Fear of borderline personality disorder
Why does it seem that everybody is so afraid of people with BPD and that they constantly get away with everything? Their explosive behavior literally becomes a safety net because those around them are so afraid of what is going to happen next they let things slide that they would never tolerate from their normal friends or family members.
It seems that most people end up allowing the BPD sufferers and their life to get away with horrible behavior for one of two reasons.
First the fear of borderline personality disorder; the fear of borderline personality disorder causes victims of people with BPD deliver a lead tip toe around them afraid that the BPD psychopath will strike at any moment and rain down the fury that they are used to having to deal with.
Second, exhaustion. Not a lot of people talk about it but if you’re forced to deal with someone with borderline personality disorder long-term after while you just get exhausted with all of the craziness, lies and abuse so you just simply allow them to continue to lie to you and get away with things because it’s exhausting trying to fight an uphill battle with somebody that will never admit fault.
My first recommendation to anyone who is reading this would be to get away from the borderline personality disorder person. Unfortunately for many of us due to family ties or the fact that we’ve had children with someone with BPD we aren’t simply able to walk away. Even more unfortunate many of us lose our willingness to stand up and defend what’s right and we let the BPD people continue to get away with their psychopathic abusive behavior.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
You may be confused between borderlines and psycopaths. They are two both different things. Look at this information at http://www.anythingtostopthepain.com/borderlines-vs-psychopaths/
If this person in your life is really a psychopath then you must get away from them. If they are a borderline then maybe you should ask what are they afraid of that is going to happen next and why are they afraid of this. And they can act badly but this can be fixed in time if you understand what is wrong and they do too.
PS maybe it is better for your children if you have them with this sufferer, if you take them out of this toxic situation whether the person is a psychopath or a borderline. This is terrible but you sound like very hopeless person. You have my thoughts.
From what I have seen of your site, I don’t think you’re are trying to help people with Borderline, but instead making a mockery of them. I’m so sorry your mother was like that to you, but not all of us with this illness are spoiled rotten brats whom throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. That is absolutely the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Borderline is a real mental illness. Do you suppose people make blogs about how their mothers are such a burden to them because she has cancer and can’t function properly? I think you sir need to stop being a big baby and grow up. Yes, this is coming from a woman who has borderline personality disorder.
I am so upset to see all these comments people telling each other to get away fron us bpds….we are people too you know, our skin may not be as thick and our reactions to situations might be a tad diff to those non bpds…but to run way from situations because of an illness is one thing I am oroud to ay I do not do….you people bring shame in yourselves….ugh
I was in a relationship for 7 years, with a woman that suffers from bpd. She was the love of my life. I tryed everything humanly possible to help her, in a sense trying to save her. The relationship was most of the time, as they say, walking on eggshells. Never knowing when the next explosion was going to happen and what the trigger maybe. I saw her in very much pain and it hurt to see that side of her. For me, it real drained me and left me in sitution of do I run away or stay. I stayed , and tryed to safe my bestfriend and love. They do not see the world as non bpds. It takes alot of understanding and care to be involved with someone that suffers from this. They feel and love , and hurt just like the rest of us. In the end, she let the relationship die. She knows how much pain and suffering she caused. I think she was trying to safe me anymore pain. I do thank her from that. I realize that some just can not face this and want to heal from bpd, it is very scary for them.
Good bye my Love, Hope someday you find your inner peace. I did my best.
