Family evaluation

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

I have a family evaluation that will need to be scheduled soon and I am terrified that all the gaslighting will make me look like the crazy one.  I am the financial stable, emotionally stable, sober, sane one in this relationship but I am afraid that the charm of the BPD/NPD person in my life will be missed.  Defending the day to day gaslighting is hard enough but the anxiety of going into an evaluation knowing that they are likely to miss these issues feel overwhelming.

Could use some advice or support.

[SimplyExhausted]

I have a family evaluation that will need to be scheduled soon and I am terrified that all the gaslighting will make me look like the crazy one.  I am the financial stable, emotionally stable, sober, sane one in this relationship but I am afraid that the charm of the BPD/NPD person in my life will be missed.  Defending the day to day gaslighting is hard enough but the anxiety of going into an evaluation knowing that they are likely to miss these issues feel overwhelming.

Could use some advice or support.

[kells76]

Hi SimplyExhausted, welcome to the group 

We've all been in the place your name describes -- wiped out, steamrolled, dreading ANOTHER performance by someone in our life with BPD traits.

Sometimes, that person can even subtly / tacitly "make" us believe that "everyone" will believe them, and "nobody" will believe us. It's insidious, and overwhelming.

What's interesting is that even without telling other people "hey, this person in my life? watch out for them... they're charismatic but toxic", other people in our lives can get it on their own. But the pwBPD (person with BPD, whether diagnosed or not) doesn't want us to believe that.

SimplyExhausted, whenever you're up for it, care to share more about your situation?

Are any kids involved?

Is there legal involvement?

Are you safe?

Here for you;

kells76

[CoherentMoose]

Hello.  Welcome to the board.  There is a wealth of information in here and some amazing people, some of whom have walked a similar path.  Learn effective ways to search this board and I believe it will serve you well.

Concentrate on what you can control.  Start documenting everything.  You cannot control your partner or how others will view the situation.  Acknowledge the worries, and then let them go and take action.  Prepare by researching likely questions and situations you will encounter during the evaluation.  Prepare by eating well, exercising, getting good sleep, and do whatever self-care charges your batteries.  For me it's running and a nice evening Hot Tub soak.  Good luck.  CoMo

[yeeter]

I have been exactly in your shoes many times. Freaking out and worrying how she may or may not be perceived. And wondering who will buy into her narrative.

My experience is that some will. Some will not.  There were fewer that did than I might have expected (People either see through it or start with an approach that there are two sides to every story, some simply just cut off the drama).  So it was not as bad as I might have made it to be in my own mind. But some amount did happen

Either way however you cannot control it. Establish and set your own narrative and your own course. And be consistent and stable with that. And let go of the rest.

This is excellent advice:

Concentrate on what you can control.  Start documenting everything.  You cannot control your partner or how others will view the situation.  Acknowledge the worries, and then let them go and take action.  Prepare by researching likely questions and situations you will encounter during the evaluation.  Prepare by eating well, exercising, getting good sleep, and do whatever self-care charges your batteries.  For me it's running and a nice evening Hot Tub soak.  Good luck.  CoMo

[SimplyExhausted]

Thanks all.  More about me and our situation.  We have a 6 year old that is biologically mine but that she adopted.  She abruptly ended the relationship in November and immediately told me she was hiring an attorney to “protect her rights” to our child.  She is refusing to move out until I give into her demand for 50/50 time.  She has an intense drug and alcohol addiction that has been enabled by my strong financial situation— she could spend all her $$ on using and she did.  She has a lot of anger that comes out when she drinks so she augments it with pot and then just sits there wasted.  She likes to lie about how much she is using, spending, etc.  I caught her driving us high and have since stopped her from driving us.

As the case is heating up she is still here and is not drinking or using out of fear of the tests.  She is becoming even more unhinged in that— following me from room to room, menacing, intimidating, just shy of physical violence or threat.  I am now genuinely afraid of her.  She is also now plying our child with candy and garbage food to win him over.  She’s so hyper focused on being super engaged.  We had been pretty 50/50 in our parenting until her drug habit and some death in her family really made her unreliable.  She has been very uninvolved since the pandemic as I think it’s really accelerated her mental state.

She’s really good at gaslighting me.  Taking facts and making them new facts.  I am constantly having to go back and fact check myself in reality.  She’s been really good at creating this sense of destabilization.  I am constantly second guessing myself and my motives because it always all my fault.  And there is no accountability for her own issues.  She now claims that she did all the parenting and I was just the paycheck for it all and I am afraid that she will be charming and normal seeming and convincing of it all.  And it’s just a mountain of teeny little facts that I then have to dig through to prove otherwise.

