No tolerance, -NC a long time, and stuck in a dark place

[Our abuse recovery guide]

 

I feel terrible. So instead of curating a post that makes sense and is proofread, I am just allowing myself to vent/post/cry into the forum.

I have been NC for five years now. Absolutely no contact of any kind.  I cannot say confidently I have learned the necessary skills to engage my mother. I cannot say confidently that I want to leave NC to enter the unknowns of relationship management. I think i want my other family members to forgive me.  ( I don't believe my choice needs to be forgiven but coming from their pov maybe they should extend that to me.) but Ii dont know that with their forgiveness I really want a relationship with siblings. Sigh....

I will never have a safe relationship with Mom.  One where I can call my mom take a deep breath and just accept her love. I CRAVE the safety of a mother that can take care of herself and just wants to love her kid(s) without the burden of this illness.

And along that line my relationship with my MIL is not what I had hoped either. I am very sensitive to her, I have lofty opinions of what I think her shortcomings are...and that's why I say I have very little tolerance. She also does not provide me with the safety and love I crave. Its possible that she is not comfortable with me bc I went NC with problematic family and as the years have passed...shes become problematic family. I likely scare the sh** out of her.

I just want to throw the notion of family away.

To me: no one is worth the trouble. As you can imagine this creates a lot of tension in any family dynamic  bc I am so unforgiving? so triggered....  so anxiety riddled by perceived judgement, so tired of being a kid from a broken home.


And in this dark place I wonder...what have I been learning this past 5 years? Anything of value?

I just am really good at running away from people.

My soul is pissed off.

Does anyone have any success stories of forgiveness with their person of high conflict?
Does anyone have a good relationship with a MIL?
Has anyone here healed anything?

Sorry to be so negative,

[Imatter33]

 

I feel terrible. So instead of curating a post that makes sense and is proofread, I am just allowing myself to vent/post/cry into the forum.

I have been NC for five years now. Absolutely no contact of any kind.  I cannot say confidently I have learned the necessary skills to engage my mother. I cannot say confidently that I want to leave NC to enter the unknowns of relationship management. I think i want my other family members to forgive me.  ( I don't believe my choice needs to be forgiven but coming from their pov maybe they should extend that to me.) but Ii dont know that with their forgiveness I really want a relationship with siblings. Sigh....

I will never have a safe relationship with Mom.  One where I can call my mom take a deep breath and just accept her love. I CRAVE the safety of a mother that can take care of herself and just wants to love her kid(s) without the burden of this illness.

And along that line my relationship with my MIL is not what I had hoped either. I am very sensitive to her, I have lofty opinions of what I think her shortcomings are...and that's why I say I have very little tolerance. She also does not provide me with the safety and love I crave. Its possible that she is not comfortable with me bc I went NC with problematic family and as the years have passed...shes become problematic family. I likely scare the sh** out of her.

I just want to throw the notion of family away.

To me: no one is worth the trouble. As you can imagine this creates a lot of tension in any family dynamic  bc I am so unforgiving? so triggered....  so anxiety riddled by perceived judgement, so tired of being a kid from a broken home.


And in this dark place I wonder...what have I been learning this past 5 years? Anything of value?

I just am really good at running away from people.

My soul is pissed off.

Does anyone have any success stories of forgiveness with their person of high conflict?
Does anyone have a good relationship with a MIL?
Has anyone here healed anything?

Sorry to be so negative,

[Notwendy]

I will try to get at some of the thoughts you mentioned. While for some people, NC is a necessary step for their own emotional well being- as you have stated, it isn't an end to emotional struggle. It can create divisions in families. It can come with losses. In some ways it is similar to a divorce- a difficult choice made when people feel it's necessary, it's rarely without a feeling of loss.

I didn't go NC with my BPD mother after my father passed away but he was the glue to relationships in our family and after he passed, the relationships changed. I became alienated from my mother's extended family. On my part, I felt hurt and betrayed and embarrassed and didn't want to contact them. But that didn't mean I didn't grieve the loss. I did. My relationship with my mother also distanced but I am not sure it ever was more than it is. I think I wanted it to be more. I think we are wired to crave a safe and loving relationship with a mother. There is sadness in seeing that what we have is different.

I also had hopes for my mother in law, but her personality is different. She is loving and caring to her family but also reserved and stoic so it was hard to become emotionally close to her. Maybe we impose our hopes for a mother onto another possible mother but they are not our mothers and so can't replace that longing. Maybe part of your critical view of your MIL is due to the inevitable impossibility for someone to replace the lack of a secure mother.

Maybe some of this is our own fear and mistrust of women in a motherly role in general. While we may crave that connection, I don't know if we can trust it- due to our own experiences of having that trust broken by a disordered mother. If someone acts motherly to me - I have two responses. One is like a lost puppy- like please adopt me because I like it and then the other is to keep that person at arms legnth because I fear being disappointed.

A couple of sayings I learned in counseling and co-dependency work. One is "if you spot it you got it" meaning if we see shortcomings in others, it's likely they are our own shortcomings as well. I see this where you are judgmental with your MIL and then also feel she is judging you.

The other is forgiveness. You want your family members to forgive you but also struggle with forgiving them. While the idea of forgiveness has a religious component to it, I think it's a work in progress. The 12 steps looks at the concept of resentment. I think forgiveness can follow working on resentment. Dealing with resentments seems more concrete- more doable. I think the 12 step programs are helpful with these steps and also a sponsor can be a support person through them. This helped me a lot.

