Should I demand an apology from uBPD mum following latest Jekyl & Hyde behaviour

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hi everyone, thanks for the past advice and support many of you kindly shared with me recently. I'm here again with another dilemma. To summarise, I am the only child of my 74 year old mother. She has always lived alone, hermit/waif like and is diagnosed with bipolar dirsorder and more recently vascular dementia and of course BPD.  My whole life, I have been her caretaker, emotionally and practically. Through a lot of therapy and meditation, I am now seeing my way out of the FOG and trying to establish boundries.
Last week, I thought it would be safe to visit my mother with my kids and husband. The kids hadn't seen her in 3 months because of her increasingly aggressive and unpredictbale behaviour and I felt obliged to bring them. I had misjudged her mood and when we arrived she immediatley started giving my husband evil looks and making passive aggressive comments to both of us, while being over the top nice/erratic with the kids. Eventually, I pulled her aside and told her we would leave unless she stopped being nasty and then she lost it, calling my husband and I every name under the sun and saying she was writing me out of her will, that I never did anything for her, etc, etc. Anyway, we left. I felt broken afterwards. My body was in actual agony from the experience ( anyone else get this?). Two days later,  she phoned me and acted like nothing happened and asked would I bring her to a medical apointment, she was breezey and brazen on the phone. I stayed neutral and tried to be calm and didn't bring up the weeked episode. My question, is what do I do - I feel I enacted a strong boudary by walking out of her house at the weekend and cancelling the lunch out and nice day we were supposed to have. That was the consequence for her. Do I continue the punishment now and demand an apology or is there any point?

[Lalisa]

Hi everyone, thanks for the past advice and support many of you kindly shared with me recently. I'm here again with another dilemma. To summarise, I am the only child of my 74 year old mother. She has always lived alone, hermit/waif like and is diagnosed with bipolar dirsorder and more recently vascular dementia and of course BPD.  My whole life, I have been her caretaker, emotionally and practically. Through a lot of therapy and meditation, I am now seeing my way out of the FOG and trying to establish boundries.
Last week, I thought it would be safe to visit my mother with my kids and husband. The kids hadn't seen her in 3 months because of her increasingly aggressive and unpredictbale behaviour and I felt obliged to bring them. I had misjudged her mood and when we arrived she immediatley started giving my husband evil looks and making passive aggressive comments to both of us, while being over the top nice/erratic with the kids. Eventually, I pulled her aside and told her we would leave unless she stopped being nasty and then she lost it, calling my husband and I every name under the sun and saying she was writing me out of her will, that I never did anything for her, etc, etc. Anyway, we left. I felt broken afterwards. My body was in actual agony from the experience ( anyone else get this?). Two days later,  she phoned me and acted like nothing happened and asked would I bring her to a medical apointment, she was breezey and brazen on the phone. I stayed neutral and tried to be calm and didn't bring up the weeked episode. My question, is what do I do - I feel I enacted a strong boudary by walking out of her house at the weekend and cancelling the lunch out and nice day we were supposed to have. That was the consequence for her. Do I continue the punishment now and demand an apology or is there any point?

[TelHill]

Hello,

I would ask for one and leave it at that. Keep it simple and quick. You may want to keep your cool if she takes up the drama a few notches or drop it if she doesn't remember.  This sets boundaries with her.  

Punishment isn't the goal.  She has a severe mental illness. That won't change due to your behavior. Boundary setting is to let her know the behavior you will and won't tolerate from her. 

[Notwendy]

Two days later,  she phoned me and acted like nothing happened and asked would I bring her to a medical appointment, she was breezey and brazen on the phone.

I stayed neutral and tried to be calm and didn't bring up the weekend episode. My question, is what do I do - I feel I enacted a strong boundary by walking out of her house at the weekend and cancelling the lunch out and nice day we were supposed to have. That was the consequence for her. Do I continue the punishment now and demand an apology or is there any point?

My BPD mother does this too.
This is like a small child who has a stomach ache from eating too much candy. The child throws up and afterwards, feels fine and runs off to play as if nothing happened.

With your mother, she "threw up" her uncomfortable feelings. Now, she feels better, acts as if it didn't happen.

But it did, and I think your boundary of removing yourself was a good one.

