Lawson (Understanding BPD Mother) - (1) 2nd part Chap1-The Make Believe Mother

[bethanny]

More from Lawson's book.

She speaks of BPD mothers who have an inability to remember moments of trauma for their children they were responsible for.  The BPD mother suffered from brain damage from her own chronic stress and this stress damaged her capacity for memory and emotional "regulation".

That is something that haunted me with my mother.  When she unleashed her fury on  me she could and would annihilate my identity in seconds.  Since she had manipulated my grandiosity growing up with feedback about how wonderfully self-denying, etc., I was, my ego continued to feed largely on her attributions of me.  Then to have her "all or nothing" thinking -- angel to devil in seconds --- sudden negative denigration coming at me suddenly and once again.  Gobsmacking extremism breathtakingly horrific.

This must have been the borderline mother's psychosis forcing forward.

I would feel like i had been beaten up in a boxing ring within an inch of my life. In the first round.

The next time I would see my mother I would be anxious about what she would say next, and often she would be on an entirely different channel -- a relief but a crazymaking inconsistent scenario -- she would be bland or even polite and calm and I felt I was going out of my mind in  terms of what was real.

Also who was the REAL mommy.  The recent monster or the calm and indifferent mother incapable of acknowledging her viciousness a short time before.

She would NEVER EVER mention that particular denigrating rant. I learned from a young age that if I dared to reopen whatever her irrational rant was about I would trigger another one.  The witch would be back and just as crazed as ever.

Walking on egg shells around her was safer.  

Lawson writes about fight or flight responses.  I have since read about fight, flight or freeze responses.  

When you can't fight the BPD mother and you can't flee them.  You freeze.  Like the recipient of Medusa's look.  Shame, guilt, anxiety, rage all get triggered in you and you have no safe place to process and express them.

Lawson explains that such mothers developed the belief system from their own experience that "hurting" children was the best way to train them.  "Training" not educating.  (my words, not Lawson's)  And they use fear to control their children. (it has much faster results in the short run -- my words again)

Also she writes of the enormous "separation anxiety" of borderline mothers.  Natural separating according to developmental stages of their child is seen as not to be tolerated betrayal to the borderline mothers.  

The child is constantly in the position of having to calm his or her histrionic borderline mother. The child is not free to express his or her own feelings of anxiety, fear and anger.  Eventually, doesn't consciously even acknowledge them to himself or herself.  

Something very striking the first time I read the Lawson book was her focus on "the look" when the borderline mother transitions to her psychosis state.  Lawson compared her eyes to that of a shark.  The pupils dilated.  "A killer's threatening glare overtook her face" to paraphrase Lawson.

Lawson writes that borderline mothers are challenged loving their children with patiently and consistently. Healthy love is consistent, patient and kind.

Children of borderlines learn to "dissociate" over the terrifying moments of annihilating anger coming at them from their suddenly psychotic parent.  Lose a sense of physical grounding.  Feel they themselves are going crazy.  (Too dangerous to acknowledge who the real crazy one is -- MY words).

I see finishing my notes on the first chapter "The Make Believe Mother" is that the ego of the borderline mother demands that her children act PERFECTLY happy.  Not that they ARE perfectly happy, importantly, but that they convince others they are perfectly happy.  To satisfy the ego needs of impression management by the borderline mother.

Lawson ends Chapter 1 with a footnote about "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll.  Lewis Carroll admitted once, she explains, that the book was about "malice".  Alice goes down the rabbit hole, like a borderline's child, and there she sometimes feel very big, when she is parentified by her dysfunctional parent, or very small, when she is infantilized by the borderline mother.  Terrorized at times, as by the crazymaking Mad Queen at that tea party, etc.  

The dysfunction of the borderline parent is overwhelming for fellow adults in their orbits, but imagine just how overwhelming it is to vulnerable, innocent, children dependent on these neurotic to psychotic borderline individuals needing emotional and physical support and guidance through life.

As i read this now, I wonder if  Lawson's chapter should have been "The Make Believe Child" rather than the "Make Believe Mother."  My mother conveyed during her darker times that I betrayed her by not having been someone else.  As simple but surreal as that.

And to make that up to her I was meant to perform as her "make believe child," the perfect child in her eyes would have behaved -- for the entire rest of my life.  I somehow must not only focus on her needs and demands at all times,  but second guess them without her even needing to communicate them, and if I misstepped she was entitled to "shatter my soul" (Lawson's words) as punishment.