The other saying if someone can not interact with a disordered family member is " I am not emotionally recovered enough yet to interact with my disordered loved one". This takes the focus off their shortcomings and on to our own personal work. I think through my own personal work, I am able to interact with my mother better (my MIL was not difficult to have a relationship with). She hasn't changed. I can't have the kind of relationship I wish for with her. I think there is some sadness over that- for all who can't have this with their mothers. However, I am less emotionally reactive to her. Is it perfect- no- we are always a work in progress. We are all doing the best we can with our situations. You might find 12 step ACA to be helpful.

[Imatter33]

Thank you for taking the time to put into writing a lot of valuable points. I am having a hard time with quoteboxes... (out of practice)

The thing about looking for a replacement secure mother is like peeling back a scab. It's the pain under the ugly blob. I do this not only to my MIL who has disappointed me but other women also.  Even if "they" do a bunch right they are not my mother. I am mad that  at the core of everything this still causes me so much sadness. I grieve the loss of my mom. Bc even if she enters my life after this period of NC, she is not any more mothering. I will not enter a relationship having the naivety of a child and embracing (literal and figuratively embrace)  her without a measured careful response.

If i can let go of the resentment of my reality. I can be better than i am right now.  I think i resent my reality of motherlessness more than I resent her as a person/mom.

I think i have been trying to find a replacement so that I can say I've dealt with the motherlessness. OOF. I have not. I have replacement resentment toward MIL mostly....that I created myself. No one forced me to put my MIL in that place but me.

 I have been running from reality.


The adopt me puppy or the push away scenario...again feels like you have met me in person. Yup i do that.

Lets see, the spot you got it thing? Hmm I will just think on that one.


And finally your last nugget of wisdom. If someone cannot interact with a disordered family member is " I am not emotionally recovered enough yet to interact with my disordered loved one". This takes the focus off their shortcomings and on to our own personal work."

I will look into some resources you suggested.

Its been a long time since I processed in this way. Wow. much appreciated.

[kells76]

I think i resent my reality of motherlessness more than I resent her as a person/mom.

I think i have been trying to find a replacement so that I can say I've dealt with the motherlessness. OOF. I have not. I have replacement resentment toward MIL mostly....that I created myself. No one forced me to put my MIL in that place but me.

 I have been running from reality.

That hits close to home.

I noticed last weekend, when I was struggling with some sudden changes around the house, that it was so easy emotionally to go to a place of blaming my H [though neither of us has a PD]. I noticed myself jumping right into thoughts of blaming him, victim-y thinking for myself, etc, and it was so, so easy for all the old hurts to get dredged up in my mind. I focused first on blaming him because that allowed me not to feel the pain of not being heard. Then, as I cooled off, I focused on "ugh, what kind of person has those thoughts, what kind of person jumps to blame right away" -- once again, I used blame, though that time of myself, to avoid pain. Finally, I ended with "well, I recognize that none of that was about him, it was all about me, so because it was a 'me' issue and I worked it out in my mind, I don't have to talk to him about it". One more move of avoiding the dreaded pain -- by convincing myself "I worked through it so I don't have to share myself with him".

Nobody is forcing me to withdraw from him besides myself. I do that to avoid the reality of emotional pain that I will do almost anything not to feel.

Thank you for being willing to share your process here. You're not alone in working through what's underneath the anger, resentment, blame, etc.

[Notwendy]

Imatter33- this motherlessness is its own situation- because we have a living mother and are also motherless because this mother isn't able to be a mother, but people assume otherwise. Not having a mother for any reason is difficult and tragic- we only have one mother. Nobody else can fill those shoes.

I also resented my mother for not acting like a mother. How do we move from that to acceptance of who they actually are, rather than resenting them for not being who we want them to be. I think it was the 12 steps- working with a sponsor, one on one- (meetings are helpful but the work with a sponsor was where the emotional work happened for me). One of the tasks was to write down all our resentments and who we resented and talk about each one and then look at the emotional cost and payoff of these resentments. Once we can see our own emotional cost for having the resentment- it becomes easier to perceive them differently. I think it's simplistic to think of "just letting them go"- it's a process that leads to being able to do that. It's also not a one and done thing sometimes- we feel resentful but we can then mentally go through the process of choosing to let them go.

Another term for dealing with this is radical acceptance. Not that the situation is acceptable- but that our mothers are only capable of being who they are. Expecting them to be different isn't helpful to us or them.

As to NC vs LC. I am in contact more with my mother in her elder years now that is needing more assistance. She is still disordered and I don't have any expectations that she will act differently. From speaking to her health care providers, I can see the extent of her mental illness and it has helped me to accept that she is who she is. It wasn't a choice to not be motherly. She isn't able to do that.

This situation can be aggravating as she can be difficult. My H notices that it takes up time and attention. I could have gone NC. I don't think anyone would have blamed me for it if I did. But what I have explained to him is that in some way, I am gaining something from the experience. I can see the outcome of my efforts if I try and subsequently fail. If I were NC, I would not know this.

So to the question- should you break NC? I think it's an individual decision. I didn't go NC- I was LC- and now the "LC" is an emotional LC as the contact by phone is frequent. I have distance as a boundary. I don't live near her. Being in her presence is different than contact by phone. Visits to her don't seem to make a difference to her- it's me being useful to her and doing things for her that seem to matter to her- and I do tasks for her that can be done online or by phone.

