Overwhelming guilt, and rejecting the narrative of being a bad daughter

[Methuen]

We just arrived home from our 30 day camping trip mostly off grid.  It was the trip of a life time really.  We got pretty close to the Arctic Circle, and did hiking, kayaking, a lot of driving, and met so many interesting and helpful people along the way from all over the world. It was amazing.  Total R & R and no crises.  Unplugging from her helped me to "find myself" again, and be happy and joyful. Just wow!

H got sick driving home, and since I was trapped in the vehicle for so many hours driving with him, I now have it too.  The upside of this is that a fever of 103º F means I don't have to feel obligated to rush over and listen to all her trials and tribulations while we were away.  She of course can't wait to tell me in person, so she texted.  I replied with some details about my flu symptoms.

Lots happened.  Her dysfunction worsens.  The upside to this is that since we weren't here to deal with it, perhaps her friends got to observe the REAL dysfunction in person (unfiltered by all the things we do).  Thirty days is a long time for her to hold it together.  She had people "running" for her.  I sense it didn't go well.  Our DD saw her yesterday, and said "she didn't look good".

Here are some of her "texts" that came in when we would come into service:
     - I miss you (sub text: she doesn't miss us because it is unlikely she ever "attached" to me.  What she misses is all the jobs we do for her so she can "get by" in her own home.  There is a very big difference).
     - "things are tough".  3 words.  Nothing else.
     - "a very tough day".
     - "not for poor eyes". (she's talking about an online puzzle she did, but struggled with.  Recall that this is the woman who has likely gone "blind" in the eye she got an endophthalmitis infection in because she cancelled home care putting the drops in for her after some months.  She has Parkinson's and can't hold her hand still and so misses getting the drops in her eyes.  The drops run down the side of her nose or cheek. But she keeps doing it, and says "the drops aren't working". Home care even tried adaptive OT tools to help her dispense the drops, but they didn't work for her.  )
     - "a big problem.  I need you."

Aside - I'm going to be honest and say when this one came in, I got PO'd.  On my holiday she shouldn't be texting me that she "needs me to solve her problem".  This is MY holiday and MY time to take care of MYSELF, but the BPD/narcissist isn't capable of allowing that.

     "I need you.  I want you.  My left eye is swollen.  I really need you."

To this, I blocked her.  She didn't know when I was in/out of service, which was helpful.

The neediness is toxic.  I just can't do it any more.  I am burned out from her after a lifetime of trying to be the good daughter. I figured out in the last 5 years that this was a very unhealthy relationship that only served one of us.  Getting dumped on, accused, blamed, yelled at, and being her emotional punching bag isn't something I'm willing to do any more.  Neither am I willing to sacrifice all my goals, and interests, and friends, and travel, to be her slave and meet all her physical and emotional needs which are a bottomless pit.

There are several things I need to work out still.  She's my mother, and I do have compassion for her, and in a wierd way love her, but it's clearly not a safe love (I'm so scared of her and rarely visit her alone), so I need space and hard boundaries.  I've managed this by returning to work out of retirement so that I'm not available to my mom.  She pushed back HARD (biggest toxic dump ever) against that.  In my place, my H takes her to Dr appointments (so we know what's going on) and gets her groceries.  He also helps to manage the tasks of daily living like changing light bulbs.  There are a LOT of those tasks.  Everything else, she has had to find other people to do.  And she has.  BPD's are exceptional at "getting their needs met" by someone.  We just have to let them do it. I guess some would call it "tough love".  It's necessary if we are not going to drown with them.

I would like to reduce the amount of days in a week that I work, and since I live in the same town as her, I don't feel free to do this without her flying monkeys seeing me and reporting to her.  In short, I am "afraid" to retire. So I am not really living my best retired life, and neither is my H (although he is amazing at playing stupid with her, and holding hard boundaries, and not getting drawn into her drama).

My other challenge is overcoming the GUILT, and not buying into her narrative that if I don't meet her needs, I am a bad daughter. I have had so much T who has given sage advice.  My H supports me.  My adult kids support me.  A dear friend supports me.  This forum supports me. But I can't seem to get past certain things because one of my core values is to "help people", and I've spent a lifetime career doing it.  While I have "radically accepted" that my mom can't change, or learn, or "be a mom to me", it just doesn't feel right sometimes to let her experience the "natural consequences" of her own bad decisions. She struggles terribly and is miserable and lonely, and suffers deeply.  She could be living a lively social life in assisted living, with kind people working there (I know them) but "her sense of abandonment" gets in the way of that ever happening.  She will never go there willingly.  And her family genes include a trait for "malingering" well into the late 90's.  Also, she knows exactly how to push my buttons, and make me feel bad.

