Hi I’m new. My trans son was recently diagnosed with autism but has been displaying behaviors of BPD for the last 4 years. We’ve all gone through DBT IOP (twice) and they continue with therapy 2x weekly. DBT has helped them regulate but hasn’t fixed the underlying problem of intense anger toward me and my husband. The dbt coaching we got didn’t really help. They are brilliant and extremely rigid and angry so they don’t try to do anything to help strengthen our relationship. This leads me to the fact that they say they want to hurt us the way they’ve been hurt- that we gaslit, abused and traumatized them for the past 4 years. We do have another son who is neurotypical and with whom we have a great relationship, btw and we consider ourselves a loving, kind family with little strife between me and my husband. The problem is that anytime I say something they don’t think is right, they say I’m gaslighting them again and go on a rant about how much I’ve traumatized them. If I leave to protect myself, that seems to traumatize them more and the go into attack mode. They don’t respect my boundaries and have physically blocked me from going to another room (fear of abandonment). I feel stuck what to do. If I sit and listen to the verbal abuse, I feel that empowers them to hurt me. If I leave it triggers them to get angry and say that’s what I always do. I’m really not sure if staying and listening will help but am willing to do so. They do try to get me to say that I abused them but when I try to tell them whatever I did was not intentional. They are super sensitive so typical discipline like taking things away from kids as a consequence feels traumatizing to them. No one ever suspected they were autistic until I figured it out. Thanks for any input.