I also don't think I could have as much contact without having done the personal work through 12 steps and counseling, as this helped me to not feel as emotionally reactive to her behavior. It's not that I have reached a point of not reacting at all- it's that it is less- which decreases the drama to the interactions.

So here is a thought and it goes with the are you emotionally recovered enough to interact with your mother statement. Maybe not now, maybe not ever, or- it's a work in progress-- not now but maybe later. Another question is - do you want to interact with her? If the answer is no- then that is the answer.

If you do choose to not be NC, do it for you. What would you learn from this? What are your reasons for interacting with her?

[Notwendy]

Kells- I have found myself doing what you experienced with your H- withdrawing from people to avoid feeling emotional pain.

I recognize my tendency to emotionally withdraw and "tune out" another person. I credit this as a coping behavior that helped me as a child. There is a certain pain and frustration at not being heard. It's not only with someone with BPD- it can be traits or other reasons too. But if someone's behavior simulates that feeling- I can withdraw from it- even if it isn't necessary to do so.

[Methuen]

Hi IMatter,
I'm really sorry you are going through such a difficult and dark time.

I think when Zachira says our bpd moms bring us lifetime sorrow, I think this is what she is talking about.  The waves of pain ebb and flow with other things happening in our lives and environment. 

I CRAVE the safety of a mother that can take care of herself and just wants to love her kid(s) without the burden of this illness.

  To the point that you have discovered that your MIL has flaws and isn't the mother-type-replacement you were hoping for, I suspect that as long as we look externally for the mother we crave, we may perhaps always have trouble finding her. 

The advice from my T yesterday is to look inward and parent my own inner child (little M).  I live near my mom, am still in contact with her (88yo) at least once a week in person, plus any texts I choose to reply to. I live in perpetual fear of my mom because of her unpredictable behaviors, and now my situation has evolved where I have allowed her to control my freedom in my retirement.  Two years ago I returned to work to keep a safe boundary from her.  I have never told her I don't work full time, so on my days off, I can't do things in town with my  friends because I'm afraid her flying monkeys will see me and mention it to her and she will attack me for not being her "caretaker" on my days off.  In her mind, this would mean I don't love her, I've abandoned her, and amongst other things, she says things no mother should say. So I hide at home or on the trails on my days off, to stay safe.  The truth is I've been a great daughter, but her needs are a big BLACK HOLE, and I burned out.  For a BPD mother, it is never enough and the rages keep coming.

Kudos to you for figuring things out while you are still young.  I misdirected a lot of my life energy over 5 decades to her before I couldn't do it any more.

There was a lot of talk in my T session yesterday about not really having a "mother" and what a loss this is.  My T suggested "reparenting" my inner child (little M).  I said "how do I do that?"  Her suggestions sounded word for word like how I spoke to my own kids when they were little.  So I thought, OK I can do that, and the next time my little M gets scared, I can speak kindly and soothingly to her.  Basically reparent myself.  At this point, I'll give anything a try. I don't know if you think that could be worth a try for you? 

I think this kind of thing might be what it means to "look inward" to repair ourselves, rather than looking externally to other people or "replacement mother's". Then we will be in a better place to accept the positive qualities of MIL or other adults, and maybe pay less attention to the negative traits, or take the issues that come up less personally?

I don't know if this makes sense.

Thoughts?

To me: no one is worth the trouble. As you can imagine this creates a lot of tension in any family dynamic  bc I am so unforgiving? so triggered....  so anxiety riddled by perceived judgement, so tired of being a kid from a broken home.

Instead of going to that dark place and thinking no one is worth the trouble, how about shifting and saying "I am worth the trouble."  We know our mother's will never change.  The only thing we can change is how we react to them. So the work is on us - it's internal work.  It's not always helpful to look external for what we are missing because there is a good chance we will be disappointed. I think maybe we have to mother ourselves, which is kind of sad, but also just the luck of the draw (or the sperm and egg).

For me I can acknowledge that my mother isn't all bad.  She isn't Satan, or Hitler or a murderer or bank robber.  There were a some things about her that were ok as a person.  But as a "mother" she gets a hard fail.  What I learned from her was that I couldn't trust people, I didn't feel safe around her, and that I disappointed and failed her as a daughter (because I should desire to be her slave to show my love). I understand that this comes from her FOO - and a chaotic unloving home rife with physical, emotional and sexual abuse when she was a child, and a mother who died when she was 14.  While those things don't excuse her behavior as a mother to me (esp. she refused to ever consider therapy for herself) I can still look at her with compassion, and say that despite her failings as a mother, she probably did the best she could. I have detached from her "emotionally" over the past number of years.  I haven't had any "expectations" of her for years, because I chose to "let go". "Emotional detachment" is a task for recovery I think, and I've worked at it to do that. It's been freeing I think. I have chosen to keep contact, but it is very superficial, and brief.  Afterwards, I'm usually reeling, even if nothing terrible has happened in that hour.  There's just too much unresolved history over 6 decades.

I have a cousin who went completely NC with her mother (my mother's sister) and I totally get that and completely respect her for her choice.  She did what she had to do, to save herself and her family. All the power to her. I totally support her, even though I never see her because of distance.

Two different people, two different ways of navigating the trauma.  I think everyone of us is just different, and needs to do what is right for each of us.

