Unsure about my next move with uBPD mother

[Riv3rW0lf]

Hi again !

I've been thinking a lot since joining this forum, and while I am aware our situations are all different, I'd like to ask for your insights on my plan for the future with uBPD mother, because I found that writing everything down, but also reading your stories and answers, help a lot in decreasing the impacts of my own biases and patterns. 

I am now back in my own house, and have somewhat healed my mind and made "peace" with the fact that my uBPD mother will never change. A couple months back, she took her own mother in her house and it ended up in a big drama that drew in my brother and me as saviors, as well as many of my aunts as prosecutors, while my mother was the victim. I tried to fix the issue by having my mother takes responsibility for her feelings and finding compromises and at the very least, I tried to persuade her to talk with my aunts. This didn't soothe her, so she brought my brother in, and he basically .. threw my grandmother out of the house and told (scream) my aunts to shove it. My grandmother now leave with another aunt. And drama is "resolved".

During that time, my own uBPD mother told me she was sorry about the kind of mother she has been, and she showed sign of wanting to change. My brother had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and she said she thought she had it too, showing that she knew something was off with her. At this time, I didn't know of BPD, and I encouraged her to seek help. For the first time ever, she got into therapy.. she went once or twice, then stoped. I thought, though, that she had truly changed. She came to help me after I hurt my back pretty badly and while she was still very intense with my daughter (she wanted to sleep with her and was just very attention seeking), there was no outbursts (although now I realize there was also no direct confrontation). This is why I ended up going to her house, I thought things could improve but the proximity just brought everything back.

Now I realize she had just propped me up, painted me as a hero because of the emotional help I provided with the previous crisis with my grandmother and at her house, I was basically devaluated because I was taking space and telling her not to do things with my children, etc.

Since I have left, I've been the big person, meaning I didn't place blame on her, thanked her for her help, and said I left to preserve our relationship. Since then, I have received some texts when she says she understands followed by her basically disowning me. But in all this she says she will be a grandmother to my children and she demands that I give her news of them.

Most recently, she demanded to talk with them via messenger and I ignored her message because I didn't feel ready.  I lied the next day saying I hadn't seen it, but that anyway it wasn't a good day and that we should give ourselves some time. She hasn't answered yet. She is hurt but in a way, and no matter if it is the silence treatment or not, she is respecting my request of space. She did try to engage my brothers in the fight, but to my surprise, they both didn't. My oldest brother did tell me I was a bit rough leaving without a phone call, but when I told him I wasn't interested in discussing my relationship with our mother, he backed off and said he loved me and that he wouldn't get involved. My other brother didn't brought the subject when we talked, and I thanked him for it. He said he loved me. I have work a lot, in the past two years, in developing a relationship with them that did not include my mother (by basically never discussing her) and I think it paid off, and there is nothing she can do to break our current bond. 

Now I see a new dynamic slowly establishing itself : she feels entitled to see her grandchildren. She wants nothing to do with me, but she will be civil as long as I meet her demands. But she has no leverage, not anymore. I am not scared to lose my brothers, I do not need money, nor anything from her, really.  I am basically free.

The thing is : I have absolutely no interest in her seeing my children if she plans on making it a love competition. I have no interest in her grooming them to meet her emotional needs and I have no interest in faking it. But I also don't want to go full no contact. Low contact would be my first choice right now.

I value integrity, authenticity and emotional responsibility.

Based on our current situation (not talking but her making recurrent demands (not request, demands) to hear from my children (it's funny how she phrases it though, like they aren't my children but also hers), I am not sure how to proceed. Should I annonce low contact?

I am thinking I will have, at some point, to write something about what I have realized and what the boundaries will be.

How did you guys do it? Any of you had any chance opening a direct dialogue about it? Or did it just sneak in, a little bit at a time? Did you do it via writings? Phone call? I don't know, I guess I'd like to hear your stories, if you'd like to share them with me, about how you came to establish boundaries and basically how you did it.

Thank you all for reading my novel 

[Riv3rW0lf]

Note to self: this post is a good example of me trying to buy myself more time before having to confront her in a way that I hope will be the best way possible to mitigate the depression and crisis that will follow this setting of boundaries. My uBPDm makes a lot of suicidal threats... Best way to reel us in, as we never know when will be the real one.

[Couscous]

Note to self: this post is a good example of me trying to buy myself more time before having to confront her in a way that I hope will be the best way possible to mitigate the depression and crisis that will follow this setting of boundaries. My uBPDm makes a lot of suicidal threats... Best way to reel us in, as we never know when will be the real one.

My mother has never made suicide threats but the last time I visited her and stood up to her she drove off into the night and didn’t come home until 3 AM, and I was beside myself the entire time imagining the worst.

The two most helpful pieces of advice I have heard about how to handle suicide threats is: 1. Calling 911 when someone makes a threat and: 2. Accepting that if someone really intends to kill themselves that there is nothing you can do to stop them.
 

[Riv3rW0lf]

The two most helpful pieces of advice I have heard about how to handle suicide threats is: 1. Calling 911 when someone makes a threat and: 2. Accepting that if someone really intends to kill themselves that there is nothing you can do to stop them.

It's rarely a direct threat, more like a : "When stepfather will die, I think I will kill myself." She said that many times, especially when I don't call enough. And sometimes, even when I did call lots, in a way to hear that I will be there for her and she won't be alone. Our stepfather is very sick and it is a matter of months now I would say. She goes completely quiet and then she cries to my brother saying she is depressed and she wants to die. Then my brother calls me to tell me I have to talk to her because he is scared she will kill herself. I see the pattern but it's just ... Suicidal threats are very hard to quantify. 

[Methuen]

She came to help me after I hurt my back pretty badly and while she was still very intense with my daughter (she wanted to sleep with her and was just very attention seeking),

This part jumped out at me - her need to be “close” by sleeping with her.  I can also guarantee my mom did this too, although back then I didn’t know anything about bpd, and since our first baby was colicky, probably wouldn’t have thought anything about it.  

Intent is important here.  Is she sleeping with your daughter to calm her, or, to meet her own emotional needs?  If it’s the latter, that is a big red flag.  

Others on this forum have used restrictive access, setting it up so that yourself or your H would also be present, and the child is never left alone with them.

I can’t imagine how I could have managed that with my mom living in the  same town.  Oh my…just thinking about it…

Should I annonce low contact?

Just my opinion, but no.  This would just initiate a conflict that would never end, and a power drama for her to focus on.  

Much more effective to take the quieter  approach.  

The closest we came to anything like this was when we decided my mom couldn’t drive our kids anymore.  We just engineered things quietly every time to prevent this from happening.  It resolved itself when they were old enough to get their driver’s licenses, so we had to manage that for many years.  

Thankfully we found a daycare that did school drop offs and pick ups.  

If I had declared to mom that she would not be driving our kids it would have been damaging in so many ways.  BPD’s have no emotional skin and cannot recover from that kind of hurt.

When they are hurt, the drama escalates.

My approach tends to be to avoid conflict , rather than to confront her, or act to feed  the drama. I would rather try to starve, or prevent drama.  That’s just me.

Just my thoughts.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Intent is important here.  Is she sleeping with your daughter to calm her, or, to meet her own emotional needs?  If it’s the latter, that is a big red flag.  

It was definitely for her own needs. She was leaving the next day and she said something along the line that it was for my daughter because she wouldn't be able to say goodbye to her the next morning and my daughter would surely miss her (she really needs my daughter to be all about her). but my daughter was fine. it was the like the fourth time she had actually met her grandmother in person. She couldn't visit for two years because of COVID as our frontier was closed. My daughter has no attachment whatsoever to her. so I said, no she is perfectly fine. You can read her her story but you are not sleeping in her bed with her. My husband was right there, and my mother doesn't know him too well so she said fine and didn't make a big deal out of it. She still keeps her guard and perfect face when he is there.

This tendency she has to put her emotions on my three years old is the reason why I need to set boundaries. We have to move back in our home province soon because of my husband's work, which will bring us much closer to my uBPDm. Still three hours away, but after living 10hours away from her, she said many times that it wasn't much. She mentioned wanting to see them once a month at a minimum, and I know she will try to have them at her house. Once a month is too much, I want to go low contact.

The way we left things makes it hard to not annonce low contact.

Yesterday I had this idea of using her own texts against her. It got so bad recently that I just left, and many things were already said in our relationship ( I didn't talk to her for six months after my daughter was born because of all the emotional mess it brought in our relationship). You are right in saying they don't get back from this kind of hurt because I can tell I am always just a step away from total disowning. But she wants my children...

She wrote me she wouldnt be a mother to me anymore but just a grandmother, that she would never help me anymore because I hurt her too much. Usually I would have felt guilty but I didn't and never replied, but to send her a link about BPD, in the hope that she would keep on with her therapy. I am pretty sure she thought I was talking about myself because then she wrote me she would always be my mother and she would come by my house to play with my children (which gave me shivers). I think she also understood that I was ready to cut all ties with her, so she took back the disowning to not lose access to my children.

 I was thinking of writing her something along the line of : you are absolutely right, physical and emotional distance is needed for both our mental health. You will be welcome to visit your grandchildren, provided husband and I agree. I will expect respect and calm, we will not discuss anyone else in the family ever again. Something like that... I am french so I won't translate it all but basically, I agree to what she said herself two weeks ago and to the disowning...

I am expecting drama but I really can't have her around my children. She uses them against me and they are so little, it's just... Wrong on so many levels. My fear is the depression that will follow.

You are right that not anoncing low contact would bring less immediate drama and hurt, but at the same time, I am wondering if I really want to be dealing with the constant tiptoeing and stress entailed by hiding and manipulating things around her as to not get constant crisis mode. I can see why not anoncing, I keep delaying sending the letter... At the same time... I don't want her to become my responsibility, I have already given her my whole childhood... I feel like that's enough...

Thank you Methuen, hearing your point of view kind of showed me that in my case, to be able to let it go.. I think I need to annonce.  Else I feel stuck in a loop where I need to constantly think about her and her needs, when what I really want is think about my children and my husband.

[Couscous]

My mother is also trying to co-opt my children, as is my sister. And I fear my French MIL is trying to do the same. She ‘accidentally’ referred to herself as ‘maman’ last time we visited… Because of this I am going to drastically minimize contact my kids have with their grandmothers and my sister, including phone/video chats.

Although this is probably not a longterm solution, but what I have done first with my mother and then with my sister, was to announce a ‘temporary’ hiatus which I have continued to extend. I left the time frame open ended and I blamed it on the tension in our relationship instead of blaming it on their behavior. I have continued to allow video chats with my kids on their birthdays with me supervising, and I plan to make these calls much shorter in future. I think my mother has now got the message that I no longer am interested in her being an active part of her grandchildren’s lives.

For me, the ideal solution would be to get to a point where I have drastically reduced my reactivity around my mother so that I can stand her presence without getting easily triggered. Then I could imagine visiting her once a year for about two days (she lives abroad). We would stay in a hotel and meet only in public places, and do some kind of kid-friendly activity.

How are you thinking of handling her future visits? Will you leave the house while your husband supervises the visits? I personally do not trust my mother to be alone with my husband as she has said things to him that have undermined our parenting decisions.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi again Riv3rW0lf,

Perhaps this article would be helpful, Behaviors: Splitting

Some of what you have described reminds me of the topic in this article. I think you are very wise to not let your mom sleep with your D.

My uBPDm watched my niece from birth until about 4 years old when my sister was working full time. There always seemed to be a lot of competition between my sister and uBPDm during that time. My niece was confused as to who was her mom and who was grandma. Our mom died when my niece was about 4 years old, and there was a lot of quietness and withdrawn behavior in her for years. She was a very happy baby but changed as Grammy was watching her. My sister couldn't believe that our mom had affected this little child so much, but when emotional needs and enmeshment takes place between a BPD and a child, it is hard to comprehend. My niece is now 15 and doing much better, but it has taken a lot of encouragement for her to share her emotions and feelings. I still believe that having our uBPDm affected her, like it did my siblings and I growing up with our mom.

 
Wools

[Notwendy]

I don't think there's a way to have the boundaries you wish for without it having some consequences in terms of drama. I also have felt as if I am pushed into saying something and the reaction from my mother is difficult. I have also tried avoiding saying something, but my mother tends to push boundaries and keep at them until I have to say something.

The Karpman triangle has helped me to not take her response as personally, but it's uncomfortable and difficult regardless. She takes victim perspective, sees me as the persecutor and then becomes verbally abusive. She also then might rally people in her circle to take her side against me. The benefit to her for taking victim perspective is that, a victim is not responsible- they are the victim after all, and so the blame goes to me.

I've been "disowned" and then "reowned". Over time, I have realized that my role to my mother is to be useful to her. In a way, it's fortunate she's not interested in hands on mother tasks as there isn't pressure to involve her in that, but she also wants the grandchildren to be "hers".

Saying "no" to her is very tough. On a more recent situation, she expressed wanting to move closer to me so she could "see her grandchildren" more. Yes, that is understandable but the children are grown and aren't home as much. When they are home on breaks, that is our family time. Each time we do visit her, it's drama, she's unhappy, verbally abusive and it's difficult. I realized that I need the physical distance to minimize this kind of thing. So, I basically said no, and she responded with very mean statements back. It was stressful to do this, I didn't want to be in that position, but I had to say it.

I would say that saying "no" to her results in such responses, and this is why we have walked on eggshells with her and feared these responses.

It was easy to supervise their visits when the kids were younger, as my mother has no interest in changing diapers, or fixing meals, or driving, or any of that.  My dad loved to read stories and she was with him while he did that. He would also play games with them. They always visited together.

It was at about the early teens when she began to enlist them as emotional support. She used to confide to me as a teen, too much information. I noticed she'd take one of the children to be alone with her. She would not do anything terrible, but it would be at this point where she'd begin to tell them something she made up about me, and then tell them to keep it secret. That's how she triangulates people. She also asks personal questions, such as if they are interested in a boy or girl at school. These may sound innocent but then presses for details. She wants the emotional tie of sharing personal information but doesn't have boundaries with this. The kids didn't feel comfortable with this so they avoided these situations.

Once they were teens, with their own phones, I didn't give her their numbers but then she sneaks behind my back to call people she knows to get them. She thinks she's being sneaky- pulling one over on me, when she calls them directly. Now they know they don't have to answer if they don't want to and also how to avoid too personal questions.

[Riv3rW0lf]

How are you thinking of handling her future visits? Will you leave the house while your husband supervises the visits? I personally do not trust my mother to be alone with my husband as she has said things to him that have undermined our parenting decisions.

I have given a lot of thoughts to your questions, only to realize I am stuck in a loop. I still haven't send a letter, I have no idea how to breach the subject, I have no idea how I want things to be in the future. I am like a boomerang that keeps coming back to the default position, but at least, with every throw, I feel I am going a little further away. I see something new and I just hope this new thing will be enough to pull me out of it.

My uBPDm is still mad at me for the first time I left to leave with my dad. And I realize, Methuen is right. They don't get back up from that kind of hurt, and so, I think there is just no way we will ever be able to get out of our cycle. She wants to help and love me, but she does not trust me, because I have abandoned her in the past. And I have done it again when my daughter was born, and again recently. She just does not trust me and so, if I am anything less than admirative of her, she attacks me, guiltrips me or is in competition with me, so I abandon her...again. I feel, I know, she doesn't want to hurt me, she sometimes has those enlightened moment where she does something and stops by herself and says : no I don't want to hurt my daughter. But they just don't last... And it's often after the hurt is already done.

I have no idea how to even write her anything. I hate it, this whole effing disorder. I know she is hurt, but she will keep hurting me. I read on splitting and now I feel sorry for her. And I know I will hurt her. I know I am not responsible and I still have to put boundaries but I hate that I have to hurt her again. And at the same time: I hate her. So bad. I am so angry right her. But then I somehow have to be the biggest person because I love her and I can see the complexity of it, while she can't. It is so manipulative. There can be NO authenticity in our relationship, ever! I am not allowed to be myself. Ever! And because it is a illness,  because she is not truly a bad person, I have to play along with it somehow. It's just ... I needed to vent here.

So will I supervise... Will I leave it to my husband... I have no idea right now. I don't think she could turn my husband,  he really doesn't like her. He hates her intensity, he hates that she hurt me, and I think he would remain cordial but would never give her any sort of credit. But then, I have no idea what kind of power she has to get into other people's head than my own. She is very charismatic... And she is smarter than she looks, I know that now.

What happened for you? The undermining? Did she somehow convince him of something? Or just questioned him until he lost trust in his own judgement? 

[Couscous]

Riverwolf,

My therapist keeps reminding me that the place of not knowing what to do is actually a healthy place to be. When you feel supremely confident in your decisions you are usually acting from place of reactivity and can make impulsive decisions which you then later regret, which then triggers shame, and it's a downward spiral. But it is a very anxiety provoking place to be, to be sure. I think it can a long time to figure out what the best course of action to take is in situations like this.

I am rereading Understanding the Borderline Mother and one part that really stood out to me is how pity prevents separation, and that feeling pity is the worst possible reaction to the self-defeating behavior of the borderline waif because it legitimizes feelings of hopelessness. It's OK to have sympathy though. And the distinction between pity and sympathy is that feeling sorry about the "it" that happened is sympathy, while feeling sorry for the "you" to whom it happened is pity. For some reason I have never really pitied my mother but I have struggled with this with this with both my brothers, and recently I have made a real effort to resist feeling sorry for them and to basically put them into God's hands, it has made a HUGE difference for me.

As for your question about my mother's attempt to undermine our parenting (and destabilize our marriage), it's not an easy question to answer without your knowing a lot of the backstory, but suffice it to say, she knows exactly what to say in order to plant little seeds of doubt in your mind, either about yourself or other people, without your even realizing it. The end result was that my husband and I got into an argument after our video call with her, and only much later was I able to trace the cause of our argument to the "innocent" question she had asked my husband after I left the room for a few minutes, which made me realize just how dangerous this woman really is, and how I must always be on super high alert and never lower my guard around her, ever. My brother even once told me that I don't realize how dangerous our mother is. 

Since you are Jordan Peterson fan, here is a video of him discussing BPD: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=320733.0

[Notwendy]

she knows exactly what to say in order to plant little seeds of doubt in your mind, either about yourself or other people, without your even realizing it.

Couscous, my mother does this too and she tries to do this with my husband. And after she says something she adds "don't tell NW about this" as she claims she's only concerned about me.

Fortunately, my H feels uncomfortable around her when she does this and walks away but it's another reason I don't want her alone with my kids. At this point, they know what BPD is and don't take anything she says seriously.


She's said things about me to her relatives and unfortunately they have believed her. She's done this about other people with me. She didn't like that I am close to the relatives on my father's side so she's said these small digs against them to me. Sadly, you don't unhear it and it does make you wonder. However, she's also lies frequently and  I can't trust what she says to me.

[Couscous]

NotWendy, I have to say that when I hear these kinds of stories I feel like doing a complete family cut-off, even though it looks like your mother hasn't been successful in her attempts to co-opt your kids. The issue to me is that she's still trying...

I am honestly struggling to see any compelling reasons for daughters of divorced or widowed BPD mothers to have to endure the never-ending game playing and/or outright abuse by their mothers. What value do these grandmothers add to our children's lives? Our children are nothing more than pawns to them. I just can't come up with a single reason for why I would let them be used in such a way.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Thank you Couscous for sharing what your therapist told you. It helped to recognize the positive aspect of this neverending loop I was in (I ended up sending an email (yay!), more about it later). It does bring on a lot of anxiety, but you are right in saying that at least I am not reacting.

Our conversation about turning the other cheek this morning really helped in my decision and in how I would phrase my email. I decided to have someone I trust read it to make sure there was no unconscious attempt to hurt her back. I used a mix of validation (of her feeling of pain/hurt/anger), I appealed to her heart (by saying I know she loves me), I acknowledge her needs (to be a grandmother) and I ended with my own need which is stability in our relationship. I didn't say anything about her and how she acts, and only mentioned the intensity of the relationship and how it seems to break down/reconstruct itself really fast, which is a reference to the splitting she does with me all the time. I said that I thought physical and emotional distance were needed to keep our relationship stable. I finally used her own word "against" her by saying we would welcome her only this summer for a short visit and that otherwise I would call her on some weekends while stepfather is there. I told her I would call her before January 15, date at which we will be moving.

I tried to be assertive, but without hitting back. In the end I am happy with the letter, because I really needed to express my basic need (stability) and my values (authenticity and integrity). This was my way of being true to myself. I kind of anonced low contact, in the objective of preserving the relationship, so it's not a full abandonment.

Which brings me to your last post ... I think, deep down, it comes to our own basic needs and values. I am not yet ready to go no contact, because I value the empathy I developped by just being her daughter. Despite my anger, my hate, my fear, my guilt, my shame... When there are crisis like that, as hard as they are, I try to see them as occasions of growth, because every time, I learn something new about myself, if that makes sense.

As for my children, they will never be alone with her and I will make sure they are protected. But I think they have a right to know their grandmother. She is not evil, even if she does cruel things sometimes.. like using something deeply personal about me that she knew to hurt my father that didn't know. Yes, she does say things about me in my back too, to hurt other people or just to mess with our heads and proving she is the center of the family somehow, and that she gets to decide what we know about each other. I still don't really understand her and probably never will. And tonight, I am fine with it. Because I finally understand what boundaries are and that she does not even need to know my boundaries... I can just apply them, without her knowing where the "no" comes from. I don't need to justify myself, I am, after all, a full grown adult.

I think I can actually use her to teach my children about myself, and about themselves. It helps to know where you come from, at least that's what my intuition is telling me right now when I ask myself why I even bother.

I don't think there is a right or wrong way to deal with our relationship with our mother... We just have to stay true to ourselves, to our God (thank you Notwendy and Couscous for the other topic that brought up Christianity for this other piece of the puzzle I needed to read).  For some people, no contact does it, for others it just doesn't seem quite right and I think that to find the strength to keep them in our life, we somehow have to figure out the value we are trying to honor, because it's the part of ourselves that forces us to keep them around. I am still not totally sure why, maybe I will know later down the path of my healing...

And yes, I did know this video of JBP . After leaving my mother's house, I was a mess, and this video is the reason I made peace with me decision to leave her house with nothing else than a note.

Thank you so very much for your presence on this forum ! It really helped ! Really.. so many pieces came together, reading all your thoughts and story, and I am so relieved that I was finally able to put in words how I felt and send it.

[Notwendy]

Being NC or LC both has their challenges. It's an individual decision. I thought I had a good relationship with my father on my part, I valued it. The kids loved him and they had a good relationship with him. Had I even considered NC with her, it would have had to include him too. I didn't want to do that. In addition, I didn't really understand BPD until later.

When he passed away, my mother was by then, elderly. I didn't think it was the right thing to do for me- NC and felt LC was a better choice.

We also live with some distance between us, which I realized is one reason I can keep in contact as it's mainly phone calls and when I can visit. However, other situations are different, and so we need to choose what is best for us, and that may be different from what someone else may choose.

[Riv3rW0lf]

I agree with Notwendy, and I would like to add that, as our healing journey continues, our needs and values will change over time. And so, on my end, I know I am trying to stay flexible that someday it might end up in no contact. But right now, low contact seems to meet my current needs. I think it's a question we all have to answer for ourselves.

I can certainly understand no contact. This is also something that attracts me because of the complete independance it brings, but right now, I am trying to meet that specific need with hard boundaries. If it doesn't work, and if it brings too many crisis, then maybe no contact will be necessary.

[Couscous]

Riverwolf, I admire your courage in taking this step with your mother.

Notwendy, if you had known about BPD when your kids were little, how might that have affected the decision on how much contact to have with your parents?

My therapist now thinks that I would benefit from going NC with my entire family, at least for a period of time. He said that there are two schools of thought about this amongst therapists, but that in his experience his clients make much faster progress in therapy when they go NC. Mind you, this was not always his position but he seems to have been quite taken aback by how my father turned on me the way he did, and now believes that NC makes a lot of sense for me.

But I do agree that everyone’s situation and mothers are different, and that there is no one size fits all approach. Husbands also play a role too in helping enforce boundaries I think, and this something my H doesn’t help me with.
 

