abusive adult son

[Mooneyn]

 
My adult so is totally unable to support himself and cannot hold down a job. He has become extremely verbally abusive towards me and refuses to do the minimum to care for himself ie: get health insurance, deal with student loans, file taxes. I helped him financially through grad school but I can’t afford to support him any longer. I have been advised to stop communicating with him. I feel he will become homeless or harm himself. This is haunting me and I am devastated. What is a decision I can live with?

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]

My adult so is totally unable to support himself and cannot hold down a job. He has become extremely verbally abusive towards me and refuses to do the minimum to care for himself ie: get health insurance, deal with student loans, file taxes. I helped him financially through grad school but I can’t afford to support him any longer. I have been advised to stop communicating with him. I feel he will become homeless or harm himself. This is haunting me and I am devastated. What is a decision I can live with?

Hello and welcome!

Ultimately, there's only one decision to make here.  You're responsible for you, he's responsible for him.

Let's break down what you wrote- your son can't support himself or hold down a job.  That's not true at all.  He chooses not to hold a job or support himself because he has you to support him...so why should he try?  Through being a loving, compassionate mom, you're enabling him to remain unemployed.

He's verbally abusive towards you- that's a common problem with BPD and it also stems from enablement.  When he's abusive towards you, what actions do you take to let him know that's not okay?  When my BPD daughter gets abusive, I ask her to leave.  If she continues to be abusive, I tell her not to come back because I don't deserve being treated that way.  It took some time but the message was finally received- abuse is not okay.

He won't get health insurance, file taxes, or deal with his student loans.  Okay, that's fine...none of that stuff has anything to do with you.  Let him figure those things out on his own time.  Maybe it ruins his credit or gets him in trouble with the IRS.  That's okay though, it's his right to decide to do that.  If you're bailing him out of these situations, he has no reason to change since he's not learning life lessons from it.  All he's figuring out is that mom will do everything so I don't have to.

You worry that he will become homeless or harm himself.  I know that's tough, but maybe that's what needs to happen in order for him to grow up and start being an adult.  There's only two outcomes here- either you baby him for the rest of your life (while accepting his abuse) or he grows up and becomes a man.  Which outcome would you prefer?  It's impossible to have both with the path he's on.

Your son is sick and it's heartbreaking, but you must have boundaries to protect yourself from his abuse.  He must make his own choices in life and the blame has to stop for your mental health.  The only way for that to happen is to force him to handle things on his own...even if that does mean asking him to leave.

I hope that helps and I'm so sorry you're going through this.  With my BPD daughter, things got a lot worse before they got better.  But there is hope once you stop enabling him to ignore society's rules.

[CC43]

Hi Mooneyn,

It's understandable that you feel devastated, seeing someone you love unable to embrace adulthood.  Not only is he failing to launch, he's also abusive to you.

The facts are that he's an adult, and he's making choices about how he wants to live his life.  If you continue to support him, he probably has little reason to make positive changes.  Changes are often hard, especially for someone with BPD.  Has your son been diagnosed?

I have a stepdaughter who is diagnosed with BPD, and she remained totally dependent, avoidant of adult responsibilities (including self-care), and hostile to her family until she hit rock bottom, twice.  For her, rock bottom was losing all her friends, estrangement from family and suicide attempts.  In a way, she needed a couple of hospital stays to realize that she needed to make changes for the better.  Critically, her dad conditioned his continued financial support (rent, car, insurance, etc.) on her following doctors' recommendations for treatment (therapy and medication), and getting on a pathway towards adulting (working, independent living).  She could choose something else, but then the financial support would be withdrawn.  The choice was relatively easy, because most people really do want to live independently and support themselves.  Though she's had some ups and downs, and a couple of setbacks, I'd say my stepdaughter is in a much better place now than a year ago.  She still has work to do, but she is doing some work.  Before, she just gave up on everything, including herself.  A kindergartener has more responsibilities and functions better than she did when at her lowest.

I'm often asking myself, how much of my stepdaughter's dysfunctional and hostile behavior was intentional, how much was learned, and how much was mental illness?  To me, it often seemed like the illness was an excuse for not "adulting."  Then it became a vicious downward spiral:  not hitting milestones (graduating, getting a real job, having a romantic relationship, etc.) made her feel ever more resentful and depressed.  She self-medicated with weed, and got worse.  The more she avoided adult life and the more she acted out, the more her dad rushed in to help or rescue her, as he was driven by concern and guilt.  So what was the incentive to change?  For a long time, she was "rewarded" by being hostile, because she got out of obligations (going to school, holding a job) and she got money from her dad!  Only when she hit bottom and she was at risk of losing financial support did she decide she needed to change.