If you are someone who "let go" of the guilt, how did you do that?

How did you walk away from the narrative of being a "bad daughter"? (or son?)

[CC43]

Hi Methuen,

I’m so glad you got a break, even if you had so much fun that you got sick at the end.

Alas the change of scenery can bring into focus the dysfunction of your loved one with BPD.

Maybe going forward you both need a little more distance and separation?  Maybe you could « slow walk » your responses to her cries for help?  Maybe she needs to be weaned off your steadfast support?  Maybe she needs more time and space to try to solve her own problems for once?

I hope the texts and illness don’t spoil the vacation. You deserve to live your life too. You’re all adults and are responsible for yourselves. I hope you model that for your daughter. In the meantime, try not to be angry at the texts. Your daughter can’t possibly consider your feelings when she is in distress. It’s like getting mad at spam. It’s both impossible to avoid and not worth your energy.

Maybe, going forward you decide to help your daughter only with things she could never do for herself.  But you let her do the things that she should be doing for herself. With this criteria it might be easier for you to decide when to intervene and when to stand back, with love for her, and, equally, love for yourself.

[CC43]

Methuen, I apologize, I thought you were speaking of a daughter with BPD rather than your mother. But otherwise I still think you might need to feel more grace and less guilt!  Please be loving and kind to yourself and don’t let her spoil that with her manipulative and selfish messages. That’s just BPD talking, she can’t help it. All my best to you.

[Notwendy]

Lots happened.  Her dysfunction worsens.  The upside to this is that since we weren't here to deal with it, perhaps her friends got to observe the REAL dysfunction in person (unfiltered by all the things we do).  Thirty days is a long time for her to hold it together.  She had people "running" for her.  I sense it didn't go well.  Our DD saw her yesterday, and said "she didn't look good".

This is similar to when my mother's family and friends, and her caretakers were able to observe her dysfunction. It helped with the feeling of guilt and inadequacy as it seemed to shift their perspective about the situation rather than for me to think they were judging me.

Here are some of her "texts" that came in when we would come into service:
     - I miss you (sub text: she doesn't miss us because it is unlikely she ever "attached" to me.  What she misses is all the jobs we do for her so she can "get by" in her own home.  There is a very big difference).
     - "things are tough".  3 words.  Nothing else.
     - "a very tough day".
     - "not for poor eyes". (she's talking about an online puzzle she did, but struggled with.  Recall that this is the woman who has likely gone "blind" in the eye she got an endophthalmitis infection in because she cancelled home care putting the drops in for her after some months.  She has Parkinson's and can't hold her hand still and so misses getting the drops in her eyes.  The drops run down the side of her nose or cheek. But she keeps doing it, and says "the drops aren't working". Home care even tried adaptive OT tools to help her dispense the drops, but they didn't work for her.  )
     - "a big problem.  I need you."

This aspect is the most difficult for me. It seems easier when she's in "witch" and "queen" modes and being verbally abusive than when she's acting waify and "I miss you" and needy. It's pitiful and really does tug- as it's also real- she is a pitiful and sick elderly woman. However, when I make attempts to help her, she finds something wrong with it and then blames me- also to other people. She was sick a while back and refusing treatment. After phone meetings and calls with her providers, she was screaming- saying she was in pain- and I pushed for her to go to to the hospital emergency room. She was refusing treatment there but after being told the alternative was a nursing home, she agreed to being admitted where she continued to refuse treatment. Due to her age and condition, she was qualified for Hospice.

Hospice turned out to be good for her. She had nurses visit and less difficult to tolerate management for her conditions and the nurses got her to comply with them. She did so well with it that she didn't qualify for it anymore and now is discharged from that. All the while though she complained about it and told others she blamed me for suggesting it.

What? I thought she was in agreement with it at the time, at least that is what the nurses at the hospital told me.

Lately BPD mother has told me she's considering going to the hospital emergency. I think she wants me to tell her to go. Nope- I don't say anything back about it- if she chooses to go, that is on her and I have pulled back from trying to speak to her providers and caregivers.

Aside - I'm going to be honest and say when this one came in, I got PO'd.  On my holiday she shouldn't be texting me that she "needs me to solve her problem".  This is MY holiday and MY time to take care of MYSELF, but the BPD/narcissist isn't capable of allowing that.