I’ve started timelining out our last several years to try and both keep me grounded and to help me in the process of custody.

I made an offer to my spouse through our attorneys for 40% parenting time conditional on substance abuse monitoring but that got rejected because it’s not 50/50.  Her attorney claims that they “reject the lifestyle claims” of the drugs.

So it looks like we will need to file and start the evaluation process now.  And I am concerned that if she can make me question my own sanity she will be able to do the same with them.  And some of these things about her can be hard to prove since it’s how she behaves in private which is very different than how she behaves in public.

[GaGrl]

When you say Family Evaluation, are you referring to a court-ordered Parenting Evaluation? And does that evaluation include a psychological evaluation (preferably for both of you)?

Also, do you have a Guardian ad Litem (GAL) for your child? This is a lawyer to protect your child's interests and does not work for either parent.

[SimplyExhausted]

Yes— will be a parenting evaluation and a psych evaluation for us both.  And yes an attorney will need to be hired for our child.  My concern is that I have really shielded our 6 year old from so much of this and now my soon to be ex is plying our child with constant treats and the endless attention she has been withholding for so long that I worry all these manipulations will work.

[ForeverDad]

My advice is that you have to be very strategic in selecting Guardian ad Litems (GAL) and Parenting/Custody Evaluators.  You don't want the other person to be picking just any GAL or CE.  Sadly, many qualified and experienced professionals are not interested in low paid assignments, so you may get someone who is new, inexperienced or - worse - gullible.

My lawyer picked an experienced GAL but court ruled I had to pay my half of the GAL bill but then further ruled my ex's fees were waived.  The cream of the crop may go elsewhere with rulings like that.

One good approach is to research for a GAL or CE, make a short vetted list of the most reputable with the court, and then present it to the other side for them to choose from your list.  Court will like that because it involves both parents in the selection process.  You will like it because you know you have more trust in your vetted and researched list than in just anyone your ex would come up with.

If I may inquire, did you recently grant her to adopt, I'm wondering if she got the adoption and then quickly felt empowered to make demands... that seems to happen in our disordered ex-relationships, once they sense a commitment then the demands and guilting ramp up.

[SimplyExhausted]

It was a second parent adoption— we are an lgbt family.  I am the biological parent.

[kells76]

Hey again SimplyExhausted;

This stood out to me:

My concern is that I have really shielded our 6 year old from so much of this and now my soon to be ex is plying our child with constant treats and the endless attention she has been withholding for so long that I worry all these manipulations will work.

I think you hit the nail on the head for the core issue -- how will your child cope with the conflict.

In our situation, my husband's older kid (now 14) was the "golden child" to mom and her new husband for years, while younger kid (now 12) was definitely the black sheep. Throughout all this, Mom's mantra was "we just need to listen to the kids' voices" -- which inevitably echoed Mom's wants. But, as SD14 has started to think for herself a tiiiinnnnnyyy bit more, all of a sudden it's SD12 who is the focus of Mom and Stepdad's attention, warmth, love, positivity, hugs, etc. And, because she didn't get that for years, she's eating it up. It's pretty stomach-turning to watch. But I also get that kids want and need that attention, and will "forget the past" to get it in the present.

One of the key antidotes to that kind of superficial stuff is true validation coming from you.

You might know about validation already -- it's a lot of empathy mixed with reality. Often, it looks/sounds like open-ended questions, and/or statements of "it makes sense to me why you like that", "I can see how you'd feel that way", etc.

Validation isn't the same as agreeing with the other person (or child). It's more about putting yourself in their shoes and seeing why stuff would look or feel a certain way to them.

And it also isn't telling them how they should feel, or trying to get them to feel a certain way.

But I think that's the genuine, "nutritious" counterpart to the "junk" offerings from your ex. What she's doing is superficial, and at some level, your kid either knows or ultimately will know that.

I can't encourage you enough to add validation (if you haven't already) to the way you interact with your child. It's like a huge glass of water to a thirsty person -- it's what is really wholesome and fulfilling. Your kid will notice a difference in how you and ex interact with them, especially if you can validate without "strings attached". Because I bet that there are some major strings attached to your stbx's snack offerings... there's an expectation that your kid respond in a certain way. When your child can experience that there AREN'T strings attached to your validation, they'll feel way more safe and open with you.

...

OK, now as to the "will the professionals be snowed by my stbx's charisma" -- we've been there, too.

