable and that's the reason their relationship worked, through plenty of explosive rows and ups and downs. Previous relationships were very tempestuous.

Now that she's gone, we've seen his true colours. Extreme anger, paranoia, self-centredness. Panic attacks related to abandonment. The push pull is just exhausting! The main issue is that he's villified most of his family and my Mum's family. He basically requires unconditional love from everyone, no questions asked. At whichever stage people fall short of this they go on the bad list. We feel like they all did a lot around the time Mum died, and after this their efforts petered out, as is normal. It absolutely consumes him, it's all we hear about, particularly with regards to my Auntie. She retreated from him after Mum died because she recognised he was going to require more from her than she was willing to give. Understandably! He has written her emails and called her, and admitted to her that he wanted her to emotionally support him. He has blocked out all of these conversations and believes he has behaved impeccably since Mum died. He blames another uncle for my Mum's death, and complains that he doesn't get in touch in the same breath as calling him awful names.

My siblings and I have listened to all of this for six months. Getting zero support for our own grieving I might add! Dad has admitted that he's always seen us as competition and that Mum was his soulmate before we were born so we're less important. And because of his awful behaviour, we have withdrawn from all of Mum's family since he is our main issue but we can't discuss with them that he's obsessed with all of them being awful! As a result have lost a huge support network.

Anyway, Dad brought it up again with my brother last night, after they had had a drink and my brother tried to change the subject multiple times. My brother is extremely calm and almost impossible to fight with. Dad managed. My brother ended up saying that Dad couldn't care less about the three of us and that we'd been parenting him for six months. Dad then punched walls, smashed his own head against the walls, and swore at my brother and threatened to knock him out. My brother had to leave his flat at 1 and stay at a friend's house. He expected an apology today, but Mum was Dad's conscience and now he doesn't apologise anymore, he thinks all his actions are justified. He did text to complain that we've all been useless and he's really upset that we don't take our auntie to task for him, and that we're cowards for this... I see my Dad every week and talk to him most days. I have fielded so many calls with him in a state and gone to appointments with him and given advice. I have a toddler and a new job and have had no chance to grieve myself. My brother has him stay in his flat every week several days and sleeps in the lounge so he can have his bed. My sister lives furthe r away, but has taken charge of many different admin tasks and also checks in on Dad, but Dad is awful with her, genuinely nasty and abusive. We try our best.

Please any advice would be so welcome!

[ihatejezza]

Hi everyone, this in my first post. I'm writing because my siblings and I are really struggling to deal with my Dad, who we think has BPD, and last night he threatened to knock out my brother.

We lost our Mum unexpectedly six months ago, and it seems like he was held together by her. She had lots of her own issues but was exceptionally stable and that's the reason their relationship worked, through plenty of explosive rows and ups and downs. Previous relationships were very tempestuous.

Now that she's gone, we've seen his true colours. Extreme anger, paranoia, self-centredness. Panic attacks related to abandonment. The push pull is just exhausting! The main issue is that he's villified most of his family and my Mum's family. He basically requires unconditional love from everyone, no questions asked. At whichever stage people fall short of this they go on the bad list. We feel like they all did a lot around the time Mum died, and after this their efforts petered out, as is normal. It absolutely consumes him, it's all we hear about, particularly with regards to my Auntie. She retreated from him after Mum died because she recognised he was going to require more from her than she was willing to give. Understandably! He has written her emails and called her, and admitted to her that he wanted her to emotionally support him. He has blocked out all of these conversations and believes he has behaved impeccably since Mum died. He blames another uncle for my Mum's death, and complains that he doesn't get in touch in the same breath as calling him awful names.

My siblings and I have listened to all of this for six months. Getting zero support for our own grieving I might add! Dad has admitted that he's always seen us as competition and that Mum was his soulmate before we were born so we're less important. And because of his awful behaviour, we have withdrawn from all of Mum's family since he is our main issue but we can't discuss with them that he's obsessed with all of them being awful! As a result have lost a huge support network.

Anyway, Dad brought it up again with my brother last night, after they had had a drink and my brother tried to change the subject multiple times. My brother is extremely calm and almost impossible to fight with. Dad managed. My brother ended up saying that Dad couldn't care less about the three of us and that we'd been parenting him for six months. Dad then punched walls, smashed his own head against the walls, and swore at my brother and threatened to knock him out. My brother had to leave his flat at 1 and stay at a friend's house. He expected an apology today, but Mum was Dad's conscience and now he doesn't apologise anymore, he thinks all his actions are justified. He did text to complain that we've all been useless and he's really upset that we don't take our auntie to task for him, and that we're cowards for this... I see my Dad every week and talk to him most days. I have fielded so many calls with him in a state and gone to appointments with him and given advice. I have a toddler and a new job and have had no chance to grieve myself. My brother has him stay in his flat every week several days and sleeps in the lounge so he can have his bed. My sister lives furthe r away, but has taken charge of many different admin tasks and also checks in on Dad, but Dad is awful with her, genuinely nasty and abusive. We try our best.

