Setting Boundaries

[lilybright]

I have an adult daughter of 30 years of age who is has a diagnoses of BPD and also substance misuse disorder.  She lives independently in semi supported accommodation. She engages well with therapy and is keen to attend both group and one to one sessions.  There have been many episodes of my daughter messaging me to say that she wants nothing more to do with me or her Father or Sister at times when she may have been drinking( it is hard to know when this may be) or she has had something happen in her life and I have had to contact her or emergency services to check if she is safe. She will then accuse me of being controlling and not treating her as an adult and that she can cope quite well without us and wants nothing more to do with us. She also says I do not respect her boundaries, but does not allow me any boundaries of my own.  This is then usually followed by other dialogue that tells us all what we are not and how we have affected her life. She also has a diagnoses of ADHD so the situation with her mental health. Due to this highly complex situation we as a family have always maintained an open door approach she has a key to our family home and can come whenever she wants to. We however are not allowed to ask anything about her life and relationships.  Recently she has become estranged from her sister who lives at home who is no longer able to cope with the verbal tirades which are launched at her and has withdrawn. I remain in touch and want to work on how to create a more healthy situation in relation to contact and boundaries for us all as I appreciate that my approach to date doesn't seem to be helpful for my Daughter and my heartfelt desire is to create a more healthy environment for the whole family. Does any one have similar experiences and any ideas in relation to this issue.

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

[Sancho]

Hi Lilybright
It always seems like a neverending battle doesn't it? There are some really positive things in your post - your dd has accommodation and is willing to participate in the therapy.

I don't know how much you have read about BPD but there are lots of good sources of information here. Of course the substance abuse and ADHD are significant complications.

The awful abuse just wears one down - even the effort not to get floored by it is enough to make one exhausted. And it is so, so hard for a sibling to be at the end of horrible verbal abuse.

Setting boundaries is hard. One thing that helped me was that someone on this site described 'boundaries' as what you need to remain safe and sound yourself. Up until that time I had thought of it as a 'line in the sand' that contains my dd's behaviour. When I began looking at it the other way I found it very helpful.

For example dd had paired up with an old flame here over the past few weeks and a couple of weeks ago turned up with him (he had had a fight with his housemates or something like that) and his HUGE dog wanting for them all to stay.

In the past I had allowed partners to stay - for various reasons - and life was horrendous.

The pressure from dd is always huge to get what she wants. This time I held my boundary - one night and no more and I followed through.

I held the line of 'I cannot have anyone else in the house' through lots of arguments etc. It was exhausting but so glad I did it.

So my helpful things have been:
'letting go' of trying to help dd to avoid the consequences of her chaos'
thinking of a 'boundary' as what line I need to draw to protect myself
coming here to read others' posts so that I know I am not alone.

I hope you find the things that help you on this challenging journey.