Limiting communication with BPD mother

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum. Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I am 33 years old and have a mother with BPD. She emotionally abused me and controlled me all my life as the only child. I was tied to her apron strings until I had to go away for graduate school (thank the lord). I am grateful that I was provided for, and she was an over-involved mother who made sure I was successful academically and career-wise. Personally and spiritually I feel I have been stifled and unable to develop or self-actualize, and have only recently recognized myself as codependent and am trying to recover from codependency. I realized all this about 1.5 years ago and have been doing a lot of work in therapy since then. I am just in a new relationship with a lovely person. I am no longer able to pay my mother as much attention, so her BPD behaviors have recently escalated. I've honestly have had enough of her control, guilt-tripping and manipulation, and I want to put my relationship first. As a result, I have decided that it's time to limit how much I communicate with her. Up until about 1 month ago, for my entire past life I used to text her good morning and good night daily, and text throughout the day. I would also call her every day for 15-30 min at least (she used to demand I talk to her for almost an hour in the past, thankfully as she's gotten older she's gotten more tired). Everyone in my life raised their eyebrows when I told them how often I speak with her, but I thought I was making a compromise. She had seriously guilt-tripped me into thinking that was the bare minimum I could do after "all she has done for me."

After a few weekend visits last month that resulted in family meltdowns because of me having screaming fits (I know, I'm working on not screaming) with her over politics, about her disrespecting my boyfriend (while at the same saying she liked him), and about both my parents being disrespectful to me about my opinions about global issues, my therapist suggested I stop speaking with her so routinely and set stronger boundaries. After raging at me for a few days with little response from me (I'm proud of myself for finally learning how to do this without breaking down and asking for forgiveness and taking inappropriate blame) - after raging for days, she usually calms down and wants to make up. But then she goes into rages again. Today, after I told her I can't talk to her every day, she sent me a very long text telling me that "God" and "life" will punish me, and that my therapist has turned me into a stranger (also that my therapist will be cursed), that I have broken up the family, crossed out 33 years of our lives, that I'm a bad and cruel person, and that no one's kids behave as horribly as I do. This is after I went home last weekend and helped them clean out the basement and ran errands with my dad he needed help with, and brought them a lovely gift for their anniversary.

I will obviously go no contact with her for at least a few days after that message. But I was wondering - does she need an explanation as to why I am limiting my contact with her? And if so, what is the best way to do this? She is an intelligent woman, and when she asked me on the phone for an explanation (before sending that abusive text), I didn't have a good answer prepared, which was my fault. Part of me wants to never speak to her again (I'm so tired of this toxicity and poison in my life), and part of me feels sad and bad about her illness and wants to at least try to help her understand. She has tried hard in her own (sometimes twisted) way to provide and "protect" me in life. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have no one with a similar experience in my life to ask this. Thank you all so so much for any suggestions. All the best wishes.

[Seaswimmer]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum. Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I am 33 years old and have a mother with BPD. She emotionally abused me and controlled me all my life as the only child. I was tied to her apron strings until I had to go away for graduate school (thank the lord). I am grateful that I was provided for, and she was an over-involved mother who made sure I was successful academically and career-wise. Personally and spiritually I feel I have been stifled and unable to develop or self-actualize, and have only recently recognized myself as codependent and am trying to recover from codependency. I realized all this about 1.5 years ago and have been doing a lot of work in therapy since then. I am just in a new relationship with a lovely person. I am no longer able to pay my mother as much attention, so her BPD behaviors have recently escalated. I've honestly have had enough of her control, guilt-tripping and manipulation, and I want to put my relationship first. As a result, I have decided that it's time to limit how much I communicate with her. Up until about 1 month ago, for my entire past life I used to text her good morning and good night daily, and text throughout the day. I would also call her every day for 15-30 min at least (she used to demand I talk to her for almost an hour in the past, thankfully as she's gotten older she's gotten more tired). Everyone in my life raised their eyebrows when I told them how often I speak with her, but I thought I was making a compromise. She had seriously guilt-tripped me into thinking that was the bare minimum I could do after "all she has done for me."