Like you, I will never have a safe relationship with my mom. She is not a nice person.  But I have accepted that she is who she is. She doesn't have capacity to be anything different. I also need to be "who I am" and feel safe, and live my own life. And, I need to "let" her be "who she is" and not try to change her or have expectations of her to be different than she is. 

I have recently read two books that I found very helpful (both recommended by my T)
Set Boundaries Find Peace - by Nedra Tawaab
Codependent No More - by Melody Beattie

I don't know if you're a reader or not.  I was in a reading funk for about a year because I was just on "overload", but I'm back on the reading wagon and found these very practical.  I related to so so much in both these books.  It was kind of like reading Eggshells so many years ago.

IMatter, so many people have supported and lifted me up over the years, and the support has been life changing.  Know that you are not alone. We are all here for you.    I sincerely hope tomorrow is a better day.   

[Notwendy]

Hi IMatter,

I think when Zachira says our bpd moms bring us lifetime sorrow, I think this is what she is talking about.  The waves of pain ebb and flow with other things happening in our lives and environment. 
 

I live in perpetual fear of my mom because of her unpredictable behaviors.

I'm afraid her flying monkeys will see me and mention it to her.

The truth is I've been a great daughter, but her needs are a big BLACK HOLE, and I burned out.  For a BPD mother, it is never enough and the rages keep coming.

For me I can acknowledge that my mother isn't all bad.  She isn't Satan, or Hitler or a murderer or bank robber.  There were a some things about her that were ok as a person.  But as a "mother" she gets a hard fail.  What I learned from her was that I couldn't trust people, I didn't feel safe around her, and that I disappointed and failed her as a daughter (because I should desire to be her slave to show my love).

I can still look at her with compassion, and say that despite her failings as a mother, she probably did the best she could. I have detached from her "emotionally" over the past number of years.  I haven't had any "expectations" of her for years, because I chose to "let go". "Emotional detachment" is a task for recovery I think, and I've worked at it to do that. It's been freeing I think. I have chosen to keep contact, but it is very superficial, and brief.  Afterwards, I'm usually reeling, even if nothing terrible has happened in that hour.  There's just too much unresolved history over 6 decades.


Like you, I will never have a safe relationship with my mom. She is not a nice person.  But I have accepted that she is who she is. She doesn't have capacity to be anything different. I also need to be "who I am" and feel safe, and live my own life. And, I need to "let" her be "who she is" and not try to change her or have expectations of her to be different than she is. 

I have highlighted this section because it is so relatable. Even at a distance, I feel judged by my BPD mother's family sometimes. They have been more supportive recently- and are also aware of her behaviors - but they don't "get" the situation--- they are unable to- due to their own experiences with mothering- or being mothered. It's instinctual to them so they can't imagine otherwise.

One of the relatives around my mother's age had surgery and her daughter (my cousin) helped with her recovery care- and the contrast between these two experiences was apparent. I can see where my mother would feel slighted in this situation- her children aren't providing this one on one caretaking but the relationship between that mother and daughter is different. I don't have intentions of slighting her but the situation is different. This was also a short term situation as the relative is motivated to get well as soon as possible and did what she needed to do to achive that. She was cooperative.

Does my cousin feel irritated sometimes as her parents are now in their elder years and can be a bit irritable or forgetful sometimes? Of course- that is what is known as normal. But the foundation of the relationship is solid and built on consistent love. The occasional irritability is the exception. I recall when my MIL snapped at me in her elder years. This was not her usual self. It didn't bother me, because I did feel safe with her. She's a generally consistent and kind person who was having a bad moment. I can relate to the fear and unpredictability with my BPD mother.

Just as we can conclude that our mothers are doing the best we can, I think we are too. There isn't a cultural model for a disordered mother and neither is there one for a daughter who has one.

[Imatter33]

For me:

I have a loftier resentment that I have not gotten a replacement mother yet, vs any conscious resentment I have toward my actual mother. * I use "gotten" rather than found ..
purposefully.... I am discovering there is a part of me that feels the replacement mother is  owed me. And i've been living my life out waiting until some special person loved me in a motherly way. I don't know why I have this expectation. It could come from a faith based place that God will provide me good relationships. However, I see that even in my reasoning its very entitled. I have no reason to think that because I don't have a  healthy bio mom/daughter relationship that  there will ever be anyone up to the task of replacement. This is a momentus realization.

I want to do the work and get past resentment, and become beautifully indifferent. To mom, to MIL, to well meaning women out there, to people that rub me the wrong way, etc.

To my own knowledge I have radically accepted that my mother is disordered and will not provide me with what I crave. ( NC is a barrier to test that hypothesis further.)

When we went NC every fiber of my being said, "Well this is the last time she does this to me."

And bc there has been NC since then I don't know if i put a bandaid on resentment or if it is indeed gone with the passing of time. 

This whole original post began with again thinking about breaking NC in the smallest of ways. The reason because I was tired of feeling motherless. I was tired of my flawed replacement attempts driving me crazy. ( Oh my goodness am I thankful for the forum right now )

The draft I wrote was:

Hi mom, I love you.
Hi mom, I forgive you.

And then I was planning to promptly block her number again.


Now I sit here thinking about my journey with  emotional recovery and where I am in that.

I don't think I should break NC when I know my discoveries are fragile.

from the bottom of my heart.

Thanks all.

