Caring For My uBPD Mother Has Me Questioning My Own Sanity

[Done211]

Hello,
I honestly do not know what has taken me so long to reach out for support from others who may have had/have similar experiences as me. I am convinced that my mother is an untreated individual with BPD. From the time I was 5 or 6 years old I have been placed in the role of my mother's therapist. She has been intrusive in my life for my whole life, I am 49. Any boundaries I set to maintain my own sense of self or my own mental health are viewed by her as a personal affront to her. Worse I am sure she 'gaslights' me with my most recent experience with this happening yesterday. This experience has made my truly question my own perception whether or not I am acting in MY right mind. I am so upset and saddened by this most recent experience that my desire is to cut all ties with her as I am worn out from a life time of these episodes. But she is elderly and all of my brothers and sisters have washed their hands of her leaving me to take care of her as she ages. Any suggestions on how I can navigate this situation while maintaining my own health;  mental and physical?

[Harri]

Hi Done and welcome!    We do get it here and we have several people currently posting who are dealing with caring for an elderly family member so you are definitely in good company.

Boundaries can be hard to implement and take practice and, unfortunately, there can be push back before the behavior stabilizes.  This is called an extinction burst.  Are you familiar with that term?

Can you tell us more about the recent situation?  What happened?

[Zabava]

Welcome Done211,

You have taken a big step reaching out.  I am also pretty new here but this a wonderfully supportive community.  Sounds like you are bearing a heavy burden.  Can you tell us more about what you are experiencing?

[Done211]

This last situation began pleasantly enough as I took mom on a road trip to celebrate her birthday. We had a pretty good time until the trip home. I needed to get a certified copy of my birth certificate. Come to find out there is a mistake on the spelling of my name.. For whatever reason this absolutely sets mom off she becomes rude and argumentative with individuals trying to help me figure out how to fix the issue. Then the situation spins out of control when she says she us going for a walk leaving me to get the info. I need. I come back to the car and see she has taken a few of her belongings and is nowhere insight. She calls me I ask where she is she tells me she is going to walk home! Or to the nearest police station. I ask her what is going on. She talks over me and ignores the question saying she can take care of herself and she doesn't want to put me out etc. This is all said in a tone of voice that makes my skin crawl because it is the angry voice from my childhood. I finally find her, encourage her to get in the car,but she is still saying she doesn't want to ride home with me. I lost my temper, I did. I yelled why are you mad at me? She ignores my question to ask one of her own which infuriates me...then she flips, she becomes modulated quiet as if she is the reasonable one and comments on my frustration something to the effect that she thought I was able to control myself better. I say I am not talking anymore. She says she is calling the police she then threatens to jump out of the vehicle! On the freeway! Stating she would rather be dead on the side of the road then trapped in the car with me. About an hour later she then attempts to 'discuss' the situation. I am still angry and hurt. She then begins to twist all of what went on as a bizarre misunderstanding on my part saying I am sorry you took it wrong and were confused. Which only served to anger me more! Then I just did not talk for an hour or more finally she starts in on how my silence tells her I do not wish to make amends and that I am letting a frustrating situation come between us. I tell her I need time and that I just don't recover quickly after that level of argument. She follows this by saying this is not the daughter she knows and that's not me and that I have been acting strange over the last couple of years. At the end of the trip I was drained and really questioning my own actions and perceptions

[CautiousHopeful]

Hi Done211,

I so empathise in this situation and can very much relate to it, especially being labelled as the crazy or dysfunctional one. This is major projection on your mother's part. She clearly gets emotionally dystegulated in an out of control way.

I think in the first instance you need space and time for yourself, to be away from that toxic energy. It's so important you don't end up your mother's sole support if your siblings have all washed their hands of dealing with her. I know I fell into a caretaker role and this was not good for me, and I'm now finally learning to unlearn that role.

You must prioritise your own health and well being. This may mean establishing a new normal about how much contact you have with her and what you are prepared to tolerate and not tolerate. Sometimes the other person's behaviour gets initially worse when you do this, known as an extinction burst. Eventually this increase in reactive behaviour from them burns up its energy, and they are forced to adapt to a new normal, even though they might not like it.

How is your mom with your other siblings, if she has any contact at all? It sounds like you are perceived as reliable help to her and she expects you to serve her needs and respond to her emotional drama. You absolutely don't have to respond to this drama or put up with it. I was my mother's therapist from the age of 5 and I'm now finally unlearning that role in my mid-forties and you can do it too! You are most definitely in your right mind, so don't allow your mother to undermine your sense of self and who you are.