[Riv3rW0lf]

Couscous,

If your whole family keeps you and forces you in the triangle via abuse, then it is like triple the pain. I am sorry your father also turned on you. My courage to annonce low contact with uBPDm, I think, stemmed a bit from the fact that both my brothers and stepfather told me they would not engage and would mind their own business. Maybe because I am the only daughter, and the youngest... My brothers feel they have to protect me just as much as her, and I found they have a lot of trouble turning against me. So they often don't meddle between my mother and I. Their own link has been completely broken by her though.

All this to say, if my brothers were also in the triangle, forcing me back in, and turning on me, then I would think about No Contact much more. Somehow, as crazy as my family is (my husband's words), I still find some support within it, so I feel I can still "manage" her.

[Notwendy]

Couscous, I think I would have had the tools to understand it better and deal with it better. At that point, I still was reacting to her and "on the drama triangle". Rather than lean more towards NC, there may have been less drama on my part.

As to contact with the kids when they were little, it wasn't much of an issue as the "work" of raising kids didn't appeal to her. So being supervised served her needs. She also didn't have much patience with them and ended up sitting on the couch just watching us. The drama was more with me as she likes to be taken care of.

I think it would have helped to understand the relationship dynamics between my parents and maybe I would not have tried so had to "rescue" and help and fix things.

My father was a major positive person in my children's lives and bonded with them. They loved him and were attached to him. For this reason alone, I would not have cut contact with my mother because it would require going NC with him as well.

As far as the kids are- I knew I would not ever leave them alone with my mother. There was no way I'd allow her to treat them like she did her own children. She liked to say she visited the grandchildren and helped me, but it was more like her being an observer of us.

Our attachment was mainly to my father and so knowing about BPD would not have changed the decision to have contact.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Notwendy and Couscous,

This is a question for you two.

Did you notice if your own behavior, as a mother, changed depending whether you were in full contact/low contact/period of no contact with your BPDm?

[Riv3rW0lf]

Just wanted to add that even if I said the question was for Couscous and Notwendy, please, everybody feel welcome to answer. It's just because it seems I am most often writing to them, but anyone is welcome to join the conversation any time !   

[Couscous]

What I noticed is that after going LC is that I would have an emotional hangover that lasted for days after the rare occasions that I did talk to her. This would distract me from being able to be fully present with my children.

I would also find myself feeling angry at whatever sibling she happened to mention (it’s always a piece of ‘news’ that would cast the sibling in a negative light) during the conversation. It was like what NW said, I couldn’t ‘unhear’ what she said about my siblings, even though I could see exactly what she was doing.

[Notwendy]

I don't think changing the contact had a direct influence on how I am as a mother to my children. Doing the personal work on co-dependency and the 12 step groups made positive changes in all my relationships and it all occurred over the same time period.

I could see how the behavioral patterns in my FOO were an influence in my marriage, parenting, and other relationships and felt motivated to change that.

There were several of them, each would take a long time to elaborate on, but I learned a lot of co-dependent behaviors growing up, and people pleasing, and walking on eggshells and a fear of people being angry at me. I didn't know how to stand up for myself. I didn't think that was setting a good example for my children.

As far as relating to my mother, I feared that if I wasn't good to her, my kids might think it's OK to discard an elderly parent- and it's not. However, as they got older, they could see where she is difficult and disordered. She hasn't been able to hold it together with them all the time, but their reaction to her is different from mine. One difference is that they have grown up with better boundaries.

Once I understood the importance of boundaries, I could encourage my children to "trust their boundaries" with other people and that it is OK to stand up for themselves. I had to be able to model this for them as well.

Choosing LC was part of this process. The LC isn't as much about frequency of interacting with her but that I am less reactive emotionally to her- and so less of a participant in the drama. I still feel I have to stay on guard with her, and yes, the "emotional hangover" happens. There's still a sadness at the relationship- because of the disorder.

My kids are old enough to know what BPD is and I have explained it to them. I have been open with them that it's a challenge for me. I am open about going to 12 step groups. I let them know that it is OK to seek out help/counseling.

[Riv3rW0lf]

There were several of them, each would take a long time to elaborate on, but I learned a lot of co-dependent behaviors growing up, and people pleasing, and walking on eggshells and a fear of people being angry at me. I didn't know how to stand up for myself. I didn't think that was setting a good example for my children.

This is the next step, figuring out how I was impacted from all of it. It's interesting because, even answering to Couscous, I wrote down something along the line of : what are you hoping to achieve by bringing out this story with her, it won't change anything, she is mentally ill... but I somehow just couldn't bring myself to be direct about what I was seeing. Which tells me that really, I tiptoe around a lot more people than just my uBPDm. I guess it is ok to choose our words carefully, but as long as we come from a place of love and understanding, then why the scare of being truthful? I am scared of being completely truthful.

Thankfully Methuen is lovingly straightforward. Were you always like this Methuen, or is it something you had to develop overtime?

Also, I can really relate to your choices Notwendy, I have it a lot of thoughts and this is also my aim by being LC right now... Modeling someone, for my children, who stand up for herself, so that they know they can do it too. I also don't want them to think it is ok to discard an elderly parent. This is what is terrible with BPD though... As hurt as I am, I think my uBPDm is conscious of what she is doing (pushing the people she loves away) but she just can't bring herself to stop. This must be even worst. But I also don't want to victimize her. When I really can't manage anymore, I will go NC, but as long as I can manage... Then I will try to be the model I never had, for my kids.

All this to say, I also have those moments where I wonder what I have done wrong to be treated like that, and it helps to remember : she is ill. It wasn't me, it was her illness. She did things to me I would never ever ever do to my own children, just to hurt me, even sometimes physically. My daughter cried once while so brushed her hair and I hated that I had to keep doing it, I tried to be super gentle and finally just had to stop because I got so anxious. Now I thankfully found a way where she doesn't feel a thing but just to say ... You never deserved any of the thing she did to you, Couscous, none of us did. And you were a daddy's girl, possibly because he was treating you better than she was. None of this is on you. None.

Now that we are adults though, it is definitely on us to not follow in our mother's footsteps and to break the cycle. And we are already doing it , every day !

Edit : oops, I replied to the wrong board, this was meant for Couscous board ! Sorry !

 

[Notwendy]

I think we all have emotional responses due to being raised with a BPD mother. The teen age years brought out some of this for me. Teens are moody. They get mad and say things. I think if we haven't had a teen ager get angry at us, we probably aren't setting limits

But having a teen get snarky when told they can't go out because they didn't do their homework is a totally normal situation. Still, such an exchange was close enough to the exchanges between me and my mother when I was a child, it was scary. I was afraid my kids would feel the same way about me as I did about my mother.

But it wasn't the same. I wasn't abusive or cruel. The teen snarky reactions were milder than my mother's and then they got over it.

My BPD mother still contacts my children directly sometimes. They know how to deal with it. On their part, it doesn't impact them much. They aren't interested in a close relationship with her but prefer to be cordial and polite. If they see me have an emotional reaction to her, my oldest will sometimes be critical of it- saying "It's not that big a deal Mom".

I could react to this as if they were taking her side, oh no, but actually- it's not a big deal to them because they have boundaries and aren't as affected by her emotional responses. One thing that does help is that she doesn't live close enough to visit frequently as frequent visits would be more difficult. But if she calls or texts them once in a while, they aren't bothered by it.

[Riv3rW0lf]

My BPD mother still contacts my children directly sometimes. They know how to deal with it. On their part, it doesn't impact them much. They aren't interested in a close relationship with her but prefer to be cordial and polite. If they see me have an emotional reaction to her, my oldest will sometimes be critical of it- saying "It's not that big a deal Mom".

Do you find it helpful for you when they notice your emotional reactions and "call you out on it"? I would think that might actually help sometimes.

I am just now starting to realize that while my mother see the world through her illness, I see mine through my abuse. For example, I tend to see more within what my brother writes to me, which cause me to feel guilty and lash out at him. While my husband doesn't see anything wrong with it. It helps ground me back before I answer to have him aware of the situation so he can tell me what he sees, which is often not a big deal.

The thing with BPD is that the issue is rarely just the pwBPD, but also the overall family dynamics it created... Which I was a part of for a long time. And still am, although now I am more aware of my own tendencies.

[Methuen]

Does it ever seem to anyone else that their mother has trained them to be a mind reader, and even to feel what they are feeling?  
You know…so tuned into people that we can recognize their struggles far in advance of others, or in the case of our bpd family member - we may know what they are thinking or feeling even before they tell us?

We’ve had conversations about being empaths on this board before.  

Also a very good point from Riverwolf about  how our SO can call us out on our reactions and make us more self aware.

I am curious though if being raised by a bpd mother whose moods were so unpredictable, so black and white, and so scary and scarring, somehow helped us develop an intuitive skill to understand people…

To paraphrase how I understand Riverwolfs post, I think she was talking about how she gets her H’s input to a text received from her mom, to help gauge what her own reaction to it should be.  NotWendy also mentioned that her son can check her reaction. I also almost always get my H to help me with my mom’s texts.  He can definitely help me to check my reaction.  I am also finding that I am teaching him to read between the lines. He is so darn literal he misses all the between the line stuff.  But I’m thinking now its probably a gift…

Learning to not be reactive to her has been part of my recovery journey. It’s definitely a process that I get a lot of practice with.  

[Riv3rW0lf]

I am curious though if being raised by a bpd mother whose moods were so unpredictable, so black and white, and so scary and scarring, somehow helped us develop an intuitive skill to understand people…
  

I do think I am overempathetic to other people, compared to my husband who is, like yours, very litteral. We are a good team for that reason, we balance each other out, in some ways.

But I am starting to question if I understand it well or through my abuse now. What I mean is... I am empathetic and tuned into others feelings, but I think I am not always right as to the reason behind their emotion, and I tend to try to correct it because I feel somehow responsible for it. At the same time, I can get totally  emotionally numb when it comes to my myself. I've had a panic attack once and I didn't even feel I was stressed out in the moments leading to it. It just sneaked on me.

Also... Having my daughter lead me to read on the overly sensitive children and high need babies. She was just ... So much. So anxious, so sensitive to sounds, lights. She was born highly sensitive to everything and she didn't tolerate anyone else arms but mine. She never took a bottle, never took a pacifier, she is still very difficult when it comes to texture. She will find the tiniest bit of peppers into any given meal, and she has stress related eczema. The second she hurt her brother without meaning it, even if I stay calm and tell her it's ok, she bursts in tears, it's just too much. She never hurt the cat. And she is 0 to 100 in 1 second. I've had this feeling when she was born that being in daycare would break her, so I decided to move to a part time position to stay home with her. I am happy to say that she is very autonomous now, and she seems tuned into others as well. She goes to the other kids and she makes friends easily. She is very happy, she makes jokes..m she is not at all withdrawn, which is what I was.. withdrawn and silent.

All this to say... I wonder if I was not just an overly sensitive child who got disrupted by the abuse. I think it might be a genetic predisposition, high sensitivity that is. A genetic predisposition to BPD.

My uBPDm certainly exhibits many traits of oversensitivity and she also is an empath. She reads other feelings very very well, which is why she is so good at manipulating people. Also, She assumes in an extreme manner, that she caused the bad emotion and react by making it even worst. She makes everything and everyone about herself. So part of me believe that when she was younger, she was a highly sensitive little girl, who got deeply hurt by adults. She was sexually assaulted many times by her uncle and then discarded by her father when she brought it up. She could feel everything deeper than everyone else, but no one helped. So she got stuck in a pain loop, and developped BPD.

That's my feel of it anyway...

I exhibited BPD tendencies for a while too, and I remember the pain, being out of my body, seeing myself react without being able to do anything about it.  I remember feeling everyone else's feelings and feeling powerless and not knowing anymore what was mine and theirs, so I would take drugs to numb myself. What saved me, personnally, is I went to study engineering and developped my rational thinking. I think that for me, this acted as a cure, a link between my brain and my heart. Coupled with my father's self help seminars, it lifted me from the BPD loop.. that's my feel for it anyway.

But I still find it very hard to decouple my own feelings and the feelings of others and I don't quite trust myself enough in the sense where... I don't think I really know the real cause of their feelings and now, I try to ask, instead of assume. Because we have similar stories here, I think the assumptions often turn out true though, because it's like we all developped similar coping mechanisms from having dealt with a BPDm.

Just my thoughts and feels. I am missing many pieces still !  

[Couscous]

My mother has ‘diagnosed’ herself as an HSP which she believes makes her entitled to special treatment. She gets overwhelmed by the emotions of others. She also is very skilled at reading people. I have noticed how anxious I get and how much pressure I feel to rescue and help my H feel better when he’s unhappy about something. Interestingly, my brothers and I stumbled upon the book the Highly Sensitive Person independently years before our mother did, and all three of us felt that we were HSPs.

Riverwolf, my niece was exactly like your daughter, and separation anxiety seemingly started with her at birth. My second child’s separation anxiety started at three months — he wouldn’t even stay with my H, but he outgrew it by 18 months.

[Riv3rW0lf]

I just wanted to update on this thread. I sent my letter, had someone read it to make sure it was clear of any blame. I validated her feeling, and offered to call her via FaceTime with my children before January 15. I also mentioned something about a visit this summer, like she had already proposed in her previous "reactive texts".

She texted me yesterday wishing me a good move, she thought I was probably stressed but wished me a good move anyway. (All white and nice...BUT she knows I am moving only in two weeks, so this was a good bye text charged with an underlying message only her daughter can feel and see).

I ignored the underlying message and replied with : it seems you want to talk with me. Have you read my email? We don't have to discuss it, I just want to know if you read it.

She said: yes

I said: are you and stepfather free this coming Sunday, we can call via FaceTime with the children.

She wrote back this morning : we are not available. (pictures of my daughter's toys I couldn't bring with me when I left because I didn't have enough space in the car). Those are all the things you left everywhere in the house. We will bring them to you someday.

(She is trying to gain control of when she will see us, and she makes the separation HER decision). This is the kind of things she used to do when I was a child, if I didn't agree or stood up to her, she would cut love from me, she would reject me and stop talking to me for days on end. So, it does hurt and I feel little Riverwolf softly crying inside, but now I know I can give myself the love I need. So I will go and bake some cookies instead of staying in my pain. And I will make an extra effort to have fun and play with my children.

In the end, it didn't escalate in a full open fight, so I am happy about that. My letter "worked".

As for the things... I will send my husband pick them up. It's our things and my daughter wants her toys. UBPDm will not get to decide when my daughter gets them back. She can leave them outside and not see us if she wants too, I don't give a s***, but I am not leaving the timing of her visit to OUR house up to her.

I replied: ok thank you! Have a nice day!  (What a normal person without my emotional baggage would have answered).

Thank you all for reading and being there !

Now, to those cookies...