My child seems to hate me

[Parents! Get help here!]

I am so exhausted from the yelling and recrimination I get from my grown son. He grew up middle class and had a stay at home mom. For years he has struggled but now everything is my fault. He cannot keep a relationship or marriage. When he’s “in love”, all is fine. When he ends it, I become the target of his venom. His father passed away so I’m all that’s left. I’m tired of the constant abuse.

[Dogmom2]

I am so exhausted from the yelling and recrimination I get from my grown son. He grew up middle class and had a stay at home mom. For years he has struggled but now everything is my fault. He cannot keep a relationship or marriage. When he’s “in love”, all is fine. When he ends it, I become the target of his venom. His father passed away so I’m all that’s left. I’m tired of the constant abuse.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[KBug]

Dogmom,

I'm so sorry that you are going though this turmoil and pain. You are in the right place to find connection and support.  Having a loved one with BPD can be really painful and soul sucking.

People with BPD are in deep pain and often project that pain onto other people through blaming them for their problems and sometimes even making false accusations. The mantra that has helped me most is from the co-dependency people, "I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and I can't cure it" (the 3 Cs). I know you love your son, but his issues are not yours (although the issues impact you deeply). This mantra helps me to set boundaries for both myself and my SD (age 23). Thankfully, my husband is on the same page and is usually better at boundary setting than I am.  One of our boundaries is that she's not allowed to rant at us or be verbally abusive in any way. If she does, then we ask her to leave our house or we leave the situation.  We'll talk with her about difficult issues so long as she remains constructive (non-abusive and doesn't get stuck in a repetitive loop). Another boundary is that she is not allowed to be alone with one of us due to some false accusations that she has made. For a while, we would only meet with her in public places after the accusations until we met with a therapist to talk about the accusations. Of course, these boundaries aren't easy and setting a boundary results in intense anger and ghosting us for months at a time. She eventually comes back around for a while until we have to set another boundary. We love and miss her but we can't trust her at this point. She is emotionally abusive in all of her relationships and we see it as our responsibility to teach her how to have a non-abusive relationship with us. We hope that she will use what she learns to make better relationships.

Working with our own therapist has been really helpful in setting boundaries and not engaging in the chaos and abuse.  It's still hard.  I miss her and I feel a lot of guilt.  I know that she has a serious illness and I want to "fix" her so I have to remind myself of the 3 Cs. I can't allow someone to abuse my husband and I like she does.