After a few weekend visits last month that resulted in family meltdowns because of me having screaming fits (I know, I'm working on not screaming) with her over politics, about her disrespecting my boyfriend (while at the same saying she liked him), and about both my parents being disrespectful to me about my opinions about global issues, my therapist suggested I stop speaking with her so routinely and set stronger boundaries. After raging at me for a few days with little response from me (I'm proud of myself for finally learning how to do this without breaking down and asking for forgiveness and taking inappropriate blame) - after raging for days, she usually calms down and wants to make up. But then she goes into rages again. Today, after I told her I can't talk to her every day, she sent me a very long text telling me that "God" and "life" will punish me, and that my therapist has turned me into a stranger (also that my therapist will be cursed), that I have broken up the family, crossed out 33 years of our lives, that I'm a bad and cruel person, and that no one's kids behave as horribly as I do. This is after I went home last weekend and helped them clean out the basement and ran errands with my dad he needed help with, and brought them a lovely gift for their anniversary.

I will obviously go no contact with her for at least a few days after that message. But I was wondering - does she need an explanation as to why I am limiting my contact with her? And if so, what is the best way to do this? She is an intelligent woman, and when she asked me on the phone for an explanation (before sending that abusive text), I didn't have a good answer prepared, which was my fault. Part of me wants to never speak to her again (I'm so tired of this toxicity and poison in my life), and part of me feels sad and bad about her illness and wants to at least try to help her understand. She has tried hard in her own (sometimes twisted) way to provide and "protect" me in life. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have no one with a similar experience in my life to ask this. Thank you all so so much for any suggestions. All the best wishes.

[Turkish]

Hello Seaswimmer,



It sounds like there are a few things going on here. The first is the constant communication which seems a bit too much for a child of any age. You've done some work to step back from that, and that's good. I'm glad that you found us.  Members here can relate to your pain  

The second sounds to me like a disagreement about values. I'd step out of discussions about these and focus on general communication, even if she baits you. Cursing your therapist? *eyeroll* I wouldn't share a bit about your personal journey of healing. This is where it's hard, because you've been trained to share.

Less is more. This might help, and I've tailored BIFF verbally (the thread is a bit dated, but the basic principles work).
2.03 | B.I.F.F. Technique for Communications

Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm.

[Mommydoc]

It sounds like you are going for low contact, not no contact. One thing my therapist had me do was wait 24 hours to respond to any text, that was other than positive or neutral. Even with positive texts, I just respond with a like or love to acknowledge without engaging.  Because people with BPD cycle frequently, waiting 24 hours and using BIFF, can get them past what ever the rage of the moment is. My pwBPD is my sister and sometimes she rages for days on text/ email, and I choose not to reinforce that behavior by engaging.

Glad you found this site and encourage you to continue to post. It’s a journey and there is a lot of knowledge and support in this forum.

[Methuen]

I will obviously go no contact with her for at least a few days after that message. But I was wondering - does she need an explanation as to why I am limiting my contact with her? And if so, what is the best way to do this? She is an intelligent woman, and when she asked me on the phone for an explanation (before sending that abusive text), I didn't have a good answer prepared, which was my fault.

no no no to an explanation…

Are you familiar with “Don’t JADE”?  The challenge and problem is that her very behavior has trained you to JADE, and JADING is healthy and typical in our  everyday lives with healthy and typical people.  We “defend” a thesis.  We argue a point in a discussion, we justify a thoughtful decision we made, or we explain when someone else needs help understanding something.  These are all life skills.  The problem is that to the person with BPD, they are triggers and therefore escalate the situation.  Don’t JADE is a super useful tool.  Instead, use “validating questions” or SET.  

You’ve probably already found the educational part of this site, but since you are a first time poster, I’ll mention that you can click or tap on “How to get the most out of this site”, and then scroll down to a wealth of useful information such as “Don’t Jade, SET, and asking validating questions.  

Boundaries are important too.  You have a right to privacy.  Most of us here have gone through the process of learning to keep personal information to ourselves.  As Mommydoc suggested, not answering texts for 24 hours is helpful too.  Your boundary is to answer when it’s a good time for you, not a good time for her.  The text comes into your space - you do have a choice when to answer it - if at all.

Lastly, I understand the frustration of doing so much to help, and still being called the worst daughter ever, or some such thing.  The problem is that you are trying to understand her emotional behavior in a rational way.  BPD is an emotional disease which affects relationships.  It doesn’t work to try to understand or rationalize their behavior from our point of view.  Much better to learn the tools to neutralize their behavior.  

Self care is important.

[Channing]

Seaswimmer, I am in a similar situation with a BPD sibling. I was spending in excess of 20 hours a month on the phone with her and it could not continue. I think the most difficult part of setting new phone boundaries in such a situation is that the BPD relative has come to feel entitled to the phone time and may also insist that it benefits you. So, when you try to set a new limit, there is a lot of anger and outrage.