Sending you lots of strength and support   I'm sure there will be others here with some ideas and strategies for handling things.

[Done211]

Hi Cautious Hopeful,
Thank you for sharing some of your insight and suggestions! I hope this does not sound terrible but it is nice to know that there is someone out there that 'gets' what I have been going through for years. Of course my siblings all had there own special hell to go through with our mom and each of us (I am guilty too) think that our own personal hell in/was the worst.
How did you get out of the role of being a sole caretaker? I feel it is my duty to look after my mom now that my father has passed away and she is elderly. One of my brothers has already passed away, my older sister has NOTHING to do with mom and the brother that lives in the community has mental health issues of his own and struggles to take care of himself. He does try to be a support to both me and my mom. He and my mom are very similar and really cannot get along for any length of time. So, I feel like I am the only one that can take on the responsibility.
I feel guilty for not liking my own mother, for resenting her. I grieve for the fact that I don't have a mother that truly knows me or loves me for me as she is so caught up in her own world/world view/victim status...and me even thinking this makes me think I am a horrible person because after all, who thinks this way about the person who gave birth to them?
If I could I would walk away and never look back. Its not that I don't love her, I do. I just can't be well and be around her.
I am giving myself space from her. She believes that everything is all good again because on that ride home I caved to save myself in the moment. I agreed that we could move past the 'misunderstanding'. That makes me feel even worse, like I have been emotionally raped and then turned around and emotionally took care of the assailant! I know that boundaries are healthy and I do try and set them with her, she does 'go off' when she pushes against one and I don't budge but eventually she copes. I realize that I have got to stop having the expectation that she is ever going to be a 'normal' mother, continuing to carry this expectation after YEARS of being disappointed and worse, is the very definition of insanity!  

[Harri]

Hi.  

Feeling guilty is, I think, natural given the way we were raised to caretake and fix things.   The thing is that feelings just are and it is the same with our thoughts (as long as you are not thinking of shaving bunnies or something ;) ).  

Part of what we struggle with as adult kids of is differentiation.  Having an identity apart from our parents and others where their opinions do not define us.  So if we say No and a family member gets upset and calls us selfish, it might hurt to hear it but we do not take on that label of being a selfish person.  Does that make sense?

As we learn more about the disorder and separate emotionally from our family member, we can work on having our own internal sense of worth and value.  Using the tools here, reading, helping others in their threads all can help with that.  We know and understand more than we realize and sometimes reaching out to others helps us realize this as we organize and write down our thoughts.  

When you can, google Bowen Family system theory.  Then we can chat about it.

[CautiousHopeful]

Hi Done211,

I have one sibling and he will help our mother from time to time with practical tasks around the house, but he does not get involved in emotional support of her and limits his visits to her to 1-2 hours max. When she was having chemotherapy I took her to all of her sessions. I asked my brother once if he could take her to one so I could attend something else, and he just changed the subject. I guess he is avoidant of dealing with her, whereas I have felt a sense of needing to respond to her emotional vulnerability.

But it is the feeling of needing to respond to her emotional vulnerability that I am now changing. I don't think my conscious mind had much to do with this. It was more like a self-preservation instinct took over. Following the last intense drama scenario I went through with her in December, I was severely depleted. I started to dissociate and leave my body (go spacey) as I simply couldn't cope anymore with these things happening with her. I was also literally returning to my traumatised child self. When you mentioned about your skin crawling from the angry voice from your childhood, this is exactly what happened to me with the last conflict situation with my mother. I was back in that feeling of powerlessness and intense distress.

So ultimately I realised I needed to change things or otherwise my mental and physical health was going to be too severely damaged. I have reduced my level of contact (only visiting her once since December) and communicate more via phone or email. I have increasingly differentiated myself so that I'm a separate identity to her. Like you my mother placed me in a therapy role with her from a young age. I was 5 when I first remember her looking to me in this way when she was upset about how her brother had treated her, and she was looking to me for advice and emotional support. So it is so ingrained in me to respond on the basis that somehow I am meant to care for her because she taught me this, and it is hard to unlearn a role learned so early. But I can now see how wrong this was and that at no point was I meant to be her caretaker.