Please any advice would be so welcome!

[CautiousHopeful]

Hi ihatejezza,

This is a really difficult situation and it is good you are reaching out for help 

My first thought is are there any crisis care helplines or similar you can ring, just in the first instance, just to debrief with someone and talk it through? It sounds that your Dad may need assistance from a health professional, but I can see it may be challenging to encourage him to do this. However, knowing about some options that might be available to him may be a start.

But I am also thinking of you, and that with a young child and job as well, you need to protect and take care of your own needs, and make sure you are supported in some way, as this is a stressful situation.

In terms of your Dad's behaviour, the Tools section of this website may be helpful. There is a section on validation which I have found helpful: https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating In BPD it seems that validation needs are very high, as they can feel extremely invalidated (even if others are not invalidating them but they perceive things this way). Sometimes acknowledging their feelings of abandonment/vulnerability/upset can calm and settle them a bit, and if this happens they may open up a little rather than continue raging uncontrollably.

To provide a recent example, while staying with my mother I inadvertently triggered a BPD rage in her, because she misinterpreted something I said as abandonment. In the midst of her yelling and screaming at me, I managed to say something that acknowledged her inner child - specifically, that she was feeling abandoned because of her own abandonment issues in relation to her own mother. I said I recognised how she was feeling, but assured her I was not abandoning her and that I understood that things had been really hard for her. It actually de-escalated things, and that rarely happens when she has been in a rage. It's like she is prepped to see everything as potentially against her or an attack on her, so I found by validating her feelings as real and showing empathy for that, she did calm down a bit, and even rang me the following night and offered a sort of indirect apology (which is extremely rare).

So I am just wondering with your Dad if there is a way you can acknowledge the way he is feeling and provide some sort of validation for those feelings that might at least get him to a point of acknowledging his own vulnerability, instead of perceiving everyone and everything as against him and lashing out? It seems that when feeling invalidated, one thing people can do is projection - blaming others for their bad feelings. Right now that seems exactly like what your Dad is doing. So by acknowledging the way he's feeling perhaps it might start to encourage him to acknowledge his own feelings more and reduce some of the projective behaviours. Acknowledging their feelings is not condoning their bad behaviours, but sometimes the acknowledgement may encourage them to feel the emotions that they experience as painful but don't want to own. This may or may not work, but it may be worth a try.

You are clearly doing heaps for him already and it is a strain for you and your siblings to be dealing with this, along with trying to process grief. My dad died two years ago and my mother's behaviour following that was very stressful for my brother and I, and it did delay the grieving process. But grief does keep working its way out bit by bit. I hope you can find some nurturing time for yourself in all of this, whether it is finding half an hour to meditate a day, talk to a therapist, go for a walk in nature somewhere - whatever works for you and allows your whole nervous system to experience some calm, to counterbalance the challenges you are dealing with.

Take care and let us know how you go 

[Woolspinner2000]

Welcome Ihatejezza, 

You are safe here to share whatever you are struggling with and to find caring family who will listen and support you. What a difficult time you all are going through! I do see a very good thing, and that is your siblings seem to all be aware of the situation right along with you. Your dad does indeed sound very troubled, and how stressed you must each be!

My mom was an uBPD, and I certainly understand all that extreme sensitivity and fear of abandonment which brings out the worst in them. Please know that with a BPD, nothing you say or do will change them. As CautiousHopeful shared, if you can validate the feelings (they cannot be argued with, they are just feelings and we all have them), it may provide a bit of relief. I hope that Harri will stop by and share her great words of wisdom on this. She does a wonderful job of explaining it so well and sharing examples. I'll leave that up to her.   (You're welcome, Harri!   

One tool that we often encourage members to use is SET. There is a tremendous amount of wisdom in that little acronym!

Please keep posting, and let me know what you think about SET!

 
Wools (aka the resident llama)

[Harri]

Hi there and welcome!  I am glad you found us and decided to reach out for support.  We get it here, as you can tell from the responses by CautiousHopeful (CH) and Wools.  First, let me say I am so sorry to hear of your loss.  Losing a parent is difficult enough, never ind having your other parent become so difficult on top of it all.