Looking back, I'd say my stepdaughter was extremely scared of adulthood.  She didn't really know who she was, and she was afraid of doing the hard work.  The more her dad stepped in to "save" her from crises and make her financially comfortable, the more avoidant she became.  He really had to threaten to withdraw his financial support in order for her to accept getting treatment.

[livednlearned]

He has become extremely verbally abusive towards me and refuses to do the minimum to care for himself

Is your son living with you?

Did you have a reasonably good relationship prior to this change? Any thoughts on what might've happened for him to become verbally abusive?

If he has executive functioning skills or other neurodivergent traits he may need help breaking tasks into discrete chunks to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Any insight into whether he may have any of those struggles?

At a minimum, your son can't be abusive to you. If you feel safe enough to try and rebuild productive communication, declarative language can be a good way to minimize the defensive/fight - flight responses that kids with a lot of shame tend to experience. Declarative language includes "I noticed, I wondered, Maybe we could, etc."

But if he is over-the-top and you're afraid of him, it's important to focus on boundaries, especially since parents may forgive behaviors that often increase shame, making the cycle hard to break.

[Ourworld]

Hi,
I can understand somewhat how you are feeling, I have a 38yo BPD daughter. I paid everything for her to obtain her BA degree, with a lot of intervening issues. But she realized that once she completed that degree that she was not going to depend on me anymore.
That was good, but without realizing her struggle with a mental disorder, I was working civil service and took a job in Germany.
Apparently she felt abandoned and when I got back she blocked me from communicating with her (her phone, fb, messenger, and email). She got married then got her MBA online, works, and is paying her student loans.
She’s a quiet, high-functioning BPD child-which is actually quite difficult-she knows she needs some help, but the likelihood of her actually getting it is questionable.

You probably would not want your son to ever feel like you abandoned him and block you, but you actually have the upper hand here an I urge you to do your best to get him to enter family counseling (with a Case Worker preferably) with you to work out things. There are several things he can do, of course the best would be to go ahead and begin getting disability.

Many kids (they remain kids for most of their lives) with BPD are very intelligent, and it’s difficult to understand why they don’t understand. I would venture to say that of course he can understand your predicament, but he doesn’t empathize or even realize that his expenses play any part.

Although in the normal scheme of life, a parents financial responsibility should end once they become adults, children with BPD often remain immature and still need parental help and support.
Unfortunately, he cannot really grasp your hardship, which really puts you in a fragile situation, as I’m sure you realize.

I sincerely hope that you are able to get him to some family counseling to try and let a Case Worker help to try and communicate this to him. As his parent, you seem to be getting buried in the trees.

Just my ideas, I am clergy not in mental health, but I hope that helps.

[Mooneyn]

I should have clarified that my son is 31 and living in NYC. He took out loans for grad school and I paid his rent. He got a job a couple of months ago but already got fired. I told him I’m not renewing his lease. He has planned to move in with his girlfriend but now doesn’t have a job. Somehow in all of this he seems to believe it’s my fault. I have blocked his phone since he texted me horrible things like he hates my guts and wishes I would die. I plan to go no contact but I already feel like I am grieving. I can’t help but think I may never see him again. I used to have hope that once he got his masters degree he would get a job and things would improve. Now I have lost hope. I feel like he has already died. How do I get myself through this.

[CC43]

Mooneyn,

My opinion is that his criticisms of you (hating your guts, wishing you would die) are projections--that's what he thinks about himself.  But because feeling that way is too painful, he projects those thoughts onto you.  Please don't take it personally; that's the manifestation of the illness.

I too have gone through many cycles of grieving and hope.  I've learned that I need to temper expectations both ways.

For as long as he remains untreated, he will continue to come back to you to ask for help, while spewing hatred your way.  He resents the fact that he's dependent on you, and yet he's too scared to act like an adult.  I think that's a big part of BPD:  anger and learned helplessness.

What do you do?  You've cared for him well into adulthood.  He's making his own choices now, and that's what he wants to do.  You need to take care of yourself and live your life.

Will you see him again?  If he thinks you'll help him, I bet he'll make an appearance and make many more requests for money.  But if you do help him, I think you make your expectations clear:  he treats you with respect, he gets treatment and he progresses towards independence.  That's what he should want for himself.  It's his choice.  If he doesn't comply, then you can withdraw your support.