There is no one else to step into a caretaker role that I vacate, so effectively I'm working to change the dynamics with her so that she learns to be her own caretaker - she is responsible for herself. The way I'm learning to do this is by changing my relationship with myself. I have to think - what do I need right now, what will help me? I didn't even ask those questions before. I still have some contact with my mother and I am still caring towards her, but I think there is a distinction between being caring and being a caretaker. By stepping out of the caretaker role I am taking care of my needs, and handing her back the responsibility to take care of her needs.

One thing that has helped is being around good, kind people who are balanced and remind me what is normal and healthy in human relationships. Shortly after the last drama with my mother I had two friends over for lunch who are lovely, normal people who are so easy to be around, and that was so healing and balancing after what I'd just been dealing with with my mother. So I think having reminders from good, balanced people about what is normal really helps and actually helps to heal some of the damage dome by the unbalanced people in our lives. This board is very helpful in that way too.

I don't know if this has happened with you, but I also unconsciously took on the caretaker role with others in my life, and I've realised certain other friends sought a friendship with me because they realised they could use me as a caretaker. As I've differentiated myself more from my mother, I've also just relinquished some friendships that were really unhealthy and one-sided and really not good for me. My life was being drained by all these people with BPD-type behaviours and I realised it had to stop. I feel so much better to have walked away from those friendships. I have more time and energy for myself. Again, this was a self-preservation survival instinct.

I understand the feeling guilty thing and the sense of duty. Those things defined me for a long time. I think my dad could see I was like that, because he used to call me 'dutiful daughter'. But I've realised I am not duty-bound to anyone, even my mother. I know it is so hard when our mother does not see us, and is so caught up in her own world that it is like we are invisible, apart from out usefulness to them. And yes there is so much grief around that. I really understand   I've had a lot of grief come out over the past few months, but although painful to go through, it was like a kind release of pain stored up over a long time and I feel a greater sense of ease in myself (not complete ease yet, but gradually feeling better and less burdened).

Sorry that is a long answer to your question about the caretaker role! I just wanted to explain the process I've been going through in case it helps. I had a look at the Bowen Family system theory that Harri mentioned too. It mentions there can be a family member who absorbs the anxiety within the family and does a lot of accommodating for the others. I have a chronic pain condition and I'm certain it's largely associated with the role I ended up in in my family. I'm trying to heal my physical body as well as my emotional self at present (they are really one and the same), and I'm becoming more and more aware of how the behaviours of others impact on my body and how I feel around them, and what is healthy and what isn't.

So hang in there! I understand how testing of our sanity these things can be, but you are reaching out for help and that is great!  

[Done211]

Hi Cautious Hopeful,
I really hear what you are saying about evaluating all the relationships in my life. I have repeated the unhealthy relationship pattern that I have with my mother in friendships and especially in romantic relationships. And wow! what you said about creating my own identity and sense of self-worth! Yep! right on target! I have hinged my sense of self-worth to the mercurial opinion of my mother until about eight years ago. But she is still 'there' the judging voice in my head is hers.
I have some working knowledge of Bowen's theory my problem is applying the skills, theory etc. in the moment when I am triggered. My therapist says that when I am triggered by my mother I go back to a primal, survival state she also believes that I have PTSD from my childhood which seems accurate given this primal response that shuts down any higher form of cognitive functioning.

[GaGrl]

I bought a retirement house 3 years ago, and after my dad's death moved my mom into the housev-- closer to her medical care and other relatives, and much more convenient for shopping, etc. She is now 92, can no longer never drive (sight issues), and we retired at the end of the year. So now my DH and I are living with her, and I haven't lived with her since I was 17.

My mom isn't BPD, but she has some traits from her ToO -- a stepmother who made Cindarella's look like a sweetheart (uNPD/BPD) and an enmeshed father.

When Mom asked if she should cut back her caregiver days since DH and I were moving in, I said not to do thay. I want to be her daughtet, not her caregiver, and we both might continue to work part-time. In spite of being aware there would be adjusyments, howevet, we have found that we don't have a handle on what is going to trigger her, with the result being a change from an outgoing, happy woman to a waif who gives us the silent treatment for several days until she goes into a "poor me" attitude. During the last one, I was clear that we don't know how to read het, that she can speak up and not make us guess, and that I can't be responsible for her emotions. It was a good conversation but tricky to have in a cating, loving wau.

And my mom is neurotic, not PD.

I think the thing that gets me through each week is knowing that the hired caregiver (a trusted. Long-time family friend) will be there for the medical care/visits, shopping, etc. So that what I do is supplementary and allows us to be family not necessarily focused on her daily needs 100% of the time.  Otherwise  I think our marriage would suffer.