I have a beloved parent who I think may have BPD. I love this parent alot. It is not me who steps away from our relationship, but the parent, who hates me for non-reasons, such as not knowing how to operate the channel changer, and this leads to a huge blow out of screaming at me for the entirety of her time in my home – several days; Or another relative saying something that no one else in the world would consider an insult, and the BDP person’s anger builds, and then I am requested to repair the problem which I was not present at and do not know what really happened, and the result is again, screaming at me for days that I don’t protect my parent. This has gone on my entire adult life, but not in my childhood – apparently when this parent of mine discovered that I now controlled my own life, the raging set in at me. The relationship is 98% good and nice, and then wham! I say or do something that no one in the world would consider wrong and it is almost like demon posession – the anger, the screaming, the length of time I am either yelled at or fully ignored. Entire vacations have been ruined because of this; Moving back to my hometown was very financially costly for me and I did it because I wanted so much to be near my parent, but in the end I had to move to another city because these episodes occurred on a smaller scale on a weekly basis and then epic ‘blowouts’ also occurred, one finally resulting in my immediate decision to move away again. This move in turn led to wonderful visits to me that turned into nightmares, not occasionally, but with every visit. I looked so forward to my parent visiting me and we got along beautifully for a few days and then wham! and I was ignored for days while my parent shut the guest room door and refused to have anything to do with me over confusion about a tv show lineup, or not having a beer in the house at 11:45 pm while I was up to my elbows in dirty dish water and could not grab the rag fast enough to dry off and rush to the 24 hour grocery to get some beer – insantiy. The last blowout occurred last year over my own child’s religious ceremony, which everyone in the family was invited to attend. Instead of focusing on my own child however, the “wham-blowout!” occurred and we sat in the ceremony thinking not of my beautiful child, but of the anger radiation out from my parent, who continued the onslaught after the ceremony. I finally, not knowing what else to do, found other loging for this beloved parent, who now accuses me of ‘eviction’. Needless to say this visit ended nicely because after several days of cooling off, I took my children to ‘visit’ for an hour to say goodbye, and the next day took the beloved parent out for an hour to shop around. Wanting to make up, the beloved parent offered to host a goodbye dinner, but I declined, because last time this supposed ‘make-up’ time occurred, my spouse was taken aside and told awful things about me, that left me with a final parting gift – a 3 week argument with my spouse. My beloved parent had warned me during one of the ‘blow-outs’ that this time, my spouse would certainly leave me after the awful things my parent planned to say about me (all of course lies, but planned lies that were disclosed to me in advance so that I could shudder about the avalanch/volcano that was supposed to implode upon me at any given moment should I not remain statue still, obedient and worshipful toward the beloved parent. I finally resolved after several decades of this behavior that I do not need to endure this behavior any longer, which does not mean I have to disconnect from my beloved parent fully. I just set up very strong boundaries. From here forth, I will not ever again stay in the home of my beloved parent – but when vacationing, I will visit for only brief amounts of time – should the mood shift, that’s my “q” to leave quickly and I will. Further, my beloved parent wanted to come down and visit me and I said no, not at my house. The ‘nicey-nice’ mood quickly changed to one that accused me of being mentally ill, angry and crazy; all the things I had suffered over several decades were ‘all made up’ and the beloved parent could not figure out why I would say such things about the beloved parent’s behavior. Of course now my beloved parent is not speaking to me (once again…not surprised about that), and has made plans to stay elsewhere in the city and has told me that I am forbidden to come and visit that place at all during the vacation time. I had to visit a psychiatrist about an upcoming weight loss surgery (required by insurance) and took that opportunity to ask what this behavior was and if it had a label. I was told it is highly possible that it is Borderline Personality Disorder, with Dissociate Amnesia (hence the ‘forgetfulness’ about the awful ranting, and the genuine belief that I had made all these awful things up about the beloved parent); also along with this BPD and the Dissociate Amnesia is linked to an Anger Disorder. Of course the Psychiatrist said he could only guess, because the patient was not there to speak with, and advised me not to have company before my surgery since, after the last visit, I felt like I had been slugged in the stomach and felt nautious thinking about how I was treated for 8 months, and certainly had no time to heal emotionally prior to a huge change in my life that I have planned. Of course, now that I have told my beloved parent that they can not stay in my home, again the focus is not on my plans, but on this person’s rage at me for setting up a limit on how much of this behavior I can take. Yes I love my parent very, very much. But yes, over the years I have slowly had to draw back farther and farther from a relationship from a parent I love with all my heart, someone who never acted like this in childhood (except maybe a couple of times, but not regularly). Again the