Dealing with fear

[pearcel]

Hello everyone,

My 17 year old daughter has a BPD diagnosis.
Her BPD is very inward facing and self harm is a daily occurrence. She engages in dangerous forms of self harm which could result in her death and she has a permanent suicidal mindset. She has had multiple hospital admissions for physical complications but never been admitted to a psych unit. She is under our local psych team and receiving excellent care from them. Despite this, she continues with high risk self harm behaviours.

I live in constant fear that I will find her dead. I cannot supervise her 24/7 and inevitably she is sometimes left on her own. This situation has triggered ptsd symptoms for me related to experiences I had when I was younger.

Does anyone have any advice for managing the constant fear that your child will kill themselves?

Apologies for the grim topic but it must be something many parents of BPD children live with

Thank you

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

[wendydarling]

Hello pearcel and welcome  

I've been were you are managing, gripped by fear that my adult DD (dear daughter) may kill herself, you are not alone.   My DD is also a inward, 'quiet' person' with BPD. I've done grim  

I wrote this here back in January 18. I was reflecting how I felt in early 2016 and how I released myself, through radical acceptance.

"I like to think I've conquered my fear, I feel as though I have. What helped me was acknowledging to myself I'm doing my very best and if my DD completed I’d done everything I could for her knowing what I knew at the time.

I know this sounds awful everyone but I’ve also done some preparation how I may feel and what I’d do, who I’d contact in the event of, for immediate support …... through to how we’d celebrate her life.  Somehow it has helped me emotionally and released me to focus on what I needed to do to focus on me and my needs. I had felt stuck, trapped and paralysed by fear, I was now moving forwards, I accepted that I may lose her.  I felt healthier, which must sound a bizarre way to get there to many. I was releasing myself from her suffering, feeling my pain and facing my fear. While my DD is slowly progressing her way through remission to moving to work through recovery stages  I don’t kid myself that at some point in her future life she may hit crisis, I am however hopeful that she can reach out for help and my learning skills here contributes towards that. It's a process and sometimes we are not aware of the progress we make through working on and investing in ourselves until we have a period of time to look back on reflect and realise we are detaching with love. I have 3 years to look back. The dreaded 10% figure, I've come to accept it, and focus on the 90%.

She is under our local psych team and receiving excellent care from them.

What kind of treatment, care pearcel? I think we know in our gut when they are receiving excellent care.

I'm glad you found us and posted.

Hope

WDx

[pearcel]

Hi Wendy, thanks so much for your reply. It’s good to hear from someone who understands.

I have been through similar mental processes to those you describe.  Most of our close family are unaware of her difficulties and I really fear having to tell them if she does die. It will cause such devastation. I also greatly fear for her younger brother to whom she is very close. I have also thought about how we would celebrate her life but usually this makes me too upset to pursue. I am trying to do the same radical acceptance process as you. Some days is easier than others. When she is better, it’s harder because she is good company and so intelligent, I cannot bear to confront the fact that she might not be around for much longer.

She is having twice weekly DBT and is also on a low dose antipsychotic which does seem to have helped a bit.

Thanks again for understanding