Parent with BPD cannot give what they don't have

[BigOof]

From Understanding the Borderline Mother, Christine says in reference to trust and a stable sense of self, BPDs "cannot give what they do not have."

What other qualities does a parent with BPD lack you think they have a hard time teaching their children?

[eaglestar]

This strikes a cord with me, as I have been on this journey lately to understand what it is that my inner child needs from my mother, which she has not given me. It makes me feel guilty just to start thinking about this topic. I internally say "your mother gave you so, so much. She tutored you. She painstakingly taught you so much, and as a result, you were ahead of all the other kids in school. She spent so much time with you. She drove you places, watched TV shows you like, played board games with you, and now that she isn't living close by, she sends you food and buys you random things. How can you complain? Get over yourself." But there is a sort of emptiness to our relationship that is hard to quantify. Whatever it is that I'm seeking from my mother, that my inner child needs so much, it helps to frame it in the context of something she was incapable of giving.
I think the quality the relationship is missing is something like unconditional love. I don't know that she ever made me feel unconditionally loved. Not since I was a toddler and didn't know better. She sang me lullabies that talked about unconditional love and I believed it. At around 4 or 5, I started to realize that love was transactional and not unconditional, though I didn't cognitively know that this was what I was learning. I just knew that my mother would not express love for me unless I checked off the right boxes. And as I got older, it became even harder to check off the right boxes, to the point where now, it is impossible. She has not expressed any love for me in years, even though she does do nice things for me. I think she does it out of obligation, or guilt for her foul behavior toward me and my wife, or for some other reason I don't understand. But regardless, I think the one thing I want from my mother, that she likely isn't able to give, is love. And the reason she likely can't give it is that I don't think she ever feels loved, herself, despite the fact that she actually *is* loved.

[Goldcrest]

Empathy was a big one for me. My mother would have a very angry response to my emotional distress, it annoyed her as she saw it as another demand. If I was afraid, hurt, sick, worried, she would get really rejecting because she found it a chore to soothe me, again a demand. I grew up with a similar sense of being overwhelmed by others and remember really struggling to accept that people could have a different opinion or thoughts to mine! It was my first dog who taught me all about caring for a sentient being and empathy. I really struggled at first owning a dog and got irritated by her puppy needs but slowly she taught me what it was to be loved unconditionally and to love from a place of caring. I came to adore doing all the care tasks for her, walking her, playing with her, feeding her. I never had children but owning a dog showed me I could be empathic and showed me the sheer joy in meeting the needs of another.

[Notwendy]

And the reason she likely can't give it is that I don't think she ever feels loved, herself, despite the fact that she actually *is* loved.

That's actually what I think is the issue with my BPD mother. She has constant emotional turmoil - and so that takes much of her emotional attention. There really isn't much left for anyone else.

In this sense, I feel sorry for her, because she can't perceive the good intentions of her family members. She filters things through her own emotional difficulties and perceives us as causing them.

[Riv3rW0lf]

This thread brought on a lot of distress in me and I was deep in thoughts for a few hours this morning... I decided to share the results of my thoughts...

The first time I read the initial post, I read it as "a mother cannot give a strong sense of self to her children because she lacks one" and it shook me. Yesterday I wrote on another thread I still didn't know if I had one. And I have two very young children. So it brought on a lot of distress.

Until I realize I do not agree with this statement. I don't think it is a mother's role to "give" a sense of self to her children. It is, however, a mother's role to not disrupt it. I think the development of the self is a natural biological and psychological phenomenon that occur as we get older, and that the abuse, the overwhelming fear, stress and guilt put on a child by a BPD mother disrupts this natural phenomenon.

It is important for me to point the difference because it gives back the power to the victim to fill themselves, and heal, and discover their true self, since this process does not require a mother. Couscous started a thread with great ressources to do that, and this is why we have therapy as well.

I wrote yesterday I feared that I just "filled myself with my husband strength and would revert back to my old weak self without him". I shared it with my husband earlier and he said : " the reason you became yourself with me is because I give you space, just as you give me space to be. You never tried to change me or control me, and I don't wish to change you, nor control you. This is who you are, I didn't build you, I merely let you discover yourself." And it makes sense. He gave me the love and acceptance and space and support I needed to finally be, and when I was, he didn't reject me, nor did he try to change me, he accepted me, which in turn helped me accept myself. And so... Even if I still carry trauma, I feel I somehow know now who I am.  I didn't need my mother for this, I needed someone, anyone !

Concerning unconditional love... What is it and how does one give it? How do we show love? By action, by words, by touch. When do we show love?

As a mother of two young kids, I know I feel love for them all the time, even when I get mad. And I do get mad. After telling 10 times of all different manner to a toddler to get into her bath, you get mad when they look you in the face and say NO ! Toddlers are always testing the limits. You keep your calm, but you feel mad. And the toddler feels it, they are tuned to you. The love gives place to anger, even if the love is still there, and the toddler learns that even mommy has limits. We all have limits. And the role of a mother is to provide safe boundaries for a toddler to experiment and find themselves without fear. But they NEED to know kindness, calm and respect don't come free and people have limits. Or society will teach them at a higher cost.

I am not sure I believe unconditional love exists. I believe it is possible for a parent to not like a child, on account of not having taught them proper boundaries. If you let your child disrespect you in their experimental period, and you let them push you around, you will create a narcissistic personality that can't respect other people boundary and you will question your love for them at some point. But this is not what happens in the case of a BPD mother.

Did our BPD mother really didn't love us, or is it more than they just don't know HOW to show love? I understood when I read the term "transactional love", it is an excellent term to describe how it felt for me too. There were no safe space to experiment, because the second I was off, love was taken out of the equation and so any misteps became very dangerous, very quick. I didn't have a safe space to experiment at home.

I think they don't know how to love. I think loving a child comes with very highly complex emotions about ourselves and about the child. You want to foster independance, without pushing them away. You are always walking a fine line, and anyone who stops to think about it too much (or just start googling) will find it bring anxiety awfully quick, especially if they are survivors themselves. Especially nowadays where just picking up a child is called abuse.

All this to say... I think what my own uBPDm couldn't give me is:

- A proper set of healthy boundaries. I had to teach myself. I got intimidated at school, I bullied my friend, I didn't know my limits and other people limits, which brought on a lot of stress and anxiety in social contexts.
- Self-care. I only brush my teeth because they showed us at school. A guy came in dressed up as a tooth an explain the importance of brushing teeth and that's when I started. I still have to fight myself to give proper care to my own body.  
- Definitely agree with the empathy. She didn't give me any enpathy. But now I have too much of it. I wonder, if a mother gives TOO much empathy, if the balance cannot be shift the other way, toward narcissism?

A very fine line.

I am not ready to admit she never loved me though. I think she loved me as a baby. I think that as I developped my "self" though, she stopped seeing who I was and she couldn't accept it. Because she is ill. Not because she doesn't love her child. But because it is impossible for her to let the process happen without feeling abandonnent and rejection. She cannot tolerate her child not being an extension of her because everyone that isn't her are either enemies (whenever they don't give in) or allies (if they feed her). It's black or white. If anything, they love their children so much that they want to keep them IN them... and some children will embrace that, to the cost of their own sanity.

Healthy love requires seeing and understanding the complexities of human emotions and accepting the other person for who they truly are by providing safe space to be.  

Unhealthy love is still love...

Just my thoughts. Discard at will, take what you like, reject the rest. We all need to find our own truth, the one that heals us.

Thank you for this thread, I got out of it with a stronger sense of self.

[zachira]

The most damaging quality my mother with BPD had as do other relatives with BPD had/have is an unstable sense of self. I feel like I never know whether I will get love bombed with over the board acts of generosity or ruthlessly abused depending on their moods of the moment. It has made it very difficult for me to trust people and allow healthy love into my life. I am learning to take my time to get to know people before I get close to them. I am hypervigilant about people being two faced: a person who impresses most people in public and is secretly abusive to those closest to them, while saying the most horrible lies about so many people who have been kind and generous to them. After my mother died, I wrote and thanked many of the people who never forgot her during all the years when she was ill, most of whom she regularly disparaged in private, no matter how generous and kind they were to her.

[Couscous]

They can’t model healthy self-soothing. That’s a big one.

[Methuen]

From Understanding the Borderline Mother, Christine says in reference to trust and a stable sense of self, BPDs "cannot give what they do not have."

What other qualities does a parent with BPD lack you think they have a hard time teaching their children?

Feeling safe (including emotionally safe).  It's hard to feel safe when we have to overthink every thought and action to prevent mother from seeing us as all "black".  Then inexplicably we are back to being the perfect daughter.  Love-bombing may happen.  But, when something next triggers her, and she needs a place to project, we are suddenly all black again.  Then comes the rage, the vengeance, the abuse.  And the cycle keeps repeating.  It's hard for any child to grow up feeling (emotionally) safe in that environment.

[eaglestar]

I think I struggle the most with dealing with other people's emotions, as others have mentioned. When people become unprofessional at work, I distance myself from them. I judge them as emotionally unstable, and don't think of them in the same way.  I had a supervisor once who was very, very emotionally unpredictable. I definitely felt the same kind of anxiety dealing with her as I do with my mother. I didn't know what to expect, and tried to do my best to be perfect in every way to avoid incurring her wrath. Even slight mistakes caused me to have a feeling of dread because I didn't know if it would cause her to explode.
Similarly, when my wife has a mood, or reacts emotionally to something, no matter how small, I have the urge to go hide in my office or find some excuse to leave the house. I don't want to be around her. I realize now that my strong aversion to dealing with others' emotions, is because of my mother's unpredictable explosions and days of silent treatment.

[Notwendy]

Me too, and especially angry people, and most of all, angry women.

I freeze up if someone speaks to me in an angry voice. It may not even be about me, and much of the time it's not- as I don't go around making people angry. But someone may be having a bad day and get short with people. I freeze out of fear when that happens.

[Couscous]

I’m reading a book called Love 2.0. The author contends that the first precondition for love is safety, which would mean that love is yet another thing that a BPD mother is unable to give. This would explain why it doesn’t feel to me like my mother really loves me, even though she professes to.

The first precondition is a perception of safety. If you assess your current circumstances as threatening or dangerous in any way, love isn’t a possibility for you at that moment. Indeed, your brain has been shaped by the forces of natural selection to be exquisitely attuned to threats. Your innate threat-detection system even operates outside your conscious awareness. You could be engrossed in conversation, or enjoying a blissful run in the woods, for instance, and still instantaneously spot that writhing snake on your path. Although true threats are rare, not everyone can trust the world this way. People who suffer from anxiety, depression, or even loneliness or low self-esteem perceive threats far more often than circumstances warrant. Sadly, this over alert state thwarts both positivity and positivity resonance.

https://www.traumasensitiveyoganederland.com/defining-love-todays-fast-paced-world-love-depends-shared-connection-safety-mutual-care/

[Notwendy]

Interesting article Couscous - as it mentions connections. Those small ( and big ) moments of connection between people. Even yesterday I was making small talk with the cashier in the grocery store. For me, finding some point of connection with someone else matters- and I think it's possible to do this- we are all humans, we all share common feelings of some sort.

To truly connect, we need to also be authentic. With my mother - her social persona is a conscious act. In her more private times, she mostly seems unhappy.

I have to admit, I struggled with being authentic as well. Growing up, positive attention from my parents seemed to be contingent on pleasing them, and so I thought I needed to be a people pleaser to be loved.

Looking back at one of my first dating experiences, I can see how dysfunctional this was. I had a crush on a guy in one of my classes, and he finally noticed me too. But I wanted him to like me so badly- I was such a people pleaser. This even sounds like how people recall how a relationship with someone with BPD starts out- with the pwBPD acting like a perfect person, but I don't have BPD- this is what I thought I needed to do to be loved. Ironically, this actually annoyed him. I guess he had better boundaries than I had at the time.

Even now, I feel that I need to be doing something for someone as a form of relating to them. I think the "connection" in my family was through doing things for my mother. She has a large need to be taken care of- to have people do things for her that she can do herself- she prefers that. Since I have decreased my co-dependent behavior, our relationship feels disconnected and distant.

I recall when a domestic violence shelter was selling T shirts as a fund raiser with the statement "Love doesn't hurt". I recall thinking about that, and although I have not experienced domestic violence, it occurred to me that love, in the context of growing up in my family, also could feel hurtful, scary. We were mostly afraid of my mother's moods. Another slogan I saw later said "hurting people hurt others" and I think that describes her situation. Maybe she feels love, but mostly it seems she's overwhelmed by hurtful feelings.

You mentioned on another thread that a poster's wife may have been abused and I have wondered about that with my mother. Somehow she seems to be feeling that abuse with her close family members but we are not abusing her. Maybe she needs to see us "serving" her to feel she's not being abused? I don't really know. I also don't know who may have done it. It wasn't her immediate family  but she had extended family nearby and might have been one of them? This is only a guess but may be an explanation.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Great article Couscous !

I guess I did view love as a westerner, like something you feel or "know" you feel more with some people than others.

Connecting with my husband and children is easier, making it feel like it's always in the back of my head. And it's true that I can only bring it forward when I slow down and actively put my mind into the present. Then and only then can I connect with them, and feel whole.

It stroke a chord. Within that definition, then it's true that...I guess I never felt love for uBPDm, and I don't feel loved by her. It's more a rigid set of rules of attachments than love. I "know" she must love me, but I don't feel it. It's different. Knowing (thinking) and feeling (living).