     "I need you.  I want you.  My left eye is swollen.  I really need you."

To this, I blocked her.  She didn't know when I was in/out of service, which was helpful.

Me too Methuen- the reason I got PO'd was over her constant calls over her finances and lying to me. I try to help because I want to be the "good daughter" and do the right thing for her. It seems similar to that comic where Lucy promises Charlie Brown that she will let him kick the football and he runs after it and she pulls it away every time- and Charlie falls on his face, humiliated.

That "football" is our wish to be a good daughter.

The neediness is toxic.  I just can't do it any more.  I am burned out from her after a lifetime of trying to be the good daughter. I figured out in the last 5 years that this was a very unhealthy relationship that only served one of us.  Getting dumped on, accused, blamed, yelled at, and being her emotional punching bag isn't something I'm willing to do any more.  Neither am I willing to sacrifice all my goals, and interests, and friends, and travel, to be her slave and meet all her physical and emotional needs which are a bottomless pit.

My other challenge is overcoming the GUILT, and not buying into her narrative that if I don't meet her needs, I am a bad daughter. I have had so much T who has given sage advice.  My H supports me.  My adult kids support me.  A dear friend supports me.  This forum supports me. But I can't seem to get past certain things because one of my core values is to "help people", and I've spent a lifetime career doing it.  

If you are someone who "let go" of the guilt, how did you do that?

I don't think I have let go of guilt entirely. I think it's been more of an acceptance of the failure to do what I wish I could do. It's the extension of the wish for a "normal" "Mommy" in my childhood. We don't have a "normal" Mommy- and this is at all stages. We didn't have one in childhood and we don't have one now. Without judging- what we have is different. It's not the norm and so there's no established accepted "norm" for the relationship we have.

Even if there is difficulty involved in caring for an elderly parent- I think we are both willing and wanting to do that part. It's not in our nature to neglect an elderly parent, even if that parent was abusive to us in ways. It's not what they did in the past- it's that they continue to be exploitative and uncaring. It's not a mutual or cooperative situation.

Personally, in addition to counseling- what helped me the most is 12 steps ACA and CODA groups. The family dynamics with a family member with BPD are similar to that with a family member with drug or alcohol addiction. The ACA and CODA program isn't focused on changing the person with the issue but on us and our feelings of guilt and obligation and to lessen our enabling. It helps to have the support of a sponsor and other people in the group.

Acceptance of their situation - they are who they are- also includes acceptance that as much as we want to be a good daughter, to them this may not be "good enough" because, I don't know if anyone or anything could be good enough. Settling for doing the best we can with the situation may feel like failure and I realize that may just be a part of how it is.

You are doing so much more for your mother than I do- and yet for both of us- it seems to not be enough to them.

[zachira]

Methuen,
Glad you had a well deserved vacation and sad that with your return you are now dealing with the ongoing stress of how badly your mother treats you.

You would like to know how to deal with the guilt and move away from the narrative of being a "bad daughter".  What helped me was to learn how to cry, to be able to grieve for a long time (several years) the life long loss of never really having a loving family. Underneath the chronic anger is usually tremendous sadness. My father took a movie of me crying when I was six years old and he made fun of my crying because he did not have the capacity to acknowledge some of his deepest feelings. I had to learn how to get in touch with my feelings and cry in therapy with my first therapist. I no longer feel angry with so many family members for being the family scapegoat and just feel sorry for them while keeping my distance.

Skip, the founder of this site, says that differentiation is the cure for having a family member with BPD. My second therapist was a Bowen therapist, and we worked on my becoming a person in my own right, one with my own feelings and no longer the sponge for the stoic family members who cannot acknowledge their deepest feelings.

Keep trying and let us know how you are doing. Do you think it would ever be possible to stop worrying about how your mother is doing and how ignorant people judge your relationship with your mother, which they know very little about? Having hope opens the door for many changes and new avenues. We are all a work in progress on this site. Let us know how we can help.

[Methuen]

This aspect is the most difficult for me. It seems easier when she's in "witch" and "queen" modes and being verbally abusive than when she's acting waify and "I miss you" and needy. It's pitiful and really does tug- as it's also real- she is a pitiful and sick elderly woman.

This. I think they have learned through trial and error and practice that waif brings them the results they want more than witch or queen.  So in their elderly years, they turn almost completely waif, except when they can't.

NW, your mom claiming she was sick and refusing treatment is like my mom refusing to accept help to put her eye drops in, refusing to accept she has Parkinson's (she called it something else) blah blah blah.  Zachira also has a story about her mom refusing to follow instructions about a leg.  I am "curious".  Does anyone understand why a BPD cannot accept the expertise of a Dr and follow instructions "to help themselves"?

