hospitalization

[Isabel2]

Our 18 year daughter was in-patient in a psychiatric hospital for 8 weeks and has now been in PHP for a few weeks.  We have no official word from the place but she has told us she is going to be there another 4 weeks.  We do not feel like we have really seen any changes in her behavior.  She is still doing things like texting everyday/ every other day with a new physical disorder/ chronic disease she thinks she has or claiming injuries, and is on and off stating that she never had a childhood, we did not feed her correctly etc. and have caused all of her problems.  She will not discuss taking any responsibility when she gets out.  She wants to just come live at home and be taken care of.  We have told her she needs to go back to the university and just take one class to ease back into her life and cannot come home to just vacation for the summer. She was able to complete 1st semester last year in the university with 12 credit hours.  Now she just talks about going and living with other people so that she can have the summer off. Have other people seen progress while their child has been hospitalized or is this normal after two and half months to not really see any changes in behavior?    I know it takes a long time to really make progress with BPD but we would have thought we might see some changes while she has been through such an intensive experience.  She is the one who decided to go check into the hospital it was not our suggestion. 

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]

Hi Isabel2,
BPD is a long marathon.  What you have described is unfortunately very common.  It . My son was in and out of hospitals, day programs, therapeutic hospital, etc.  It was a gradual thing for him to get to being able to "function enough". 
There is hope in your case- your daughter wants the help.  That is huge.
Patience and lowered expectations will help.  Look at the wins no matter how small- even if it means she only screamed at me once today instead of the usual three times. 

[Swimmy55]

This came across a bit more flippant than I intended.  What I mean to say is while you really do have to lower your expectations. Change is slow in all of us but especially for out BPD kids.  You have the advantage that your daughter wants help - that is over 50% of the battle. My

[Swimmy55]

Please excuse typos.

[Duped_312]

Hi

[Duped_312]

Ignore that Hi. Lol I posted a whole thing here but it only posted that one line!

[Isabel2]

Thank you for the reply.  We hope she wants help...there are some suspicious details to her hospitalization...she got on a train for hours to go to this place rather than a place close by, it ends up her friend from college is also there at the same time (and her friend had been there before), this place is a very nice hospital for rich people (horses, beautiful grounds, art classes with lots of amenities, and some famous people have stayed there). She even told us how excited she was for the PHP house she was in because of the star who had stayed there before and she was hoping to stay in "her house". She has been late to therapy because she was "busy" with her art, she is excited about all of the great places she can go in the big city while she is in PHP...and the list could go on... We knew nothing about it until she called one day and said she was going there the next day with foggy details of how this came about and needed us to drive to go pick up her cat from college to take care of her. Prior she kept telling us she did not want to go back to college and now she is saying she never had a childhood and just needs time to be a child again and then later she will take on adult responsibilities.  This place specializes in eating disorders and works with other problems too...suddenly she has an eating disorder but there are some odd details (according to the therapist).  She is very good at "learning" other people's problems and acquiring them herself so we are feeling guilty with the amount of money insurance is paying if she manipulated this to take a vacation from college with her friend.  We were mostly wondering if this is typical to see no improvement (and we fell some behaviors have become worse) with this type of hospitalization because we are considering taking her off of our insurance and having her get her own.  If this is in fact a "vacation" for her and she is not there with the intention to get better it feels almost like theft the amount of money that is being paid for her stay there.       

[Duped_312]

I wasnt sure if you got my reply or not, as some of my posts are coming as one-liners across this site, at least on my end.

I think the insurance thing is a good idea. And the idea of theft is also common, I feel. I am new to this world, well... just new to realizing this world. Ive been stuck in it for years and years but didn't realize that what it all was with fiancé. Any leech-opportunity that exists, will be taken advantage of fully. Right now she is leeching off of you AND the hospital amenities. Perhaps it isnt quite  vacation, or isn't quite "theft", but it is a source, at the very least, and thats all they need. And I think most people on this site would say that there is some element of feeling robbed.

