How do I reconcile with my adult BPD daughter safely and helpfully for us both?

[hopefulmom**]

My daughter is 50 years old. She has extreme mood swings, angry outbursts, blaming and shaming behavior and then sweet loving moments. Sometimes she creates stories that aren’t true, then blames me for doing things I didn’t do.
I made many mistakes raising her as a single mom but have tried for 30 years to try to make it up to her. It goes well for awhile, then something triggers her and it’s yelling and swearing and blaming again.
I became afraid of her and two years ago I had enough and although she tried several times to reconnect, I shut her out of my life.
Now I learn that she very likely suffers from BPD and abandonment was the worst hurt I could have inflicted on her.
I am so torn and remorseful and guilt-ridden. I want to help her and stay safe at the same time but I don’t know how.

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

[Pook075]

Hi Hopeful and welcome to the forums.  I've been exactly where you are and learned so many things the hard way, so hopefully my failures can lead you to a place of better understanding.

First, how do you help your daughter?  It's very simple- you decide to love her for her and let go of the past.

Now, letting go might be hard and maybe your daughter would constantly bring up ways that you failed.  Maybe you'd stay up at night feeling guilty or ashamed that the relationship couldn't be different.  That's quite normal, blaming ourselves, and it only leads to pain and suffering.  You have to let that stuff go, all of it, and just love your daughter for who she is.

I do understand that this feels so impossible, but it's really not.  It's a simple choice deciding that the present and the future is more important than the past.  If your daughter brings it up, you apologize and tell her that you always did the best you possibly could under very difficult circumstances.  Then you tell her you love her and that it's time to move on.

Getting back in your daughter's life is certainly a process and there are many challenges, but at the end of the day love and forgiveness are more powerful than all those other emotions combined.  The trick is for you to let all that stuff go so your daughter can as well.

Take a look at the sticky tabs along the top of the page- they really help in terms of better communicating and avoiding the most common mistakes that escalate conversations.  Begin to master those and you'll be well on your way to accomplishing your goals here.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns and again, welcome to the family!

[Leaf56]

Hi hopefulmom,
First of all, please, please do not feel guilt-ridden for cutting ties with her. You did what you needed to do for yourself after dealing with her antics for what must be 30 years. If she feels abandoned, that's completely on her. BPD isn't cancer. It's not something you "have." It's a description of a set of characteristics that a person displays. Nothing more. If you made mistakes raising her, apologizing a few times back in her 20s should have sufficed. More was never necessary and frankly is likely detrimental to her ever getting over it and could possibly have been part of the cause of her continuing to stay stuck.

Why do you feel unsafe? I personally feel unsafe because I believe, based on my son's own statements and occasional psychosis, that he is volatile enough to kill me and others and because he has actively attempted to purchase a gun. We see these type of murders by mentally unstable people every day on the news, and there's no reason that we might not be the next victims if we give our own unstable children access to our physical presence without some sort of protection. I've seen my son once in person in the past 2 years and that was in a restaurant with his girlfriend during a mental time when he seemed better. I knew I was taking a chance, but I did it anyway. Is there a similar situation that you could set up to see your daughter?