I decided not to get into any arguments about whether all of that phone time was a benefit to me. It would have just escalated the situation. I did find it hard to set a new boundary without doing what people call JADEing -- justifying or explaining it. I think a new boundary should have a brief and clear justification.

My BPD relative reacted to the new limit on phone time with a slew of accusations (that I had imposed this limit in a devious and secretive manner, that I was behaving as though she was dead, that I would no longer be available to help her in an emergency because, due to my heartless phone limits, I would not even answer the phone, etc. etc.)

If you decide to impose a new limit on phone time with your mother, you need to be prepared for such accusations and more. I decided to handle them with BIFF statements (Brief, Informative Friendly and Firm) which is helping. My sibling and I are low contact now but at least I have better control over my own time.

[Couscous]

A book that has been quite helpful for me with setting boundaries is Susan Forward's book, Mothers Who Cannot Love. Hopefully you can find it at your library!

[Seaswimmer]

Thank you so much for all your replies everybody! I just dove right in here with a long post and I appreciate everyone taking the time to read it and reply. I will definitely be studying the material and others' posts on this site.

Turkish - thank you for the understanding and pointing out that I was trained to share. That's so true. I will definitely give that thread a read, thank you!

Mommydoc - Thank you so much for your input. After the last abusive text I got, I honestly don't really want to reply or reinitiate conversation and feel like I'd like to wait longer than 24 hours. I'm so tired of her. Part of me wants her to apologize, but it will take so much effort to get her to acknowledge what she said. She is capable of something like an apology after saying bad things, but of course it's very rare. It's so true that they cycle so frequently, describing it that way was helpful. Thank you for the encouragement, it means a lot.

Methuen - I was not familiar with the term JADE before you mentioned it, but that is very helpful and reflects what my therapist is teaching me. It was really great to hear that I cannot understand her behavior rationally because her disease is emotional. And yes to self care!

Channing - Thank you so much for sharing your experience with your sister. Do you have any examples of a BIFF statement that has worked for you? What brief justification did you use with your sister, if any? I was thinking perhaps something as simple as "I don't have a lot of time after work and am really tired so I cannot talk every day"?

Couscous - thank you for the book recommendation. That is such a sad title, in a way. It only struck me a few weeks ago that I will need to grieve the realization that I never had a truly loving mother and she will never be the way I wanted her to be as a child.

[Channing]

You are welcome Seaswimmer, An example of a BIFF statement is after a tirade, I would say something like. "I hear that you are disappointed. My schedule is not going to change."
The justification I used is that my workload had increased and I needed to turn my phone off so I could concentrate on work.

For months prior to this, I had a fantasy that this could all work out well. I told myself that if I just introduced this change in the right way, my sibling would accept it and all would be well.  I suggested that we could watch movies together to relax or that we could use what had been our phone time for other positive activities. This was unsuccessful and brought on a flood of very ugly accusations.
 
I think one of the hardest aspects of giving up your role as the phone person for a person with BPD is that is is very unlikely that you can come to a compromise. They will probably not accept this new situation and will be very angry at you. One  important question is whether you can accept that if it happens.

After experiencing several months without the phone time, I knew I could not go back no matter what effect it had on my relationship with my sibling. I literally felt like these conversations were sucking the life out of me. I now have more time to do things like exercise and clean my house. I feel like I have been released from detention.

On the other hand, the first few weeks when my sibling was angry at me were very hard. I worried about her incessantly and it was hard to sleep or concentrate. Now that the difficult period is over, I have a much more rational view of the situation and I will never go back to it.

[Couscous]

This is an example of some verbiage from Mother’s Who Can’t Love: ‘Mom, I want to let you know I’m not going to call you every day anymore. I have a life of my own. I’m happy to call you a couple of times a week, but it’s no longer okay that you want all the details of my personal life during these calls.’

And then when you get pushback: ‘If you continue to insult me, I’ll end this conversation.’ You can also interrupt her by saying, ‘Stop right there,’ or ‘That subject is off-limits,’ or ‘Unless you calm down, I’m going to hang up.’

The author also recommends writing out and memorizing a script, and role-playing ahead of time with a therapist or in front of a mirror.

Here’s another excerpt: It’s common for many mothers to cast themselves as the victim when you begin to resist their unhealthy behavior. That’s a powerful form of manipulation. You don’t have to accept it. One effective response is: “Just calm down. There are some new ground rules in place and you need to hear them and take them seriously.”