An article that was helpful to me in finding diplomatic yet truthful ways of communicating with professionals was this one by Dr. Craig Childress:

https://drcachildress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Ju-jitsu-Parenting-Fighting-Back-from-the-Down-Position-Childress-2013.pdf

While your stbx isn't alienating your kid from you (not directly), she is trying to control the narrative. What you can do in these professional interaction settings is, as Childress describes, take back control of the language. You don't have to say anything inflammatory, or use labels. In fact, part of showing who you are (stable, solutions-focused, etc), is to make it clear that you aren't interested in labeling anyone's behavior. You're just concerned for you kid's health and want your child to have healthy relationships with each of you. You aren't talking about shutting them out of your ex's life. You're just focused on health and solutions, and aren't a blamer.

But, there are also ways to be honest about what's going on. You can express concern that the child is being brought into adult conflict (which, based on snack bribery, sounds like a Yes), and when it's framed that way, it isn't blaming. It isn't "My ex is so awful, she's bribing our child, I'm not doing anything wrong, I just want to team up with you to stop her". Instead, it sidesteps labels and blame, and focuses on your child's well-being: "I'm concerned about the effects of adult conflict on our six year old. What do you recommend we do to keep them out of the middle?"

...

Also check out the recent thread by member RobertSmith, who is in the middle of "coparenting counseling" with his disordered ex. There are going to be hard times where it looks like the professional is siding with the disordered other parent. A couple of things could be going on -- one, the therapist (T) could be building a therapeutic alliance with the ex, in order to get her buy-in to the process, and in order to have any foundation for effecting change on her parenting. Or, as member livednlearned suggested, it could be that the T is in over their head. Drama and triangulation coming from pwBPD can be so intense that some professionals aren't prepared to deal with it. It can take a few sessions to get a sense for whether the professional is alliance/buy-in building, or swamped. If you guys go through a few sessions, feel free to bring those experiences back here, and we can give some feedback on what we think could be going on.

...

Wow, ok, sorry that's a lot! I'll wrap it up for now. Please feel free to keep us updated on how things are going for you.

cheers;

kells76

[livednlearned]

She is refusing to move out

That is rough.

I'm so sorry you're going through this.

She is becoming even more unhinged in that— following me from room to room, menacing, intimidating, just shy of physical violence or threat.  I am now genuinely afraid of her.

I lived through this, too, with my substance abusing ex. My lawyer called it dry drunk  

How do you respond when she does this?

Has she been physically violent before? And by violent, I include physical aggression like throwing things near or at you, or locking you out of the house, or even turning on lights while you sleep.

She is also now plying our child with candy and garbage food to win him over.

The link to Childress's jujitsu parenting that kells76 shared is really good for unwinding your head on this and learning ways to out maneuver the alienation tactics. My ex did a similar thing (post-separation) to the point my son would eat so much garbage food he vomited.

It might be hard to order books while co-habitating during the pandemic, but just in case you can safely get access, Divorce Poison by Richard Warshak is excellent and so is Bill Eddy's Don't Alienate the Kids (same author who wrote Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing a NPD/BPD Spouse).

She now claims that she did all the parenting and I was just the paycheck for it all and I am afraid that she will be charming and normal seeming and convincing of it all.

She's a fearful person and resorts to power and control to avoid being accountable for a "self" that's probably pretty damaged.

If it helps, try changing the pronoun when she talks to you. Often, it will be things she is projecting onto you. Hurts and grievances or negativity she cannot process internally (too painful) so she projects it externally (safer for her).

Her "You are a terrible parent"

is more likely

"I am a terrible parent"

I’ve started timelining out our last several years to try and both keep me grounded and to help me in the process of custody.

It's good to get organized like this. I kept a google calendar going and entered things that happened, then printed it out in agenda view so I had a good sense of chronology. It helped me keep my head straight and also made me a credible witness.

I made an offer to my spouse through our attorneys for 40% parenting time conditional on substance abuse monitoring but that got rejected because it’s not 50/50.  Her attorney claims that they “reject the lifestyle claims” of the drugs.

Substance abuse monitoring is hard to do in practice. I had a clause in our order that said ex was not to drink/do drugs before or during visitation. I could tell from abusive texts/emails that ex was drinking once our son was asleep.

Another alternative is to do a deposition. Sometimes lawyers do this to get a sense of how credible parents are as witnesses in case things go to court. My ex hired a father's rights attorney who realized in the deposition that his client was going to be a problem. That motivated the lawyer to pressure my ex to settle on something he would not likely get in court, becoming an unexpected ally.

So it looks like we will need to file and start the evaluation process now.

 

If you can, set it up so that you select three of the best custody evaluators you can find, then let her select 1 from that list. Pick a deadline for her to do this, and if she hasn't made up her mind, you get to decide.