[Notwendy]

For me:

I have a loftier resentment that I have not gotten a replacement mother yet, vs any conscious resentment I have toward my actual mother. * I use "gotten" rather than found ..
purposefully.... I am discovering there is a part of me that feels the replacement mother is  owed me. And i've been living my life out waiting until some special person loved me in a motherly way. I don't know why I have this expectation. It could come from a faith based place that God will provide me good relationships.

Interesting. I may have wished for someone to mother me but I know now that I'd also push away anyone who tries. I don't think I could trust someone in that position. I don't feel that one is "owed" to me.

I can handle it in small amounts. An elderly woman I met was very sweet to me one time. I had a "mommy" moment there but I think I would also not get too close.

"Mommy" is just too scary to consider. I even keep most female friends at a distance. I will let a few close friends "in" but only after knowing them well.

My experience with faith is different from yours. My earliest and young impression of religion was that God was my parent too, so I felt as if there was another parent.  But my experience of my mother is more like not knowing a different situation.  This is the only mother I have  so I don't have another experience. I can see it as an observer.

[TelHill]

For me:

I have a loftier resentment that I have not gotten a replacement mother yet, vs any conscious resentment I have toward my actual mother. * I use "gotten" rather than found ..
purposefully.... I am discovering there is a part of me that feels the replacement mother is  owed me. And i've been living my life out waiting until some special person loved me in a motherly way. I don't know why I have this expectation. It could come from a faith based place that God will provide me good relationships. However, I see that even in my reasoning its very entitled. I have no reason to think that because I don't have a  healthy bio mom/daughter relationship that  there will ever be anyone up to the task of replacement. This is a momentus realization.

I did this unknowingly as a child when we had nice older women visiting my parents. I'd ignore kids my age. For lack of a better term, I love bombed them and they'd respond with the warmth I craved. My mom noticed and put them down viciously to me after they left. I did this in college with my roommate's mom.  I think it's natural to seek what we never had.

I know you know this intellectually and it's easy to put it in a  box to remember and  examine at will. The emotional part is like a living tsunami for me. Feeling the anguish and misery is like falling into it and dying.

It's just a little bit at a time for me to cry some of it out of my system and move on until the next emotional cleansing comes upon me.

It's hard to face mom as you're healing and having her add more pain to deal with. The bucket's already overflowing and overwhelming.

It's ok to slide from NC to LC to VLC as needed -- many times in a week is okay.  You don't have to announce it to mom or anyone. Mom won't melt or vaporize in your absence. If she's like my mother, she'll stay the same annoying and exasperating person she's always been when you interact again.

You may be that rare person who can reach a state of indifference with a bpd loved one.  We were robbed. I'll never forget that or the person who did this.

.

"Mommy" is just too scary to consider. I even keep most female friends at a distance. I will let a few close friends "in" but only after knowing them well.

Older than me women are ok but it's those around my age I run from. I think it might be I don't have an trusted authority figure to run to if something goes wrong. I was bullied in school by girls. I think I was very quiet and was afraid of the consequences of fighting back.  Not fair to me, but I was a juicy target.

My experience with faith is different from yours. My earliest and young impression of religion was that God was my parent too,

Same here about God being a parent figure and as a Catholic, the Blessed Mother and female saints could be stand in mothers. On earth, my mother seemed to be God's enforcer so it was a mixed bag of love and fear.  I remember my mom saying don't be so proud of yourself. You're not so smart and pretty as you think you are. I took it as a failing for feeling like that and internalized the shame. I'm working on all of this.

It seems like the repairing and healing takes so long though.

[Imatter33]

Just had the unfortunate reminder this website can be a bit like a person with BPD, if they don't like what you're saying...it will be deleted. 

my response was deleted. 

Sigh.

The jist was my emotional dysregulations used to be mostly due to sheer exhaustion from being in any type of relationship with her. It was an emotional survival mode with my mom. The survival of our shaky relationship was always riding on something I did or said.

Now in NC, the reasons can be anything big or small....and my newest emotional eruption unearthed the resentment I've been holding onto.

Side note: I don't like getting closer to older women either but I do experience a rather powerful disarming euphoria when I witness  a woman that is both powerful and loving. I just want to be in their presence. And then i go home ....and weep over my closet resentment that they are not my mother, or that my mother will not ever  be like them ( one of the two)...... haha.

I am going to put a  HAHA right  there so that you all know my mood has lightened...

but this work is never not heavy. HUGS.

Thanks everyone so far. 

[livednlearned]

I think i resent my reality of motherlessness more than I resent her as a person/mom.

This really got me in the chest. Oof. It's so profound to recognize this ... I hadn't ever thought of it this way. But it makes sense. Having a mother who fails to create the conditions for a secure attachment can lead to a lasting injury.

I haven't heard many others here over the years say this so I don't know if this is atypical or not ...I actually found it exquisitely painful when an older friend (22 years older than me, so a mother figure) demonstrated love when she offered money (no strings attached) to help me get full custody of my son. I had married a man with a PD and managed to get out of the relationship, but he was intent on staying negatively engaged through court. That debacle went on for 4 years and I ran out of money. My friend offered help, and my lawyer offered to provide legal counsel at a reduced cost. The combination of these two older women trying to help me nearly drove me to a nervous breakdown. I had a moment in my living room feeling like I was going to get sick and pass out -- I hadn't really ever really been put in a position where I had to acknowledge I was worth their kindness and care and love. Being offered something as a gesture of unconditional love really hurt! I didn't have any way to make sense of it. I had friends and approval that meant something to me, through my education and career, but this felt different.