My husband is a saint, but then his ex-wife was severely uNPD/BPD.

Do you have any caregiver assistance, or possibility of hiring a PT caregiver?

[Done211]

Hello Gagrl,
Luckily, my mother can live independently right now. But as she ages I know that she will need a lot more assistance. I don't have anyone to turn to now. Mom never made good friends with anybody so there is no outside support there. My siblings have all distanced themselves from her with the exception of some help from my brother. I know right here, right now that I would never be able to handle having her live with me. In my head that sounds so cruel and selfish but it would ruin my life.

[Harri]

But she is still 'there' the judging voice in my head is hers.

I think a lot of us struggle with what we call the inner critic.  That voice that is always in the background commenting and criticizing, putting us down with endless judgements, etc.  It is a beast to try to tame.  What do you do to try to counter it?  Have you talked about this with your T?

I have some working knowledge of Bowen's theory my problem is applying the skills, theory etc. in the moment when I am triggered. My therapist says that when I am triggered by my mother I go back to a primal, survival state she also believes that I have PTSD from my childhood which seems accurate given this primal response that shuts down any higher form of cognitive functioning.

Are you able to look back after being triggered to identify what caused it and then look at your reaction?   Sometimes working backwards will help to hone your skills so that you can respond rather than react in the minute.

What sort of things do you do before you see or talk to your mom to prepare?  I would use visualization, remind myself that I am an adult now and she has no power except that which I give to her, etc.  My encounters with her were not always planned but for the ones where I could, managing and using the tools ahead of time helped me stay centered and helped me in future encounters.

Are you familiar with Mindfulness?  It is a way of keeping us centered in the moment.  I find it quite helpful.

[CautiousHopeful]

Hi Done211,

I know what you mean about going into a primal state when triggered. In the last blow up rage scenario with my mother, I actually found I had to suck in air to breathe properly, which wasn't even voluntary, my body just did it as it felt so under attack and my nervous system just shorted out. It even felt like something broke in my head, and I remember having this awful feeling that my relationship with my mother was now destroyed and there was no coming back from this particular conflict. But somehow, in the midst of it all, there was a little bit of my thinking brain just online enough to kind of monitor everything that was unfolding despite the craziness of it all.

I am currently trying to learn about a range of body-oriented therapeutic approaches that work with the trauma reactions in the body. I've been looking into somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy and an approach called trauma releasing exercises (TRE). I've found even just reading and learning about these things has helped, as I now have an understanding of the processes unfolding in my body when I am experiencing trauma/distress. Also, understanding that my body is trying to protect me in these situations (e.g. activating either fight-or-flight or freeze) has allowed me to have compassion for my body attempting to help me, and then I'm more able to get my mind and body to collaborate to help me deal with the situation.

What you describe with you and your mother having a pleasant enough road trip, only for it all to suddenly go haywire, is a familiar situation to me. It is very disorienting for things to basically go quite well, and then all of a sudden it is like being body-slammed by a tornado. I've been in a store with my mother when one small thing has caused her to snap and she ends up in a weird fight with a shop assistant, and I just want to disappear. I think unpredictable sudden rage, especially if we have been dealing with it since early childhood, is very distressing and it can mess with your sense of reality.

But I think the key is to stay grounded (even imagine your feet being firmly connected to the ground/earth) and remembering that you are a stable, adult person (even if mom is not acting this way). I think it is a gradual process unlearning that voice in our head that is our mother's, and realising we have our own voice that differentiates us from them. The more we are able to own and exercise that voice (which sometimes means even not speaking and walking away from some situations), the more I think others start to respect our boundaries more.

By recently leaving certain situations such as a couple of unhealthy friendships, I've felt a sense of release from lifelong FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) whereby I always thought I had to be there to help others, and also that if they wanted something from me, I was supposed to give it and make them happy. I read an interesting thing about certain kinds of people in your life who are not loyal to you, but loyal to their neediness of you. It hit the nail on the head with regard to certain friendships I had, and when I realised they cared more about getting something from me than me as a person, it was actually a lot easier to let those friendships go.

It is a bit harder navigating these things with a parent, but I think the same principles apply. We might not want to go as far as not seeing them anymore, but it might be a case of finding the right balance whereby we respect our own boundaries first, and then they also have to learn to respect those boundaries. It sounds like you are doing good work with your T anyway, and you will get there