Estrangement -- kept on going as ubpd mother completely controlled narrative

[bethanny]

I was estranged from my family for 10 years.  I couldn't believe it just kept going on and on and I couldn't believe how quickly my family detached from me to circle the wagons around a mother who was either paranoid or maliciously character assassinating about  a recent moderate assertion of mine to her. 

Rosa Luxembourg once said something about how we sometimes don't realize we are bound up in chains especially if we never rattle them.  Stay still and compliant.  I rattled them one day and all hell broke loose in my walking on egg shells world.

Honoring my own needs and boundaries which was very rare for me since I had been pretty much an obsequious puppet all of my life to my "poor, unhappy" mother, rationalizing I was responding out of empathy and pity rather than the reality of fear -- terror -- that my ubpd mother could inspire with her irrational rages, her sudden ranting of "annihilating anger."  Always when there were no witnesses.

She was married to an alcoholic who presented his own terror to the family.  That was my excuse for moments of her devastating verbal abusing of me, HE and his alcoholism was making her act crazy.

 Whereupon a while later after her gobsmacking moments of irrational and malicious verbal abuse of me she would act as if what she had said or the situation that had triggered it had never happened.  Jekly Hyde.  To try to explore it would immediately trigger another visit from Hyde.  I learned to hold my breath and strive to avoid triggering her. 

I had to adjust to  a multiple personality type situation and to avoid the ugly personality was all I had to do, and the rest of the family, -- to sustain hypervigilance about her wants and needs.

I knew I was most in her thrall and I minimized how she had manipulated everyone in the family to prioritize her narrative of reality until it was too late.  My brothers were at geographic distances at the time and I had presumed had stronger boundaries than they actually had regarding her and her demands it turned out. 

She was the hub in the middle of the wheel of family and all spokes were directed to her.

When I first asserted to my mother enough to trigger WW3 it freaked out my family and she manipulated everyone to see me as the sudden crazy ungrateful one who was irrationally hurting her.  They frantically tried to get me to calm her down from her hysteria.  Meaning they demanded I sacrifice myself for whatever she wanted.

I recognized in horror that the siren of her hysteria was drowning  out my voice, and the assumed connection of intimacy I had with family members was pretty much an illusion.  My mother defined reality, defined a narrative that character assassinated me quickly and effectively.

My mother had manipulated my feelings to my alcoholic father and I suddenly recognized it was my turn to have her manipulate family members to get me in line the same way she had used my relationship with my father to try to control him. I came to resent him for the pain he was causing my mother.  My family was convinced by her I was causing her pain and bought into her pathos.

I thought with time things would settle down and communication would happen, but my mother was the leader in the estrangement scenario and I was repelled by my family's obsession with getting me to stop upsetting my mother for her and their sakes apparently and were not capable of understanding what my  mother was doing to me and the family. I also was repelled by my fear that once again in my life I would put servicing her needs above my own, especially from their collective pressure. 

They were repelled by me and my entirely different narrative about what my mother was doing.  I was shunned and I sensed they did not want to be challenged that my mother was not the "ideal" she wanted to be thought of.  They didn't want to begin to hear, nor had I before WW3, that my mother was either paranoid disturbed or a cold-blooded liar, willing to destroy her daughter's relationships with primary and secondary family and friends to keep her status quo state of control and manipulation.

I trusted that sense and strength and courage would visit all of us. 

The estrangement went on for an entire decade. 

I learned that tough love doesn't work on a ubpd parent.  Nor conflict resolution.

And that the enthrallment to a ubpd parent among other family members is disturbingly profound.  A kind of Stockholm syndrome.

I did reconnect with the family after the decade. 

I did achieve some honest communication with siblings, though not enough close to the narrative I hold in my heart of my mother's disturbed and tragic condition.

My parents still suffered misery in their relationship. (They have both passed at this point.)

I walked on egg shells but had LC rather than NC.  My mother refused to acknowledge there were 10 years of estrangement.  I had to recognize how incapable she was of true emotional intimacy.

 Affinity is what she could handle.  That was sad, but as a young adult she had demanded my energy and attention be focussed on supplying her that affinity and for me to sacrifice opportunities for real intimacy with people who were in my life.  Even, as it turned out, in my very family.

I am still recovering from the psychic wounding. So much unnecessary pain and separation for so many  years and still grieving and sadness and loneliness because of her incredible power over the family network.

We were a "borderline" family.  A borderline, alcoholic family.   

Thanks for listening.

[beatricex]

hi bethanny,
It probably feels good to get this all off your chest.

