Burnt out Single Parent seeking self care

[NatureNurture_NY]

Hi BPD Community,
Haven't even looked at the forum yet because it immediately led me to "send a first post".  I found this website because I am searching for meetings and/or support groups for parents of kids with Borderline Personality Disorder.  I did a lot of searching pre-pandemic and did not find much. But hoping things have changed and that there are more options now that we have been cooped up for so long.  My mother has BPD, ADD and Depression. My sister has Bipolar Disorder, ADD and Depression. I have ADD and Depression. I see all the signs of my 9 year old daughter having BPD or Bipolar Disorder but so far her psych doc diagnosed her with ADHD, OCD, ODD, Anxiety Disorder and Tourettes. I think he may be finally starting to see what I see about the BPD because he recently asked "has anyone in your family been diagnosed with BPD or Bipolar disorder?" I was like "Hello! YES! That's what I have been telling you!" Anyway, now he put her on a mood stabilizer so I am praying that may help. But I am exhausted, stressed out from all the adversarial emotional outbursts and feeling very alienated from my own kid.  It's heartbreaking and is really taking a toll on me. I feel like I cannot get through to her and there is very little I can do to make an impact or effect a change.  So here goes my first post and will try to read some of the posts to see what this forum is like. Thanks for reading. JD in Upstate NY

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]

Welcome!  Wonderful that you are getting help for your daughter.   Your next good step is coming here to get help/ a network of support.  It is very tough going this alone.  We don't have meetings here, but it's a blog / forum with information you can use to help navigate BPD.   Feel free to write here as you have need.  There is also a library of suggested readings on this forum as well.  Learning about BPD, in addition to self care is necessary so that it doesn't take over your life.  I have been a single parent dealing with a son ( he is an adult out of the house) but I know the pain of being forced to deal with something alone that you don't understand. I had no idea what I was dealing with when my son was a teen.  As a matter of fact there is a reluctance for the psych community to label a minor child as BPD due to hormonal/ brain growth and changes.    You can click on my name ( or any one else's here) to get previous posts/ more of a backstory.  Feeel free to write back as you are able , we understand here.

[NatureNurture_NY]

Thanks for your reply and the welcome Swimmy. I tried clicking on your name to see other posts as you suggested but I didn't get it to work. I got this message, "An Error Has Occurred!
Many apologies, but you can't view just any profile." But I have been reading around the site and I am finding it very helpful already. While I have a heavy sadness and a sense of mourning as I accept this more and more, I am also reassured that I am not alone.  And that I can use whatever energy I have left to learn the tools that will help us.  All of the DBT therapy and regulation looks amazing and will clearly benefit me and my daughter to change the deep grooves of our emotionally charged dances.   
When you say this, "As a matter of fact there is a reluctance for the psych community to label a minor child as BPD due to hormonal/ brain growth and changes.  " It makes total sense to me for docs to be reluctant when so much is in flux,  and their brains finish growing. But at the same time when it's SO obvious how come they can not just call a spade a spade and start some sort of intervention or early DBT therapy to hedge off what seems like inevitable trauma that this condition can cause? Especially when it is already in the family? Isn't part of this genetic? When my daughter was born 9 years ago, I read a book about Mothers with BPD and spent many many sessions with my therapist working through the info I was learning and reviewing my childhood and events through the new lens of coming to understand BDP a little better. It was a huge relief but also very sad to learn that my Mom has this. My therapist wholeheartedly agreed. I asked her almost every session if I also had it and she said no, although I can relate to a lot of the drama myself, sadly. Anyway, my boss's daughter ended up having this as well and was diagnosed on the early side at 16 but by then she was already suicidal and had been wreaking havoc on their whole family for several years. I am going to delve into learning more and already have DBT books on tape that I have been listening to. But if there are any specific suggestions about young children and this disorder please pass them along. I just found a game on amazon that teaches CBT and DBT but I am not a therapist so not sure if that's a good idea til I can learn more. Thanks for being here. I almost feel like signing off by saying "my condolences to all". It's so sad...

