10 year Roller Coaster w/ 17y/o son

[ORANGE_U_GLAD]

Greetings. I'm not sure how much I'll use this site, but the book our therapist is working through with us mentions it so I figured I'd at least register and see what it's like and share the summarized version of my story so far.

My son has had me on...wait...no...I've chosen to ride my son's roller coaster for about 10 years now. His mom and I divorced when he was 3. By the time he was 6 or 7 he started telling wild stories about me to his mom, and about her to me. By the time he was 11 he told a custody judge a tall tale of physical abuse and got his younger sister to go along with it and they were gone from life almost entirely for over 2 years. Then he came back-showed up out of the blue telling me how his mother made him do it and how he always knew he could count on me and what a great dad I always was and asked for my help. The court whirlwind picked up again, I got my kids back, and I thought it was time for happily ever after. That lasted 8 weeks before the suicidal threats, avoidance, drug use, running away back to his mom's then back to me, inpatient psych admissions, outpatient programs for months...probation, detention, back home, more crazy accusations and stories about me, baiting a sibling to make wrong choices then show off how great he is at helping them make good choices, and on...and on...and on. His Family Based Therapy Team informed us they believed his mother was undiagnosed BPD fairly soon after they started working with us 6 months ago...a month ago they shared they are confident that he also has it. I took an abnormal psych course for college back in 2003 and remember BPD being described by the professor as "a combination of most of the personality disorders and the worst to have because it was impossible to treat"... When the therapists explained their clinical evidence to support BPD I wept. Then I was angry and grumpy and sleepy for over a week. My wife and I have been using the Stop Walking on Eggshells book with the therapists and learning it and digesting it but my son doesn't know he most likely has this yet. He's been gone for 3 weeks back to his mom's...not talking to me or any of us here or any of our extended family...no texts, no emails...just silence. Over the last 4 weeks or so I've gone from hopelessly distraught to angry to denial to having hope that I can choose acceptance and then hope that my wife and I can learn and implement the skills to be able to have a loving relationship with my son without choosing to ride the roller coaster that he's still stuck on.

I don't know if this is too much sharing or too much for a first time share, but it's what I'm sharing because it's what I need to share. I'm hoping to be able to walk with all of you, and have all of you walk with me too. I'm just not sure how I'll adapt to using this online message-board type support group yet.

Thanks for reading and feeling and prayers and good vibes.

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

[Modesty68]

Hi there!
Just wants to say welcome to the forum, but also that IT IS possible to give GOOD treatment to people with BPD. Unfortunately, patients with BPD is stigmatized - also in the health care - and also by people in the mental health field.
DBT and MBT is both used to help these patients, with good results. I have not read the Walking on eggshells, but i do recommend Valerie Porr's book: Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder.