In the first 15 minutes I saw uBPD mom after getting home...

[Methuen]

We were away for 5 days while we dealt with difficult family business with SIL and BIL (H is executor for his and his sister's late father).  In that 5 days I was able to support H 100% with no distractions, as he brought forward difficult conversation with his sister before he executes the Will for his father.  We were immersed in the the travel (22 hrs each direction), the task in front of us (literally months of preparation), role playing, executing the discussion, and then the debriefing (H and I) needed which comes naturally afterwards. He disclosed this was the most difficult thing he had to do in his life.  With that back drop, we arrived home today from the trip.  Mother had texted that she had made supper for us.  Sounds wonderful, except that we all know that gifts ALWAYS have strings attached.  We stopped there to say hi before even going home to our house, so we would have the excuse (we needed to get home).  In the 15 minutes we were talking inside her front door (we didn't want to take our shoes off), she managed to say the following:

1- she thought that because we didn't come yesterday, it meant we didn't want to see her (she got her days mixed up even though I had given her an itinerary complete with where we were staying each night)

2- she thought that because we didn't come yesterday, we could also be dead on the road after a car accident

3- she assumed we didn't want to see her

4- she asked "do you feel "empty" now that you are home?"

5- she told us "she could never move to a new place because it would be too much for us"  (we already mow her lawns, shop for her groceries, look after maintenance to her home, manage her banking, look after all her computer problems, drive her to Dr appts, cook her meals...)

6- told us how tired she was because she "did something every day" (toenail appt, physio appt, lunch with friends etc)

7- she said about herself "stupid me" because "she tried to do too much"

8- told us a story about someone being found dead in their house after 2 weeks and said "that will be me".

It was overwhelming.  There was more, but I can't think of it now.  I said nothing.  H handled the convo.  We picked up the supper and said thank-you very much.  

She arrives in 10 minutes to have dinner with us.  We invited her to get it over with, since she made the dinner.  Obligations right?  After this, I plan a quiet LC for a week, for myself.

I can see I need to get back to basics.  I will start with boundaries over the thoughts she shares with us.

1/2/3 - I'll use SET.  This is easy.
4 (us). We don't feel empty, but we're curious about what SIL and BIL might be feeling.
5. This one needs planning on our part.  The truth is helping her move would be a LOT easier than all the assisted living care we are obligated to help with because she refuses to even consider going on an assisted living waiting list.  Strategizing this is a project for the future.
6.  We asked her if she enjoyed having her toenails done.
7. We ignored
8. This is the kicker.  It made me feel angry (although I didn't let it show).  In the future, I think I will use an "I statement".  Eg.  "I feel both sad and hurt when you say you could be dead in your house 2 weeks before anyone found you".  Between your friends and H and I, somebody is at your house every day, and sometimes you have 3 sets of visitors in a day.  When you say you could be dead in your house for 2 weeks, it feels like everything we do for you is not enough.  Please refrain from saying negative things like that which hurt us."

Thoughts?  I need help.  In the 5 days I was away, I did not miss my mother.

[Mata]

What an exhausting "welcome" home, Methuen.  I hope that you get a real chance to relax this week.   
I do think 5 and 8 could be little windows of opportunity though. These seem to be small cracks in her "not moving into assisted living" position, or at least you could treat them as such.  I think 8, particularly.  I can imagine having a conversation along the lines that "the risk of dying at home and no one noticing for 2 weeks is why so many people choose assisted living."  In fact, that is pretty close to one of the things we said to my mom when she moved to assisted living. 

[Notwendy]

Oh gosh that sounds exhausting.

One idea that I learned for self care is to take care of yourself first. You and your H returned from a difficult and tiring trip. The acronym HALT- hungry, angry, lonely, tired- is a reminder to take care of yourself first before visiting your mom because you are already tired before you see her.

Ideally you would come home, unpack, get a good night's sleep and see her the next morning.

Or at least stop, get something to eat and chill a bit first.

Reminds me of when the kids were little. I would get off work, pick the kids up, they'd be hungry and tired and want attention. But I was hungry too. So, I would stop on the way for a few moments and get a snack before getting them. This way, I could fix dinner, play with them, and not be hungry  myself.

[Methuen]

Mata - thanks for the encouragement.  She has so many health problems that she would benefit from  the level of nursing care available in assisted living.  H is going to take the lead on that convo when the opportunity is right.  She likes him.  It can’t come from me.   Has your mom adjusted to her assistant living?  Does she like where she is?

Notwendy - I hear you!  I’ve become much better at looking after myself.  The challenge the day we got home was that mom had informed us she had made supper for us.  This obligated us to pick it up - as she hardly drives due to poor mobility.  By cooking supper ( or more often baking buns) she gets another visit from us.  In this way she got to ask H how the trip went with his sister’s family drama.  We refused to talk about it other than to say it went fine.  I guess we could have gone home first, and unpacked and had a cuppa, but neither of us could face going back to her place after we arrived home.  Once we were home, we wanted to be able to decompress and stay put.  But being on the listening end of her negativity was overwhelming.  Her telling us to pick up the supper she had made just put us between a rock and a hard place.  Sometimes there just isn’t a right answer.  What we had done for self care was sleep in the last morning, and treated ourselves to a very nice restaurant breakfast before the last few hours of driving home.  Sometimes I think our own self care can’t be enough, because their BPD is just overwhelming. In this case it came at the tail end of an otherwise trying and emotionally exhausting trip.  

With regards to her negativity, I’m thinking that boundaries and SET are the two applicable tools here.  Other than the I statement I mentioned earlier in the thread, I could address her fear from 1/2/3 with this SET:

SET: It sounds like you were afraid mom.  I wish you wouldn’t feel so fearful.  Rest assured we will always be here to support you (unspoken: but not to be manupulated).  Any other suggestions?

[zachira]

Methuen,
I hear how overwhelming it was for you to have to listen to so much invalidation from your mother after returning from your trip. My mother with BPD often used being generous, doing something, for her children as a means of control and ways to invalidate her children. Would it have been possible to make an excuse about not taking the supper your mother had fixed for you? My mother kept trying to give me all kinds of money before she died because supposedly I did not have the means to support myself. This was after many years of being on my own. When I was in 7th grade, I had a Girl Scouts Project to make dinner for the family. After I finished cooking dinner and was so pleased with myself for cooking dinner for the whole family, my mother came into the kitchen and told me how bad the food was. In high school, when I got my first job as a waitress, mom came down to my work, had me wait on her, than told my boss in front of me, what a terrible waitress I was. I do believe that all the interactions with your mother are about her needs, and not yours, and above all her dysregulated feelings. It hurts to realize that what appears to be a kind generous gesture by your mother is really not that at all. It seems the days you were away were too much for your mother, and she thought of the excuse of making supper for you as a way to unload all her feelings onto you as soon as you came back. The last years of my mother's life, the contact was mostly by phone, and I would keep the conversations brief and end them as soon as they became abusive. Is is possible for you to just get up and leave when it is obvious that your mother is unloading on you her unbearable feelings? I know it feels terrible to treat your mother this way. I have grieved many times how I could not really care for my mother in her old age because she was so abusive. You are a kind caring generous daughter. Are there any new boundaries that you want to set with your mother or more steps you want to take with self care? I realize there are days when what a mother with BPD does is just plain upsetting and hurtful, because after all she is your mother and the person who is supposed to treat you with love and kindness with your best interests at heart.

[Methuen]

It seems the days you were away were too much for your mother, and she thought of the excuse of making supper for you as a way to unload all her feelings onto you as soon as you came back.

Exactly.  You nailed it Zachira.  This has been the pattern for most of our married life.  I have to find a way to break this pattern, but it's hard.  When I tell her I don't eat much bread any more (i.e. her white buns), she tells me I'm taking away the very few things she can still do (she has very impaired mobility - a lot of it because of her own choices).  If I tell her (before we even leave town) that we can fix our own supper when we get home, I will get the same response.  If I remind her that her friends love her buns and she could share with them, she screws up her nose.  If I suggest she invite a friend over to have dinner with her, she has a million reasons/excuses.  That suggests to me that she uses food as a way to have her needs with me met...at least that's how it seems. So to break the pattern of her always having a meal ready so she can dump her feelings onto me as soon as I get home, I could tell her that "all we want the day we get home is a light snack (and I have eggs in the house to make an omelet)", but I already know she will say (in a pathetic voice)  Don't take away one of the only things left she can still do.  It's really hard, because I don't want to hurt her (I get that BPD is awful and they don't have a sense of self or self-esteem), but I also don't want to be controlled by her feelings, and have them dumped on me.  Finding the right balance is do-able some days, and not on other days.  

Are there any new boundaries that you want to set with your mother or more steps you want to take with self care?

I think that for many of us it is simpler and clearer to see what is healthy/unhealthy in other people's struggles, and harder to see the solutions to our own problems.  I have a harder time knowing what is OK and not OK when it comes to setting boundaries with my mom, because I was enmeshed for so long.  It honestly helps when other people make suggestions, because while I have a very confident sense of what is normal/not normal with people outside of my mom, I have a very poor sense of what is normal/not normal with my mom.  If that makes sense.  I have set so many boundaries with her over the last 2-5 years, it has been truly exhausting.  But when it comes to things like her "preparing dinner for us", it's harder, because on the surface it's such a kind helpful gesture.  If we could just sit down and enjoy it together (with her) and have normal typical healthy and pleasant conversation, it would be amazing.  So many families have that.  But we in this community don't and never will.  With my mom (who is totally self-obsessed in her old age - narcissistic) it's her opportunity to dump.  So it sucks to know that I have to even set a boundary about not making a dinner for us when we get home from a trip, because the pattern for years (probably since my dad got sick, and then died 16 years ago) is that she uses the excuse of meeting up for the dinner she cooked, to then dump all her negative feelings which have built up over the time period we were out of town.  It comes as a heavy dose- a shock (after being away), and an unpleasant return home, at least initially (until I get my psyche sorted and adjust to being in town with her again).

or more steps you want to take with self care?

I've done pretty well since becoming an empty nester and 80% retired.  I have more time to look after myself, and I have the awareness to know when I need to do more self-care, and then I do it. I've been doing a good job of that since I got home from this trip, but...wow.  She bowls me over sometimes, even when I think I'm prepared for it.  I think it might be impossible to prepare ourselves for the unexpected that comes from a pwBPD, even if we should know to expect it.

Someone on this forum a while back used the phrase "death by a thousand small cuts" or something similar.  That resonated with me. 

[Methuen]

When I was in 7th grade, I had a Girl Scouts Project to make dinner for the family. After I finished cooking dinner and was so pleased with myself for cooking dinner for the whole family, my mother came into the kitchen and told me how bad the food was. In high school, when I got my first job as a waitress, mom came down to my work, had me wait on her, than told my boss in front of me, what a terrible waitress I was.

Oh Zachira.  These are the kinds of stories and examples that make it just remarkable that we still turn out as decent human beings.  I'm so sorry that she couldn't validate, encourage, and parlee your effort and successes to nurture you, instead of tearing you down.  Instead maybe her own insecure feelings and unworthiness made her act in ways that hurt you, because by saying these things she at least had a sense of power which fed her tortured soul - at your expense?  Not sure if that fits, but wow, did she lose out on opportunities which could have made you both feel better, more positively bonded, and stronger as people.  This is the sorrow and emotional poverty that results.  Yet somehow we find our way and resilience.  Amazing.  I can almost feel how invalidated little 12 year old Zachira must have felt when your mom said that after your Girl Scouts dinner, and how angry teenage Zachira must have felt after the scene in the restaurant.  Shaking my head here.  I worked with teenagers my whole life, and heard many stories similar.  It's ironic that we need a license to drive vehicles, motorbikes, boats, heavy machinery, and also licenses or tickets to practice in medicine, teaching, social work, counselling and construction, pipefitting... but everyone is somehow entitled to be a parent despite the darkness that may lie within...and the damage that can be done to their little (and teenage) children.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi Methuen, 

As I was reading through your post, I had this inclination to roll my eyes and say, "Yes, yes, that was my uBPDm's response too!" I so so get it! Any time my siblings or I went away, and especially if we were visiting our dad whom she divorced, the end result when we came back was always about her. The drama from her (because the focus was off of her) came back in full force. We paid for going away. Sometimes we wished we had never gone wherever it was that we went. So sorry for all the pain and difficulty! It all comes back so quickly and mom has been gone for 9 years now.

I like the responses that others have shared with you. Is it possible that you don't have to address her points? Will they blow over if you don't, or will she keep poking at them?

Take care, 
Wools

[Mata]

 H is going to take the lead on that convo when the opportunity is right.  She likes him.  It can’t come from me.   Has your mom adjusted to her assistant living?  Does she like where she is?

My H has likewise taken the lead on some difficult conversations with my mom.  Not always, but often, she responds better to him.

