Adult daughter - does this sound like BPD?

[Lost4Words]

Hi, this is my first post and I'm not sure where to start. I only recently started reading up about BPD and so far a lot of the description seems to match my daughter's behaviour from her mid-teens up to now, when she is in her mid-30s. For a long time I thought that her problem was anger, and that if she could learn to calm her outbursts of anger her life would be a lot easier. But the anger is only part of the complex of behaviour which causes her problems.
She often seems to sabotage her own success. She has had a number of jobs, and in almost every case she has been very enthusiastic about the work initially, worked very hard and been praised for her performance: and then things start to go downhill, often as a result of conflicts with colleagues which seem to result from her own tactlessness and lack of diplomacy in dealing with other people. Sometimes she has resigned at a moment's notice for no good reason.
She has much better relationships with friends and cousins than with her parents and her sister. With others she is charming, generous, sympathetic to other people's troubles: but to us it often seems that she is acting out a part with them, and she comes across as fake. Her friendships are intense but it is hard to say how many of them last for more than a couple of years.
Her relationships with close family have become increasingly difficult over the years. She spent two long periods of time living at home in her twenties, and it was like having a lodger in the house. She wouldn't eat with us at mealtimes, shut herself in her room for most of the time or went out to see friends. When I tried asking her whether there was anything wrong - I have suffered from depression for years, and I thought this might be her problem as well - she denied that there was anything, and she was categorical that she wasn't depressed.
She insists that she wants people to communicate with her, but unless you say exactly what she wants to hear she becomes angry. You may start off trying to explain something calmly, but she will push until you become angry yourself and end up saying something you later regret. If you try to withdraw from the situation for long enough to calm down she pursues you and the situation gets worse. People close to her have stopped talking to her sincerely. Instead we say only what we know will not provoke her anger.
She is married, with a four-year-old daughter. The marriage wasn't happy. She treated her husband as she treats her friends up until they got married, then she started treating him as she treats her close family. A couple of months ago she announced that she was getting divorced. Since then she seems to have become more irrational, more unpredictable and extreme in her reactions to other people.
If it were not for my granddaughter I would have cut contacts with her to the absolute minimum two or three years ago, but I am very sorry to see the little girl with a mother who can be dramatically affectionate at one moment, furious with anger the next.
She is expert in what "Stop Walking on Eggshells" calls "tag, you're it". Any suggestion that she might be happier if she behaved differently in any way brings the accusation "You behave / behaved like that, so you have no right to criticise me." She frequently criticises other people for things that we recognise as part of her own character. She is adamant that no-one has the right to judge her - but I suspect that she knows herself that their judgement may sometimes be right, and she is afraid to recognise it.
Does anyone else recognise similar behaviours in their family members? Does it sound like BPD? Am I on the right track, and where do I go from here?
Thank you for taking the time to read this!

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

[Swimmy55]

Hi Lost4Words,
 Thanks for writing in.  While we can't make a definitive diagnosis here, it does indeed sound like she has BPD traits.  I would suggest continues reading up on BPD , reading through the site here.  Most importantly though is self care- for you.  Since your daughter is an adult, unless and until she is ready to acknowledge and deal with her issues, there is no controlling her actions.
It is good that you are still able to maintain a relationship with your granddaughter .   

[Blueskyday]

As Swimmy said we cant diagnose but my goodness this is familiar. I too am in a similar situation and stuck around for the Granddaughter. I am minimal contact now.

My dtr is the same with her child who is so good. The lack of consistency is so damaging.


Have a look at the dsm for the list if diagnostic criteria. You can work out how many she has. Whatever you do do not ever mention BPD to her. It won't go well.

On youtube AJ Mahari is a therapist who herself recovered from BPD over 20 yrs ago. There is nothing she doesnt get as she had a partner after recovery who also had BPD. Shes been on both sides of the fence.

Sorry you are going through this too

[Lost4Words]

Hi Swimmy and Blueskyday, thank you so much for your replies. It has been a great help simply putting things into words, because clarifying my own thoughts and sharing them with others is in itself calming (more so than simply writing things down in a journal which is not shared) and knowing that other people are facing a similar situation.
Since posting yesterday, I remembered some other things which seem typical of her behaviour:
- rewriting history: an event seems to go well, but later she gives a different account of it. For instance, we visited her in the summer and the relationship with her husband seemed to be a lot better than in previous years. So we were taken aback when she decided to divorce a couple of months later. When I mentioned this to her she said that we just hadn't recognised how bad their relationship was when we'd visited.
- as a teenager she often justified her actions and judgements by reference to her feelings. I used to try to explain that feelings are not a guide to what is actually true: e.g. because you feel hurt by something that someone has said, does not mean that they meant to hurt you. Now I wonder whether that approach was in some way invalidating? Was it a mistake to tell her not to trust her feelings implicitly?
- she seems to find it hard to accept that we are all flawed. In her book, people are either good or bad. Sometimes they switch from one to the other, and the switch can go either way. She is intelligent, so it shouldn't be difficult for her to accept that sometimes people say things they do not really mean, or that with the best of intentions people may hurt others unintentionally. Her judgements of others are often very harsh. It feels like a lack of compassion, both towards others and towards herself.
Based on past experience, it seems likely that she will want to restore communication with her father and me at some stage in the future: she may then deny that there was ever any rift. What scares me right now is that while she is in her present state she may make decisions which will hurt her daughter in the long term, e.g. fighting for full rather than shared custody.
I've been reading the threads on here about narcissism and BPD, because she also seems to have some narcissistic traits, as well as posts from children of BPD mothers. Gaining clarity and understanding not only of her situation but also the ways that people around others with BPD are affected and the ways they can continue to interact with them is my priority for the moment. I've tried working out how to use the various techniques which are recommended for dealing with BPD, but to be honest it is very hard to see how I could apply them, for the time being.
Anyway, thank you again for replying!

