Supporting and promoting the well-being of mental health carers and their families.
Mental Health Carers Austalia.
06-09-2024 12:34 PM
06-09-2024 12:34 PM
Hi there,
I just joined the site today. thanks for having me.
I think my mother has borderline personality disorder.
She has never been formally diagnosed but these are my suspicions. She certainly fits the symptoms.
I am feeling scared and anxious (this realisation has made SO much fall into place). It also feels a bit overwhelming. I now realise as much as I love her, I can never trust her.
I am in therapy (which is going really well) and I think now, I have to learn safe, protective methods and start instilling very good boundaries. I have already done this physically - we live in different states. I really do love my mother, but she is hard work.
I am a strong person, but I don't have a lot of support in my life - and this is hard sometimes.
Any support/advice/input appreciated.
thanks 🙂
06-09-2024 02:38 PM
06-09-2024 02:38 PM
Hi @Lilly15 and welcome to the forums.
I'm so glad that you've found this space to add to your already solid-sounding support network.
It can feel quite overwhelming when we find a name for what you've been observing/experiencing for so long. While it can help us better understand what's happening, and diagnosis can be a great step towards recovery, it can also be scary to use these labels for someone that we love.
Do you think your mother would ever seek support or perhaps diagnosis?
While I don't have experience with BPD myself, I know that there are a lot of forums members with lived experience themselves, or through supporting a loved one with BPD. I look forward to seeing any guidance or support I'm sure they'll be able to offer when they come across your post.
Thanks so much for sharing here, I hope that this can be a safe space for you to feel supported as you continue to work through this
09-09-2024 03:50 AM
09-09-2024 03:50 AM
I have bpd it IS HARD IN ALL ASPECTS ..EXCAMPLE ..MOOD CHANGES WE ARE LIKE THE WIND WE CHANGE .GET SAD CRY DEPPRESSED FOR NO REASON. ANGER YES ..LASH OUT YES..BPD IS SO HARD FOR US TO LIVE WITH ..MY EMOTIONS ARE EVERY WHERE ..WE TEY OUR BEST BUT ITS SO HARD ..THE PAIN IS WITH US 24 7 ..WE ARE KIND CARING PEOPLE ..BUT SOME ONE WHO HASNT GOT IT WILL FIND THEM SELVES CONFUSED ..SUPPORT IS NEEDED FOR WHO EVER IS LIVING OR CARING FOR SOME ONE WITH BPD ..THEN THEY WILL KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT..MY CHILDREN WELL 2 OF THEM CANT HANDLE ME OTHER DAUGHTER HAS BPD WE CLASH .DONT SEE MUCH OF MY KIDS ALL GROWN UP SAID IM TO MUCH IT HURTS ME BUT I ACCEPT IT ...
12-09-2024 09:35 AM
12-09-2024 09:35 AM
Hi @Lilly15
Welcome to the forums 🙂
Feel free to have a look at some of the resources below, hopefully some of them will be helpful for you. It's not easy setting boundaries with family and changing long-standing patterns, so well done! It's really understandable to feel a bit overwhelmed when the puzzle pieces fall into place. I think the main thing is to be proud of yourself for being compassionate and for respecting your own needs at the same time. It can be a learning curve, so go easy on yourself.
BPD Australia provide support for family and carers.
helpful tips for friends and families with challenging relationships
Ultimately, learning new skills can only work to improve family cultures and our own mental health. It may not feel great right now, but hopefully you will be able to feel the silver lining as time goes by 🙂
Have you noticed any change in the way you are relating to each other yet?
13-09-2024 03:49 PM
13-09-2024 03:49 PM
Hi @Lilly15,
Thank you for sharing with us and welcome to the Forum 🙂
I'm sorry to hear that you've had so much weighing on your shoulders and that you have such a strained relationship with your mother.
That's great that you're happy with how your therapy is going, it's such a good feeling when we find the right people.
It sounds like moving away was a really good decision for you and that creating some healthy boundaries would be beneficial.
If you feel you need some extra support, then you did well in reaching out here. It's a lovely community full of kind and understanding people, so I hope that you feel welcome here.
I'd be more than happy to provide you with some different support services and resources, if you'd like? Just let me know.
There is also SANE's Support Line 1800 187 263 which is available Monday to Friday 10am - 8pm, and they may be able to help provide some advice and support to you right now.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Take care.
10-10-2024 02:18 PM
10-10-2024 02:18 PM
hi @Lilly15 I can see this was posted about month ago but I thought I'd reach out and respond, I'm new here myself.
I also think my mum has BPD, not been diagnosed herself but both my sister and I have been told (independently) by mental health professionals that we present as adult children of parents with BPD.
In my case I think my sister has it too so I can commiserate when you say it's hard to love your mother. They make it really hard to be loved! From everything I've read about BPD (they are also generally emotionally immature people so highly recommend the books by Lindsay Gibson) they have intense fear of abandonment and the way they communicate this is to lash out at the people they care about most.
I've grieved the mother I deserved as a child and the only way I can maintain a relationship with mine is to see her for the flawed person that she is. I know she did the best that she could with the limited tools she had and at the same time, I know rationally that my sister and I were emotionally neglected. I limit my interactions with her and like you am working on boundaries, physically we don't live as far as a different state but we're not neighbours.
