First time here.. looking for an online support group

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hi, I’m not sure exactly how this works, but I found this message board today. I am struggling very much with my mental health in relation to my mum. She has bpd and narcissistic traits. Not officially diagnosed by a medical professional but I have done a lot of research and I trained as a psychotherapist eventually to try and make sense of her and me.. I am approaching 40 at the end of this year and I feel like the volume on the abuse that has resulted from her illness has been turned up so loud now... I can see things clearer than I ever have before in terms of what happened and the impact it has had but there is so much I still can’t remember but I am remembering more and more and that’s very overwhelming. I feel alone in this and I would like to see if my experiences resonate with others and theirs with mine.  To share support and companionship in this.

[GinTea]

Hi, I’m not sure exactly how this works, but I found this message board today. I am struggling very much with my mental health in relation to my mum. She has bpd and narcissistic traits. Not officially diagnosed by a medical professional but I have done a lot of research and I trained as a psychotherapist eventually to try and make sense of her and me.. I am approaching 40 at the end of this year and I feel like the volume on the abuse that has resulted from her illness has been turned up so loud now... I can see things clearer than I ever have before in terms of what happened and the impact it has had but there is so much I still can’t remember but I am remembering more and more and that’s very overwhelming. I feel alone in this and I would like to see if my experiences resonate with others and theirs with mine.  To share support and companionship in this.

[Turkish]

Hi GinTea,



I'm glad you found us. 

What kinds of abuse are you dealing with and what is your contact situation? Do you think it's getting worse due to her age or something else?

[GinTea]

Hi, thanks for replying.

[GinTea]

.. it is more complicated now she is getting older because I want to be there for her and my dad more.. to help them in all the usual ways an elder needs and to spend the time we have left. But I am getting more and more affected by her behavior. I previously managed this with distance. Taking time away. Now I speak to her every day. Yesterday after I spoke to her I was so shaken up, I was suicidal for most of the day. Desperate. Feeling like dirt. She seems to get delusional around relational things. She told my half brother that we hadn't spoken in three weeks. I had left a gap of two days not speaking to her because I was feeling vulnerable and like my nervous system was activated. I had a massive reaction to the fact that she had such a different perception of reality to me and a version that painted me in a very bad light. I can't remember a lot of my childhood but one of the things that is coming back to me is all the times she has raged and been utterly convinced that something was true when I was sure it wasn't. She made me stop being friends with other kids that I liked, she said it wasn't safe for me to go out of the house sometimes, she was convinced that I was plotting something against her or that other people hated her when I knew at a really young age that she was wrong, but now when she says I haven't spoken to her for three weeks and I know it's been two days, 70% of me thinks she's right because I had to believe her when I was too young to defend myself and assert my reality as true and valid. Sometimes just talking to her now I feel such a deep sense of worthlessness and disgust for myself because that's how she treated me when she was gone. Lost in her stuff and unable to see me as a separate person. I still feel like I am trapped in her delusion and I am that worthless ugly piece of PLEASE READ that she wanted to tear down. I don't know how to make sense of that or move on from it. It feels hopeless to me at the moment. I want to know if this delusional aspect if that is the right term for it, is something that other people have experienced with BPD caregivers or parents.

[Harri]

Hi Gintea and

You have landed in a place where other people get it and can help guide you through.   

So much of what you wrote is familiar to me, especially the parts about not being able to see yourself as a separate person, the hopelessness, being seen as something that was bad, worthless etc and the exaggerations and lies about me, who I am etc. (though my mom died about 13 years ago)

I know there are several others here who can relate as well.   You are not alone and yes, it can get better. 

How are you feeling today?  You mentioned that you were feeling suicidal yesterday.  Are you safe now?  Do you have access to help, either a therapist or local support services?   If not I can help you with that.   

As I was reading your post, it sounds like you are having a break though in terms of memories.  It can be rough to get through but it is possible.  One thing I reminded myself of when I was going through it was that my remembering was a good thing.  It meant that I was ready.  Remembering was still hard and it hurt and took a while to sort though though.  Changing the way I looked at the process helped me though.

Have you seen the Survivors Guide?  The first stage is remembering.  If you click on the link a popup will appear.

Post as you can.  We've got ya.

