We are not ourselves in their eyes. Separate, precious and wondrous human beings. We are their security blankets, trophies or punching bags, considering the time of day or given day.
We are the trash receptacles for all the contempt they feel for themselves. Now they have us to punish and push away to escape their own inner ego-monster of perfectionism. They have us to tyrannize and push to be their perfect AVATARS or HOLOGRAMS so they can congratulate themselves for inspiring us and directing us there or get the payoff of punishing us for disappointing them when they invested so much faux-faith in us.
We are their p.r. department that promotes their impression management campaign which additionally cripples us since we are covering up their dark surreality with us. While we create the illusion of their powerful goodness all the while the profound erosion of our spirit is taking place by them.
We have been so profoundly confused by them -- confused means "FUSED WITH" -- and at times we PITY them and try not to notice how much we FEAR them. We hustle to be as convenient as possible in their world of paranoid, brittle hysteria.
We don't understand their disorder. We don't understand the nature of their paranoia. Trust with them is not global, not a long-standing reservoir of good will. It is specific to a limited narcissistic moment with them. It is earned by us second by second -- one more step on a tight rope with no net.
There is no resilience and capacity with them to accept us -- even for one tiny moment to accept us -- if they don't understand us. IF THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND US WE ARE A THREAT TO BE BULLIED AND PUNISHED TO GET IN LINE. If we take the focus off their needs, even if we must since our ignored needs are rushing in and demanding attention, we become their ENEMY and they threaten us with all they have to get us back into line.
They are disordered. They cannot see us. They are the PLAYWRIGHTS, DIRECTORS and MAIN CHARACTERS of their life drama and everyone else in the cast must read from their scripts and be waiting in the wings for their cue to come on stage and circle them and it is their show. Even if you have a bit part, you must be available at all times and watching their show and participating in their show and GOD help you if you want to star in your own life. It is treason. Improvisation is TREASON. Invites total rejection.
If you blow your role, you are gone in a heartbeat. Banned and shunned by them and they demand that the cast and crew shun you as well. They act out on their stage themselves as an inconsolable victim of your selfishness. They hook others to enable them and rescue them from cruel, heartless you who had been their main enabler seconds earlier.
You thought the role you had been playing at least meant something to the MAD GODDESS or GOD of the theater, enabling her or him in an oh-so-vulnerable and needy survival mode always. But there is no will or comprehension in them to communicate with you because you are not nor ever were a fellow human being. They are not capable of respect and intimacy, only affinity on THEIR TERMS. THEY ARE WILLFULL, NARCISSISTIC TODDLERS, stuck in that arrested development.
You were a kind of machine that has now broken down and deserves their rage and replacement INSTANTLY. They are not capable of hearing about you and your needs because they never were really all that important. Sometimes they convinced you they cared, but that was in the role they were playing, not in their ego-controlled and numbed out heart as director and playwright. You got suckered by the role they sometimes brilliantly performed, but, alas, it wasn't real at base. You got snookered.
You are bereft, because the only thing you have experienced was being the second-guessing security blanket, trophy or punching bag for the MAD GODDESS or GOD. Your trauma is some Godawful baggage to sort out. Alone and confused you are with your identity so beaten up. Well beyond recognition. Your capacity for trust is shot. And you still don't want to believe the tragedy or pathos of it all. That is your albatross, your addiction still to the denial.
Scott Peck said it is evil to "tit suck from and control the same person" and that is what they did for years and years. He also said recognizing "evil" -- and it is one helluva "evil disorder" this ubpd (unrecovered borderline personality disorder) -- in a parent is the hardest thing a child can do in a life time. Most can't and stay enthralled.
"Hope was the last temptation of Christ," it has been said. Look what happened to HIM! Hope has to be surrendered by you for your own survival. "Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had" another saying goes. What a hard step that is. Processing -- accepting -- your heart-breaking reality.