focus is not on me, or the person who should be in the spotlight, but on the rage of this parent, who wants so much to be central to my life but whose rage takes the stage every time for several decades. I only wish that when this person dies, we are on speaking terms, but I worry alot that this person will die and will die in rage at me. I have finally discovered that there may be a ‘lable’ to this insane behavior and so I forgive my parent with all my heart without coming near enough to be raged at. I have of course moved out of town twice because of this behavior, and after enduring outrageous explosions during visits have made a personal decison to never vacation inside their home again, but nearby and ‘just visit’; and I have made it clear that although we can enjoy one another’s company, they can not stay in my ‘safe-zone’ (my home) either. Further, my spouse is completely off limits and will likely never accompany me to my beloved parent’s home again, even if we stay in a nearby hotel or some other relatives home. My spouse is simply “working” and “can’t make it this time”. My duty thus far is not to further enrage or bring hurt feelings to this person, but to stay a distance so I don’t get hurt any more. I also want to keep up these ultimatums until this beloved parent seeks psychological help, which I doubt will ever occur, but which I can continue to re-state as my grounds for self-protection, in that, until I have knowledge of the doctor that is helping my parent, and can call this doctor when a rage breaks out towards me, there can not be any “staying together” for vacation purposes. I have to have someone I can gain assistance from when these rages take place. period, no options in this. And if my beloved parents refuses, then it is the parent’s behavior – I give back my parent’s behavior to my parent, and I have chosen not to try to “fix” this any longer. It is not my fault, it is not mine to fix because I am not a psychologist, and it is not my therapy to pay for. The only thing I can do is stay away if I don’t have some help with this from a trained psychologist who can step in and rescue me and my parent from these rages of ‘nothing’. I refuse to walk on egg shells any longer which means that while egg shells are on the path to this loved one, I can not walk this path. This hurts me deeply and any time my parent wants to repair this, I am fully ready to repair the relationship to a degree of communication we can both enjoy. I doubt I will ever stay in that parent’s home again with my children and will likely never bring my spouse in the vicinity of that parent. Further, I will plan family events/ceremonies such that the parent does not arrive until a few hours before the ceremony, and will not see that parent until the ceremony is over – and yes, that parent will certainly be angry/explosive/raging about it, but that is not my problem or my fault any more, nor can I fix that emotional response from the parent toward me for wanting to protect myself and the things I plan – it is alway slike this and never changes for me. I feel sorry that I can’t have a closer relationship with a parent I love with all my heart, but I can not fix this and the parent does not want to fix it. Until my parent chooses to see someone and give me their number so I have someone to call for help, I will have to stand my grounds. My question, to end all of this is, since I informed my parent recently that they can not come and stay at my home, the parent told me they would be happy to accompany me to the psychologist to uncover my extreem anger problem (I dont’ have one, but they can not face their own responsibility in this, and the psychiatrist said this is the Dissociate Amnesia in the whole thing – my parent can not ‘remember’ what rages occurred), and so now I am not being spoken to (splitting behavior: I was good, now I am evil); Do I write my parent a letter telling what the psychiatrist said was wrong and encourage this parent to go get help? In reference to the recently passed vacation that led up to this decison, I did send a print out of anger-disorder, which was fully ignored an turned around on me, so as much as I want to tell my parent what is wrong with their behavior, I kind of think it will just be ignored and later used to threaten me that I am the one with the disorder and this false ‘information’ used against me in some way. If I let the information go, there can be no chance of my parent seeking help; if I send the information, it would of course lead to further raging, possibly ignoring the information, and possibly using the information to rage against me even more as well as somehow planning to further punnish me somehow. I am weary of this raging, so I have disconnected for a time. And of course my surgery, which was central stage is now on the back burner, because this parent wanted to ‘come visit’ before my surgery and now wants to come visit and ‘ignore me in full’ because I am so awful as to say not to come stay in my home since I don’t want to endure the raging hate that comes against me for something as simple as not knowing how to run T-Vo. What is my responsibility to this parent? I am just lost about what I owe my parent informationally, and how to offer this information, which I wish could lead to healing, but which I know may lead instead to further punnishment toward me. And again, my ‘big event’ is overshadowed by an angry parent, same as last year when my beloved child had a beautiful ceremony that of course was pushed out of center stage so the rage of the beloved parent could be central to everyone’s attention. I am hurting for many decades on this. How do I defend myself? How do I help my parent get well from this? And how do I continue in a relationship with someone who always breakes out in a rage against me? Please let me know what you think. Thank you.