[GinTea]

Hi, thanks for responding. Your reply has been really helpful, thank you. Having my experience affirmed and you reflecting resonances with your story comes as a relief. Although I’m sorry for any pain you have endured through your own experiences.

I am safe. Thank you for checking. I shared with a friend today which helped. Last night I was in service to another celebrating 25 years as a teacher in her field, that helped. I have a partner who is supportive. That helps, although it’s not always easy between us when I am having trauma flashbacks as you can most probably imagine. I have people I can reach out to and often I still find it hard to do that. But I have been doing it. One person at a time. Trying to be more open about the truth of my story as I understand more of it myself.

The survivors guide looks very comfortingly ordered. I was wondering if there was a step by step process for survivors and here it is ☺️. I will look through it in more detail, but it’s great to know remembering is one step in a larger recovery process. It’s not that I don’t know that full stop but with the memories come such devastating hopelessness  that it’s easy to feel like there is no path forwards. A simple list to move through is really helpful to see.

I am looking for a therapist but I haven’t found one yet that feels right. Do you have a resource where I could look for therapists specialising in working with adult children of bpd parents? I also have Bpd traits from growing up with mum, but I don’t think I have the full blown condition.

She can’t remember how she was with me. When I have tried to talk to her about it over the years she has got either aggressively defensive, genuinely confused or reverted to victim status to protect herself. I honestly get the feeling that she doesn’t remember being emotionally and physically violent with me though. She doesn’t seem to be lying, just very puzzled.  I think it was mostly emotional abuse, the few violent memories stand out strong in my mind, but there is so much I can’t remember, maybe there was more physical violence than I can recall. What I can remember is the shame and the rage and the helplessness and the want to hurt myself when the feelings come back to me. I don’t and I won’t, but the feeling of wanting to is there.

It’s taken a really long time to start to truly understand how bad the abuse was. It’s only through the feelings that resurface, the ptsd traumatic flashback episodes that I have, the panic attacks, the incapacitating weight that descends on me out of the blue that I have really started to get to grips with how bad it must have been. Although as is say, there is a lot I can’t remember. It’s confusing because I was never without a roof over my head, searching for my next meal, unclothed.. I had an education. I was cared for and privileged in many ways but a person doesn’t feel,like this without having suffered something substantially bad. I can’t imagine ever treating a child some of the ways I was treated. And there are things I can remember which I have never told anyone because I was so ashamed. Because I am ashamed.

[Harri]

Hi there.  I am very glad to hear you are doing better and have people you can reach out to... and that you are actually reaching out and sharing parts of your story.  Talking about things, as hard as it is, is really the best way to help with the shame I think.  Sharing with safe people allows us to stop hiding and give up the burdens of carrying such secrets.  Okay, maybe I am projecting here a bit!  heh heh.  that is the way it worked for me and for a lot of the people I have talked with over the years.  What's that saying about shining a light on the bad is the best disinfectant?  Something like that anyway. 

I was diagnosed with PTSD but with the understanding that it is really c-PTSD.  Are you familiar with that?  I have the more traditional visual, auditory flashbacks, but I also have the emotional ones that seem to come out of no where and are hard to recognize. 

As for emotional abuse, that really is the worse kind and the most damaging.  I was abused in a couple of ways and it is the mental and emotional element that is the hardest to deal with in terms of the scars left.

As for a therapist (T), some people think it is vital to make sure they are very familiar with BPD.  I fall in the other category.  I did my best and most healing work with ones who were familiar with it but not experts.  Rather I found T's who could help me with my trauma, my c-PTSD and coming to terms with my own BPDish behaviors.  BTW, I think it would be more unusual and perhaps even suspect if we came out of an abusive childhood without some unhealthy personal traits.  How can we not have some?  The point is being aware, then self aware, then willing and able to change.

Oh!  You mentioned your mom can't remember how she treated you.  That is fairly common.  I know mine would deny it and i too did not get the impression she was lying.  My mother was mentally ill and part of that was frantic efforts to avoid feeling her own feelings/failures.  There is also something called dissociation that may be playing into the lack of memory.  Instead of trying to talk about past instances, once I started working on me, I focused on things in the present and how to respond and deal with them in the moment.  We can help with that too.

