just let them be?

[mom7834]

I'm all-consumed with my daughter's poor life choices. I'm a fixer and a peace-maker by nature, but nothing is working and I feel like I'm trying to hard. She's 20, so she is technically adult, but she is a student and I still pay for her college, phone, health insurance, car insurance (well until she wrecked her 2nd car and the company dropped us) and she just moved home for the summer. I was actually ready to get her another car and found decent insurance, but now she took off with someone she just met. I did post about this earlier, but now I have another question(s): Should I stop trying to contact her? Should I just let her go, do whatever it is she's doing, (drugs, drinking, sex, criminal activity) and wait until she comes back to me? If she gets arrested, should I bail her out? pay her fines? etc.?
oh, and was I supposed to attach this to my initial post? If so, sorry.

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

[Only Human]

Hi mom!

Welcome to the group! You will find many other parents here who are struggling as you are with wondering what to do! Fortunately, there is help here. We are all learing together, supporting and holding each other up when we are not strong.

I'm all-consumed with my daughter's poor life choices. I'm a fixer and a peace-maker by nature, but nothing is working and I feel like I'm trying to hard.

What you've said here reminds me of one of the lessons - they are all outlined in the post pinned to the top of this board, HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS SITE

Have you had a chance to look around? The lesson I'm referring to is Lesson 2, If your current approach is not working, change it!

I think most of us who land here are caretakers, rescuers, fixers. When we get here we are totally spent and have seen little to no change in how our adult children behave. A lot of energy spent, a lot of money gone, we are not living our best lives. Within the Lesson above is a link to a discussion about support vs enabling. Have a look, jump in, you'll find that you are not alone!

oh, and was I supposed to attach this to my initial post? If so, sorry.

Attaching to your initial post, creating another post, it's all good

Welcome again, I hope you stick around and learn with us. Things CAN get better - many of us are living proof

~ OH

[No-One]

If she gets arrested, should I bail her out? pay her fines? etc.? 

If you bail her out & pay her fines, then you would be enabling her and prompting more of the same behavior.  It would be wise to set some boundaries (your personal boundaries that you control & enforce).

It appears as if she currently thinks she can disrespect you and treat you poorly and still be able to count on your to buy her cars and pay for college. 

[livednlearned]

Changing our own response is hard because many of us (caretakers, fixers, rescuers) cannot easily handle the anxiety that surfaces when we watch a loved one suffer. I had to learn to tolerate my own anxiety and find a way to manage it and that took some work to figure out.

Have you tried saying no to her in the past, and when you did, how did it go? If you have a recollection of a time you set a limit and it worked out, can you identify why? Maybe that's a place to start as you slowly begin to change old habits. In my experience when we try to change too much at once things can feel discouraging when there isn't immediate success.

A child psychologist told H and I that kids feel fury when they can manipulate a parent because our job is to be the authority, not the other way around. The child knows on some level that they aren't handling things well and if we allow their intense emotions to run the show then who is in control? It can be frightening to look around and realize that no one is strong enough to curtail these intense emotions.

Setting limits with SD22 is one of the hardest things I've ever done and requires more work and planning and practicing than I anticipated. If it feels hard it's because it is hard 

One small change I made was to ask validating questions instead of rushing to solve her problems. There is no problem too small for her to offload to someone else. The book I Don't Have to Make Everything All Better by the Lundstroms has a good section on asking validating questions. What I like about that strategy is that it is easy to implement and practice with anyone and as an added bonus it helps buy me time as I try to think in the heat of the moment about what to say next.

[MomSA]

Hi Mom7834

My daughter is also 20, but I do not see her as an adult. She probably behaves more like a 14yr old...in every way.

However, I want her to be a 20yr adult like my other children were at that age. So every choice we are trying to make in our interactions, limits and boundaries need to be feeding into that goal...of seeing her standing firm, making wise decision as an adult.

While I daughter hasn't written off cars she has abused our finances again and again. We now only provide the basics...food, clothing (needed not wanted), shelter. She does not have access to our cars anymore, she has to pay for an Uber or get a friend to lift.In our home she needs to be considerate of communal areas (she's very messy) but her room is her own tip. She needs to earn an income for her cigarettes, alcohol (if she wants), social activities. She blew her year at college, we do not have more money to pay for another year, therefore she needs to find work.