ZZ, boy can I relate to your dilema. Having a parent with BPD is the worst of the worst. It wasn’t a relationship you chose, and it is so much harder to disentangle from compared to spousal, romantic, or friendship type relationships (although leaving them isn’t easy either). You aptly described the toxic crazy-making cycle of your mother’s behaviors. What you have here is the spoiled brat syndrome, only it isn’t a stage, it’s terminal: the constant need to be center of attention, the rages, the total lack of care about other peoples (even children’s) feelings/needs, the subsequent denials of any wrongdoing by projecting her abusive attributes onto YOU. It is sick. It’s twisted. But it is classic.
No, you can’t write her a letter and explain how she’s hurting you and your family with her anger and spoiled behavior. No matter how tactly you put it. As you noted, she will always turn it around and claim YOU are the one with the anger problem. YOU are the one that’s misbehaving and mistreating HER. This is a testament to how profoundly selfish people with this disorder are. They actually feel it to their bones with such certainty that YOU are abusing THEM by attempting to instill a healthy boundary. If you don’t take their abuse unquestioningly, then YOU are abusing them (in their eyes). Any attempts to establish boundaries with them is deemed “unfair” or “abusive” and they will accuse you of being the problem, when it is they that have it, and you are merely trying to establish normal, sane, interactions. The projections keep coming because they will then accuse you of needing psychological help, when clearly, they are in dire need of it. Again, if you’re in a relationship with a BPD, you will have to endure these kind of projections. They flip reality upside down and call their victims abusers. They weren’t raised with boundaries growing up, and it is fruitless to try and instill them this late in life. They reject it totally. They find it abusive, which is so ironic considering they are abusing 24/7 and don’t even realize it. Thus, they won’t ever change. If you try to talk to them about their behavior and how its affecting you, forget it. It will get turned around so that you are the bad guy. You are the problem, not them (or so they believe). You will be met with further abuse. And you can completely give in and coddle them 24/7, surrender your life to meeting their endless needs, take the abuse unquestioningly….and you will STILL be raged at. Something as simple as when a tv program is on can do it. Or like you said, your own child is momentarily the center of attention instead of your BPD mother…all these things can trigger a BPD rage. By the time they are adults, this isn’t a stage. It’s their constitution. It is their personality. They are profoundly selfish and it pervades every aspect of their interactions with loved ones. And it will damage us. My own mother is BPD as well. For the longest time I deluded myself into believing two things about her. 1. That she couldn’t help it
