Daughter has borderline and need advice

[mockingbird13]

My daughter has borderline (and OCD, depression and anxiety), BPD diagnosed in 2014. She is 28 now but back in 2014 when this started she was in and out of McLean 6-7 times. McLean kicked her out because they realized she was manipulating them and not wanting to do the work.

Fast forward 6 years and not much has changed. She lives with me but I am finding it hard regarding what to do. She comes and goes in waves regarding chores - whether she wants to do them or not - as well as things like showering, keeping up her room, etc. but then she also doesn't do much during the day. I get glimpses of hope when she is doing her chores (keeping up her own messes or doing her own dishes or laundry) but it is always short lived.

We have had talks about how she doesn't remember her past clearly. In fact, she has psychotic tendencies and remembers things that never happened. But she is adamant about what she remembers and is in denial.

If I say something "wrong" then she goes from 0-100 on the anger scale and I walk on egg shells around her (our extended family does too). No one wants to upset her. She is also always putting targets on people, picking verbal fights with people, trying to get attention, combating people and will basically do the opposite of anything anyone wants her to do. Even something so simple as keeping track of her medication in a pill case she won't do because the hospital told her to do it.

She is on medication and has a therapist. She has been through therapists - easily in the double digits at this point.

At one point she was lactating because one of the medications was causing this as a side effect. She put a target on her chest and manipulated therapists claiming she is trans now (out of no where mind you) and threatened suicide (not the first time) to get insurance to have them removed and it worked. She was a lesbian (accepted by us all as she is now) but now she claims she is trans and goes back and forth on liking men, women, or both. She comes up with a new name frequently for herself (which is almost in the double digits now). She is getting testosterone which hasn't helped the moods but there are times throughout the day or week when she lets this guard down (the trans persona if you will) and is being like her usual self before the chest had to go. Keep in mind, if she is legit trans, we accept it fully. But she never expressed interest in this, being a boy or anything of the sort until a couple years ago when she wanted her chest removed. She has even questioned the transition, whether or not it is worth it, that it makes her nervous and all these things that make it seem like she isn't 100% about it. But she was 100% when the chest had to be removed.

My life has become increasingly more stressful with her (or him) and she isn't improving. She isn't doing much during the day, taking care of her own stuff, etc. When confronted she admits she knows how to do it all but that she is lazy. I feel bad and don't want to kick her out - she is my kid - but at the same time my coddling and enabling her hasn't helped either. I have no idea what to do now.

Any advice you have will be helpful and is much appreciated.

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 and Welcome!
 You are definitely not alone.     I suggest reaging "Stop walking on Eggshells" to read up on BPD - the book stated the first step is to shift our focus back onto ourselves. This is not easily done.  However we are here for you and can walk this walk together. 
You reached out to us and you can use us as a support for yourself.  In my particular case, I also have my own therapist and go to 12 step meetings ( these are free) such as Al anon and Nar-anon.  These also provide tools on detachment, and building up self. 
A BPD's self image is fragile and changeable.  My adult son struggled with his sexuality , too.  However, ultimately she is an adult and she has to figure it out. Something for you to consider, if she is asking you for $$ for her operations, maybe that is something you can put a boundary on. 

For something to change, something has to change and that is you and it starts with you.  She is not going to be able to change on her own .  You have just as much rights as your daughter does.  Not stating you have to necessarily kick her out, but you have every right to think about what you need and to put boundaries in place.  Make sure you have consequences that you can live with .  We are here to help be your sounding board and support as you figure this out.  Many of us are / have been where you are at , just click on any of our names to see our previous posts.  You are not alone.

[PearlsBefore]

Wow, there is a lot to unpack there; my apologies up front if I seem rude, it is not my intention. I'm familiar with the BPD, Anxiety and Depression overlap - but the OCD is something still strange to me co-morbid with BPD (though I've seen it in an in-law, but not in someone in my household)

So my first thoughts reading your whole thing twice...

-As Swimmy suggested, don't stress too much about things like pronouns; honestly "Trans" was once-upon-a-time an actual identity - but it's currently marketed instead as a panacea to people who lack the ability to hold a stable self-schema/identity. I see two options for your daughter's statements on the matter:

• The first is that she legitimately subconsciously  believes (rightly or wrongly) that she has been sexually molested focused on her breasts presumably as a child and thus seeks classic Victorian-psychology to repel them because they repel her. If she didn't have a slew of diagnosed mental difficulties, that would be my go-to assumption. (Because BPD does have a legitimate correlation to unprocessed childhood trauma, and because BPDs do have a tendency to claim abuse whether it's true or not...the harsh reality is, as I suspect you've found at McLean or elsewhere, many outsiders will cast dubious looks and harbor a suspicion your daughter was abused by one or both parents. You're a stranger on the internet, I don't know you and you don't know me - we're probably both harbouring the same concern on some level)
• The second is that this is simply a trap she's laying out, hoping for an excuse to take offence and claim you are being insensitive. The frequent need to demonise caretakers means some pwBPDs can take comfort in devising "no-win situations" for family. On the day you remember to hit all the right pronouns and declare you're willing to pay for a grand Coming-Out Party and you fully support plastic surgery...would then turn into a day accusing you of not accepting them for their natural gender and that they never really were Trans it was "just a JOKE" and you didn't get it. Supporting this theory is the dozens of chosen personal names - you called her Star today but she told you a week ago she's not Star anymore she's Serenity! You never listen!
  

-It might be a tiny step towards encouraging her to identify as an adult rather than an arrested-development child if you found another word for the tasks instead of "chores" which might contribute to keeping her in an oppositional mindset. That said, I definitely sympathise here - I took flack from visitors years ago when she started passing around a list of things she was asked to do, including showering and brushing her hair (she'd spent the past year or two claiming she needed somebody else to brush her hair and to help her bathe), to which she'd added her own goals and labelled them as demands on her. That said, if you want the living arrangement you have to work out, you could consider instead of each of you doing your own laundry/dishes/etc - offering her a bargain, that she could choose whether she wants to do ALL the laundry and you'll do all the dishes, or vice versa. Just try to hold her to the original agreement (for as long as humanly possible), rather than accepting the temrs being reversed a couple times every week, etc.

-I have no advice, only sympathy, for the getting-kicked-out-of-Mclean aspect. I'm more familiar with the "You can't make me see doctors, they're going to lock me up!" strain of BPD - but I've known a few parents through a local support group who swore by the magic of programs like McLean Hospital's and I can only say I'm sorry to hear that you're in the unfortunate-but-understandable situation where she's been triage-d out. Many BPDs, as you're doubtless aware, like the idea of things more than they like things - so they like the idea of having a dog more than actually liking the dog, they like the idea of being in treatment more than they like the idea of actually doing the homework, etc. If you find a way to cure this that doesn't involve constantly needing to be the bad-guy saying we can't get a chihuahua no matter how cute Lady Gaga's is...please let me know and I will pay any price for your book.

-A brief moment to share a laugh that I suspect you've also come across the outsiders who say "OCD? Yeah I've seen that in Nicholas Cage movies - that's where everything is always spotlessly clean and they're obsessed with tidiness and hygiene, right?". Ah, if only...

[PearlsBefore]

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