There is something about resisting love from others that functioned like a codependent engine for me. Receiving love is so painfully vulnerable. Like physically painful. Especially if you wanted it so much as a kid, and there were moments when you thought you could get it, only to have it taken from you, repeatedly. How do you give yourself permission to feel vulnerable when that instinct is mixed up with pain and betrayal?

I had to work with a therapist to be able to accept the gift, then I had to keep working with her to help me not build resentment or feel guilt -- basically, managing emotions that would ruin the friendship. Accepting the gift felt a bit like giving away power. I had to stay vulnerable. Not easy to do without a therapist. Not easy to do with a therapist  

With you and your MIL, I think the in-law dynamic also adds a dimension of complexity that, at least for me, would make it even harder.

I think i have been trying to find a replacement so that I can say I've dealt with the motherlessness. OOF. I have not. I have replacement resentment toward MIL mostly....that I created myself. No one forced me to put my MIL in that place but me.

Maybe not force but she does have mother in the job title. You didn't really get to choose her. Maybe it created a higher than normal expectation to repair an attachment injury with someone else who shared that title?

MILs are known for challenging relationships. So then we have two challenges -- our own feelings around an impaired mother, and then the triangle dynamics with a mother who has a strong attachment (I would assume) with her bio child. And unless you married your spouse because he had a family you wanted to be part of, most of us take what we get. Just like our own mothers.

I have been running from reality.

I wonder if you are running from the same thing I was? I really avoided confronting my own worthiness, my own lovability. Similar to what Methuen describes, I did not allow anyone to parent me, including myself, until I worked with someone who could help me.

My estrangements lasted 10 years with my uBPD sibling, 7 years with disordered father, and LC for the same period with my adult child mother. My sibling and I are as LC as possible, and would be NC if it weren't for my parents occasionally pushing contact.

They weren't there for me as a kid and the memo was pretty clear that they weren't going to be there for me as an adult either. In fact, it was more like the job description was be there for them no matter what. I needed to figure out how to keep myself emotionally safe and I couldn't do that while being repeatedly injured. That's what Notwendy's comments brings to mind for me -- the estrangement was so I could gather strength and edit the family script where I got to treat myself like someone who was loved. If I didn't do that work, it would've been too easy for my family to say I was wrong to care about myself and for me to believe it.

This is a bit more tactical, but understanding Murray's family systems theory was a big aha for me. People in my family use other family members to regulate their emotions and try to stabilize relationships. Kids end up suffering collateral damage because there seems to be rules but no one can explain them so many kids put their efforts into illusions of control. Like responding to chaos with fawn, flight, fight, freeze.

For me, I used adulthood to flee. I became the ultimate outsider. Unfortunately, there is a cost to that. It's only after understanding how my family's triangle dynamics work that I can align my boundaries with how they function. Without that understanding, my boundaries were kinda rigid and I didn't understand how I could keep walking into a buzz saw.

I no longer mistake their overtures for closeness as genuine because they're driven by triangle dynamics and not an authentic desire for intimacy. In fact, I think intimacy and closeness sets off some of their high tension behaviors. And for whatever reason, I seem to embody intimacy and closeness to them. I guess my need for it was transparent? I sometimes wonder if I wore my vulnerability and spontaneity too openly and they both wanted what it represented and were threatened by it at the same time. If you walk around feeling things that they feel afraid of or remind them of, childhood is going to be really really confusing. And adulthood isn't going to make much more sense without people helping us understand wtf was going on for us as kids.

[Notwendy]

I actually found it exquisitely painful when an older friend (22 years older than me, so a mother figure) demonstrated love

Put in a position where I had to acknowledge I was worth their kindness and care and love. Being offered something as a gesture of unconditional love really hurt!

There is something about resisting love from others that functioned like a codependent engine for me. Receiving love is so painfully vulnerable. Like physically painful. Especially if you wanted it so much as a kid, and there were moments when you thought you could get it, only to have it taken from you, repeatedly. How do you give yourself permission to feel vulnerable when that instinct is mixed up with pain and betrayal?

I wonder if you are running from the same thing I was? I really avoided confronting my own worthiness, my own lovability. Similar to what Methuen describes, I did not allow anyone to parent me, including myself, until I worked with someone who could help me.

Yes, these moments stand out to me and yet, I will run from them too.
Some of them are probably insignificant to the person in "mother" position because it's so normal for them. It's like I want the connection but am so afraid of the potential disappointment from wanting it that I won't let it happen at all.

[Methuen]

It's like I want the connection but am so afraid of the potential disappointment from wanting it that I won't let it happen at all.

This!  Ditto

For me, I would add that a woman demonstrating a loving kindness to me hits me like a wallop - kind of like running into a brick wall you didn't see was there.  I'm in total shock.  And at a total loss.  I don't know what to do or think or feel.   And it's VERY UNCOMFORTABLE.

[Notwendy]

In college, this spilled over into romantic relationships with men. I was afraid to get that close to someone- male or female. I did like guys- and dated some in high school- but they felt more safe- maybe because in high school we know people already through friend groups. In college, meeting a guy for the first time, I was afraid to get involved. Friendship was fine but not closer.

I still hold a distance but some people less than others.  I prefer it when people are straightforward with me and authentic. In high school and college, I tended to be friends with both males and females. Once married though it becomes inappropriate to "hang out with guy buddies" and most of my friends are married now.