[PearlsBefore]

I'm assuming from your username that you're in New York? If so - https://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.org/new-york-state-partners-with-nea-bpd/ confirms that NY does host the "Family Connections" program which is for non-BPD caretakers of BPD (I don't think they discriminate on any other mental health woes, at least half of us in there are crazy and depressed, even from caretaking BPD if nothing else).

It's a 12-session program where a group of 5-15 parents/siblings/spouses of BPD work with a leader through a DBT program largely based on Marsha Linehan (videos available on Youtube). I found the curriculum portion to be a mixture of mindfulness and basic communication tactics like validation and boundary-setting - and not the most helpful part.

What's most helpful in my opinion is that the program spends half of each session just letting you all vent to each other and seek advice...and I cannot overstate what a relief it is. If you think this forum is good, wait until you drink stale coffee with a dozen people who don't bat an eyelash to hear the paramedics make snarky comments when you call, or the police were around last week, or that her therapist, you, your lawyer, her lawyer, the judge and two cousins are all accused of carrying out some daycare satanist sexual abuse of her so THAT is taking some time out of your year right now. I'd guess about a quarter of the people I met through the program also had PTSD going back to witnessing extreme violence from their BPD loved one - either towards the caretaker, towards themselves, or towards children - you can imagine the person relating "I can't open my mother's front door if she hasn't answered the phone without flashbacks to the time I found her covered in blood", etc.

Now, good news is that it's free, bad news is that during Covid it's just virtual.

I tend to agree with the "inability" to diagnose BPD in early childhood, simply because things like superficiality of affect or an unstable self-schema are actually relatively "normal" for children - and only indicative of a personality disorder if they aren't shed in later teenaged years.

As it sounds like you've experienced, what gets labelled "OCD+Histrionic+ADD" can just as easily be labeled "Bipolar+GeneralAnxietyDisorder" or "BPD+Neuroticism+Immature PD", etc. One you start layering mental health woes with overlapping symptoms, it becomes very difficult to start pulling apart the layers - even if professionals claim to be certain...their peers likely would've been equally certain of a different combination. All you can do it try to treat the underlying symptoms and keep an eye out for anything concrete like schizophrenia which will require a very specialized drug regimen unlike those for the other disorders for improvement.

As a total layman who is not a doctor...I'd say it's relatively good news that your child's "ADHD, ODD, OCD, Anxiety Disorder and Tourettes" paints a picture that is largely incongruous of ending up as BPD. There are two different forces pulling there (the hypomanic and the neuroses), with a lot of overlap - but hopefully none of them end up with severe mental dependency and abandonment issues, self-harm or violent outbursts in later years.

For what it's worth, I'm not convinced PDs, specifically BPD, are genetic; obviously you can find stories on either side of the fence or more usually just saying both predispositions and environmental causes are at play - so we each end up imparting our own experiences it seems. But in fairness my view has been challenged in the past year in discovering an adopted-out relative who never met my dBPD also has...we'll say some variation of the common-mother's mental health woes.

[Swimmy55]

Hi Nature-
QUickly- you have to be on site having plugged in your user name and password before you can click onto peoples names.  I hope this helps.

Meanwhile I will think on your post some more and have a  response.

[Naughty Nibbler]

Hi NatureNurture_NY:

I just found a game on amazon that teaches CBT and DBT but I am not a therapist so not sure if that's a good idea til I can learn more.

The website below has some worksheets for children that can be helpful.  The link below lists sheets that are beneficial for children.  They have DBT worksheets, that are geared for teenagers.  The ones for children are very DBT/CBT like.  I think you can find some helpful exercises that could help with some skill building and promotion of ways to manage emotions.
https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheets/none/children

Perhaps you might want to process some of the worksheet yourself and/or some jointly with a friend or other family member, before including your daughter.  I suspect there is more harm in not teaching some skills, even if you feel a bit awkward right now.

PS:  I think you may have to have made 10 posts before you can access someone's profile.