Hello New to BPD Family

[mamascomeundone]

Hello. I am new here and haven't used message threads in years, so please bear with me.

I have 3 children who are young adults and all have BPD w/ comorbidities,  as well as physical health issues, and my youngest also has disabilities.

My youngest son who just turned 23 still lives at home with me. I am looking for others who understand what it is like to deal with a loved one who has BPD along with other challenges. My son has ASD, ADHD, PTSD, many physical health disorders, and very low executive functioning and short term memory, along with substance abuse, as well.

I work at home, as his PSW, helping him learn independent living skills. His BPD is a huge roadblock to moving forward and becoming independent, as is his smoking weed.

I have no emotional support as I have no friends or family members (I am estranged) to turn to when I need help. Also, there is no BPD support group in my area, and I have found that people do not understand or even know what BPD is, which makes it difficult to talk about with others who do not know what I am going through. They may mean well, but they try to give me all kinds of advice, which is not what I need. Or they throw out suggestions, again not what I need.

My therapist suggested I go online to find support, so here I am. Not sure if this will be helpful or beneficial for me but I feel like I had to at least see if this is a good fit.

I am so use to dealing with everything on my own and having to be strong and resilient at all times. Self care is difficult for me, as I have become so accustomed to taking care of others from a young age. I also have ASD, which has made making/keeping genuine friendships difficult. Most people simply use me until they no longer need my help and then disappear. So, this is a big leap of faith for me. Fingers crossed that this is what I am need of to keep myself balanced, while dealing with the daily chaos.

Thanks for hearing me out.

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

[PearlsBefore]

 

The good news is that many of us were once where you are now, frustrated with well-meaning friends and relatives who say "Oh well I have a cousin who is Bipolar and..." or "Sounds like depression, does he eat enough? How are his bowel movements?" and similar nonsense. I have had to deal with police, paramedics, judges, lawyers, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and honestly most of them don't understand the difference between personality disorders (especially BPD/ASPD) and "everything other mental disorder". To quote Judith Herman, all you're taught in psych grad-school is "If it's BPD, refer it to someone else, don't let them ruin your career". Obviously caretakers don't have the same "luxury".

Some of us find this messageboard a God-send, others (like me) say there's no substitute for the "Family Connections" program for caretakers of BPD. My God, one of the most liberating moments of my life was realising I was standing in a room full of people who didn't judge me when I said "nah, that suicide attempt wasn't really worth fretting about" or who understood why I have PTSD to police cars or coming home and not hearing my pwBPD moving around upstairs.

There's a lot of dark humor for some of us, though I think we're often hesitant to indulge for the sake of others who are not yet able to appreciate the same wry insights. I cannot count the number of times people have refused to believe that I'm honestly not angry or hurt that my pwBPD tried to stab me, or shouted some truly horrifying and eyebrowing-raising things at me in public when upset. There's a list of restaurants to which we can never go back but hey, such is life.

The addiction issues are pretty common for pwBPDs, there's obviously a lack of self-restraint that then manifests with addictions - alcohol and marijuana being sadly more common than videogames or cigarettes...I assume because pwBPDs appreciate the mild dissociative affects. In my own experience, it's possible to "nearly" eradicate the addiction - though it obviously means you're the bad guy. If the pwBPD has Haltlose tendencies (which many/most do) then the good news is that the strong present-time fixation means they're easily distracted onto other, more healthful, hobbies/addictions...at least for a time.

My son is younger than yours, but also has ASD, C-PTSD, is a candidate for ADD/ADHD and is too young to be diagnosed with BPD but...yeah. I'm looking into some bioneurofeedback clinics for a short-term solution to catch his interest in receiving treatment that's "fun" right now.

[mamascomeundone]

 
PearlsBefore

Thanks for taking the time to reply back, I so appreciate it. It is nice to know someone who has an idea of what I am going through and also still has their sense of humor intact. I am happy to find a forum where I can speak freely about my experiences and people will actually understand what I am talking about.