I don't think I could ever connect to her. Not in the way I can connect with my husband and children.

You have given me much to think about. Thank you

[Notwendy]

I think the main emotion I feel around my mother is fear. I think we feel love through connections but I think there's other kinds of love, one of them is "tough love".

This is a hard concept to grasp. As you mentioned with the toddler, loving them means to nurture and protect them, but tough love also includes the need to teach boundaries and appropriate behaviors. A toddler wants to eat cookies for dinner. Love doesn't mean giving them cookies. It means "I love you enough to not let you eat cookies for dinner" and say no while they tantrum- because love means wanting them to have a healthy meal, even if they want cookies.

Unconditional love is that. It's not "I love you no matter what you do". It's "I love you and to encourage the best in you, I will have limits, and even if you are having a tantrum, I love you enough to not give in to the cookies"

When I did work on co-dependency, I could see how enabling, caretaking behaviors may appear self sacrificing but are actually selfish. They aren't "I love you enough to want the best for you, even if you are angry at me". It's a need to be the good guy, to be liked, to avoid the uncomfortable tantrum- none of that is considering the best interest of the other person.

With my mother, I guess it's "I love you enough to not allow you to be abusive, because that isn't supporting the best of you". She doesn't like that, and I think she doesn't like me when I do that. I don't like how she treats me either. But walking on eggshells and enabling her isn't being supportive of the best of her- it's making it OK for her to be abusive.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Yes, I agree with that Notwendy.

I kept thinking a lot about all this love thing and I am not completely comfortable saying PwBPD can't feel/give love. I remember connecting with my uBPDm. She did have good days. It's easy to connect with a child, they are always looking for connection, so when she was in a good day, I was connecting and felt safe. Those days though, got rarer and rarer as I got older. And I think the enabling comes from my inner child's desire to bring back those good days and connect again.

The description of love as an emotion of connection that come and goes... I can understand it, but I think I prefer the other self help seminar, where he described the same kind of feeling (inner peace, connexion, etc.) to the self being in control, a feeling that could hypothetically by achieved at all time. I feel love for my children all the time, even if I am not always "connected" in the moment to them. Another person might call that attachments. Those are virtually just words to describe our world view.

But I agree with tough love. And I am starting to think the best approach with uBPDm might just be to treat her as a toddler. Especially when it comes to dealing with emotions.

[Methuen]

I’m reading a book called Love 2.0. The author contends that the first precondition for love is safety, which would mean that love is yet another thing that a BPD mother is unable to give. This would explain why it doesn’t feel to me like my mother really loves me, even though she professes to.

Mother says she loves me.  I think she has a childs view of love.  She grew up in a violent and emotionally abusive home.  The father was a monster, and the mother could not protect the children.  There was no safety, and she has told me she grew up in a loveless home.  Hard for this kind of person to develop a strong sense of self capable of giving and receiving love. Also, there wasn’t reliable role modelling for her to experience genuine love, especially in a chronically unsafe environment. I have never felt loved by her.  Actions speak louder than words .  Any attempts by her in the past have felt awkward and even icky. Not genuine.

When she introduced me to her boyfriend the first time, she said “now you two hug each other”.  This was bizarre behavior.  Not a very “adult” view of human connection.  She was in her early 70’s when this happened.

As a very small child, I can remember sitting in my father’s lap, and feeling connected to him - safe in a cuddle.  There was none of that from mother. No hugging, even as a child.  As she grew older, she went through a stage where she started wanting hugs once I had kids.  But she also wanted hugs from me.  The good thing about Covid is the obligation to hug her came to an abrupt end.

I doubt she has the capacity to experience genuine healthy love.  She didn’t grow up with it so that could be one explanation.

[eaglestar]

I doubt she has the capacity to experience genuine healthy love.  She didn’t grow up with it so that could be one explanation.

I totally agree with this. My mother also grew up in an abusive home. One of her earliest memories was her father gathering up all her favorite toys and burning them while he forced her to watch. He told her that she should stop getting straight A's because there was no point -- she was only ever going to amount to bring a waitress, if she was lucky. And when she needed his signature to apply for a college loan, he refused out of spite, telling her that she was only trying to attend college to "show me up."  He was physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive and vindictive.  He abused her mother as well, and as a result, her mother was unable to show my mother much love. So my mother grew up without any model of a healthy parent child relationship. It makes sense that she struggles with physical touch. She never really hugged me, and when she did it was awkward. It also makes sense that she struggles with her physical relationship with my father -- they never hold hands, and when he tries to hug her or kiss her, she always looks like a stiff board.