2. That she was capable of change (if she only realized how she was hurting us).
But, like abusers everywhere, she clearly CAN help it. She’s always excercised great control in public and around friends and co-workers, donning the perfect mother role. All smiles and sweetness. She could be quite charming when there’s an audience present. Like most abusers, this Jeykl and Hyde aspect proves she KNOWS her behavior is sick, damaging, and wrong and thus something to hide. She turns the abuse on and off with mastery, depending upon who is there to witness it. She abuses, not because she’s out of control, but when she can get away with it. They are in control. It’s just they choose to let the mask of normalcy fall behind closed doors for their nearest and dearest. So they have control of themselves, they simply to choose to abuse and rage when they can get away with it (with close family). They won’t ever change because it’s not that they don’t know what they’re doing is wrong. They just don’t care about how they’re affecting you. Their moods are more important than anyone else’s wellbeing. They are like a bratty toddler in the terrible twos, denying and projecting their way out of the bad behaviors they committ. No amount of therapy or reasoning or explaining in a letter will get them to change. They don’t want to change. They want to do and say whatever they feel, no matter how extreme, no matter how ridiculous or damaging it is, and get away with it. They feel that’s their right. This is no small matter. It’s the core of their personality. They truly feel it’s their right to be this way. That’s why they feel they are victims when you attempt to talk with them about their behavior or instill a boundary. How dare you!!! (is what they think). Rules don’t apply to them and you are abusing them by suggesting otherwise! They are never the problem, YOU are! This is the script that runs in their head and it is a deeply imprinted script that will never change. It was programmed into their little heads as children by poor parenting (parents who didn’t provide consistant discipline and boundaries, nor consequences for poor behavior). If a child is allowed to go through life with this lack of boundaries, at a certain point it sets in their brain and personality and the window for change closes. What was once typical toddler behavior becomes cemented as a personality trait for life if it doesn’t get corrected by the parents. And then you’re screwed because once they reach a certain age, it isn’t a matter of behavior that needs correcting, but a whole personality. And unfortunately, that doesn’t change in any significant way. Outward behaviors yes, to some extent with extensive therapy, but one’s basic personality remains fixed for life after childhood. As I’m sure you know, and many others experienced with the BPD parent or family member….THEY DO NOT CHANGE. No amount of effort or explaining on your part will change that. Writing a letter is fruitless because they don’t care about anyone but themselves and will quickly turn it around on you, and accuse you of being the one with the behavior/anger problem. They cycle never changes with them. They mistreat others, rage, act selfish, but deny it and blame and accuse you of doing the very things you’re trying so desparately to get them to recognise and change in themselves. You can’t break through to them because they will always twist things if you try to get them help; you are mistreating them…you have an anger problem (because you dare to talk with them about their rage attacks)…you are selfish (for asking them to respect boundaries, which they won’t do because everything always has to be about them, their needs, their wants, all the time, no matter how trivial, they must come first or else they rage)….you need psychological help (because you suggested they need to change their behavior). All you will be met with are more twisted projections. If they stole from you, and you called them out on it, they would call you selfish for not wanting them to have the money. When they’re smashing dishes at you and throwing a tantrums, notice the words coming out of their mouths while they throw an adult sized hissy fit “You’re a spoiled brat! You’re out of control!” Etc, etc, etc. Guess what? Your BPD mother won’t change. Don’t bother writing her. She will only rage and project. Personal accountability is absent. Remorse is not in their repetoire. You say you’re lived with this for several decades, so you know this pattern is not changing. I’m in my late 20s and I know my mother is incapable of changing. It took me a long time to accept this however. For years I’d try to appease her, to understand her, and always maintained the belief that she could change. I would never have bothered to plead or reason with her or try to get her to see her behavior for what it was, if I didn’t believe she could change. But guess what? Just as personality disordered people project like hell onto us, we too do a bit of projecting. We each think the other party possess our own attributes. The reason I never quit on my BPD mother all those years was because I PROJECTED my own quallities onto her. Meaning, I believed she was capable of empathy, remorse, morals just like I was. If only I could reach her, I thought. I thought if she only saw how abusive she was and how it affected us, she would feel remorse and long to change. Wrong. She doesn’t have empathy, remorse, or morals in her personal repetoire. Our mistake as non-personality disordered people is to believe that all humans possess these traits. That its innate in all of us. It isn’t. It’s this false belief that keeps us in a relationship with toxic abusers. Because deep down we still maintain the hope that they will change. Once we emerge from our own denial (that tells us they didn’t mean it, they aren’t in control of it, they’re capable of remorse, of empathy, of doing the right thing even if it goes against their own ego) we are free to leave them. Really, it is false hope, it is projection of our own attributes onto them, that keeps us with them. Along with inertia from prolonged abuse. Maintaining the false hope that they will change is