My fiancé was very good about getting himself on whatever positive thing I was on. Whether it was something like an insurance plan, a loan, getting a new car... none of which were for him, but he somehow made off with. He watched me work my ass off every day while caring for two babies and what was basically an adult baby, and still work to afford to a new van for the FAMILY (guilted me for weeks about getting myself a new car that "we" should have talked about bc there are new costs that "we" have to consider. There was never a "we" when it came to costs. He was just jealous.), I ended dup giving him my "old" car, a 2014 Subaru Forester, and within 5 months he wrapped it around a telephone pole in a psychotic stupor. So anyway, I digress. I guess the point is that any source they see as an opportunity to acquire, they will take it and they will quite literally drive it into the ground. So yes, I felt robbed. I do feel like it was theft.  This really difficult invisible theft.

Your daughter is robbing you of many things. Now she has found a source in this hospital. A source for pretend happiness, but it is just fulfilled selfishness wrapped in a happiness blanket. It is like they go into an ignorance bliss. They are happy as can be, but they're not really there for it. Its just an autopilot happiness, until the next unfortunate source walks by. And she will figuratively drive it all into the ground. You may have already had experiences like this.

The different here is that she is your 18 yr daughter, and not a 43 year old man; however, I would wager a good amount of money that the behaviors are about the same across all age brackets. And I can't even imagine how hard this must be. I lurk around the parent threads bc I now have two children who have a father and paternal grandfather with uBPD. The grandfather committed suicide at 38. There is an obvious history here and I keep my eyes on these threads to know what to look for, what to avoid doing to trigger something. Im sorry you're in this position. I have reason to believe my half-sister is also somewhere on the BPD spectrum and her and my mother no longer speak. She has an incredibly toxic and soul sucking individual.  Our lives are immensely better without her in it, and that took my mom about a decade to come to terms with. She still caves and emails her once in awhile, only to be immediately reminded why it wasn't a good idea. To try and sever that mother daughter bond, one I know they had for many many years, was excruciating to watch. As a mommy to a baby girl right now... it is hard to think about.  

I wish you lots of strength in this situation.

[JD2028]

This place specializes in eating disorders and works with other problems too...suddenly she has an eating disorder but there are some odd details (according to the therapist).  She is very good at "learning" other people's problems and acquiring them herself so we are feeling guilty with the amount of money insurance is paying if she manipulated this to take a vacation from college with her friend.  We were mostly wondering if this is typical to see no improvement (and we fell some behaviors have become worse) with this type of hospitalization because we are considering taking her off of our insurance and having her get her own.      

My daughter also treated her experience at hospital and inpatient as if it were a vacation. And sometimes she expresses a strong desire to go back. Which is infuriating but understandable (btw everyone she was with at the time has been back to inpatient, a few more than once since she was discharged 2 mos ago).

In a facility, the staff is there to take care of you. Not necessarily cater to you, but they are interested in your problems, they listen intently and they don't tell you your wrong. There's no chores and your surrounded by others who won't shame you for your problems because they are in the same place.

It seems as if treatment is a revolving door with BPD loved ones. It can take years for them to realize that their behavior needs to change. And more years before they are willing to put in the effort to make that change.

Because of the nature of their maladaptive thinking, adopting the characteristics of people around them is de rigueur. So the eating disorder thing is not surprising at all. My insurance covers a very similar place that we will likely use the next time she gets out of control/attempts suicide and the idea that she could come out worse is terrifying. On the other hand, my daughter did pick up the habit of cutting while she was inpatient but that petered out after a few weeks.  Just keep swimming

[Swimmy55]

This is a tough one... You've mentioned in previous posts that you have 2 other children and they are frightened of her  in addition to her not wanting to go to school this summer. Just some thoughts :
1. The place is extending her stay for 4 more weeks.  It may be possible they do see a real issue?   Would your daughter consider allowing you permission to talk to the therapists there ( this is a long shot, I know).  My son was in PHP and My insurance would have to check in to the hospital every few days to see if he needed to still be there.
2. She does have a diagnosis of BPD- was the diagnosis made at this place she is at now?
3. If she doesn't want to go to school for the summer , but your kids may suffer with her there, are there other alternatives you are considering if you had her withdrawn?