We have a very supportive group of people here so feel free to share whatever you want.  I know I have shared some of the dark things that caused me the most shame and found nothing but kindness, acceptance, love and yes, sometimes some challenges to my ways of thinking and my perspective about certain events.  We get it here.   

[Methuen]

Hi GinTea

Welcome to our group!  I can really relate to a few parts of your story so far, such as this:

She seems to get delusional around relational things. She told my half brother that we hadn't spoken in three weeks. I had left a gap of two days not speaking to her

and this:

one of the things that is coming back to me is all the times she has raged and been utterly convinced that something was true when I was sure it wasn't.

My mom doesn't remember her rages or attacks either.  Sometimes if the rage event comes up months or years later, she has either a confused look on her face, or no apparent memory at all.  When my mom rages, in those moments I can actually see a kind of "crazy" look in her eyes.  I don't quite know how to describe that look.  I think when there is that much emotional rage, the rational "thinking" brain stops working between some of the synapses, and so perhaps it's actually a biological malfunction in the brain when the "crazy" rage event (emotion) takes over, and that's why there's no memory afterwards, for her.  At least, that's what I tell myself, so I know I'm not the crazy one when she tells me later that my memory is wrong.  Also, sometimes, she just exaggerates like crazy.  So when your mom says she didn't hear from you in 3 weeks, that could be a metaphorical 3 weeks because maybe it just felt that long to her.  If she's like my mom, it's possible she could be sitting and waiting for you to call, and then getting madder and madder when you don't (which just confirms her belief that she's unloveable).  I think of BPD as a kind of pathological symbiosis, where the pwBPD is very "needy" of you, and without this they struggle or feel "empty", but at the same time, nothing we do for them is ever enough or "good" enough to fill them up.  Inotherwords, they make us responsible for their feelings, and they struggle when you actually have a life separate from your mother.  Do you think that could be why 2 days felt like 3 weeks to your mom?  Could that fit for you?   Here's an example of an exaggeration with my mom: when a friend of hers gets sick, she always tells the story like they are on death's door.  She's deadly serious and "scared" for her friend.  It's always a dramatic illness.  A long time ago I used to believe the things she told me as facts.  Slowly I saw the pattern of exaggeration.  None of her "death's door" friends have ever died.  But she also never tells me when they "get better".  Only when they are "injured or sick".  I think when she says stuff like that it's really the fear in her "emotional brain" talking that stuff, because she's afraid her friend will "leave her" (abandon her) by dying.  She always imagines the worst, and then it becomes a fact for her that she actually believes, and is terrified from.  So now when mom says these delusional or exaggerated things, I try to use SET, and validate her feelings, instead of arguing with her (which only results in conflict).  SET really helps her, and what helps her also helps me.  So to use the example of your mom saying she hadn't spoken to you in 3 weeks: instead of stating the facts to her that it was really only 2 days (which she will find invalidating, will probably get her all riled up, and she may also see it as you arguing with her {and I'll bet she's never wrong!}), you could say something like "Gee mom, it seems you feel like it's been a long time since we talked, and perhaps you were feeling a little lonely?  (This validates her feeling/emotion  when she's dysregulating).  We are talking now.  (A statement of fact to refocus her after validating her feelings).  How can I help you today?"  (This offers a solution because you are asking her what she would like help with, AND sets a mild boundary that you want to talk about something positive moving forward from today). Don't get sucked into talking about how busy you were over the 2 days you didn't call her, because that probably won't end well (if I had to guess...) I'm not sure if this could fit with your mom, and I apologize if I've prattled on about something that doesn't fit for you.

I have found learning about and understanding the disease of BPD, and relationship tools to "manage" it, liberating.  Having said that, I still have my bad moments too.  Last weekend when family came to visit from afar, and mom shared some of her "distorted" memories that I remembered very differently, and I was really triggered.  I stayed quiet at the time and didn't argue, but it's taken me a few days to get back to "being more myself", and start to feel better.  Today was a good day.  

After being triggered by your mom, the most important thing to do GinTea, is take care of yourself.  I saw my therapist yesterday for a routine visit, and before I finished sitting down in her office she knew I was "off".  The last thing she said to me before the appointment was over was "Today is not a day to talk to your mom about anything.  How are you going to take care of yourself today?"  I thought I would share that with you.  