I think what has already been shared about validation is very important to remember.  As CH said, it is not about validating their actions or saying they are right, it is about validating their emotions.  a lot of times when we are trying to validate someone, we unintentionally end up invalidating them instead.  When people are emotionally dysregulated,  especially highly sensitive people or people with BPD (pwBPD), an response that is perceived to be invalidating will escalate a situation. 
And example of invalidating would be:
Dad:  You don't support me
Invalidating response:  Yes I do.  I do this, this and this and that to support you.
A more validating response would be:  "It must be awful to feel like you have no support.  I do not like feeling that way either and I find it very upsetting when I do feel that way.  What does support look like to you?"  Or something along those lines.  You know your dad best. 

It is hard to do the above when upset and hurt and grieving though.  Sometimes the best you can do is simply not invalidate and when he says "you don't support me" don't say anything to justify, argue/attack, defend or explain.  This is what we call Don't JADE as JADEing is invalidating and in addition, it puts us on the defensive for stuff we did not do and it can make us look like we are trying to hide something.  Read the article and then we can talk more about it.  I am not sure if it applies, so if it doesn't we can talk about some other things that may help.  We have lots of other tools but I do not want to load you up with them.  You are dealing with a lot right now.   

I do think one of the best things you can do is learn about the disorder as that can help you depersonalize the behaviors as you will understand the anger, rage, lashing out, and aggression has nothing at all to do with you or your siblings, not really.  When he becomes emotionally dysregulated like that he is not really aware of what he is reacting to.  BPD is a disorder of emotional regulation and as such a lot of these behaviors are fear and or shame driven.   The thing is, the pwBPD lacks the ability to manage these difficult feelings and will lash out.

I am sorry, I am chatting your ear off here.  I hope you settle in and read here and join in other threads.  Having a support network, even online, is so important.

[ihatejezza]

Thanks so much to everyone for their help and advice! Sorry for the late reply, I don't have access to a computer and replying on my phone takes a while! Basically, I took on board your ideas about validation and listened to Dad's feelings and tried to make him feel understood. As a result I was able to put across some of my own opinions without us having a row which I was quite pleased with. Unfortunately he's still furious with my brother, even though in my opinion he did nothing wrong.  The  way he sees it, firstly in talking to our auntie, we are all completely disloyal to him, and disrespecting everything he has done for us over the years. And secondly in my brother saying we have been parenting him for 6 months, again he's disrespecting him. He said he hasn't asked anything of us (this just isn't true, he's stayed with my brother every week for months! And we've had the stress of his erratic and unbalanced behaviour for nearly seven months now. And absolutely no support coming our way.) And he even said that if he hadn't punched the wall six times he would have punched my brother because he can't speak to his father like that.
I said can we just rewind there a bit. No matter what your son says to you, there's absolutely no excuse ever for threatening to knock him out! That's just never ok! I also said regarding his first point, that all of us have stopped talking to all the people on his good and bad lists. We can't talk to the people on his bad list because it makes us disloyal,and we can't talk to the people on his good list because they're already providing support to him and we can't ask them to support us too. So that leaves us with just eachother and no one else really. He didn't really take that on board! Sigh.

On talking with other friends, they did say it was completely unfair that Dad makrs himself and out of loyalty we have no support. They think I should make contact with my Auntie as part of self care, and not tell Dad when he asks. He literally said yesterday if we keep talking to them it's like choosing them over him

[ihatejezza]

Anyway the upshot of it all is that my brother isn't coming to the little celebration for my Mum's birthday. And Dad is going to lie about it to people and say he couldn't make it. But to be honest it's not going to be what it ought to be. Dad is basically making it an opportunity to show everyone how miserable his life is and how his house is still a shrine to Mum etc.

Thanks so much for reading xx

[CautiousHopeful]

Hi ihatejezza,

I really feel for you in this situation   I'm glad you managed to have some conversation with your Dad without it becoming a row. You are right, he absolutely should not be threatening to hit your brother. That is definitely not ok. It's also understandable that your brother got frustrated and said the things he did. Your friends are right too in saying that your Dad's behaviour is not ok and he is making things very difficult for you.

With regard to him not taking things on board when you raised the issue of his good and bad lists, he may refuse to take it on board at present, but he may after some time shift a bit (but he may not also). I just mention this because there are times my mother has responded to an idea or thought by saying 'what rubbish', and then weeks or months later she has changed her view, actually expressing the idea as her own that she came up with. This never bothers me in terms of her claiming the idea, because I am just glad she is finally taking it up. It is as if the pwBPD has to always be right, and after a while if it seems strategically good for them, they can change their tune. I have trouble telling how consciously or unconsciously she does this. The pwBPD tends to be childlike and has difficulty discussing ideas (especially ones that are emotionally charged for them) in an adult way. Your Dad is doing the splitting thing where people are all good or all bad, and I can see that is really challenging to deal with.

