How to help a nurturing caregiver

[shadeseekers]

Hi,

We are grandparents in a multi-generation home shared by our son and daughter-in-law and their two year old daughter. The decision to live together was driven by financial benefits - a win-win situation. We knew before moving in together that our daughter-in-law had some peculiar behavior and some difficulty with anxiety issues. But after living together and also the stress of COVID isolation, we are constantly walking on eggshells. We got the Walking on Eggshells book and also the Essential Family Guide and now understand that her behavior is very well described by BPD. She is currently being treated for anxiety and as far as we know, there has not been a diagnosis of BPD. Our son is the savior figure and he's operating under the belief that if he pours enough love and energy into this situation he will be able to fix it. We have tried to establish some boundaries and have been labeled as the bad guys. We have experienced some rage behavior, but most of it is subtle with silent treatment, no eye contact, and subtle body language communicating hostility toward the shadeseekers. We do believe based on comments from our son that most of her rage is directed inward. Her behavior toward her husband (our son) is emotionally abusive, but he just takes it and comes back for more. We think his situation may be somewhat like Stockholm Syndrome. It also appears that the BP is setting up some smear campaign actions to turn son against parents.

Without the help of the savior figure we are powerless to do anything meaningful to get help for the BP. Our current plan is to share knowledge and sources with him to hopefully convince him that the current path is not sustainable. We will lay out the facts as clearly as possible while showing love and compassion. Hopefully this will at least open up a dialog. Currently we are not able to discuss much other than the weather.

Any help, input, or suggestions would be sincerely appreciated.

Thanks,

Shadeseekers

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

[pursuingJoy]

shadeseekers, welcome! Thanks for sharing what's going on. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to have this daily stress in my home.

Can you tell us more about what boundaries you set and what led to setting boundaries? Do your living arrangements allow for separate living space, or do you share parts of the house where you see each other frequently? How is your relationship with your grandbaby?

[shadeseekers]

Hello pursuingJoy! Thanks so much for your reply - it felt like a nice hug.

The grandbaby is awesome, beautiful, and wonderful. We are very proud grandparents. In some way, the grandbaby is the glue that holds us together and keeps us going with hope to find a way to make a joyful home.

Some of the boundaries have been around child care responsibilities. We set the boundary that we are grandparents, not live-in nannies, and the parents should be primary care givers/diaper changers. This expectation has generally been agreed to with no problem. Our daughter-in-law and son had the expectation that we would drop anything we were doing and run to mother's aid anytime the baby cried in any type of serious tantrum. A boundary that we tried to set was that she needed to ask for help in such cases, because it is not always clear when help is truly needed. The house isn't huge (~2700 sq ft) and we are usually in easy earshot. But just setting this minor boundary caused great anger and rage. We backed down and have been running to help any time there may possibly be a need. The baby has been pretty good, so this has worked out to not be a big issue. We understand now that the baby throwing an EMOTIONAL tantrum was causing problems for mom with big emotion regulation problems herself.

The bigger, more generalized boundary that we have set is that we will not be caregivers for the mom. She is continually needy. We tried filling that need for several months and it totally consumed us causing depression and loss of self esteem. We finally figured out we could not meet her needs. So now, if she chooses not to eat, we just ignore it. If she 'feels poorly' and delegates many child care duties to dad, we don't inquire for details or ask how we can help. I don't want this to sound like we're being jerks. We try to be compassionate and caring and we do go an extra mile in many, many ways. But we're not being caregivers and we have therefore been labeled as evil enemies - most of the time, but sometimes something seems to switch and we become really nice people for a while, but the next day we may be back in the dog house.

So our big question is, how do we best influence a decision to find out if the root cause is BPD? We don't believe it is just anxiety.

Thanks,

Shadeseekers

[pursuingJoy]

Shadeseekers, thanks for sharing. I get the sense that there is a lot of give and take in trying to figure out the best balance.

So our big question is, how do we best influence a decision to find out if the root cause is BPD? We don't believe it is just anxiety.

It doesn't sound like just anxiety and I can see elements of BPD playing out. In my experience, and from reading the experience of others on this board, you'll have better luck in boundary setting and self-care than you will influencing a decision to find out if the root cause is BPD.

My MIL bears many traits and it has knocked my marriage for a loop. My husband (her son) will simply say, "That's just the way she is." Our marriage counselor advised against sharing BPD with him, just because he would reject it, or see it as threatening. Sometimes I wonder if that's the right approach, but I'm choosing to trust the professional in the mix, considering I'm emotionally involved.

Do you think your daughter in law (and son) are open to considering a personality disorder? How is your relationship with you son in all of this?

So glad your grandbaby has brought you joy! What a wonderful silver lining to all of this!