End of my notes on Chapter 1

[Notwendy]

What is interesting is that my mother has incorporated some of my stories as hers. For instance if I mention a toddler who is waking up at night and interrupting our sleep- she says "I remember that". Or any event from my own experiences " I was driving the kids to..." She will say "I remember when we did that".

But it didn't happen with her. It's not her memory. She was not a hands on mother. I don't have memories of my mother taking me places or doing things with her. I have memories of my father doing these things.

But we are expected to pretend she did them, and that yes, we were happy as children.

I recall I was pretty happy in general- we had good experiences, but as far as my relationship with my mother, we were mainly scared of her.

[bethanny]

Notwendy, that is an interesting development. Kind of reflection of toxic symbiosis unrecovered BPD mothers can have especially with one child.

Reality twisting from the unrecovered borderline mother.  And lack of memory from her own damaged brain from chronic stress.  

My  mother was very religious. My mother clearly suffered married to a narcissistic and active alcoholic. This seemed to give her an advantage in terms of rationalizing and forgiving her terrible moments, made me minimize her clear violations of human decency toward me and especially at times to my father.  Though when I felt pity for him it didn't last long with his ambushing meanness at times, whether drunk or not.

I was terrified of my mother but tried to minimize that in my own head and heart as a kind of psychological issue of mine -- how can you be frightened of someone so "good" and religious and abused -- since of course her sudden Mr. Hyde shifts were from stress from my father or my own lack of awareness and lack "good girlness".  I must have been being selfish ... my mother saw me addressing my own needs and wants as colossally selfish.

I held my breath around her or never exhaled in a healthy way.  I didn't want to miss one of her cues as to my appropriate behavior. Hypervigilance.

When I visited an unconditionally loving aunt alone I would feel my chest curiously expand in relief and relaxation not having to constantly deny the irrational malice that radiated from my mother to me.

An early boyfriend observed that I was extremely passive around my family and very open and lively when I was away from them.  Boyfriends never lasted long because clearly I had no right to focus on such a relationship because of the continual emegencies of my mother especially due to crises from my father's drinking and the demands for her attention from me.  

I knew I didn't have emotional room for relationships ... and desperately tried to fix my father from drinking so I could resume an adult life of my own.  As if that were going to happen that way.

My mother's one on one annihilating rantings to and at me seemed few compared to my father's train wreck moments or even ugly gratuitous remarks to his wife and children,  but when it came to denigration he was an amateur next to her. Fewer occasions but shattering attacks.

My mother used her religiosity to justify her cruel judgments and declarations. Again, she seemed to presume to speak for the voice of God!  

Looking back I don't know who my mother was.  She had multiple personalities it felt like and one was psychotic I realize today looking back.

I was her handmaiden and yet she tortured me with accusations of me rejecting and abandoning her.  She also wanted me to be a "success" in life while never leaving her side. The double bind.

I so wish I had had familiarity with this disorder earlier in my adulthood but I am grateful to study it at this point.  

[Notwendy]

My mother did not embrace religiosity, but there are other similarities- one is that she treats me like I am her servant. She's emotionally cold to me. There isn't any affection. While you called it symbiosis that she copies me, I am actually her scapegoat child. I think it's more that she sees something I did as a parent and then takes it as something she did when she speaks to others - to make it seem as if she did it.

It is interesting to see how this led to certain behaviors in relationships. An early "boyfriend" made an impression because he just liked me, for me. This was not a serious relationship- but I recognized something different about it. With my parents, I had to act a certain way in order to feel safe and get approval which could change in an instant with BPD mom. I think at this point my father was too overwhelmed to not go along with this. But this friend just liked me for me, and that was different. I also felt a difference around my father's relatives. We might just be acting like kids and it wasn't the crime of the century. One toy out of place might trigger BPD mom's anger.

Later on, a boyfriend mentioned to me that I was a people pleaser and it bothered him that I didn't stand up for myself. I don't think he was being critical of me but maybe wanted better for me. The word for this would have been codependent but I didn't know it at the time or know about BPD. But all I knew was that if I wanted someone to love me, I had better be "good all the time" and do what they asked me to do. I didn't know I had any other choices.

To change this, I had to work on this aspect of myself. We take on these behaviors early on in our families in order to get by in them. But they don't serve us well in adult relationships. The good news is that if we learned them, we can unlearn them and learn new, more functional ones. I think understanding our background is a necessary start, but the next step is to take a look at what we learned that worked for us then, but not now and then work on changing that.