[Imatter33]

Would you "all" say that unfortunately as kids of disordered parents we develop negative reactions to Love?  I know its broad.

I fight with my H a lot about familial expectation and I think a good part of the expectation is love they are attempting to give.. .and my firm rejection of it because I am uncomfortable.
Ex : an invite to family dinner does not have to equal manipulative.

I too get the pain feeling, the cringe feeling, the annoyed feeling, and the furious feeling...when having to be around families "being family."

I distrust and fear manipulation constantly.

What can help?

[Notwendy]

I think I have been a combination of either trusting too much or too little. What has helped is working on my own co-dependency- which has one looking at our own fears.

We grew up being afraid of our mothers but other adults probably aren't going to hurt us. It's possible your in laws have no intent of manipulating you, but even if they did- the fear response could be out of proportion to the actual harm they might do.

One thing we looked at was when someone triggers an emotional response. We can see this as someone doing something to us- but that renders us ineffective. If we perceive this as our own emotional reaction- why do we react this way? That gives us the ability to do something different.

Your MIL may have her own shortcomings, but she isn't your mother. Maybe she also has a disorder but maybe not- so consider your reactions to her.

I think we can be sensitive to family dynamics. We all regress a little when we are with our families of origin and families have "unspoken rules". My H's family is more functional than mine is, but they have their quirks and familial expectations.  My H couldn't see it. This is the "normal" he grew up with. I also had to put it in context. It isn't nearly as disordered as mine.

As to your arguments with your H- his family expectations are his version of "normal" since he grew up with this. So you may see it differently than he does. I think all families have some quirkiness- some more than others. The question is- how disruptive is it? The occasional family dinner might be something to just go along with, but if it was every week- that could be too much.

[TelHill]

Hello lmatter,

I can relate to being a bit lost with building friendships and relationships. It's an issue that comes from my dBPD mother's inconsistent and cruel treatment of me growing up -- most obviously.

I wish there was a clear path to navigating the somewhat overwhelming feelings of fear. For me it's of being taken over by someone through manipulation or brute force. The feeling comes at any time I try and then continue to make contact.

Have had problems with therapists who don't understand that this is an issue that's not readily resolved by showing up at events. There has been no support of dealing with my feelings and fears as they show up. I didn't know even to ask this and it wasn't presented.

In my opinion, it's such a basic thing to learn as a kid as these therapists did. How does one really describe and list what must be many steps in many directions, some unknown.

Am a techie so sorry if the following doesn't make sense. It's like the problem of a machine reading and making determinations of possible malignancies of mammograms. A skilled radiologist learns by viewing the films and knows after years of experience looking at the tumor's location, size, shape, color and the shades of black/white/gray shined through it from the machines radiation and where they appear on the slide.

 How does a doctor describe the blend of intuition, experience and knowledge so a machine can take over the task? It'll go into many branches depending on a set of variables and hundreds of paths depending on questions about singular variables and combinations of variables.

I don't think I'm overthinking this (Maybe I am!!) . It's a very slow road. Am hoping my work in a 12 step program and religious beliefs/practices can help me.Definitely just for me and not advocating a solution for anyone else.

[TelHill]

Am adding adding that therapists deal with many different problems every day.   BPD and their loved ones present their own unique problems and concerns which I think are difficult to discern and fine tune unless you have lived with someone with it for a few months.

[livednlearned]

What can help?

For me, I found somatic experiencing therapy helpful. My childhood was violent and thought that's what I would work through in therapy but to my surprise there was more to unpack around neglect and invalidation. Bessel van der Kolk has a saying that the issues are in the tissues. He wrote, "Your reality is not allowed to be seen and to be known. That is the trauma."

Talk therapy helped to a certain point but the somatic work was more helpful at rewiring some of the physiological responses that persevered no matter how much I tried to override them.

Recently I started taking a beta blocker for situational anxiety and wish I had known about this as an option sooner. They don't completely eliminate the anxiety but they sure do help. I kept experiencing migraines and muscles spasms when visiting family. Relaxation techniques only went so far. The beta blocker helps manage the more intense reactions to my mother so I can tolerate being around her without setting my nervous system on fire. Same with my uBPD sibling. I develop eye twitches and feel nearly unmanageable levels of anxiety around him even when it's in a public place and my H is there to support me. I wouldn't want to rely on beta blockers exclusively but they do help with a type of anxiety that has been hard for me to completely eliminate.

 Have you found anything to be helpful?

[Methuen]

Talk therapy helped to a certain point but the somatic work was more helpful at rewiring some of the physiological responses that persevered no matter how much I tried to override them.

LNL, I'm wondering if you would be ok to describe some examples of somatic work that has helped?

[Methuen]

My soul is pissed off.

Does anyone have any success stories of forgiveness with their person of high conflict?
Does anyone have a good relationship with a MIL?
Has anyone here healed anything?

I forgave my mom years ago.  I wouldn't call it a success story.  Mine is a silent forgiveness.  If I verbalized "forgiving" her, she would go berserk, because she thinks she's been a great mother.  So I forgave her internally, because I know she had a ____ FOO.  But I've NEVER excused her behavior for it.  Her behavior is her choice, despite her crappy FOO.  To me there is a big big difference between forgiving and excusing.  I forgive her, but I do not excuse her behavior. 

I do not believe it is possible to have a good relationship with a person with BPD who has not chosen to either get help or help themselves.  Perhaps others will disagree.  I have no expertise.  Just a really crappy mother.