She recently reconnected with an undesirable man from her past, but we cannot control this, she likes to spend weekends away doing what she wants, we cannot control this, she changes her hair color, nail colour, eye color weekly (wastes money), we cannot control this.

These are her choices - we don't like or agree with them, but she has a right to make them. As she gets more skills with her DBT training, we hope she will be less impulsive.

All we can do is define our own environment to keep our home peaceful and marriage relatively stress free.

I do hope it helps knowing someone else is in the same boat as you.

[mom7834]

Thank you. All of this helps. I want to ask the group's opinion on how I'm doing... Here's the latest scenario. I talked to my 20 yr old daughter on Friday night and didn't see her again until Sunday evening. She was with this guy she just met on Friday for the entire weekend (see above posts). My older daughter was graduating from college on Monday and I didn't want to stir the pot by asking a ton of questions. (and have her get mad and not come to graduation). On Sunday night she went to her girlfriend's house. I called her at 10:30 to see if she need a ride home. She whined and said she wasn't ready, it was still early and I just said ok.  Around 11pm I texted her, " I'll be up until around 11:30. If you need a ride later than that, I can't promise I will hear the phone ring. We are leaving at 6:45. I'm really excited to go and see (J) graduate!" She texted back "me too!"  I heard her come in around 1am, but we didn't talk. We had a great day as a family at the graduation, went out to dinner, everything was fine. When we got home she went out to her girlfriend's house and never came home. When I got home from work she asked me to drive her to work. In the car, after asking her she told me she was at her friend's until 3 then thy new guy came and picked her up and they went back to his place. I calmly tried to tell her she can't be doing this, she barely knows anything about this guy... I didn't do well here - I set her off and she said I was too controlling, all her friends think so, you may think your helping but your just making everything worse. Why can't you just let me be happy?, etc.  I knew I escalated things and didn't say any more. Just dropped her at work.  Not long after, she sent me this text: "I'm sorry, I know that was harsh but seriously, mom, you need to give me some room to breathe. You aren't going to be able to control and dictate my choices, actions or my feelings no matter how hard you try. It's just not possible."  After some thought, this is what I texted back, "I'm not trying to dictate your choices, feelings, and actions. You are, you thin, you do, you feel, and you choose for yourself. I now I can't tell you who to be. But there has to be some limits and there has to be some give and take. I can curb back my parenting and you can be more considerate as a daughter. I will always love you."  I'm not so sure about the wording at the end. I know word choice matters a lot. I was trying to validate, but also set limits. Should I have been more specific in what I expect? I thought give and take was good. Advice?

[mom7834]

My first post was "extreme relationships" telling about her running off with this guy she just met (if you want some background) I thought I was attaching this to my initial post, by apparently not.

[livednlearned]

I wonder if validation is the skill you are looking to use here? From your first post it sounds like you are looking for help setting limits/boundaries?

We often confuse limits with pleas.

If you ask her to do x, that is a plea.

A limit is something you do that you have control over. You did a good job letting her know your limit when you said, If you contact me after 11:30pm I may not be up.

That's setting a limit.

A plea would be, Text me earlier than 11:30pm, ok?

Hoping that if you put the ball in her court she will be considerate. A lot of pwBPD have trouble with impulse control, so pleas don't carry water. They are not strong enough to override the powerful impulses that drive poor choices, usually.

[mom7834]

Okay, I think I get it.  thanks.

[PeaceMom]

I have this type of dialog with my 19 yo uBPD daughter on a daily basis. She knows that I absolutely do not approve of randomly meeting men and hanging out with them. She claims she’s been asssulted in these situations. She knows I believe this to be extremely dangerous. I tell her it causes me great distress when she behaves this way and makes it difficult to live with her knowing about her choices. I assume this is stating my boundaries. she seems to disregard these entirely. As for limits, I assume that would be, I’m no longer paying your car insurance bc you take your car into what we consider high risk, dangerous situations? Is that correct? And a plea would be :Please do not meet that strange man for a “date”? She would scoff at the plea, for sure. Thanks for explaining as the boundary/limit distinction confuses me.