[Etsy]

Hi Lost4words, - what a very apt name!
Your words are very relatable! I will often think, that DD only hears what she wants to hear, and see what she wants to see. There is such a lack of education out there, and I feel very passionately for those parents who have no understand of what they are dealing with, because our crys for help go unheard,  in our case more worryingly so, in the mental arena for children - the very people you would expect to be educated in that area! - after a hideous and mammoth journey, our diagnoses came from leading London hospital, although our local health authority having paid for the second opinion still refuse to accept it! The nature  of the condition is cruel.
There is no Family Psychoeducation - "BPD and its associated problems are difficult to have and difficult to observe in a loved one. The problems and behaviours of BPD can be very difficult and painful for the person with BPD.  BPD can be hell for those with the disorder, and can also be an equal hell for those that love them." – NEABPD – Family Connections Programme.
The condition will often leave you questioning your own sanity.
For us the diagnoses helped - when you know what your dealing with it allows you to educate yourself and you can begin to understand, what you perhaps once thought was bad behaviour, are emotions being acted out - easier said than to live through!
I only found this site about a month ago, so am new here too - welcome
Takecare Etsy

[Blueskyday]

I think as parents we say what we see. We do our best.
Don't punish yourself for trying to ask your dtr to think about her feelings.

The problem we have is that people with untreated BPD "feel" everything and that is all that is real to them. I think they know when they are wrong but that leads to guilt and shame. This is so painful they seek to justify their initial feelings. They often involve others, quote examples of people who agree you are wrong. Its like typing biased wording into google. You will eventually get the result which agrees with your pre conceived idea.

I remember massive drama when at 16 I said I would never allow a boy to sleep over, a throw away comment!( She still has never had a bf). She bombarded me with examples of parents who allowed sleepovers.

Her pain at never having had a Valentine, never having been asked in a date all got tangled up in my casual comment that I disagreed with boys potentially sleeping in my house with my dtr. It became a massive drama and had nothing to do with my beliefs in reality. The roof literally came off.

All feelings swimming around without me even knowing...like kindle waiting for a match.

[Lost4Words]

Hi Etsy and Blueskyday, thanks for your replies.
I have been looking at the Family Connections website (thank you Etsy). I'm not in the UK, so a course spread over twelve weeks is not an option for me. But I've been wondering whether to look for a counsellor/therapist when I'm next in the UK, someone I can have a face-to-face meeting with initially and then Skype sessions, to try to help me sort out how to deal with my daughter and my own problems.
I've just finished reading "Stop Walking on Eggshells", and honestly the skills it promises to teach me sound like things I could never manage to achieve. I find it very difficult to think quickly when I am speaking with someone, especially about difficult subjects, so I am more likely to say whatever will keep the peace than consciously produce statements which are supportive, empathetic and truthful (in that order). I also suspect that even if I managed to come up with things to say that are similar to the examples given in the book or online, they would sound either condescending or fake. I put down the book with a sense of failure before having even started.
Etsy - it sounds as though your daughter is a teenager? When my daughter was in her teens, I believed that the characteristic behaviours which now look like the beginnings of BPD were simply part of her personality: she was more rebellious than her sister, but I wasn't aware at the time that it was more than normal teenage rebellion. Now that she is in her thirties, she is the only person who can ask for an assessment to determine whether she has BPD or another condition.
Blueskyday - I agree that they often know when they are wrong. It seems to me that she projects her own feelings of guilt and shame onto other people, blaming other people for judging or criticising her. "No-one has the right to judge me" is a sentence I have heard over and over. But we can't stop other people judging us: if we are upset by their judgement it tends to suggest that we recognise that they may be right. If she was sure of her own actions, I doubt that she would be so angry about being judged by others... Not that they are necessarily judging her anyway. She can interpret a straightforward statement with no implied judgement as a painful criticism. But she apparently feels no compunction about saying things which are clearly judgemental about others, and sometimes downright painful.
And yet there are times when she can be lovely and a pleasure to be with. Then you look back at those times and wonder what was going on under the surface that you didn't see, and you do indeed start to question your sanity.