We were trained by them to over-identify with them to the exclusion of our own identities and basic needs in life. They do deserve pity, but they have lost that right with us since we have been so victimized by their disorder. They exploited our pity so unbelievably much and our basic need to be loved and cherished to keep us locked in our victimization. Our sense of entitlement to our own God-given and satisfying life must be re-learned. Somewhere back then we were hoping for their permission and blessing to build our own life, since they were playing God over us. There is a God or Higher Power and that BEING is NOT them. And that is the source of unconditional love for us as bereft adults now, not our lost parent. That God is our parent's parent, too. Not us. Not our job ... and it never should have been.
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It says it all.
R
I had trouble breathing while reading this, again the elephant is sitting on my chest. You have well described my father, and especially my mother though she was better at hiding it. It took me a long time to understand the flaws were in them, it was never me.
"Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had" Yes.
Thank you for the post.
I've tried to be the best father I could be - my girls call me everyday.
Your post gives me the chills. / r
"We are their p.r. department that promotes their impression management campaign which additionally cripples us since we are covering up their dark surreality with us. " this is so true and great
I am having trouble finding the words to describe how I feel when people expect me to pity them- even when they are genuinely upset I find it hard to extend the slightest bit of compassion. Instead I ignore their. I have trouble feeling sorry for the person who made me into something less than whole, and made me feel less than whole every day of my life.
My mother is military. A fierce nurse to all but my soul. I just spent the day with her and it was exhausting. Great post. Thanks.
(((Libby)))
This is the kind of story that I want to see made into one of those indy movies that speak to you in that resonating swell that says, My God, I'm not alone. Someone understands. Good testimony to what it's really like. Highly R>>>>>>>
I wonder about the kid. He lives a long way away and being part of his life without dealing with his mother is impossible. Further complicating the issue is that she gets jealous of anyone the child gets too fond of, and suddenly that person is subject to persistent verbal attacks and the child is told all the same stuff about how evil the victim of the attack is.
What can you do?
My husband is a psychiatric RN. Borderlines are the one condition they can't do anything for. There are no medications, no cures, no fixes. Years upon years of therapy if the person actually wants to change. My heart goes out to you. His description of borderlines was a "chaos seeker."
Excellent,deeρ thinking work!!So,so,so rated!!Gongratulations!!
I begrudge them the term 'narcissists'. Calling them narcissists elevates them. In reality, they are frightened low life thieves and hustlers who know deep in their hearts they can never get a job shining shoes outside this country. They will do anything to keep the truth hidden and keep the status quo. R
R
-R-
Thank you for reading and rating this one especially. Thanks for your generous and validating comments. It was a blog that poured out of me in one flowing session -- but only after decades of struggling and questing for the truth behind my psychological problems.
I was grateful, touched, even awed at how this blog resonated with many of you but also sorry it did, too -- sorry to realize that so many of you went through similar, profound pain at the hands of unrecovered borderline disordered people.
I have read 100s of self help books, been to therapists, attended years of various 12-step meetings to get to the bottom of my particular set of psychological problems. The borderline personality disorder revelation regarding my mother was a valuable puzzle piece and relatively new but substantial considering how many years I have been working on my "recovery."
They say in the rooms "we are as sick as our secrets" and the secrets revolving around this disorder were so profound they spent years locked in my subconscious mind, fueling my depression, but too frightening, heart-breaking and confounding to face down consciously. Also, this disorder is not commonly discussed and should be. Once I began to explore the borderline personality disorder dynamic I was stunned at how much it explained. It has triggered a lot of feelings recently, sorrow and other strong feelings that I need to process, but it will get me to higher ground psychologically. The opportunity and encouragement to share so much here is a great gift toward my recovery.
I don't want to demonize borderline personality disordered people with this blog. They deserve compassion and help. They can assuredly be helped but it is challenging. Supposedly, as those with it age, the disorder does lessen its grip. But I do want to champion the child survivors and highlight the profound negative impact the unrecovered borderline parent can have on a child.
I also don't want to demonize my own parents, now deceased. I could describe their challenges in childhood and bring you to tears, also celebrate times in our life together they gave abundantly to me when they were not in their disordered modes. I appreciate that I have inherited or had role-modeled by them some wonderful traits and behaviors. But I also don't want the darker truths of my upbringing to be lost to sentimentality. I have lived in the fog of denial and minimization too many decades already.
FWIW, I have read 2 books about borderline personality disordered people and the challenges to their family members and social networks. Both I read through at breakneck speed with my jaw hanging open, nodding. "Walking on Eggshells" by Mason and Kreger and "Understanding the Borderline Mother" by Christine Lawson. Also, bpd and bpd family support websites are out there to give people like me access to support, opportunities to share and insights of others with the same challenges. I am grateful to them.
I also want to add that intellectual knowledge is so important but it does not automatically fix a survivor. The toxic childhood conditioning -- hard-wiring -- has to be dealt with with great patience and emotional courage. The marathon of recovery simply continues.
best, libby
I fought so hard to sustain the illusion that the all or nothing "brittleness" I had learned in defining moment interactions with my mother early on, but denied or minimized for psychological survival in her orbit, was not really all or nothing and IF I would confront my ubpd parent, there would be a breakthru not a blowup. I wanted to believe that. I blamed myself for being cowardly in not testing it. It wasn't HER problem I coaxed myself, it was about me and for some irrational reason I was intimidated by her. When I ultimately tested and asserted to her out of necessity (but with the hope of a breakthru to a more equitable relationship) finally as an adult, I triggered irrational hysteria, rejection and abandonment. The sentimentalized assumptions supporting my denial were exploded.
Bleue, I so appreciate what you wrote: "It took me a long time to understand the flaws were in them, it was never me."
Yes! As a very young but astute child the "wrongness" (emotional inaccessibility) we recognized in our parents was too terrifying, so we opted to make ourselves wrong (repress the real truth). We were dependent on them for our survival. We needed them for our identity formation.
Quite a challenging marathon from this background, isn't it? (serious sigh) Take care and thanks again!
Best, libby
Is anyone surprised that Sister and I married people just like our mother?
best, libby
My Dad, now that Mom is gone and I "wasn't there" as much as he thought I should be, has now turned full time to my sister. I'm okay with it because it frees me up to be me, but it hurts, too. And he's creeping me out a bit because he's referred to me twice as his wife. There's never been any abuse or anything like that. I just look like Mom. But it's gross.
So, I had never heard that bit about hope being the last temptation of Christ. I always thought that hope was what kept us alive. Not so much hope that they'll ever accept me, I've given up on that though it still hurts, but hope that striving will lead to something better.
Rated.
My heart goes out to you in a very visceral way, because I truly have experienced every single bit of this. All of it. It's harrowing, potentially debilitating, and takes so much from our souls. I wish you peace and comfort and love. R
They have chat streams that are specific to whether a person is a non-borderline involved with a borderline as their child, their parent, their mate, etc., and even one for bpd people themselves.
http://bpdfamily.com/
Like Bill Wilson founder of AA recognized, it is the people who are in the same boat, walking in the same moccasins, etc., that can help each other most because they can truly empathize and inspire with their own experience, strength and hope. Not someone who doesn't begin to know, insisting you "snap out it" re your problems without beginning to know how formidable that is.
When Bill Wilson's wife Lois got so furious with him one night as he was going out again to be with fellow recovering alcoholics and she even threw a shoe across the room at him, Bill turned to her and asked, "So why don't you start YOUR OWN meetings?" Lois did. Alanon!
And then from that, adult children of alcoholics grew. And then alateen (which I think is the most important, getting to the kids of alcoholic families early enough to validate their experience and not let them blindly adopt dysfunctional thinking and behaviors--to keep them from "numbing out" emotionally or "acting out") And then offshoots of specific issues for more and more programs like with money, food, relationships, drugs, sex, etc. All symptoms of spiritual misalignment in people.