I think your friends looking out for you in terms of self-care is important. Do you think if you spoke with your Auntie you could keep that between you and her, just so you can have a discussion and share what you are experiencing? I guess you will know best based on knowing your Auntie and what the family dynamics are like. I'm just thinking of ways for you to get some support, so you are not stuck in the middle as the peacemaker but without adequate support yourself.

I'm really sorry your brother won't be making it to the birthday gathering in memory of your Mum. It's not great that your Dad is lying about it either. Perhaps you can do another small gathering with your brother and other siblings? There may be some other people on the board here who have ideas about handling things into the future with your Dad.

It may be accepting that he is not going to be able to show high levels of adult maturity. It is important for you and your siblings to prioritise your needs though. It may be that in time he starts to burn off the energy of some of his distressing emotions that he is currently not handling well and projecting onto others. I hope things start to settle a bit before too long anyway. Take care 

[CautiousHopeful]

Hello again,

Another thing I just thought of is the role of shame in all of this. Your Dad has clearly displayed some not very mature or appropriate behaviours. I think sometimes this leads to intense shame on the part of the pwBPD, as they kind of know at some level they have behaved badly but can't consciously acknowledge it, hence the reason they have to make out that other people are 'bad'.

I read something recently about the effect of shame on the brain, how it makes a person withdraw and reduces their capacity for clear thinking. It distinguished between healthy shame, for example where a kid is taught in a kind way that hitting their other sibling isn't good (where they are told off with kindness) and toxic shame where a person is flooded with disgust towards themselves. Toxic shame is associated with dissociated defence responses, so it is like there is some splitting off from part of the self as a way of disconnecting from how horrible the shame feels. I'm wondering if this is what is happening with your Dad, that the shame can't be internally registered and accepted, and so it is directed outwards to others? And of course this keeps getting compounded each time he does something else that isn't a good behaviour, like punching the wall.

I'm wondering if there is a way to address the shame part of him so that he starts to feel the shame less, but of course that is difficult because he won't want to admit there is shame there. Whenever we experiences losses too, it can bring up other losses from our past, even things we'd forgotten about. I'm wondering if the loss of your Mum has brought up some deep emotional pain from the past, which he cannot process or deal with and it is contributing to his overwhelmed state of not coping?

Anyway, those are just some thoughts and I'm not sure if they're helpful, but thought I'd just mention them while I thought of them.

[Harri]

 

I really like the idea offered by CautiousHopeful to have your own birthday remembrance for your mom with your family of choice.  What do you think?  it could just be a dinner out, a trip to one of her favorite local places, etc.  Nothing fancy, just a way to honor your memory of her.

In regards to your dad, what CautiousHopeful said is right on the money in my opinion.  Shame is a root cause of a lot of the behaviors seen in pwBPD as is fear of abandonment.  On top of that, people with BPD do not process things the same way we do.  Their brains work differently and they have trouble with executive function and they process emotions differently than we do.

I think it is great that you were able to use validation and then could speak with him more rationally.  Validation is a great tool to use when the pwBPD, or anyone really, is calm and not dysregulated.  A lot of the tools can help you be heard, and knowing when to use which tool is important and can be learned over time.

 

secondly in my brother saying we have been parenting him for 6 months, again he's disrespecting him. He said he hasn't asked anything of us (this just isn't true, he's stayed with my brother every week for months! And we've had the stress of his erratic and unbalanced behaviour for nearly seven months now. And absolutely no support coming our way.)

I understand why your brother said what he said about taking care of your dad.  From your father's perspective, I can also see how he found this disrespectful and invalidating to hear.   He is dysregulated, processes emotions differently and has diminished executive function and as such he will not be able to see how he is playing into the problem here and how he is acting as a victim.  In his mind, he probably does not see how staying with your brother is in fact a helpful gesture and won't be able to hear your rationale.  He sees himself as a victim but is totally unaware of that.  Does that make sense?

This is a very difficult time for all of you and I am sorry your dad's behaviors are making it worse.  It is not fair at all and it must be frustrating to say the least.  He is who he is.  As you said, without your mom he is not able to function.  Dealing with this is going to be a learning process for all of you and I think you made great strides in doing so when you were able to talk with him.