First time posting a very long time

[nenarox2]

My mother has BPD. She has been diagnosed 3 separate times, but acts like she does not. I stopped posting here after a member was rather harsh with their words and I stopped visiting this site as well. Except. I don't know where to go right now. I got a divorce and moved back to my hometown. I got a great job and I really thought that I could have the sibling relationships that I have craved my entire life. I also started boundary setting with BPDm since Oct. of 2016 and she no longer rants and raves at me, nor threatens suicide and such... Well, I got home and my family is unable to get along. I see that it is my mom. She encourages us to stay fighting. She is so afraid of abandonment that she starts fights between the children so that she can be the center of the communication hub. So she can be the gatekeeper of information. My siblings do not see it, and they all just choose to not like me. I was her whipping post growing up. The ranting she does was mostly on me. Well, I decided that since I cannot have a relationship with my siblings, I did not want to know anything about them or for them to know anything about me. She did not respect my boundaries and kept updating me on my siblings, making me feel really excluded from the family. I decided no contact. It has only been 1 week. When I told her I needed a break from the family, I.E. her, she started gaslighting me and calling me crazy for not wanting to talk for a while. I guess, I just feel so isolated. I have read so many things about BPD mothers. I just need help realizing that she has championed a family of black and white thinkers and my choosing to be black in her eyes. She is creating a smear campaign as we speak. How do people maintain NC in small communities? It is not from spite. It is just from the sheer exhaustion of her continually pushing my boundaries.

[beatricex]

hi nenarox2,
Welcome.  I'm sorry you had a bad experience here before. 

My BPD mom also pits my siblings and I against one another and ensures all communication goes through her.  About a year ago I said "Mom, I don't need a play by play of what's going on in my siblings lives."  It hurts because she has turned them against me.  She started sending emails to the entire family except me, then forwarding the same email to me separate (I can see she sent it to everyone else already).  As if to honor my wish, but in a passive aggressive way.  This made me feel worse.  My face burned with shame when she sent an email like this, announcing one of my parent's long time friend's husband had died (this is one of the few friends of my parents I like and she has known us since we were kids, over 40 years).  Then my Mom was love bombing me and my husband in emails and texts, I got no less than 10 emails telling me happy birthday this year, around the week of my birthday - when she does this, I think "OK what has she done, what is she up to?"  It's like she's gaging my mood everyday cause she has done something (again) behind my back.  It's like she's trying to find out if I'm mad, have I discovered what she's done. I called her and snarled "STOP emailing us."  She did the "oh, poor you, oh yes you are the child that doesn't like email...because you read email all day at work" routine and I got mad and yelled "STOP emailing us!"  Then I could hear my dad who is always at her side, in the background, but not on the phone snarl "Hang Up On Her."  She was acting exasperated like "See she's so difficult."  She did hang up, and I waited a couple weeks and texted my Dad after he texted me and I didn't respond for a few days.  I said "I heard what you said Dad, no apology?  That was mean to say Hang up on Her."  He did apologize and said he loved me, which was amazing because this is the only time in my life I can remember either one of my parents apologizing to me.

I am also attempting no contact, but it's difficult because she will come to our house and she is still texting my husband as if nothing happened!  I have been telling my husband to prepare for the speech of how I'm the one with the mental illness, as she appears to be trying to get ahold of him. 

Like you I'm finding going no contact almost as much work as low contact.

When you say small town, are you talking 2000, 20,000, or 200,000 people?  I have lived in towns of all these sizes and agree it's difficult to avoid someone, especially the smaller the town.  You run into people over and over almost everywhere you go in public.  Suggest maybe figure out her schedule, like if you know she's at church a certain time and day, that's the day you go to the grocery store.  Or if you know she goes to bed at a certain time, hopefully your stores stay open that late, you could shop then.  I too avoid my Mom, luckily she lives a couple hours away and I never need to go to her town.  She drives by mine on the way to see all my other siblings though.  She actually texted my husband that she "was driving by and WAVE!"  Annoying as hell.  I know I need to ignore her, but it's so hard when she's pushing all my buttons.
 
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[Notwendy]

prepare for the speech of how I'm the one with the mental illness, as she appears to be trying to get ahold of him.

We've heard that one too. In fact, my BPD mother just did this with a sibling- "I am so very worried about their mental health..." and then spun a story about something that happened. She sounded so lucid and concerned and spun it as if it were real, but I knew it wasn't because I had heard the real version.

I have a boundary with my mother to not discuss derogatory things about other family members with her. I just don't. I will change the subject, even hang up the phone. She dislikes my father's family and just let another terrible story about them slip out the other day- and I just changed the subject. I can't tell if what she says is a lie or the truth, so I don't believe any of it.

NC with my mother would be impossible because it would mean NC with anyone who is connected with her. My father is deceased but NC with her would have meant NC with him too and I didn't want to do that. She has a wide network of family and friends and she controls my relationships with them - but there's a younger generation and my kids are in contact with them. Any time there's news or a picture on social media it goes through her connections to her. She's painted the story that I am "keeping her from her grandchildren" which isn't true but motivates them to send anything they know to her. None of us post anything personal on social media as it is, so it's not anything we care about. But if I were NC with her, her connections would make sure she's informed.

LC is not as much about frequency of contact, but the content of our contact. Nothing emotional. If she senses any kind of emotional vulnerability, she will go for that, pry, be hurtful. Our discussions are general- I pass on news that could be public anyway such as " kid's soccer team won and is going to the tournament" "kid is doing a summer internship".  These don't involve emotions or vulnerability. I also am careful who I share information with. Anything I say to anyone in her circle will be immediately shared with her.


I keep visits cordial and detached. She has turned her family against me, and yet, they tried to make contact with me. Yes, it is hurtful. I miss some of them and have cried about it, many times, but I will not get emotionally involved with anyone in her circle, I don't trust them. I also don't try to clear the air with them by telling my side. It's her word against mine and they believe her first. I try to live my own values with as much integrity as I can. If they can't see which one of us has a mental illness by now, they aren't going to.

To me, NC would require a lot of work, more than LC. I haven't felt comfortable with the idea of NC. I think it's an individual decision.