What I like about 12-steps is there are no "official authorities". Yes, 12 step literature is cited as a focus. But there is no CROSS TALK from members, no status totem, no money required, no last names, leadership revolves, they can be regularly attended, etc. No one is allowed to take another's inventory or give advice during a meeting. You speak about your own situations honestly. You have a 12-step program you can use as a blueprint and you accrue lots of common language and slogans. You take what you need and leave the rest. A community of people interested in finding serenity for their lives.
It is an international network and a real humanist paradigm stressing integrity and honorable behavior. I'm thinking there should be a recovering politicians one!
Anyway, FWIW. Didn't mean to launch into all that. :-)
best, libby
What an astute comment you make about parents not realizing the ENORMOUS power and conditioning they do to their young children. Dr. Phil was it who talked about maybe 8 defining moments in your life that have enormous influence on how you see life and yourself. If these defining moments are seriously traumatizing, they can sabotage the quality of an entire life, the capacity of a child to trust others and to fully expand his or her potential.
best, libby
I went to 12 steps originally to FIX my father's drinking so my mother would be happy (and looking back, to get off my back!)... and then I was caught short realizing I myself because of my family dynamics had a whopping case of "codependent" dysfunctional behavior -- still do and which I have to monitor as best I can.
You and I politically speaking clearly both recognize that it is the "enablers" that are empowering the toxic, power-addict, sociopathic "addict" amoral leaders and their horrifying decisions in this world.
Re CODA, the perspective there helped me enormously, but as I said in the blog, understanding the borderline DISORDER, its extremeness, was a final puzzle piece. You see I had been trying to use TOUGH LOVE that I learned in program with my mother, but I was dealing with a DISORDER, and it involved hysteria that included PARANOIA, and TOUGH LOVE did not seem to work on that, at least how I was putting it forth. I underestimated the force coming back at me.
Yes, "detachment" was so helpful and the "serenity prayer" and the 12-step formula for recovery and a support network that was willing to face their lives with rigorous honesty unlike much of a family network, primary and secondary, that enabled and let sentimentality and status quo cronyism prevail. Some family members were able to detach more than I, without needing the outside networking I felt I had to reach for. I got to be with messengers of truth from many dysfunctional families to support each other and to become more functional ourselves.
Thanks again, vzn! You have supported me since when I wrote my first blog about my Dad's drinking early. Along with many of my political stances! Appreciate! :-)
best, libby
Lezlie
I was raised in an environment (many of us I sense were) in which "inconvenient" feelings were forbidden to be expressed, especially anger and anger especially being a female. It was conflated with being "crazy". It brought anger and contempt down upon me when I went there.
As I said to vzn above, with the borderline person in my life I was facing down a horrifying at times level of paranoia and inaccessibility. Affinity replaced intimacy and I thought there was something I could do to reach the borderline and get there. The serenity prayer that advises courage to change what you can and serenity to accept what you can't.
Hayley I so relate to the pressure from outside to keep the status quo going and the lack of empathy to fellow enablers. When you are breaking through the denial of others, you are often not gonna be thanked.
We do so often need to detach from the pressure. We need to hang on to our loyalty to ourselves. Our own inner child within us, banging on the pipes within us, reminding us they are there and should not be abandoned once more for the dangerous childish willfulness of authoritarian figures in our life with their illegitimate demands for us to surrender our rights to happiness and independence for their convenience.
There are two kinds of people Scott Peck in People of the Lie (a great and stunning read) writes. Necrophilic people who want people to be numbed out (deadened) and convenient. Creating a Stepford community around them to cater to their convenience. And biophilic people who encourage people to expand in their own essences and to grow and embrace life and become naturally who they were meant to become.
Re pity, I remember in 12 step meetings reading a characteristic of children from dysfunctional families, "We confuse love and pity and tend to LOVE people we can pity and rescue." I also read something funny by was it Melodie Beattie in Codependent No More, "Some people have friends, others have caseloads!" I got special validation growing up when I was self-denying and rescuing others. When I disconnected from my "selfish" natural inclinations and wants. Focusing on others more intensely than myself.