I

[Isabel2]

She was previously diagnosed with BPD among other things when her previous therapist near us had her go for a psy. evaluation.  This place has diagnosed her with a number of things - depression, anxiety and CPTSD.  We have been able to talk to therapists there. Her first few weeks there she had one therapist who did not really communicate even in family therapy it was just like a phone call where the therapist was listening. Our daughter would not tell us why she was there and the other therapist said she could not get it out of her either other than the intake people said she had suicidal ideation.  The other therapist would not really address any issues because they "upset" BPDd.   We think she may have been fired because suddenly there was a new therapist and they told us the other therapist was no longer there. This new therapist was awesome, very communicative and told us she fully supported our boundaries and that we were doing the right thing.  She is the one who told us they had diagnosed our BPDd with an "eating disorder" because she was barley eating but that she thought there were oddities because she had never met someone with an eating disorder that did not have body image issues and that our BPDd does not.  Also, my husband was the one sending her previous psy information to the place which was not provided to this therapist until my husband spoke to her.  Her stay there and diagnoses were also based on her accounts which included many lies including that we abused her for years by not giving her any food and if we did allow her to eat like the rest of the family it was almost always mac and cheese for her...so we caused her eating disorder through our abuse. The new therapist said the history explains a lot and the it does all sound like BPD.  She also found it very interesting that she arrived at the same time as her friend who had been there before. She did get our BPDd to try to contact the university to have a medical withdraw so that she had ws and not fs in all of her classes etc.  Unfortunately she only had this therapist for 2 weeks and now has a new one in PHP.  This therapist did not enforce her finishing the process (one more email) to withdraw so she now failed all of her classes and she has only once spoke to my husband.  She has been in PHP for three weeks and we finally have a family therapy session set up.  We also just found out that the therapists between inpatient and PHP  don't really communicate so my husband has been trying to fill her in on some history. 

We have told her she cannot come home this summer and needs to move into the dorms and take just one class.  Everything is paid for and she has plenty of money to pay for a dorm or an apartment.  But she is trying to find a friend to stay with since she does not want to go to school.  We cannot have her in the house due to the effects her behavior has on others as well as our therapist and the 2nd therapist both said it was in her best interest to try to have selective support and force her to take baby steps to be independent.  If she moves back home we live in the country so she could not take classes nor attempt to get a job without us having to drive her everywhere since she won't get her license. 

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]

 I know this is not at all ideal for you, however , I think you are doing all you can here.  It is bitter when the adult child doesn't want to pursue college. There is still hope, though.  My son also took a medical leave for a semester of college, which consisted of him not getting medical help, driving across country alone, and who knows what else.  In the end, he decided to go back the following semester. 

You are a good parent .  You have covered all the bases here including setting up a boundary - being she chooses University or she can choose to couch surf with friends throughout the summer.  You are allowed to talk to her therapists in her current treatment place, that is terrific , and also they can probably see the lies your daughter churns out.

Can you be strong enough to allow her to choose no college for now while sticking firm to your boundary she can't come home for the summer? 

[Isabel2]

Thank you for the replies.  For the mental health of others and physical health of my husband (he is having some issues which are exasperated by stress right now) we will not have her at home this summer.  Her therapist is aware of this and working with her towards where she goes next knowing she cannot come home for the summer.  It is sad to watch her spend away her college money and make poor choices - she is very intelligent and has the financial means to get help and create a more stable foundation for her life. But after both of us spent more than a decade in prior marriages with spouses with mental illnesses who refused to get help and that left us emotionally, psychologically and financially drained we are not willing to get into enabling again and let it horribly affect the entire family.