the worst thing we as “nons” can do. I know its hard to accept this about one’s own parent but the truth is smacking you in the face again, and again, and again. They are telling you who they really are. It’s just that you don’t believe it. You believe deep down they’re just like you. You believe they are capable of caring about your needs, of empathy, of remorse, and responsability. THEY AREN’T. I think it is so ironic how each party both nons and BPDs project their own attriutes onto each other. The BPDs project their attributes onto you but you are not the one who is abusive, angry, jealous, mean, selfish, out of control, over-emotional, spiteful, spoiled—they are. Likewise we project our own qualities onto the BPD (its our projections which keep us with them, giving us hope they’ll change, that they’re not as bad as they really are) but they are not capable of change, empathy, morals, personal responsablity, respect, caring about another’s needs ahead of their own. Those are our attributes. And its what keeps us trapped together in this enmeshed dysfunctional relationship. BPDs are incapable of snapping out of denial and seeing their projections for what they are. But we as non-personality disordered folks can. Once we finally abandon the false belief that PDs are just like us deep down, we can realize that they aren’t capable of empathy, remorse, responsability, fairness and we can leave. There will never come a time when they stop abusing. They will always abuse and believe they have every right to do so. Getting their way over others at all times no matter how it hurts others is not even abusive in their eyes, it’s their rightful way of life. See them for who and what they really are (not what you want them to be). The truth is right there in front of you. They will not change. They do not care about your side of things. If you remain engaged with them, you will continue to be mistreated. If you attempt to talk to them to improve things, they will only twist reality upsidedown and rage and project and psychologically torture you until you relent and accept their false version of things. All attempts to change things are fruitless endeavors. This is universal with cluster B personality disorders. ZZ, you can’t defend yourself. Not successfully. It will be thrown back in your face, you will lose, nothing ever gets resolved. Same goes for writing letters. Same goes for therapy (at least thats my experience and most others. Its notoriously hard to treat in therapy. They hear what they want and shut down or leave when their poor behaviors/attitudes are addressed). You don’t help a parent get well from this. I doubt even a therapist will have success with this and they are trained professionals. Finally, you asked how to continue a relationship with someone who always breaks out in a rage against you? You don’t. Not a healthy relationship anyway. Not a genuine one. I find if you want to maintain contact you just have to “take it” whatever she dishes out at you. Just smile, be calm, and leave when things start to turn sour. This is not a real relationship. I have to swallow my feelings and deny reality to play along with my mother’s dysfunction and sense of herself as “perfectly normal.” I feel fake everytime I visit her, and it is an excercise in tolerance and fakeness, not a genuine relationship. I don’t try to discuss things with her anymore. She is very pleased with this arrangement since things go her way and she gets to feel good about herself. But I just let things happen, I don’t try to instill a boundary, or acknowledge it when she does something manipulative or abusive. Talking it out or addressing her tantrums in any way proves disastrous everytime. She’d rage. Throw things. Slap. The hope of her reacting any differently is dead. I just do what she says, nod and agree with her (for short bursts of time) then leave. When she rages, I just quietly take it, or leave. Reasoning with her proved fruitless and only ensighted her to further abusive heights. Resigned tolerance is the only choice you have IF you chose to have any contact at all with your mother. The other (much healthier) choice would be to cut ties completely. Perhaps a phone call/email correspondance, but eventually you’ll learn that she will take ANY amount of contact you give her and twist it into something awful and dysfunctional. It depends how tolerant you’re willing to be. How much abuse can you take? How much are you willing to take because she is your “mother?” Make the decision with a clear head. Don’t project your own attributes onto her and think that she’s capable of empathisizing with you, of remorse, or guilt. Those are YOUR attributes, not hers. I’m sure guilt is a huge reason why you’re even willing to stay with her in the first place. It’s why you’re asking these questions. Please realize though, that she is not swimming in guilt over her mistreatment of you, and never will. If she pushed you away with intolerable abuses and you chose to cut ties completely with her, she’d be on her death bed still believing YOU are a bitch, YOU have the anger problem, YOU sorely mistreated her, She would still be fuming in self righteous rage, without a clue or a care that she’s in the position she is (alone on her deathbed) because of all the horrendous things she’s done to you. Meanwhile, the ironly is that YOU would be feeling guilt and saddness at the loss of connection and it would feel like a tradgedy to you that she had to die alone, estranged. So ironic that the victim, the mistreated one, is wracked with guilt and caring while the abuser feels the opposite. But this is how it is. It’s univeral with abusers to twist truth, to call good evil and evil, good. The only thing that matters is THIER feelings, their wants, their ego. Everything else gets sacraficed to this. Even their own children. And they don’t feel one ounce of regret about it. You will always be bad, wrong…and they will always abuse you, yet somehow come off as always good and right. This dynamic does not change. It Does. Not. Change. Know this. And then ask yourself how much more of yourself you are willing to sacrafice and how much you are willing to tolerate.