[madeline7]

My uBPDm does not remember any events or ugly remarks, and if it is mentioned the witch is summoned. Being raged at or even given the silent treatment is bad enough, but always being told you are to blame for her unhappiness just makes it unbearable. Even when things are "stable", she wants to take credit for every accomplishment made by me. She told all my friends at my 50th birthday party that the party wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for her. Ridiculous and embarrassing, but at least she wasn't acting out at the party. When i brought her a thoughtful gift she exclaimed that she must have been a good mother, nothing about me being thoughtful. Just making it all about her. And now that my uBPDm is frail and old, I am expected to orbit around her and be the dutiful daughter. Sometimes it feels like a life sentence.

[Notwendy]

Our mothers are so similar.

I think here's where I do embrace a sense of religion- or spirituality ( could be adapted to any religion). The idea that we don't know the whole picture- what happened that she is the way she is and that I am not the ultimate Judge of the universe. I just have to accept there are things I don't know or understand.  I try to keep the balance between avoiding any harm to her while also not allowing her to do harm to me. I try to do what I can that is nice for her, while protecting myself.

I do think the "pretend mother" image is done from a poor self image and shame. It just has to be a horrible emotional place. In the grand scheme of things, I am grateful to not feel this way and from this position, can have some compassion for her. It's sad that she is in the situation she's in. Difficult for us too, we don't need to minimize that, but this is the parent I have and I try work with that. For some of us, it might mean going NC, or LC. None is ideal, but we just have to so the best we can with this.

[bethanny]

Notwendy,

The "people pleasing" is a tough one to shed.  Especially when the consequences with a borderline parent were so unpredictable, and could be so confusing in terms of trying to judge for ourselves what is appropriate.  The sense of entitlement of the borderline parent that hounds our daily existence.  Focus on the needs of the borderline or be dogged by the guilt and anxiety of not doing it when one can't.

My mother's assumptions that she admitted to in the past about me were sadly so negative, especially of the amount of focus of my life was spent trying to make her less unhappy and frustrated.

Trying to make my parents happy felt like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon.  A big part of my identity was being the devoted daughter.

When I was in a car accident in my 20s I had an epiphany that if I had died I would have died alone, not with my mother.  But I was living my life as if my mother had all rights over it, not me. It was my God-given life, not hers, existentially speaking.  The accident illuminated to me at that point just how unhappy I was and disconnected from joy and a sense of aliveness.

I learned in 12 step rooms that a dysfunctional mother wants you "to keep them company in their isolation."  Paradoxical and sad.  Not emotional intimacy.  They give what they want to give, and take what they want to take or get very frustrated if we are not willing or unable to give what they want us to give.  Also, they don't give us the space of trust to actually give to them without having the demands (often unspoken but expected to be second-guessed by us) and their sense of urgency of being rejected or abandoned does not make it a natural and mutually warm exchange of feelings and good will. We are meant to make up for the healthy attention they did not receive in their childhoods. 

Trying to be kind to the suffering borderline mother is a decent thing if it can be done without making our inner child continue to suffer and be neglected by us.  We have sacrificed our inner child for the suffering inner child of our parent, often suffering inner children of both parents.  We must stay awake to the needs and damage to our own inner child foremost in our recovery.  We must stay vigilant and comfort ourselves and you are right that understanding what we have been through is key.

xxx

[bethanny]

madeline7,

How poignant and honest your statements.  Having to orbit the narcissistic and borderline parent seems a "life sentence." 

Stress in life makes people necessarily narcissistic, sometimes tragically and pathologically narcissistic. When that person exploits the power of authority over a vulnerable child, that is so unfair to the child and to so often the struggling functional adults they must fight to become.

Our bonding with such a parent was a "traumatic bond" ... involving overwhelming ongoing fear.  Hard to untraumatize that relationship. 

The lifelong tightrope of trying not to trigger the "witch" dimension of our borderline mothers. It is good for me to be reminded of that.  Rosa Luxembourg once said something about if we don't rattle our chains we can deny to some extent we are in them.

Hard to unclutch our spirits to trust others even beyond our needy parent(s) and enjoy the good wills and trust of others to us when the price of trying to win the borderline parent's good will and trust was so impossibly high.

Imagine a life of not having to parent one's parent(s)? It should not have been our role in life, but it was and we must address it for our recovery.

xxx