If this were my mother, there would be no point in bringing up what happened. She'd come up with some reason for how it was my fault and how my bringing it up is causing her more distress. There would be no resolution. To me, there's just no point in it. Boundaries are for me, the way to handle this. If I am visiting and she starts this, I leave.

I would not consider this as punishing her. This just reinforces the victim -persecutor thinking. A boundary isn't about the other person- it's about us. It's about our own well being. The boundary for you is to decide how much contact you want to have with her and for how long. If you are who she relies on for medical appointments, and you have been doing that, unless there's another option, I don't think it would sit well with you to just leave her without transportation. If you don't want to do this, help her to find another option if there is one. As to visits, if you don't stay when she starts acting up- this is an action boundary. It's you deciding to not stay while she does this.

[Turkish]

Dementia combined with mental health issues is hard to deal with. The first isn't really her fault. My mom accused me of all sorts of legal elder abuse and even called the cops on me. Yet the next call was nice. ? Thankfully, she had left my home by the time of the cop call. She had also gotten into my face and threatened to sue me.

I wouldn't bring your family to her again, or at the very least meet someplace neutral.

Physical manifestiinations due to emotional stress are normal and I'm sorry you experienced that. I remember breaking down in tears at work while I was in the chemical lab by myself. Me, the guy who doesn't cry. That was while she was living with me and the kids.

[TelHill]

I wanted to add my mother is BPD and easily agitated and full of rage. . I am low contact and have asked for apologies due to her abuse of me.  

She becomes unglued when I spend more than a few hours every other week near her. She's elderly and disabled. She doesn't have many years left. I choose not to cut her off.

The apologies help me set boundaries and call out to my in denial dad and gc sibling that what she did during my childhood and adulthood is wrong.  She is mentally ill. It's not ladies having issues or me being a bad girl.   I don't deserve to be her whipping post so dad and gc adult child can live a less stressful life.

[Lalisa]

My BPD mother does this too.
This is like a small child who has a stomach ache from eating too much candy. The child throws up and afterwards, feels fine and runs off to play as if nothing happened.

With your mother, she "threw up" her uncomfortable feelings. Now, she feels better, acts as if it didn't happen.

But it did, and I think your boundary of removing yourself was a good one.

If this were my mother, there would be no point in bringing up what happened. She'd come up with some reason for how it was my fault and how my bringing it up is causing her more distress. There would be no resolution. To me, there's just no point in it. Boundaries are for me, the way to handle this. If I am visiting and she starts this, I leave.

This is helping me, thanks @Notwendy  - it is like dealing with a small child. It's like she needs to release her rage every once in a while and she feels once it's done. It just feel so hard to for me to play along at happy families. But Iike you @Telhill, she may not have many years left and I want to maintain contact in some way. I still struggle massively with guilt and doubt about whether I'm being gaslit or not.

[Lalisa]

Dementia combined with mental health issues is hard to deal with. The first isn't really her fault. My mom accused me of all sorts of legal elder abuse and even called the cops on me. Yet the next call was nice. ? Thankfully, she had left my home by the time of the cop call. She had also gotten into my face and threatened to sue me.

I wouldn't bring your family to her again, or at the very least meet someplace neutral.

Physical manifestiinations due to emotional stress are normal and I'm sorry you experienced that. I remember breaking down in tears at work while I was in the chemical lab by myself. Me, the guy who doesn't cry. That was while she was living with me and the kids.

@Turkish, I am so sorry that happened you. I can't begin to fathom how hard it would be to have my mother living with us and the kids.  My mother has started accusing me of elder abuse too. I know it' not true but it hurts so much. I don't know if it's the dementia or the BPD or both, she has said similar hurtful things in the past.  I feel like my whole life has been my quest to make her happy, to put her needs first. It took the birth of my two boys to start and stay in therapy and realise how I was destroying myself and that I could not fix her. It breaks my heart still to think of her being sad or lonely but now I'm seeing the emotional abuse I have been blinkered to for all my life. I'm trying to heal now by getting touch with my breath and my body, practising Loving Kindness meditation,  and I am amazed at the peace it is giving me.

[Notwendy]

My BPD mother is elderly. While she doesn't have the kind of dementia as a diagnosis, she is exhibiting the normal signs of aging in her thinking and also BPD. In an odd way, some of her needs have been "normalized" due to her age. She has always been emotionally dependent on people assisting her and it's more common for elderly people to have assistance. How she relates to people is influenced by BPD.