Have I healed some things?  Absolutely.  I've learned a lot.  I think it may have been you who once wrote "I know some things now" on this forum.  Yes I've healed some things, but for every bit of progress, there are deeper layers to unpack and more progress is needed.  One step forward, two steps back.  Some days it's the other way around.

 

My soul is pissed off.

I can relate.  It's not fair.  I just keep reminding myself about other people in the world who have so much more to deal with.  Ukraine and Gaza come to mind.  Somehow making myself feel better off someone elses misfortunes makes me feel even crappier.

[livednlearned]

LNL, I'm wondering if you would be ok to describe some examples of somatic work that has helped?

I did two kinds of somatic work. The more conventional one was working with a certified somatic experiencing therapist (based on Peter Levine's work). The therapist I worked with also did EMDR but she felt given my experience that somatic experiencing therapy (SET) would be better. I had childhood violence to work through and her concern was that I might get triggered and retraumatized with EMDR because it can apparently make it harder to put the genie back in the bottle, at least according to her. Although zachira, if you're reading this, I know you had a good experience with EMDR. From what I remember, your therapist seemed to have advanced EMDR techniques to help control for that, which perhaps mine didn't have.

In my first session, my T gave me some anchoring tools in case I disassociated, like having me name everything in the room the color blue. We did talk therapy at first, mostly answering questions, like having me describe my first three earliest memories. All of the ones I shared were fairly benign.

It was interesting because I thought I knew these memories inside and out, that there wasn't much else to know about them. But in therapy, I described one of them and I gestured to my right and the T asked me who or what was to my right in the memory. I realized that my father was there. T did a little more probing about how I felt about him being there, did I feel safe, etc. and it's weird but my voice went flat and I remember saying families aren't safe.

The T asked me to gesture again and to describe how my arm felt, was it heavy, did it feel light, etc. Did it felt like steel, was it made of sponge, other questions to help describe how it felt. And then she had me forcefully push my right arm in the direction where my father was standing in my memory. That unleashed a lot of fury and anguish and all this pent up emotion that felt fresh, like it was happening in real time. The rest of the sessions kind of went like that, with her bringing me back to the present and helping to ground me in my body when it got intense. Honestly, it's all a bit of a blur, but the key is that I felt confident she could guide me back to safety if things felt overly intense.

I feel it's important to say that by the time I did that therapy I was almost desperate to heal my trauma. My stepdaughter has BPD traits and having her live under my roof after getting out of a BPD marriage stirred up so much grief and anguish I felt like it was all I could do to survive. I was estranged from my father and uBPD brother and was developing physical ailments that were impossible to ignore. Someone recommended Body Keeps the Score and I felt like a walking poster for the author's theories about trauma and how it manifests.

I also did this less conventional somatic work with a woman who practiced polarity therapy. That work is a bit weirder to describe because she didn't even touch me and I recovered from some strange pains that I could trace back to a head-on car accident that messed up my neck. The problem was that there wasn't anything physically wrong with my neck, at least according to x-rays. I was having a hard time turning my head and had an odd phantom pain that made me feel like I couldn't do yoga -- it felt like my head was on a pin and the weight was going to break it.

I'm a trained researcher and there is no way to explain how or why it worked. I met someone in a yoga class who recommended I make an appointment with this polarity therapist, and I finally did, but I thought it would be a waste of money. I even worried I would feel like I had to pretend it was working because of people-pleasing tendencies. Instead, the polarity therapist seemed to cure two odd physical ailments that I had been tolerating for decades. I don't know how to explain it and other than here I don't talk about it, other to my husband. All I can say is that it felt like a lifetime of the same batch of feelings rolled into one tidy packet and they were gently diffused. After the session, I remember feeling more grounded than I've ever felt in my life, more like an energy feeling than a physical sensation, if that makes sense.

My husband is a physician and he's a very evidence-based guy. He also got black belts in two martial arts and is into tai chi, so he seems to be more open to the idea that energy is something we can heal. It's hard to describe but I feel both skeptical and grateful at the same. No idea how polarity therapy worked but I'm grateful that it seemed to make a difference.

H often talks about the placebo effect and how powerful it is so I sometimes wonder if that's part of my healing, too. I was carrying around a lot of trauma from childhood violence and felt like SD26 was triggering similar responses to lesser offenses. My uBPD sibling was always competing for scarce resources and SD26 did the same thing with me, and there were days I felt like I was re-living the exact same survival patterns.

I will say that one thing hasn't changed and that's how triggered and repulsed by my mother. Although recently I was prescribed a beta blocker and happened to be taking one the last time I talked to her. If my normal reaction to her was a 10 out of 10, it was less than that but not zero. She likes to be center of attention and portray herself as cute and adorable -- I think her fantasy in life is to have her head tilted back as she laughs, surrounded by a circle of adoring fans. That was, and is, more important than the physical violence that shaped my childhood, and shaped me. I can't seem to fully let go of my hatred because of the stark difference between her having a ball and me being beaten.

I don't want to make it seem like somatic therapy is a cure-all. It certainly brought down the intensity but there is probably more there to unpack. This might be the only place I would ever admit this, but I don't expect I will feel anything when my mother dies. I grieved having a mother when I was 5 and realized she wasn't a real adult who could help. She had all the powers of an adult with a child's personality which made it worse than if she were an actual child.