My son had a meltdown our credit union because he thought that they were stealing money from him. He was too wound up to sit and go over the account info the teller printed out for us and threw a huge fit inside and left me sitting there totally mortified but acting all cool and collected. I gathered my things and walked out as if nothing happened. I went to the branch across town for almost a year, as everyone at the other branch knew who I was. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was completely caught off guard and simply wanted to get out of there and never come back.

My son also went through a phase where he would get angry at me in the car and open his door to jump out and I would have to pull over really quickly and stop the car. It was nerve wracking and terrifying at the same time. His temper has improved quite a bit. He started taking one medication that seems to help with that plus I have him taking vitamins and supplements that seem to be working, right now. He has punched holes in his bedroom door, his closet doors(which I had to remove because he bent the track and they kept falling off)and the bathroom door. There are also dents on the side of the refrigerator, the stove hood and the front door. We live in an apartment building and one day when we move out, I can only hope my deposit will cover it all.

The substance abuse issue is currently not too bad. No alcohol, no cigarettes, or other hard drugs, just weed and some microdosing with shrooms. He was close to being off every thing for almost 8 weeks but then ended up breaking his sobriety. He knows that he sabotages himself, he recognizes that but it ends up happening whenever he gets close to the 2 month mark. It is frustrating for both of us.

Finding a therapist has been so difficult. I finally found one who specializes in BPD, PTSD and substance abuse. They just started DBT but my son canceled his phone appointment this week, even though he knows he needs to stick with this so he can learn the much needed tools to help him move forward. He was also supposed to be starting 2 sessions a week, but changed back to one after he had already agreed to two. He does this a lot.

I do not feel like I have read enough about BPD and know I am not handling things properly half the time. I try to stay calm, patient and not react when he is triggered and either has a breakdown or blows up. I know I need to learn how to be supportive without enabling, and to have firm boundaries which I stick to, as well as allowing my son to experience the natural consequences of his actions, and listen, figure out how to validate him, etc.

Yet, I feel so exhausted and the thought of researching, reading books, joining groups, and so on is the most unappealing thing to me at this point. Which sounds horrible, I know. The thing is, I have done all that for everything my children were diagnosed with and I was their advocate all through school and even beyond. Now I am burnt out and making it through the day with as few incidences, as possible is what I consider a victory.

Anyway, thanks for sharing with me and for the laughs. People really have no idea what it is like to have loved ones with BPD, if they have not experienced it for themselves and trying to explain it is like near impossible, at least for me.

Thanks for "listening."

[old97]

I also am new here (my way-too-long 1st post is above), but a couple of things in your post jumped out at me.

My pwBPD (which I am pretty sure is "person with BPD") also self-medicates with a lot of weed. And pwBPD has also attempted to jump out of a moving car.

The anger is very familiar (as I guess it is to most everyone on the board), although I think you have experienced it more in public than I have.

I don't have any answers for you, but wanted to let you know that you're not alone. I suspect a lot of people who read these posts have experienced much of what you're going through. That knowledge has been a huge comfort to me. I hope it is for you too.

[PearlsBefore]

Yeah, the wall-punching is definitely a thing in our household as well - more than a few long-since abandoned fists through drywall that never got replaced. I told myself I'd replace it, but ultimately I think somewhere between laziness, disgust and convincing myself it was good for her to see a reminder of her lack of control won out...not that it did much good, so I don't necessarily suggest that path. Jumping out of a car, yikes, also seen that - though I'm happy to report that usually "in public buildings" things are pretty calm, even restaurants and such - the only exception is sidewalks that apparently are anonymous enough that "anything goes" (including one memorable event wherein she declared she was going to kill a tree and spent five minutes trying to pull a sidewalk-tree out by the trunk, snap its branches, punching it, just going full-out chimp on it (unfair to chimps) and I just sat on a step and watched, too tired to bother explaining the issue to the crowd that formed.

It sounds like the best focus is that he's still not dead-set against the idea of starting the DBT; obviously phone/virtual isn't as useful for anyone, and for BPDs who tend to like having the feeling of attention even less so -  but it's still a HUGE hurdle to get them to the point they're open to it. So I'd say not to stress TOO much over whether he's going once or twice a week...so long as he's going. I hope it really helps.