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Author Topic: Q about BPD child response to different types of feedback  (Read 364 times)
Leaf56
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« on: July 23, 2021, 02:29:18 PM »

Okay, so this is kind of a complicated question that I'm not clear on how to ask but I'll try. So from reading here, I'm seeing mostly talk about egregious behavior by BPD kids, i.e. raging anger that culminates in accusations and disrespectful behavior toward the parent. I got a sampling of that behavior from my now almost 25-year-old son throughout the first year of all this happening, so about Nov. 2019-Nov. 2020 (he has not lived with me since Aug. 2019). He spoke to me in an angry, disrespectful way a couple of times at the beginning of all this, and I made it crystal clear that if he ever spoke like that to me again, I would block his texts and phone calls instantly. I would never listen to more than the first word or two before it was goodbye. As I've said in other threads, I'm very firm about limits and always have been. So he got the message very quickly and firmly that that type of behavior would never work with me. During that time and in the midst of his most crazy phase, he texted about how he hated everyone in the world including me and would gain satisfaction by being so unbearably depressed that it would sink my and everyone else's "life force" down with him. So my question is this: just because he is no longer behaving like what I see here as a "typical" pwBPD, I still think that what he's doing could be what he said he was going to do, and it makes it almost impossible for me to feel like I should help him because I believe that he's really just trying to manipulate me this way since the other way didn't work. Does that make sense? It's so much harder to ignore your child when he's not being a jerk (it was so easy when he was acting out like that). My child is now back to being respectful and loving, but texts constantly about his depression and suicidality and I want to know if anyone else has seen this type of behavior? I can't shake the feeling that it's all just part of the manipulative BPD stuff. Also from the beginning he's been very clear about how he never wants to work and pretty much everything he does seems to be in service of that. He knows I will never give him any money at all, but I think he might be bombarding me with all this psychological stuff to try to wear me down so that I'll support him. I never will, and I've told him that but I think he remains under this delusion. Today he asked me how to go about getting disability. I told him I don't know anything about it, would not ever have a conversation about it, and wouldn't participate in the idea in any way. Then he told me he would have to remain in his room (he lives at his dad's) for two weeks until his hair grows out because it's not "even." It was as if he was trying to bait me into saying something about that (because he knows that that means he will not be going to his new job). I didn't. When I asked him if he was going to stop or I needed to block him, he said I didn't have to block him because he would smoke weed and that would make him stop but that he felt ashamed that he needed to do that in order to feel better. But again, this came across to me as baiting because I was also very against smoking weed when he was growing up and he never did until he went to live with his dad. Anyway, there's no way of knowing, but I believe all of this, all of it, might just be his version of the stuff that most people here complain about their kids doing. It's all just manipulative, guilt-tripping BS born of rage against perceived shortcomings on our part and that we somehow owe them something in restitution for the rest of their lives. My son wants me to support him for the rest of his life. He's said so several times. I will never give him another dime and he has heard the words but they don't sink in.
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kells76
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« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2021, 07:55:52 PM »

Hey Leaf56,

This has the same vibe to me as childish sibling conflicts; you know, where one kid has his finger riiiigggghhhhttt next to the other one's face, but not touching it, so the second kids complains "Mom, he's touching me!" But the first kid says "No I'm not!

Or, where one kid has her feet outside the door to her sister's room, but leans her upper body through the doorway and reaches to grab something. "Mom, she went in my room and took my shirt!" "No, I never went in your room!"

There's this vibe of "I'm not technically crossing the boundary" which can leave us confused and questioning. BPDs can also sometimes be "word wizards" or "masters of technicalities", and can get us blind to the real, big picture by winding us up on smaller individual "truths".

A question, which I promise is related -- did you ever read the book Pride & Prejudice? If so, remember how Mr. Wickham describes how horribly Mr. Darcy treated him? Every "snippet" of what he said was technically true, yet when each individual point was put together, the picture told a lie. It's like trying to do a dot-to-dot picture where half the dots were erased. All the remaining dots are "truly" part of the picture, but with half of them missing, when you connect what's left, you get a really, really different picture of the whole. All with "telling the truth" the entire time.

That's the feel I get from your son's texts. In the most technical sense, he is "respecting the boundary". But if we get caught up in the true minutia, we lose the bigger picture that's being painted. OK, sure, perhaps in each individual instance he is not specifically talking disrespectfully. But when we connect the dots, what do we see? Not a picture of a respectful person. So I don't think it's crazy to look at the situation and be like "but he's doing what I asked, so why do I feel so confused?" I think that's a hallmark of interacting with someone with a PD. Often each individual sentence can make total sense, yet put all together, we walk away scratching our heads, like, what just happened? Why did the words make sense but I feel so weird?

From my perspective, you could certainly start refusing to engage with the "I'm suicidal" and "I'm doing drugs" and "I want to bring people down" type texts. It'd be up to you whether to announce "I have a rule... here is the suicide hotline #. I don't have further conversations about that." Or, you can just not respond -- effectively, acting out your boundary and personal values, without having to explain them.

You don't have to justify or explain to him why you don't engage on those topics. You can (if you want) just not respond, and only respond to tones/content that works for you. It would not surprise me if over time, and perhaps after an extinction burst, he "learned" through your "doing" (rather than "telling") what would "earn" him interaction with you. If all you respond to are neutral to pleasant texts, and respectful questions, then over time there is a good chance he will stop "trying to get rewarded" with the baiting texts.

Hope that's helpful food for thought;

kells76
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Leaf56
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Relationship status: Married
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« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2021, 03:37:30 PM »

Kells, yes, very helpful and thanks so much for the very thoughtful response. I already stopped engaging in any of those texts over the past couple of months. If he starts down the road of "I hate myself so much, what is wrong with me, why can't I just be euthanized," I immediately respond with, "Do I need to block you?" If he continues, I block. If he says yes, and sometimes he does, I block. I usually block for a day and check back in the next day with a "feeling any better?" I've noticed that after a few months of being very consistent with this, these types of texts have decreased. He has pivoted to "just help me figure out what to do next as far as a career goes." I reply that I will no longer engage in that type of discussion either, which I know sounds harsh, but I've already engaged in that discussion many times, he's heard everything I have to say, and I honestly don't think he even listens but just wants me engaged. For the past couple of weeks his tactic is to call or text and say, "I miss my momma. I want to see my momma." If it's a call, he always sounds as though he's been crying. I've then scheduled a time to see him for a walk and a lunch at Panera or something, and so far he hasn't crossed any boundaries or gotten angry during those times. I keep it to about 2 hours, and I chat about unimportant things like what I think of the Jeopardy guest hosts. Yesterday we sat on his dad's porch for a bit after I brought him home (he's never gotten a drivers' license), and he wanted to engage again in what he should do next for employment. I told him I don't know and that I've already told him everything I can think of. It was pleasant, but it feels like the wheels are turning inside his brain trying to come up with ways to keep me involved in his mental drama, and I just won't. We hugged, told each other we love each other, and I went home. I'm always so relieved to leave. I guess I should feel relieved that he's not currently acting out, but I can't help but feel that this is just an interlude until the next thing or that it will just continue like this forever, with him working small part-time jobs while continuing to say, "What do you think I should do for a career?" I can see him still saying this at age 40, just never really doing anything, living in a constant state of limbo, never really growing up or taking on any responsibility or focus.
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