New here...looking for support

[Parents! Get help here!]

I'm glad I found this board. I just registered because I fear my daughter has BPD.  She thinks she has it too.  She is 20.  Struggling since early teen years.  She was treated for anxiety/depression but not consistently.  I have just made an appointment with a Psychiatrist after a long hiatus and period of denial I guess.  Anyway it's always a long story so I won't go into all of it now. She lives with us.  No work or school.  We need to help her move forward in life.

I am in need of support for ME right now.  I feel so low and she hasn't even been diagnosed yet.  But she has all the symptoms. Almost everything I read says people with BPD were raised insufficiently.  Whether it be abuse, neglect, etc.  I guess now they are starting to believe that sometimes it can be innate and somewhat inherited as it runs in families but most still believe it's the family dynamics that caused it. How, as a mom who tried to love and protect my daughter with all I had, do I stop feeling guilty that somehow we caused this? Yes my husband and I are not perfect, sometimes we yelled. Sometimes we argued.  She was extremely difficult to get along with for a long period of time.  I had a nervous breakdown in 2013.  I never fully recovered.  It changed me to the core. It has gotten better but that's because we learned to not bring up anything that might upset her.  Ridiculous.  Walking on eggshells.  I have read the book.
My husband thinks her not getting on with her life is because she smokes pot in the park...but he agrees somewhat that there was mental illness before this.  I think it runs deeper.  Of course this causes us to get irritated with each other because we don't see eye to eye.  I'm sure others can relate.
I'm so emotionally tired of this.  I need therapy myself I think.  I was going but stopped a couple years ago.  How do mom's deal with feelings of guilt?  I feel guilty because I spanked her out of anger when she was 3.  I slapped her face once when she refused to get her shoes on before school.  I yelled at her numerous times when she became a teen and was screaming at me.  I would never in a million years instigate it.  Stupid things like wanting to see her progress on homework...grades.. .etc.  She was like a volcano...or a ticking time bomb.  I would try to keep my cool and disengage but she would actually come after me sometimes. 
Well now I'm just in a bit of a pit of despair even though I should be thankful she agreed to go to psychiatrist.  What to do about self care?  Thanks for listening.

[strangeworld]

I'm glad I found this board. I just registered because I fear my daughter has BPD.  She thinks she has it too.  She is 20.  Struggling since early teen years.  She was treated for anxiety/depression but not consistently.  I have just made an appointment with a Psychiatrist after a long hiatus and period of denial I guess.  Anyway it's always a long story so I won't go into all of it now. She lives with us.  No work or school.  We need to help her move forward in life.

I am in need of support for ME right now.  I feel so low and she hasn't even been diagnosed yet.  But she has all the symptoms. Almost everything I read says people with BPD were raised insufficiently.  Whether it be abuse, neglect, etc.  I guess now they are starting to believe that sometimes it can be innate and somewhat inherited as it runs in families but most still believe it's the family dynamics that caused it. How, as a mom who tried to love and protect my daughter with all I had, do I stop feeling guilty that somehow we caused this? Yes my husband and I are not perfect, sometimes we yelled. Sometimes we argued.  She was extremely difficult to get along with for a long period of time.  I had a nervous breakdown in 2013.  I never fully recovered.  It changed me to the core. It has gotten better but that's because we learned to not bring up anything that might upset her.  Ridiculous.  Walking on eggshells.  I have read the book.
My husband thinks her not getting on with her life is because she smokes pot in the park...but he agrees somewhat that there was mental illness before this.  I think it runs deeper.  Of course this causes us to get irritated with each other because we don't see eye to eye.  I'm sure others can relate.
I'm so emotionally tired of this.  I need therapy myself I think.  I was going but stopped a couple years ago.  How do mom's deal with feelings of guilt?  I feel guilty because I spanked her out of anger when she was 3.  I slapped her face once when she refused to get her shoes on before school.  I yelled at her numerous times when she became a teen and was screaming at me.  I would never in a million years instigate it.  Stupid things like wanting to see her progress on homework...grades.. .etc.  She was like a volcano...or a ticking time bomb.  I would try to keep my cool and disengage but she would actually come after me sometimes. 
Well now I'm just in a bit of a pit of despair even though I should be thankful she agreed to go to psychiatrist.  What to do about self care?  Thanks for listening.