zz or Leana,
Since you have parents have BPD what would you suggest I do for my little girl whose mother seems to have BPD? When her mother and I were together I just blocked out here jumps to rage completely neighbors had to tell me after she had left that she did it. I guess I have an uncanny defense mechanism. It’s odd when I stopped allowing her to act like that or realized she did that I started to see it. It took distancing myself enough to really see it happening. The odd thing is I still love her but know that unless she gets helps or wants help she will never be able to have a normal relationship. I know defining normal is hard in and of itself but something close to rational and sane.
I have a friend who is recovering from BPD and has agreed to be my filter for women I am dating. Thank god I have her. LOL. She is a god sent. I cannot imagine another relationship like the one with my soon to be x wife. I thought I was going crazy when she changed every story and conversation we ever had every time she told it to me or I brought it up. The lies are the worst. The shouting I can apparently block out.
So back to the whole point of this question. What do I do for my daughter who is currently stuck with a BPD mother?
Mark,
If your daughter has a good deal of contact with her mother, know that she is being left in an unstable and abusive environment. Her mother may not always abuse her..at times she may appear quite “normal” or even indulgent. Especially when an audience is present. But there is no way a personality disordered person can be in charge of a child and not subject them to a “crazy making” environment. It’s one thing for you as an adult to be subject to this, but to subject a developing child to this is a recipe for disaster. It WILL hurt her development. Your ex-wife will ALWAYS put her needs before her child’s (in truth a BPD can’t consider a child’s or anyone else’s needs at all–the very source of their disorder is an inability to consider anyone’s needs but their own. They are hyper-focused on their own emotions, desires, dramas, to the detriment of anyone who’s in a relationship with them. Including children. It is this self-centered immaturity that has completely overtaken their ability to deal with other people or reality. This selfish immaturity is the heart of their personality. This is not a situation where you can just talk to your ex and ask her to put your child’s needs first or request that she treat her with responsability and fairness. It simply won’t happen. Not without years of therapy. Even with that, my advice is that your daughter will need to be around “sane” healthy adults to counter the instability and messages she receives from her mother. A mother is a powerful influence on a child. We are conditioned by our parents. It can be for good…or bad. A mother can support, guide, and raise children into responsable adults…or they can destroy self-esteem, fail to provide basic boundaries, abuse, etc. A personality disordered parent is a very destructive thing. It can ruin a child. I’m sorry to be so frank, but when it comes to family, people often put their head in the sand or get very defensive. They’d rather play down the very real negative effects a BPD parent can have on kids. But that’s only because we have rose-colored glassed on when it comes to our family and ourselves. We don’t want to believe it. We don’t want to do anything about it. So we pretend the craziness isn’t that bad. We pretend it isn’t damaging our children…when in truth..Of course, it is. Children are the most vulnerable to the damages a BPD parent inflicts. A BPD cannot damage themselves more than their own children…although their egos will tell them otherwise. They are in denial about the abuses they inflict on their children. It’s up to YOU as the healthy one, to raise your child. Her mother, can’t. She can be present in her child’s life of course..but she can’t parent. She simply is not capable. Not in her state. My advice to you is make sure your ex seeks therapy (make it a condition if she wants any sort of custody). That’s mandatory. Second, make sure you and other adults are a large presense in your daughter’s life. When her mother abuses or acts immaturely against your child, let her know the mother is wrong. Let the child know she did nothing wrong, and that her mother has problems. It should not be a secret that her mother has BPD. If this is the dirty little secret no one speaks of…then your daughter will end up believing SHE is the source of her mother’s anger and unhappiness in life. She will end up believing the lies her mother tells her. Children believe what their parents tell them about themselves. They take on the blame. Someone has to, and a BPD will NEVER talk on the blame, will NEVER be responsable for their actions, and will always blame others. If you’ve lived with a BPD, you know this. If you leave your child alone with her…she will end up blaming herself, feeling she is responsable for her mother’s needs, her mother’s misery, her mother’s abuse. The roles get flipped. The child is to blame for everything. The child is responsable for the mother’s moods. The mother is to blame for nothing. The mother is repsonsable for nothing. No one is raising the child. It is a very messed up thing to be raised by a toxic disordered mother. YOU can counter the effects of this by stepping up, being responsable, facing it head on (don’t put your head in the sand, don’t make her mother’s problems something that never gets talked about).