Hayley, thanks, and to be continued! best, libby
I so relate to being around significant others indoctrinated in military thinking. EMPATHY is overridden for "discipline" and "authoritarian following" and "automatic loyalty". I have a manager at work who has or had a military parent I have heard, and she is I suspect an unrecovered bpd and is demoralizing the staff and when confronted with legitimate problems from staff becomes personally angry and impatient at them and wants the IDEAL system to work perfectly without beginning to get what REALITY is all about. No empathy. She can be so pleasant when all is well. When normal problems arise, IRRATIONAL RAGE and PUNISHMENT! The way her emotions go from zero to hyper rage really seems like bpd!
My mother, too, was very other-oriented and caretaking in her behavior. And I think saw herself and me so symbiotically that my separate needs and reality did not exist and I should be as other-focused as she. So the empathy she asserted to others, even strangers, was so often not applied to me. She expected me to be as stoic as she, and also to totally think and see the world like her. In fact, I was to be the PERFECT HER, ALL THE TIME!
I felt I could never see myself reflected directly in her eyes. I felt the only way that reflection of myself would come back to me in her eyes was if I could get the positive reflections of me from other eyes then reflected to her eyes for me to see. It was self-aggrandizing for her to have others praise me. More about conditional love EARNED. So it was about ricocheted reflection. You know what I mean? That really sets one up to be a compulsive people pleaser! Not a healthy tendency. Equals codependency.
Some of us have to detach from the borderline parent or spouse or friend or even quit a job from a bpd boss, since it is too challenging to sustain our boundaries. To keep your boundaries, fight for them, with the set-ups that can come at you, to stay in the orbit is TOUGH. The emotional blackmail, etc.
We who detach have to mourn the loss of a significant bond and the wholesome and loving moments of interaction and support that the rollercoasters often include but don't linger at. But the lack of respect and lack of real intimacy can be toxic in the orbit of the ubpd person unless we have some sturdy and validating supporters accessible to us.
best, libby
I think the Eggshells book is a great idea. I also hope you get a hold of the Lawson book! AND yes, the website I was telling Julie about is also a very strong tool in dealing with this stuff. And I have just scratched the surface on this stuff (though people might not think so since I am so hungry for more recovery I dig fast):
bpdfamiy.com
(I was googling about and at first got the baltimore police department but then I found this. it is the one that I found such education and support at a short while back!)
I also feel for you as a parent yourself. We all do our best with what we have. And with such formidable baggage I really admire those of us, people with our backgrounds, who have built families themselves. I can indulge in being a righteous purist being a non-parent. Perhaps that is why I can be so ruthless about this stuff, or the tone I used in this blog above. I used to counsel kids and being single gave me the advantage of not having such mixed feelings as if I had been a parent, too. I could relate more to what the kids were saying and not try to justify more to them the plight of the parent. I did try to do that, but it was more rational and less defensive, if that makes sense.
There is the theory about the "good enuf parent" (Bruno Bettelheim I think. Parents of course make mistakes and can not sustain perfect parenting (whatever that is). Kids don't expect or want PERFECTIONISM from them. Just honesty and in-touchness with themselves and respect for themselves to be role-modelled to the kids. And to just listen to their kids. Listening and accepting them even when they can't understand them. That was HUGE for me. Especially if parent and child also have different temperaments. Or sometimes more trouble when they do.
In fact, I wish my own mother had exercised more vulnerability to me, and not stressed so much (in both sense of the word) on the "mask" of control except when she lost it, and then she seemed to have amnesia later, that her RAGE (Lawson always refers to it as "annihilating anger" iirc) had never happened and there was no reason to acknowledge it or the horrifying judgments of me she had disclosed. To this day I wonder if there was amnesia or just the ego not letting her ever admit wrongness. That is HUGE for bpds.