You are not alone in this.  Welcome to our support group!

[Turkish]

Years after we split, I mentioned to my uBPDx the time I let our baby fall asleep before bath time.  She was cooking dinner. I approached her cautiously to tell her and after I walked out of the kitchen, she slammed the fridge door hard enough for the door contents to break and make a mess on the floor.

After I put the baby down, I returned to see her eating angrily at the table.  I got on my hands and knees to clean up the mess. That was the only time I was afraid to sleep next to her but I did. 

When I recalled that, she got a pained look on her face and said,  "you see? I really don't remember that!" She didn't deny it, but I believed that she didnt remember.

Regarding the shaming, that's Projection, my mom did the same.  She sees you as an avatar to project her feelings about herself onto you, since she's unable to own her own feelings about herself, her shame is projected onto you. 

[GinTea]

I am so touched by the time you have taken to read parts of my story and share your experiences, thank you. And for going out of your way to make me feel welcome, thank you.

@Turkish: ‘Regarding the shaming that’s projection’ - that’s what I sense about what I am experiencing, that it’s her projection. She’s dumped all the feelings she can’t deal with into me, but I don’t know how to process it now, I just feel the shame as if it’s mine and it feels unbearable. Thank you for sharing the story of your x not remembering her behaviour, That’s helpful. I don’t know how it left you feeling then, but when I have tried to confront my mum and she just looks confused I get a sense that there isn’t a whole person there to receive anything I am offering, especially not the feelings I am trying to communicate. I am left with this odd empty feeling, it certainly doesn’t feel like there is an adult present to resolve anything with. Just me. Holding the feelings and understanding what is happening on my own.

@Methuen: Thank you for sharing some of your experiences. They really resonate with me and that’s calming somehow that I’m not the only one who has experienced these things from a parent. Although I am sorry you have gone through such difficulty yourself.
   ‘Pathological symbiosis’ sums up what I am wading through at the moment very well, I think. The thing is .. I don't know how to defend myself still when I have any contact with her whatsoever from putting the blame on me for everything she is feeling. Even without contact I feel like much of the feelings and trauma that I am wading  through are hers. But they feel 100% mine when they come up.
    I like your SET method, thanks for taking the time to explain it ☺️. I think I do something similar to the first two points with mum and have been doing it sort of intuitively but I haven’t used, ‘how can I help you today?’ As a way of guiding things towards a positive outcome And staying in the present moment. I now want to learn more about the psychology of bpd to help make sense of things and to help manage my relationship with my mum while taking care of myself.
.. I can get so tired of managing her that all my methods fly out of the window and I loose my temper, then I feel really guilty afterwards. Self-care, I agree is one of the most important things and it’s the thing I find most difficult. Taking time out before I start work to share on this thread and read your responses is one of my self-care actions today 

@Harri: thanks for being so welcoming and warm

[GinTea]

...@Harri: These responses to my reaching out for contact here really are making a difference to how I feel. I’ve been on my own with all this stuff for so long and it feels like a huge deal and a huge ask to try  and bring this stuff into conversation with friends. Not that they wouldn’t hear me or receive my feelings, but this stuff just cuts so deep and Feels so dark. it’s such a a relief not to feel weird and ‘other’ when sharing about it. people kind of stepping back and reassessing me somehow as some other type of human’ that’s how it’s felt to me in the past anyway sharing with people that haven’t had this experience themselves.
  I am familiar with c-ptsd although I am not an expert. I know enough to believe that this is what my muM suffers from (additionally to bpd with narcissistic traits) and I think I now have c-ptsd too although I have not been medically diagnosed.
  My hunch has been to look for a therapist that specialises in trauma and actively works on a body level as well as with the psyche to help rebalance the habitual trauma pattern of returning the nervous system to a heightened state instead of a state of rest. So thank you for sharing that in your experience they haven’t needed to be an expert in bpd to be useful.
  Thank you too for affirming that emotional abuse can be so damaging, I have struggled to validate this for myself over the years believing instead that this was not such a bad form of abuse and I was not supposed to be very affected by it. I would never have that attitude to someone else’s struggle, but it’s how I have felt about my own.