So you know, you were the healthy one.  I'm sure you have heard that from therapists... but you KNOW it, right?  We are the first to recognize the disfunction.

Have you ever thought about writing books?  I really like the candor.

I also hope you are doing OK, I hear you, and I know how hard this is.

b

[bethanny]

beatricex,

Thank you for your nurturing messages.  They both gave me a real lift.

I have turned to this website over the years.

I was in a horrible scenario of betrayal years ago when a coworker was physically threatening and I reported him and he denied his behavior and the firm fearing litigation backed him against me and, as it turned out, he was a charming psychopath (my estimate) who denied his behavior and I went through the heartbreak of having not only management but fellow coworkers take his side, preferring to believe this gregarious guy wasn't capable of the behavior I described. 

The situation replayed some serious pain for me re family betrayal.  I was too nervous to quit and find another job, considering my age and unemployment levels in the City. If it had happened in younger days I would have certainly left the company.

The company officers then whom I dealt with were so awful, the supposed human resources staff and the borderline manager at the time, and I was made to continue to work alone with this dangerous man despite my appeals to have my hours adjusted which would help  me at least escape contact with him one on one.  He eventually left.

I think the fact that so many of my fellow coworkers chose to support him was an even bigger shock and emotional challenge for me to weather.

I was able to survive that situation though it was rough.  I also had the goodwill and support of my siblings which was a blessing. 

I received such awesomely solid support as the weeks went on from members of this website as I dealt with the work family abandoning me in my stress and the crazymaking frustration of trying to appeal to work superiors who had no empathy, especially the women whom I assumed would have a natural sympathy for a woman being threatened by a male employee. Instead they mothered him. I felt like Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter being shunned for a good while.  Apparently, I was seen to have "ratted out" a fellow employee.  He was dangerous but that was denied or minimized. I actually left the building his aggressive behavior frightened me so.  We worked nights.

Anyway, I had worked so hard on myself for decades, 12 step meetings, therapy, self-help books, etc. Finally, a decade or a bit more ago a friend suggested my mother had been a "borderline personality." No therapist had ever even suggested this.  I immediately got a copy  of Christine Lawson's book, "Understanding the Borderline Mother."  It blew me away and I raced through reading it. It was the missing puzzle piece I had been striving for.  I also found this amazing website and it was a wonderful portal for emotional and intellectual insights.

I just posted an essay I wrote immediately after reading  Lawson's book.  "Surviving the Unrecovered Borderline Parent."  I posted it on this website long ago and it resonated with quite a few people.  I also posted it on a community website I was participating in, that no longer exists, but it drew a lot of honest comments from people who related very strongly to my perspective and certainly made me feel so less alone in this lifelong struggle of surviving the devastating and crazymaking invalidation from my borderline mother.

Thanks for letting me pour all this out. 

Your support for me as a writer made me dig out this piece!  Thanks for that.

I want to celebrate my recovery though I am still such a serious "work in progress."  It seems a spiraling journey through those five stages of grief over and over. 

I think I  have complex PTSD and I wonder if one can manage to actually recover from that, but I have come a long way and hope to keep on recovering.

What you said about me being the healthiest one in the family to recognize the dysfunction and want to call it out really moved me.  An affirmation I heard long ago in the 12-step groups, "I have the right to be healthier than those around me."

I will keep that in mind right now, thanks to you. 

To be continued...  Thanks so much.

Bethanny

 

[madeline7]

To be continued...
You got that right.
We are all a work in progress but I do think that although it is not a contest, those of us dealing with the Borderline have been given an extra assignment that we did not sign up for. So I guess we get extra credit and our learning curve has been very much accelerated. More wisdom goes hand in hand with the sadness, but a strong character building lesson indeed.

[bethanny]

madeline7,

character building for sure.  [Heavy sigh]

A writing teacher once remarked how strong we can become especially around the broken places!

xxx

[Lunadora]

Bethanny,,
In your words I recognize my own experience with my uBPD mother. Affinity is what she can handle. Tough love and conflict resolution don’t help. You summarize so well the reality I’ve been wrestling with without knowing what name to give it. Could someone please tell me what NC and LC stand for? I’m new to this group, and new to the topic of BPD.

[bethanny]

Thank you, Lunadora.

I have gone for long stretches from this website and I admit to being ignorant of some of the abbreviations.

NC is "no contact" and I assume LC means "little or low contact."

Thanks for your validation. This support system is precious and I look forward to sharing in our respective recoveries!

xxxx