[MomSA]

"I'm sorry, I know that was harsh but seriously, mom, you need to give me some room to breathe. You aren't going to be able to control and dictate my choices, actions or my feelings no matter how hard you try. It's just not possible."  

Sounds like my interactions with my daughter for the last few years.

I have learnt that I can say to her: "What you are choosing to do is dangerous/risky/hurtful to me/you.your family and I believe there will be painful consequences to bear, however it is your choice and while I don't like it, you do have the freedom to choose it."

Sometimes she will ask my opinion, more often than not. But if she doesn't and its a really risky thing, I may say "May I give you my opinion?" If she says no, then I leave it.

If the situation is going to impact my whole family, I now say this is my limit. Like bringing her boyfriend for an over nighter. Wont allow it. Using our car for social situations (she tends to drink and was a substance abuser), won't allow it.

Then I just roll with the punches.

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

[livednlearned]

I tell her it causes me great distress when she behaves this way and makes it difficult to live with her knowing about her choices. I assume this is stating my boundaries.

You are stating your values. She is offering her own in response (dating strange men).

Our behaviors tend to reflect our values. We need to know our values so that we can align our limits with them. In regular relationships, limits are important but perhaps not tested quite so much because non-BPD people tend to have better impulse control and emotion regulation.

With loved ones who suffer from BPD, we tend to love them in spite of the fact that they disrespect our values, which causes additional pain for us. The pain that our loved ones are making poor choices and the pain that we are not being true to our values.

The hard work we do here is figure out our values and then work to align our limits with them.

As for limits, I assume that would be, I’m no longer paying your car insurance bc you take your car into what we consider high risk, dangerous situations?

Yes.

Limits can also require no verbalization. You simply do something, or don't do it.  

 

a plea would be :Please do not meet that strange man for a “date”?

Yes.  

Your values are that you disapprove of dating strange men. Your limit might be that you are uncomfortable hearing about these encounters. You might enact your limit by announcing it to her, or just enact the limit (by not asking follow up questions, by walking away, by holding up your hand to indicate you've heard enough, by not paying for something, by not allowing the child to live with you, etc.)

I set a limit months ago for myself that I would no longer participate in SD22's dramas. It was a no-win situation so I tapped out of the game. H was discussing her dramas with me (she calls and texts incessantly, all hours of the day and night) and I was reacting emotionally, doing the work for him. If I offered advice he would become agitated and so would I. Our night would be ruined. So I simply stopped asking questions or offering advice. I began to gently change the topic.

The effect is that H started to have to deal with his own emotions. Instead of offloading them to me, he was left to feel them directly. He came to the realization on his own that these feelings were insufferable to him, and that led him to take initiative to make some changes.

Non action can be a very powerful limit.

[mom7834]

Okay, I don't know what is happening. My daughter, 20, won't talk to me. She won't contact me. She doesn't come home at night. She has no money, no car, if she is going to work (part time min. wage for the summer and hasn't gotten paid yet.)  I went to the store today and when I came home I saw signs that she had been here and took a shower. I finally broke down and texted her " I see you were here and took a shower. I'm glad you are still alive. Rather than leaving me clues, you could just text me." She texted back " I did text you" I texted back. "You did not text me". That's it. That's the communication for the whole week. I can't take this.We used to be a close family. We used to be friends. We had a good home. Now there's nothing and I just cry and scream. How can I just let go? This is so hard. I can't talk to my fiance. His children are just about perfect.  This not knowing what is happening is killing me...  If and when she does come home or call me, I don't even know what to say. I'm worried, but I'm also angry. I really don't deserve to be treated like this by my own daughter. Right now i'm more angry at her than anything else. I can't think about anything else but what the heck am I supposed to do with this kid?  Do I just pick up where we left off 2 weeks ago when things were fine (relatively)? I don't know.

