>We Need Help. We struggle with parenting our 26-yr old daughter with BPD

[Komodo]

 
This is my first post after struggling alone with parenting challenges for the last 10 years. We are overwhelmed and losing hope that we can help make a positive impact for our family, and for our beloved daughter. It seems that no matter what we say or do, or what changes we make, she reacts with extreme anger that turns into regret, then slides into depression and helplessness. Our world seems to revolve around keeping her “stable” - and she rarely is. She is sad, isolated, and quick to lash out at those who love her. I’m frankly a wreck and terrified she might harm herself. I have a therapist for support - and she has had a string of therapists and psychiatrists (and she has had meds) but they have not made a huge difference - and she is leery of anyone being able to help her.   I’ve applied to the Family Connections program - and just knowing there are others struggling as we are, is a help and a comfort. It’s darn lonely being a parent of a troubled child   Any advice/encouragement/resources would be deeply valued. Thank you.

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

[Sancho]

Hi Komodo and thank you for posting
It is certainly a lonely journey with a loved bpd child. Sometimes I feel I am living in a strange, nightmare world - it is so unfathomable that someone in such pain would turn against the very person who has been/is there for them and just wanting to help in any way they can.

It sounds as though you have done everything possible at this point in time. Keep in mind that it is accepted that for many with bpd there is symptom relief in the fourth decade ie when they are in their 30s. My dd is there now and although she has managed to stop self medicating, the bpd symptoms are very obvious and hard to deal with.

Coming here is such a help to me. I remember when I first came I had been trying to get dd to try anything that would help and to be honest I came searching for suggestions. I read others' posts and suddenly realised that I had done all I could and I began to step back a bit in that realisation.

I learnt some skills here - not JADE - ing (Judge, Argue, Discuss, Explain) - and 'letting go' ( To let go means to love more, fear less).

I also learnt - and this was a hard one for me - that I needed boundaries to survive myself in the chaos that is BPD.

It is a long, exhausting and painful journey. I hope you find comfort coming here, knowing there are others out there going through the same thing as you are. I also hope that you can find blocks of time - however small - where you can focus on your own needs, and hopefully feel some energy once again. It has been a long haul.

Time out for you is the main thing I can suggest. Make that a priority, then hopefully some of the skills etc will keep you from going under.

Sending thoughts . .

[BPDstinks]

as always, Sanchos, your posts are like a warm blanket!  (I did not read the "letting go" one...that is helpful

Goodness, I hope I don't have to wait until BPD is 30!  however, that (this GROUP) gives me hope

[CC43]

Komodo,

I can totally relate.  What you describe parallels perfectly with the experience with my diagnosed stepdaughter:

"It seems that no matter what we say or do, or what changes we make, she reacts with extreme anger that turns into regret, then slides into depression and helplessness. Our world seems to revolve around keeping her “stable” - and she rarely is. She is sad, isolated, and quick to lash out at those who love her."

I've written various posts on this site describing the behaviors, triggers and feelings, the projections and victimhood status, the unstable sense of identity, the blame-shifting, the re-writing of history.  But I think there is reason for hope.  At least in the case of my stepdaughter, when she hit bottom, she finally realized things needed to change, and she's in a better place right now after therapies.  I wouldn't say she has had a full relapse of symptoms, but at least she's headed in the right direction.  She still tends to blame others, and she is still ruminating about the past, but her orientation has become much more forward-looking.  And she's escaped the confines of her bedroom.

I think a major turning point was, sadly, losing all her friends because of her outbursts.  Though she typically blamed her parents for all her problems, I think she had to realize that losing all her friends couldn't be her parents' fault entirely.  And sadly, losing all her friends meant isolation and depression.  Suicide attempts were both a cry for help and a wake-up call.  It's sad and frightening that suicide attempts marked her bottom, but they got her into treatment facilities with professionals, and she started taking therapy seriously.  Continuing on with the status quo became untenable.

I also think that making new friends helped pull her out of her funk, marking the first real sign of a path towards recovery (or remission).  She still hasn't repaired all her family relationships, but she resumed talking to her dad, her greatest ally, and she's texting with her sister now, too.  She can't handle family gatherings yet, but I'm grateful for baby steps.

Another turning point was with my husband.  Like many others, he was desperate, and despondent that nothing seemed to work to help his daughter, who seemed to get more dysfunctional as years passed.  Homelife became miserable.  At one point, I said to him, I think your job right now is to ensure that your daughter gets the treatment she needs, and that she sticks with it.  If you enable the status quo by financially supporting her but letting her skip recommended therapies, then you're only prolonging the situation, which clearly isn't working.  She hasn't been capable of making healthy choices, because she's ill and she needs treatment.  That seemed to flip a switch for him--the responsibility moved away from him coming up with solutions, and towards his daughter getting therapy with professionals.  The ultimatum with his daughter was that he'd continue to support her, but only if she got treatment and followed doctors' orders.  Otherwise, she'd be on her own.  In her case, the choice became easy.  And I think it was easier for her to accept help from "the professionals" (her words) than follow recommendations from her father, even if they were essentially the same.

I wish you the best.  This isn't easy at all, and it's heartbreaking.

[BPDstinks]

heartbreaking is the best description