My college-aged daughter has BPD

[Momdoc]

My daughter starting showing signs of BPD when she was a freshman in high school. We didn't know it was BPD at the time. This has progressed and has become really apparent when she went to college. It has affected her relationship with myself and my husband, her best friend, and has caused her to engage in many risky behaviors in college including drug abuse, a relationship with an unstable guy that crashed and burned, overspending, failed classes, and two minor DUIs. Now she is home for the summer and we are dealing with emotional abuse and anger from her. She often threatens me and my husband with immoral behavior when she doesn't get what she wants for example: "If you don't give me more money for allowance, I'll just find a rich old guy to support me and buy me what I want." She has a therapist and a psychiatrist and has recently started the medication Abilify but, she still is very unstable and often very angry in her mood. Anyone else dealing with this type of situation?

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

[kells76]

Hi Momdoc and welcome to the group  You're definitely in the right place to connect with others who truly get it -- parenting a child with BPD of any age is not straightforward at all.

The threats, anger, rages, blame, instability, and emotional abuse will be very familiar to other parents here. Blaming others seems to show up across the spectrum of pwBPD (persons with BPD), and some parents say that's one of the most difficult aspects of interacting with their child wBPD.

My initial thought is that a key part of making it through this chapter in her life (I could see things changing as she gets further into her mid to late 20s -- college age is not "the age of reason" for most kids, sigh) would be for you and your H to have a strong united front about how to handle her threats, so that she can't play you off of each other, and so that you can support each other and endure these really painful times of her making poor choices in front of you.

How are you and your husband doing in your relationship with each other? Are you generally on the same page about how to interact with her, or do you have different approaches? When there's a pwBPD in the mix, it's not only that direct relationship that's impacted, but the secondary relationships, too. BPD can be hard on a marriage even when the pwBPD isn't in the marriage!

How have you dealt with her threats before? Does she seem to follow through on any of them?

This seems hopeful:

She has a therapist and a psychiatrist and has recently started the medication Abilify but, she still is very unstable and often very angry in her mood.

What would she say she's seeing the T and Psy for -- i.e., is there a diagnosis of anything, and if so, does she seem to accept her diagnosis? Is she generally compliant with treatment (goes to appts independently)?

Fill us in, whenever works for you -- we're glad you're here.

-kells76

[livednlearned]

She often threatens me and my husband with immoral behavior when she doesn't get what she wants for example: "If you don't give me more money for allowance, I'll just find a rich old guy to support me and buy me what I want."

Like a lot of people, pwBPD tend to go with whatever works. Threats to do immoral things must have some payoff or she wouldn't do it.

My stepdaughter (26) used to do this with suicidal ideation. From a cause and effect perspective, stirring the pot with SI worked great to get people to focus on her. The problem was her solution was a problem.

It took a while to change how the family responded to her and there were a lot of missteps an backwards steps, definitely not a linear path and I'm not sure where we're at is entirely successful, it's just better.

I suspect she still struggles with chronic SI but she doesn't toss it out so casually anymore. At first she realized it was effective at getting people to stay engaged but overtime it didn't work as well so she increased the severity. A therapist counseled us to engage with her by saying we would be here once she had a chance to talk to a professional. Being irritated when someone recommends a common sense solution that involves accountability was sort of a sign whether she was in an acute stage or not.

Maybe something similar would work with your daughter? It won't stop her from doing what she is set on doing, but holding you hostage with threats is also dangerous because she learns that this type of behavior is effective and can be used with people who may not tolerate the same.