I was worried about wading into all this. I know that borderline parents can condition their children to grow up and become borderlines. Maybe that is why I took so long to venture into this realm of truth and study. I did not want to embrace the bpd label with its stigma for myself. My irrational fear, sometimes anger, defensiveness, premature escape from situations and relationships and positive/negative stress since I am used to "resistance is futile" having grown up with a parent with such a pathological need for absolute control.
They say in the rooms it is okay to inventory your parents before you inventory yourself. Also, the anger is a conversion process that is important. You hope not to stay stuck in the anger, but it is important to experience it. And sometimes the anger of others finally takes you to the anger you deserve to feel yourself. On this website I mentioned, there was a lot of righteous anger at the bpd that helped me. But also, since my bpd parent has passed on I was also in a different situation, since many were interacting with their active bpd parents often IRL or they were bravely detaching from them IRL and I was away from the front lines so to speak, looking back. Not to say I am still not fighting the conditioning and still not vulnerable to the aggressiveness of others. I am. (Did I say all that right, wording wise?)
Anyway, I was very fearful about me deserving the label of being a bpd. There are categories of them in Lawson's book, so one bpd personality does not fit all according to her which also was enlightening. She also talks about various roles of husbands for particular bpd mothers. She gets pretty interesting and venturesome.
But for now I see myself as more of a complex-PTSD survivor person (with its own challenges--complex means PTSD but in a kind of sustained captivity as hostage, which is a word you used well earlier iirc) who has the hypervigilance of that PTSD, the psychic numbing, the "infant time" suspensions in which one when ambushed feels suddenly like a very helpless child, and lastly coping with the survivor guilt, about being bad for being less mired in misery than our parents or simply alive now.
There was a lot of talk on that bpd family website of something called "fleas" in which having grown up among so much colossal dysfunction and lack of empathy, etc., we are bound to have FLEAS infesting us, in other words, bad habits, thoughts, dysfunctional communication behaviors, irrational responses to situations other people from functional backgrounds wouldn't begin to be bothered by, which we have picked up from the bpd dynamics. I found this comforting. Not being a bpd but having "fleas" of defense mechanisms from them seemed more hopeful to recover from.
When I start lingering about regrets, for I feel great guilt since in my adult life I have helped more strangers struggling with these issues than young people in my own family network and would like that to change and am still working up the courage to hold my ground there. Though, also, I blush at being called a prophet by Thoth who is always so kind and generous to my efforts, but there is the saying about never being a "prophet in one's native land." (also talking the talk is great but walking the walk is where the recovery is) I relate to you at discovering respect from outside the family network that was so much greater than what you were feeling within it. I was stunned at the levels of respect I sometimes received away from my family. The family role I had did not allot that. And you know, it sometimes made me pull back from the respect, like warmth on frostbite, it stung. It illuminated how much was missing not coming from parents or family in those terms and my loyalty or my fear of facing that down made me doubt or pull back from the blessed and nurturing respect I was getting. To use that to help me become independent. Too often I did not use it to benefit myself.
A palm reader when I was in my 20s looked at my palm and immediately announced, "Wow, you trust the WRONG people!!!" It was so blunt but so troubling to me, though I took her "power" with a huge grain of salt. Judy Collins has a great song I can't remember the title of, but in essence it says Dorothy should have stayed in Oz and not gone back to Kansas. Reminds me also of the Swayze line in Dirty Dancing about Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner! So many of us Baby-s were put regretfully in corners for the convenience of the bpd or the dysfunctional family.
Re looking back and regrets, I advise the serenity prayer and also the Louise Hay line, "The point of power is always in the present moment!"
To be continued, dear Bleue! thanks!!!! best, libby xxxx
I'll try & find the link. or just Google "Marica Linehan Time Magazine Borderline.
It seems I've spent half my life trying to figure out how to "stop the cycle" or figure out where the cycle came from,, etc. etc. My father was Manic Depressive, so a lot of the same issues.
Borderline Article From Time Magazine
We need our parents to help mirror an identity for us when we are young. We need them to ACTUALLY mirror who we are not ask us to mirror what their ego needs are, and to garnish praise for their egos with our behaviors and focus.