[PeaceMom]

Hi Mom7834,
I’ve been in your same scenario many many times. When it first happened I was shocked, scared, mad, confused. When it continued happening I made idle threats, tried to guilt and shame my 19uBPD daughter into behaving “appropriately and respectfully if she wanted to continue having a bed in my house”... unfortunately, that didn’t change a thing.  My therapist finally got me to see clearly that I could not physically control her. I had a friend try this with her daughter by installing locks on her windows, doors, cameras, etc. -she ran away for good and never moved back (at 16) but is married and independent and happy now 10 yrs later. I think in your situation, it will be like everything we are learning here-define your values and decide what limit you need to draw for your own sanity. We quit paying for our daughters cell phone bc she wasn’t responding. I gave her one day to switch her number to a Prepaid ATT phone. She pays $40/month. Hang in there and take care of YOU. Hugs

[Lollypop]

Hi mom7834

you can be more considerate as a daughter.

Yes, we would like our kids to appreciate us. I didn’t like my son when he was a teenager and even more so in his early 20s. He knew that we disapproved about practically everything he did. His emotions were really high and his impetuous kick backs against us continued. He wasn’t listening. I’d try to fix his situation, change him to how I wanted him to be. The relationship had so much tension in it - he just resented us. He was wild.

I can't take this.We used to be a close family. We used to be friends. We had a good home. Now there's nothing and I just cry and scream

I could have written these very same words. It’s insufferable and I’m truly sorry you’re going through this. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can’t change your daughter. All you can do learn how to change how you react to her. Everything I ever did just made things worse. I found this forum and started reading about BPD; my son can’t help the way he behaves. It helped me calm down.

I don't even know what to say. I'm worried, but I'm also angry. I really don't deserve to be treated like this by my own daughter. Right now i'm more angry at her than anything else. I can't think about anything else but what the heck am I supposed to do with this kid?  Do I just pick up where we left off 2 weeks ago when thing

You obviously love your daughter so much, of course your feeling a range of emotions right now. She’s lucky to have you looking out for her. I find that I just don’t make good decisions when I’m highly emotional. The first thing that I need to do is calm myself. Having spent nearly 9 years in a heightened state of anxiety it took me some time to learn new ways! I’d wait like a cat ready to pounce as soon as he walked in. It’s not very conducive to a healthier relationship!

Mom7834, I came here when I was at a wall. I just didn’t know what to do anymore. I was really scared of his future, our future. I learnt that my first priority was to stop reacting and show him that things were going to be different. Not “tell” but “show”. When things are not working, then a change of approach is needed. There are no quick fixes and it’s a lot of baby steps.

You can choose to continue to try to parent your daughter the way you have. Or you can choose to explore a different way here. A way that gives you your life back, a way that you are more connected to your daughter. It requires you to do the work, not your daughter - because she can’t do anything right now because she’s emotionally immature and stretching beyond the child you raised.

What does your fiancé say about what’s going on?

LP

[MomSA]

We used to be a close family. We used to be friends. We had a good home. Now there's nothing and I just cry and scream. How can I just let go? This is so hard.

Mom7834 I could have written these words. I am so sorry for the anguish you feel.

What do you think you could do to take one teeny tiny little bit of this crazy life with a BPD loved one and make it better?

Over the few weeks since we received our dd20 diagnosis these are some of the things I am doing, perhaps it could help you?

Let go of the things I can't change. (Whether she sends me a text or not, where she goes, what she eats, what she wears, how she chooses to speak to me, what she watched on TV, her permanently closed bedroom door...)
Read all I can (Good books: When Your Daughter has BPD - Daniel Lobel ; Stop Waling on Eggshells, "I hate you, don't leave me")
Watch the videos here which have some scenarios on validation https://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.org/video-series/
Walk twice a day tip the dogs
Spend time with my other children
Spend time with friends (BTW I don't talk about my daughter to them but about other things)
Spend time praying for her (I understand this may not be in line with others spiritual beliefs)

And all the time I am trying to practice radical acceptance in the way I understand it.
1. Accept what is
2 Realize what I can control and what I can't
3. Try and look at my situation with a nonjudgmental stance (Stop guilt tripping myself and my husband)
4. Acknowledge the facts of our situation (My husband is uBPD and ASD, my daughter BPD)
5. Stop fighting the reality
6. Learn how to live in the present moment, despite my pain.

Much love to you.