She does enjoy seeing my son (I'm also about to have a second) and accept what help she offers (a few hours every weekend or so since she is a very busy woman). However, she is unable to relate to me as a fellow adult and treats my sister and I like we're still children (again typical of an emotionally immature person). She has been better lately but does emotionally coerce (guilt trip, shame) when she doesn't get her way and becomes irrational with her arguments to make you feel bad about not acquiescing (with either an opinion or an expectation she has of us).
It's a hard and difficult thing to maintain a relationship with a person who has BPD and I wish you the best of luck with therapy. Even outside of therapy you will need to keep going back to those tools.
25-10-2024 02:38 PM - edited 25-10-2024 05:06 PM
25-10-2024 02:38 PM - edited 25-10-2024 05:06 PM
I think there are a lot of us with mothers with (probable) BPD. I am 47 and I think that a lot of people my age have mothers from the Baby Boomer generation which was a very confusing time for women to grow up in. For the first time ever, women had the possibility of a career in addition to (or even instead of) motherhood. I think it created a whole new level of competition and jealousy between women, and it became much easier for mothers to resent children as things who stole opportunities from them.
Mum has never sought diagnosis or treatment but - get this! - has "qualified" as a Counsellor! I use inverted commas because she is practically illiterate, she did an online diploma and got my dad to complete all the assignments. She had no contact with any lecturers or supervisors, for her it was about getting the certificate so she could say she was a counsellor. She has never practiced. It has given me a new distrust of counsellors and been the sick, ironic, cherry on top of the whole nightmare which is my mother's mental health.
I will tell you what I have learned through my private reading. Daughters of mothers with complex mental health have usually acquired some form of complex PTSD. The main crime of the mother is emotional neglect which is the hardest type of abuse to recover from because you have to mourn things you never had, which is near impossible. Daughters with CPTSD have profound insecurity, low self-esteem, difficulty with boundaries and impulse control. Fear, shame and emptiness describe our inner life. It has literally de-ranged us.
Understanding this about myself, that I am emotionally de-ranged, has actually become an enormous comfort to me. The "punishment" fits the crime. There is a reason why I hurt so much. And there is a definite outcome from all the toxic mothering I received. It hurts like hell, but at least I understand why.
Knowing this, I am ready to re-parent myself.
Knowing this, I am ready to renounce all the programming my mother gave me.
Knowing this, I am permitted to start again with a clean slate and to be gentle on myself. Although, sometimes, being gentle on myself means being (gradually) a little firmer on myself, as I remember I am literally de-ranged and cannot always rely on my own judgement. Because I am traumatised, I will always seek relief first but it is that very instinct which lands me in trouble and learning to control impulses is something I am very immature at, and I have to find a way to not give in to that tendency and to develop grit and perseverance. To this extent, I have to remember my trauma while at the same time not let it define me. In other words, I have to not reach for that chocolate bar. I have to not tell my whole story to a stranger because of my need for validation. And I have to accept that even though I feel extremely outraged at what sometimes feels like my partner's lack of care and attention, by exploding right then and there, I damage not only our relationship which has been carefully built over years, but also myself, and the work I have been doing to keep myself together.
Lastly, CPTSD/emotional neglect is always transgenerational. It is a very difficult pain to bear, it may be the hardest of them all, the very problem of life itself. I love the saying that if CPTSD was included in the DSM, that manual would be the size of a pamphlet.
Accepting that I have become de-ranged because of my mother's faulty parenting has been pivotal. I take this in the literal sense of the word - my emotional range is faulty, I react out of turn and cannot always see things in proportion. I flit between grandiosity and depression. This may be with me my whole life. But finally, I have a name for the problem I carry with me always. And now, deep in mid-life, I have a chance to correct this and to develop a healthy, productive range of emotional experience. I will learn how to amass myself over time.
25-10-2024 02:59 PM
25-10-2024 02:59 PM
Very well said @Hill12
Firstly, welcome to the forums. Thank you for sharing your experiences and your learnings here.
What has really struck me in your post is the power that can come from understanding and being able to put a name to a feeling or an experience. It doesn't resolve the feeling or undo the experience, but it gives us words to explain what we've been through and it can be a big step towards recovery.
It sounds as though you have gained really valuable insights into the way your experiences have shaped your responses and are able to use this to influence your decisions and curb those more impulsive responses that may not be serving you.
It's lovely to have you here on the forums, thank you again for sharing
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Supporting and promoting the well-being of mental health carers and their families.
Mental Health Carers Austalia.
Our Mission
To be the voice of mental health carers to enable the best life possible.
Get In Touch With Us
We're here to support and promote the well-being of mental health carers and their families
Mental Health Carers Australia is the only national advocacy group solely concerned with the well-being and promotion of the needs of mental health carers.
Supporting and promoting the well-being of mental health carers and their families.
Mental Health Carers Austalia.
Our Mission
To be the voice of mental health carers to enable the best life possible.
Get In Touch With Us
We're here to support and promote the well-being of mental health carers and their families
Mental Health Carers Australia is the only national advocacy group solely concerned with the well-being and promotion of the needs of mental health carers.