I don't get it.  The way I see it, mom chose becoming blind in the affected eye over accepting help.  Eureka? - none of her friends get home care, so she probably doesn't like the optics of receiving home care.  And of course she still doesn't connect the dots between her behavior (cancelling the home care service) and the consequence (going blind in the affected eye).

Me too Methuen- the reason I got PO'd was over her constant calls over her finances and lying to me. I try to help because I want to be the "good daughter" and do the right thing for her. It seems similar to that comic where Lucy promises Charlie Brown that she will let him kick the football and he runs after it and she pulls it away every time- and Charlie falls on his face, humiliated. That "football" is our wish to be a good daughter.

This.  This Lucy/Charlie Brown example lets me see it for what it is.  A demand for attention, followed by a "power play".  The underlying need that usurps everything else is power and control.

I don't think I have let go of guilt entirely. I think it's been more of an acceptance of the failure to do what I wish I could do.

This perspective is helpful.  Thank you

Even if there is difficulty involved in caring for an elderly parent- I think we are both willing and wanting to do that part. It's not in our nature to neglect an elderly parent, even if that parent was abusive to us in ways. It's not what they did in the past- it's that they continue to be exploitative and uncaring. It's not a mutual or cooperative situation.

Exactly.  I suspect that in our case, as they aged and became more vulnerable, the BPD traits actually may have worsened and escalated.

I hear you about the ACA and CODA groups.  If I lived in the city I would do this.  But I don't.  I live in a very small community where everybody knows everybody.  It makes it more complicated.  I have very little trust of people that aren't my H or D or S.  There is too much risk for me to accept.

Acceptance of their situation - they are who they are- also includes acceptance that as much as we want to be a good daughter, to them this may not be "good enough" because, I don't know if anyone or anything could be good enough. Settling for doing the best we can with the situation may feel like failure and I realize that may just be a part of how it is. 

I'm going to think on this.

Zachira - I hear you about the crying.  I am looking for ways to release it.  My T a while back had me write a letter to my father (passed away 20 years ago).  Well.  That released some sad emotion.  Our camping trip this summer was one my father always wanted to do but my mother refused - every single trip had to be to go visit her sister and family. Our trip this summer was amazing - we met people from all over the world doing the same trip, but the best part was not what we saw or did or even the people we met, it was that I lived an experience my father so badly wanted to do.  It brought up tears throughout the trip, but my H and adult son were also camping, so I didn't really feel free to cry as I need to, but into my pillow instead.  Still, it's a start.  So I am looking for ways to release it.  The sadness doesn't seem to come on it's own without a prompt or activity of some kind.

As for differentiation, I keep thinking I've done it (separated my feelings from hers), but apparently if I'm still feeling guilt and like I'm a "bad daughter", I have more work to do.

In some ways I've differentiated.  Last night she sent this: "feel over exhausted"

I replied: "I have a fever of 39.4"

My H laughed when I showed it to him, and voiced his approval.  A few years ago, I could have never done that.  I would have said something positive or tried to take care of her feelings.

I guess that's some progress

[zachira]

Methuen,
Some disordered people do not have the ability to have empathy, to see other people as separate from themselves, thus they cannot accept advice from nearly anybody, even a doctor. Their first line of defense is to violate the boundaries of the people they are close to, so the other person loses their sense of self and feels the emotions of the disordered person as if they were both the same person. It is a constant struggle in cases like these to enforce boundaries, because the disordered person never gives up on violating the other person's boundaries.

Keep working on feeling your sadness and reminding yourself in any ways you can that you are a completely separate person from your mother. You will hopefully get to a point before your mother passes away that you no longer feel guilty for being the "bad daughter". It really is so empowering to just feel sad for the disordered people in our lives while completely comfortable being differentiated.

[Notwendy]

Methuen- I understand the hesitancy to go to a 12 step meeting in your town. My area is relatively small too. I have walked into meetings and seen people I know- a neighbor, some friends, some professionals. People from all walks of life show up at these meetings. I think it's easier to do this because my BPD mother doesn't know the same people, so I understand.

We stress confidentiality in the group and as far as I know- none of the people I know have broken this. The other aspect is that the focus is on us, not the other person so if someone starts talking about the other person, we bring it back to them and what they can do about it.

However, I wouldn't trust anyone in my BPD mother's circle so I get it.