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

[FaithHopeLove]

Hello StrangeWorld Your name says it all
 Having BPD children is a strange world. The good news is there is help and support and you have come to the right place to get it. We are all here for you. I know what you mean about the guilt. I know from the bottom of my heart I did my best. I am sure you did too. None of us wished this on our children. The idea now is to help each other find the way forward. I am glad you joined us

[Olimar]

Hi StrangeWorld, you are not alone. I’m new here too but my 16 yo daughter has been in DBT since November 2018. BPD is complex and situations can escalate so quickly that we often respond in less than ideal ways. There will be lots of moments of overwhelming guilt with the realisation that you were unintentionally invalidating on so many occasions. Remember that you were only doing the best that you could with the skills that you had at the time. It will break your heart but don’t forget that you are here now and that you are still doing your best, and that your best will continue to be better with each day now that you have found the right path for treatment. **Big hugs**

[strangeworld]

Thank you for your replies.  It is nice to find a place where we can be heard without being judged because society does a great job of judging parents. 

It is all just so unfair that our parenting - which might have been fine, even wonderful for some - was not adequate for others. Well, onward and upward.  I'm just thankful she has agreed to go to the psychiatrist (actually psych nurse practitioner). Hopefully counselling will be prescribed as well and she can start to feel better and then hopefully start to take steps to grow up.  She has lost years.

 

[livednlearned]

We do the best we can, and we can always do better   

Having a special needs child is challenging and you probably received little support along the way, if any.

You're reaching out for support and opening yourself to fellow travelers. It's a big journey and you're taking important steps forward.

Be kind to yourself. You made mistakes like every parent ever.

What are the behaviors that most concern you? Maybe we can share skills that we've taken for a spin.

This is hard stuff. Glad you've arrived. 

[SkellyII]

But she has all the symptoms. Almost everything I read says people with BPD were raised insufficiently.  Whether it be abuse, neglect, etc.  I guess now they are starting to believe that sometimes it can be innate and somewhat inherited as it runs in families but most still believe it's the family dynamics that caused it. How, as a mom who tried to love and protect my daughter with all I had, do I stop feeling guilty that somehow we caused this?

Hi Strangeworld

We all need to be careful about the information we reference about BPD. there's a lot of older material out there that has been proven to be wrong. While upbringing can be a trigger, newer research is leaning more towards genetics.

[Sammy Jo]

I understand. My daughter is almost 17 and I feel the same way daily. You are totally right in that you must take care of yourself first. If you fall apart, everything else falls apart. Sometimes I walk away - literally. Or drive away. To a friends house, or anywhere just to get away. It's very hard to get away from a screaming BPD teen/young adult.

I also understand about the chaos she can cause between you and your husband. It's like a tornado that blows into the room and sucks the life out of everything. Boundaries is a word we all use and hear a lot and I try to use it repeatedly with my daughter. Doesn't always work, rarely, but occasionally it will. Since she is emotionally immature I can still cut off her phone, which is what does matter to her.

And finally, you did nothing wrong to cause her illness. Who knows why. And does it really matter? It does not define her. Be sure and tell her and yourself that a lot.

Good luck-

[Enabler]

Hey Strangeworld,

Assigning guilt and apportioning blame is part of everyday life. Whether it's bringing a criminal to justice or working out who was responsible in a car accident we have an obsession with pointing the finger... and sometimes that might be pointing the finger at ourselves. Like many of the board members have mentioned, BPD and the knowledge of the origins of BPD are constantly evolving making the blame game harder and harder. What do we get from apportioning blame? Moving negative feelings from one person to another, it does little to salve the situation but it's a great distraction from the hurt we otherwise feel in what are often helpless situations.

Rather than blame yourself or others, could we seek to try and understand a little more about what happened and how things evolved. This could be more constructive than trying to shift guilt around from one person to another. What if for example there was something you did, which if you had done to 97% of children they would have grown up to be a healthy adult... in fact if you hadn't have done that thing to your child, they wouldn't have grown up to be a healthy adult? Does that make you feel more guilty or less guilty? Where does the guilt lie then? What if this something was out of your control?

Could you tell me the circumstances surrounding the nervous breakdown and how this manifests itself.

Enabler

[PeaceMom]

Great questions, Enabler. I look forward to following this line of reason bc so much of my confusion and inability to move forward is due to the fact that I fall back into the grief cycle of denial and confusion. The counterintuitive part of parenting these extremely sensitive kids is something ill never really get on a deep level so my brain keeps going back to the questions listed above. I think we all do this on this forum. Even those who are veterans here appear to cycle back thru this. It seems even more apparent when our loved ones live in our homes 24/7.