I understand the feeling of whatever you do isn't adequate. I tolerated my BPD mother's behavior. I grew up with this being an expectation. A while back, my father - who I was very attached to, got ill. My mother's BPD behavior escalated to the point where I felt scared about the amount of emotional/verbal abuse. So I needed to pull back on how much I was involved. The result was that both parents became angry at me.

There are several posters here who are in some kind of contact with an elderly parent who needs assistance and who have boundaries of some sort. Having boundaries with a parent doesn't feel natural but when the relationship involves emotional and verbal abuse from the parent, then the boundaries are for a reason.

I don't think people who have not experienced a parent like this can comprehend it. There's a "normal" aspect of aging that might make a parent more prone to being angry or difficult at times but this is different. I was helping my mother in law once and she snapped at me. This was surprising as she's usually good natured, but she felt frustrated at being dependent but she doesn't have BPD. She's not emotionally or verbally abusive.

There's a different quality to my BPD mother's behavior.

[Methuen]

I still struggle massively with guilt and doubt about whether I'm being gaslit or not.

You are being gaslit.  We were all groomed to be our mothers caretakers.  They were predators on us - their children- to have their narcissistic needs met, instead of nurturing us.

Let your own feelings be your guide on how much or how little to do.

After not seeing your mom for 3 months, how did you feel when she treated you so badly you had to leave?  What was it like for your kids to witness that?  How old are they?  Children can be traumatized when they don’t feel safe.  I definitely wouldn’t bring them back there.

My mom is also elderly- 87 - with a raft of health problems.  As my new T has reiterated, there’s a dissonance between her saying she doesn’t need help - home care or assisted living - and then making H and I feel guilty for having boundaries around how much we do for her. 

I’ve never asked for an apology.  I have no expectations of my mom.  What I’m learning now is how to take care of myself, and my H.

[livednlearned]

I've never had anyone with BPD traits in my life show remorse or apologize. I've heard it can happen but it's outside my experience.

In fact, I tend to go the other way. I prefer non-verbal boundaries because that way the target is smaller. If I asked for an apology, it would only poke the bear. If I shine light on a new boundary in response to the bad behavior, that seems to become a new source of conflict, like a red flag to a bull.

You had a boundary with your mom, which was to leave when she became nasty. Telling her about the boundary seems to have wound her up even more.

That's how it seems to work with people in my family who have BPD so I just enact the boundary. "Gotta go!"

I suppose there is a third way which is to enact the boundary and announce dispassionately what the cause and effect was. But that only works if you don't feel personally impacted by someone being mean to you.

My grandmother, who I suspect was waif/hermit BPD, became mean to me toward the end of her life so I made less effort to visit. During one of my last visits she said I wasn't her favorite grandchild. Nice. I said, "I guess it's ok then that I don't visit."

I got up to go and remember how good it felt to say what seemed like a natural consequence. You don't like me and don't treat me well? I guess I'll go.

I wish I could've been that way with other disordered people in my life.

[TelHill]

 But Iike you @Telhill, she may not have many years left and I want to maintain contact in some way. I still struggle massively with guilt and doubt about whether I'm being gaslit or not.

Lalisa,

It takes time to work through the guilt. Meditation helps me deal with it.  I found it helpful to separate wants from needs, ignoring wants and seeing how to address needs. Needs for 90 year old, partially disabled mom are food, senior-safe  shelter, personal hygiene and appropriate medical care.  Wants are demanding ice cream at 9pm or me driving her to my brother's to see if he's still alive.   She's spews bpd bs and verbal abuse to get me to comply.  It's ok to say no without an explanation. It invites drama to explain. After a few no's she does start the questioning of why I'm saying no and more abuse begins. It's rough and it sets me back to deal with her.  Low contact is the sanest for me.

About apologies, I don't expect a sincere or heartfelt one.  She never punished me for asking for one. She would apologize sometimes.

I had to verbally fight her off as a kid. She was aggressive-- Trigger warning-- she hit me, spit on me, ridiculed me, called me the f word almost every day in her first language. (Not English). Asking her to apologize as a kid helped give me some control over the chaos she created.

Turkish had a great idea with seeing her in a public place with your kids. If it doesn't work it's ok to scale back or stop.