You’ll be far more empowered if you don’t respond to your mother’s specific questions or accusations and instead stay focused on the limits and boundaries you are putting in place. It doesn’t matter if you sound like a broken record. Your mother may be so off balance, shocked, or bewildered that she doesn’t fully take in what you’re saying at first. Just continue to set your limits, tell her very clearly what the new rules are, and spell out what you’ll do if she disrespects or violates them.

[Methuen]

SET strategy (Support, Empathy, Truth) is helpful when you sense they are starting to spin, but before they go into a full on rage. Here are some examples, and conversation:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=143695.0

More on BIFF:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=134124.0

IMHO, the trick is as much to learn what not to say, as much as to learn what to say. Like any skill, it takes practice.  We don't always get it on the first try, but it's probably still better than what we were doing before 

[Channing]

Methuen and Couscous, thank you for those resources! It is a struggle to come up with a new way of responding when the old way is so entrenched.

Detaching from your role as the phone supporter (maybe we should do a poll to see how many of us have taken on this role) is so hard! In my experience a person with BPD will not respond to normal phone conversation signals that the call needs to wind down and end. Part of the struggle is going through multiple rounds of "well, I need to go now" attempts before you can finally hang up.

My therapist made me laugh once when he told me that he was once on a phone call with a BPD client when the fire alarm went off in his building and it started to fill with smoke. When he told his BPD client he had to get off the phone the client just ignored him, kept talking and would not stop so the therapist finally had to hang up. : )

[Couscous]

My therapist made me laugh once when he told me that he was once on a phone call with a BPD client when the fire alarm went off in his building and it started to fill with smoke. When he told his BPD client he had to get off the phone the client just ignored him, kept talking and would not stop so the therapist finally had to hang up. : )

And I’ll bet that your T felt no guilt whatsoever for hanging up on the client.  

I think that the biggest challenge for us as daughters is not even overcoming our fear of setting limits with our mothers, but rather, overcoming our feelings of guilt for having done so.

We also have to be willing to acknowledge the distinct possibility that our mothers will not accept the new ground rules and that no relationship will be possible. This is usually the case when they are also highly narcissistic. In response my ground rules my mother told me, ‘People don’t like to be muzzled’. But I stuck to my guns, and so I am not currently in communication with her.

[Channing]

We also have to be willing to acknowledge the distinct possibility that our mothers will not accept the new ground rules and that no relationship will be possible. This is usually the case when they are also highly narcissistic. In response my ground rules my mother told me, ‘People don’t like to be muzzled’. But I stuck to my guns, and so I am not currently in communication with her.

That is exactly what I am dealing with now. My BPD relative says that phone limits are abusive because if I will not answer the phone, I may as well be "dead " to her. She says there is no point in having a familial relationship with someone who ignores any of her phone calls. I wanted to avoid an impasse but that is what happened.

I also relapsed on my limits once (I spent two hours with her on the phone during a work day) and that made things worse because it re-opened the floodgates. When I reminded her of my limit she had a complete melt down and now we don't speak at all.

[Couscous]

My BPD relative says that phone limits are abusive because if I will not answer the phone, I may as well be "dead " to her.

Oh boy… So my non-BPD enabler sister and I no longer on speaking terms because of my ‘abusive’ limits on our B/NPD brother. I’m beginning to wonder if everyone with BPD family members share a common ancestor…

[zachira]

My heart goes out to you having a BPD mother. My BPD mother is deceased. What worked the best for me in communicating with my mother, in addition to limiting my contact, was to try to always have people around she wanted to look good in front of and whom she never wanted to see how badly she treated her close family members behind closed doors. Keep us posted on how you are doing and let us know how we can be the most helpful.

[SinisterComplex]

Seaswimmer, I am just chiming in to offer support and let you know you picked the right place to come to. We are fam here. Don't feel bad posting long posts and also don't feel you can't share what you need to. You just vent and get it out and let us help you...okay?

As one of my partners in crime Turk mentioned...you have been trained to share. However, that doesn't mean you have to.

I would advise you to get more comfortable with just doing YOU and teach yourself that you only need to share what is necessary. You only need to communicate when and what is necessary. Beyond that...you have the control. What I am hinting at here for you is to help get more comfortable with remaining emotionally indifferent and balanced and avoiding the pinball from one extreme to the other. Remember...you are only responsible for your own feelings. Your mother is responsible for hers.

Cheers and best wishes!

-SC-