It's been a roller coaster with her assisted living situation.  She moved into a place on sort of temporary basis.  She hated it at first, but was in poor enough health she really needed to be there.  She complained a lot.  Then Covid hit and she kind of got "stuck" there.  After about a year of being there, she was doing great and mostly liked it.  She was eating, taking her medications, gained weight (she was 98lbs when she moved there because she wouldn't make food for herself), had friends, and was active socially.  But not too long after she got vaxxed, she decided she was "too young and healthy" to be there, so she moved back to her house.  That lasted less than 2 weeks.  She immediately stopped eating, messed up her medications, and a friend found her nonresponsive on her living room floor.  She was hospitalized for a month, had a brief stay in a nursing home, and is now back in assisted living.    Currently, she's not that happy.  But objectively, she's fine.  She's back on a medication regimen and eating and seeing her friends.  We finally cleaned out her house and sold it, so there's not going back home now.  I will tell you that regardless of how unhappy she is, I'm super relieved she's back there! 

but I already know she will say (in a pathetic voice)  Don't take away one of the only things left she can still do. It's really hard, because I don't want to hurt her (I get that BPD is awful and they don't have a sense of self or self-esteem), but I also don't want to be controlled by her feelings, and have them dumped on me.  Finding the right balance is do-able some days, and not on other days.

This sounds so much like my mom!  Every other thing is "this is all I have left"  "I've lost so much", etc.  For me, one of the things I've been trying to learn, is how to be okay with my mom feeling hurt or upset.  I personally do this by trying to check in with reality... I'll ask myself am I actually being hurtful?  Or is she just feeling hurt, or making herself feel hurt?  If it's the latter, I don't have to protect her from these feelings (because it's actually impossible to do).  Also there's an aspect of "all or nothing"/black and white thinking going on when your mom says "don't take away the only thing I have left."  Turning down one meal is not taking anything away from anyone.  It's simply declining one meal.  Trust me, I know it doesn't feel this simple.  But this is what I mean by checking in with reality.   In my opinion, it would be okay to expand your travel boundary to no meals on travel days.  Just because she doesn't like her other options - cook for you on another day or cook for her friends, doesn't mean you are depriving her of anything, or hurting her. 

[zachira]

Some other thoughts that may or may not be helpful. Could you tell your mother you are going to be away more days than actually planned so you get some time at home before you have to see her? It does not feel good to lie yet sometimes we have to protect ourselves from people who are not good for us. It seems that as the only child you have been conditioned since childhood to be your mother's prime target for dumping her dysregulated feelings. My mother with BPD and strong narcissitic traits could never see her children as separate people from her while being able to put on the facade of having empathy for people who were not close family members. I am wondering what kinds of self care would work best when this situation with your mother is life long and your are an only child.

[Methuen]

Could you tell your mother you are going to be away more days than actually planned so you get some time at home before you have to see her?

  I was not going to think of this.  The idea has merit.  Thank you for the suggestion.

Zachira - you are right that our mother's can't see us as separate from them.  My mother recently told me she had started a plant for me.  I said "which one"?  As it turns out - I don't like the plant (it has pink in it), and I don't care for the leaves or the texture.  I replied that "I wasn't fond of that plant, and could I pick another one?" She replied by telling me all the things she loves about the plant- as if to convince me.  She was truly confused that I wouldn't want something she loves so much.  It's like if she likes something I have to like it too, or it means there's something either wrong with either me or her.  So messed up right?  It reminds me of the time (I was 14) that she promised me she was painting my room yellow (my favourite colour), and when I came home from school it was pink (her favourite colour).  When I was upset, she was surprised.  Just so messed.

As to self-care, I do much more than I used to before I was retired.  Retreating into nature is important for me.  Regular physical activity has been huge.  When I can, I have hobbies, but I haven't had time to really get into them for a year.  I also consider spending time on this forum as part of my self care.  Other than that I keep busy with a little part-time work (post-retirement), projects, and volunteering, so that I don't appear to be too available to my mother.  If she thinks I have too much free time, she will try to fill it up - with her.  Her neediness is smothering.  Despite all the self-care I do, she can still be overwhelming.  What self-care works for you Zachira?  Maybe I'm missing something...

[zachira]

You are doing a lot of good self care. My main practice for self care is to meditate regularly and do lots of stretching of different body parts so I get to the bottom of what I am feeling and cry if I need to. I realize I can't let my feelings pile up, and being as present as I can be throughout the day, allows me to feel both my sorrow and joy. The best advice my therapist ever gave me was to focus on how I am feeling inside when in the presence of a toxic person, instead of focusing on the feelings of the other person.
It seems that you need more protection from your mother's dysregulated feelings that she dumps on you. Is it possible for you to lie to your mother so you don't have to spend so much time around her? Can you say you are busy even when you aren't so you have time to yourself in which no particular activity is scheduled?