Find out the exact types of psychological evaluations that may be used. There is one called the MMPI-3 (or MMPI-2) that is roughly 500 questions and must be administered by a forensic psychologist trained in evaluating the results. It's hard to game that eval. If your ex tries to do that, the results may say, "presenting falsely," which means the statistical odds of answering the questions in that way is highly unlikely.

I am concerned that if she can make me question my own sanity she will be able to do the same with them.

Addicts lie to themselves and others and a deposition can bring this to light. It's possible that you will get a court that says split the difference and see what happens, and often, that's when the sunlight starts reaching the shadows.

Courts that can't really tell what's going on will kind of watch to see what happens once a period of time has passed. Most divorcing couples are crazy right after separation so courts expect that. But months and years later, most move on and settle into something that works. Not our relationships. We become repeat customers.

The fact your ex has a drinking/drug problem does not bode well for her.

The key is to bring this into the sunlight during the upcoming evals or deposition and keep the spotlight there. Addicts talk about their addictions in strange ways. My ex said, "I quit all the time. I quit last week, and I'm quitting again this weekend." Or, "You would drink if you lived with her, too."

My favorite was, "It's not illegal to drunk in your own home."

Which is beside the point when you're in a custody battle.

This back and forth with the lawyers where no one really gets what they want is typical and to be expected. Going forward to court is not the worst thing for many of us, unfortunately. For one, the sunlight. And two, other professionals start to get involved.

The key is to structure everything in ways where her tendencies do not outmaneuver you. We can help you with that here  

[alleyesonme]

Thanks all.  More about me and our situation.  We have a 6 year old that is biologically mine but that she adopted.  She abruptly ended the relationship in November and immediately told me she was hiring an attorney to “protect her rights” to our child.  She is refusing to move out until I give into her demand for 50/50 time.  She has an intense drug and alcohol addiction that has been enabled by my strong financial situation— she could spend all her $$ on using and she did.  She has a lot of anger that comes out when she drinks so she augments it with pot and then just sits there wasted.  She likes to lie about how much she is using, spending, etc.  I caught her driving us high and have since stopped her from driving us.

As the case is heating up she is still here and is not drinking or using out of fear of the tests.  She is becoming even more unhinged in that— following me from room to room, menacing, intimidating, just shy of physical violence or threat.  I am now genuinely afraid of her.  She is also now plying our child with candy and garbage food to win him over.  She’s so hyper focused on being super engaged.  We had been pretty 50/50 in our parenting until her drug habit and some death in her family really made her unreliable.  She has been very uninvolved since the pandemic as I think it’s really accelerated her mental state.

She’s really good at gaslighting me.  Taking facts and making them new facts.  I am constantly having to go back and fact check myself in reality.  She’s been really good at creating this sense of destabilization.  I am constantly second guessing myself and my motives because it always all my fault.  And there is no accountability for her own issues.  She now claims that she did all the parenting and I was just the paycheck for it all and I am afraid that she will be charming and normal seeming and convincing of it all.  And it’s just a mountain of teeny little facts that I then have to dig through to prove otherwise.

I’ve started timelining out our last several years to try and both keep me grounded and to help me in the process of custody.

I made an offer to my spouse through our attorneys for 40% parenting time conditional on substance abuse monitoring but that got rejected because it’s not 50/50.  Her attorney claims that they “reject the lifestyle claims” of the drugs.

So it looks like we will need to file and start the evaluation process now.  And I am concerned that if she can make me question my own sanity she will be able to do the same with them.  And some of these things about her can be hard to prove since it’s how she behaves in private which is very different than how she behaves in public.

So much great info in this thread already. This site - and the posters on it - are amazing. It's an invaluable resource you can use throughout this process.

Three tips I'd add:

1) If it's legal to do so in your state, try to install a nanny cam in your home. Down the road, this will help you show her patterns of behavior.

2) I'm in a similar situation myself in terms of having a stbEX with BPD who can be very charming at first glance, and I understand the fear of other people buying her act. This is where we need to lean on our attorneys to do the heavy lifting. They need to tell the evaluator in advance what the issues are, that your ex may very well seem like a totally different person during their meeting, etc.

3) My child is younger than yours, but the GAL in our case told me that virtually nothing our child says will be held against or for either one of us. Even at 6 years old, I'm sure the GAL will meet with your child, but will also understand not to place much stock in everything your son says. Especially if you have proof of the "junk food bribing" on video, I would think/hope that a GAL will take anything your son says in your ex's favor with a huge grain of salt, especially if you warn the GAL about this ahead of time.