To sum, therapy for the mother (make it a condition for custody), and plenty of interaction with healthy, responsable adults for your daughter. And if your daughter is truly “stuck with a BPD mother” then therapy for your daughter as well. She will need it.
It is truly upsetting that people suffer on all sides of this disorder..I am in no way violent..have never harmed anyone who didn’t hurt me first..plenty of them..I am the flip side of this..I will at times become disociated for days on end where i am a visitor in my own head…i feel “everything for everyone..even people on the friggin news…i feel nothing for myself.” For every person who acts out there is probably one like me..i know what i am capable of..spent most of my life unable to feel my own touch or that of others..i want no pity..i have been thoroughly used many times..just like any illness each person is unique..my story is irrelevent..44 yrs. old and trying to feel me..don’t judge us all..some of us push people away so we can’t harm in any way…we know the monster inside…try to see the human as well…
There are a couple of things that facinate me about BPDs, in a kind of morbid sense. Based on the posts I have read and personal experience, it facinates me how they can lie on cue and keep it all straight, even months later. The other thing that really facinates me is how they can hate and love so fiercely and do it virtually simultaneously. (I hate you/don’t leave me) My BPD girlfriend literally swept me off my feet and before I even realized what was going on I was caught in the web. (her being 6′-1″ blue eyed and buxom didn’t hurt either) A lover that was a fantasy come true at night only to be pushed away the next day like I was a leper.
I understand, after many hours of research, how tortured these folks are. That doesn’t make it any easier to live with these people. They will do everyhting they can think of to keep you off balance and totally control your life. If not kept in check your life will not be yours, but theirs, and don’t you dare try to change it because they will rain a shit storm on you the likes of which you can’t even fathom. I have in my personal experience found two ways to keep a BPD off center and have them chase you which is risky and you have to be careful not to get caught so to speak. One of their MOs is to keep their loved ones under complete control and virtually run their life. Their fear of abandonment is extremely high, therefore if their loved ones are under their control they can’t leave.
First and foremost, DON’T LIVE WITH THEM!! If they aren’t with you 24/7 they can’t have complete control. They will try and try and try to either have you move in with them or, less popular, move in with you. If you live with them they get to make the rules and you are powerless to change them. Part of the control is to berade you for even the smallest violation of THEIR RULES. I got a fifteen minute tirade one time about wearing my (clean) work uniform pants home from work. I jumped down her throat with both feet because I had had enough and got thrown out for my troubles. BUT, I left and didn’t tell her where I went. That isn’t what she expected. I was expected to beg her to let me stay. Three days later she said she was sorry and wanted me to come back.
Second, BE INDEPENDANT!! They absolutely go nuts if you don’t need them. If you don’t need them they can’t control you. But don’t be too independent as the feeling that they can still catch you will go away and so will they. I have a sixteen foot canoe and she thought I couldn’t go fishing if she didn’t help me put it on top of the car. I knew I could and told her so but she “knew” I couldn’t. One day she came home from work and it was on top of the car. Her jaw literally fell to the ground. Other things too of course.
As long as they are “chasing” you your life will be awesome when they are around. The sex will be amazing and they will seemingly worship you. Be extremely careful not to get caught because the hell you will endure will be indescribable. Ask them to help you with things. They light up like a light bulb when you need their help. I can’t make it to the store and I need ….. could you get it for me?
NEVER EVER LET THEM CATCH YOU!!!