We want to accommodate them reasonably but not to have to become the projection of their perfect selves. That was what I felt I was supposed to be. My life as a hologram of my mother? Or anyone else's since when you are denied encouragement to assert boundaries with a parent, that pattern continues throughout life with others.
Yes, "enthralled". Living in someone else's "thrall" is stifling and soul-eroding. I think Scott Peck talks a lot about that in People of the Lie. And when in someone's icky thrall, where we are so busy second guessing their expectations and our choices that will or will not be acceptable to them and their presumptuous over-reactions, we never even ask ourselves what we actually want or feel entitled to -- to put that in the equation which is not an equation, really. We end up walking their netless high tight rope to sustain their good will. Accommodate them or pay a high price of heart breaking rejection, criticism or abandonment. Plunging off the rope.
It is natural to trust one's parents. It is natural to rebel agains them, too. If they are too brittle and damaged, they cannot be resilient for us to safely assert for those life passages.
I read somewhere that when we are toddlers, saying no is so very important. Getting to say no ... having it be heeded by an authority figure without it being ignored, disrespected, or invoking irrational malice for a parent. I have a memory of the irrational malice nuking me when I expressed anger when I was 3. It showed my mother played hardball. My Dad? He couldn't begin to listen to feelings. He underreacted. My mother over-reacted. So it goes.
"Saying no is the cornerstone of identity" I have read. But if you were not allowed to express the word no without too harsh blowback growing up, you lose a strong sense of identity and entitlement to define your own boundaries. I heard someone in a 12 step program talk about how people with a firm identity wear the zipper to their identities on the inside. People who have trouble with boundaries wear their zippers outside and anyone can unzip you and force exposure of you without your permission. You are vulnerable and can be violated. I am not saying that smoothly, but you get what I am saying I trust.
I was raised Catholic. Honor thy father and thy mother was a big one. Obedience. My mother was so "saintly" that her judgments seemed to have God totally at her back, and heavy injunctions coming out of her of goodness and badness were very sobering!!! The obedience thing was especially strong for females!
Thanks so much for sharing, Rolling. I really appreciate it! I still fight the blowback of Fear, Obligation and Guilt talking this talk! Breaking the loyalty rule of the family big time saying and thinking this stuff. You and others here have helped lessen that!
best, libby xxx
such an interesting comment from you. thanks! the first part, my seeing too much! i find it ironic considering how many decades I participated in "wall watching", that part of depression in which one feels like one is free falling into an abyss in a numbed state. wondering why I am investing so much time in allowing an empty sadness to absorb me so. I think it was about my trying to will myself to see the truth that I already knew on some deep level but was too terrible to bring to full consciousness. thus, the continual sense of falling without landing. wall watching. the heart knows the truth, hence the depression, but the consciousness won't make the connection. Avoiding the horror but also the catharsis to freedom.
Depression is about pressing the horror back into the subconscious ... The horror of having, say, a parent that as Alice Miller once wrote (Drama of the Gifted Child) has the responsiveness of a wall to the child's emotional needs, even while tending to the child's physical needs. Miller also wrote, "the brighter the child, the thicker the prison walls."
A responsive "good enough" undisordered parent would provide a primal grounding that we as children deserved and needed but did not get and that robbed us of existential security. That is a BIGGIE. Existential security as a sea level to launch ourselves into life from.
Those of us who did not have that early existential security from a safe parent are striving through our lives to reach that sea level of groundedness. Granted there were others in our lives when young and later who gave us intermittent and sometimes sustained tastes of this existential security by mirroring us, unconditionally accepting us and/or celebrating our preciousness, thank God. But we had a traumatic bonding with the person or persons we were most dependent upon when young, with the power to seriously threaten us physically and/or psychologically.
I liked the nuanced metaphor you use about the needle in the arm of the chair. Knowing it is there but choosing not to go there. It resonates for me that idea of trying to hide the truth from one's heart as I was clumsily trying to spell out above, though I appreciate your context of people (at os included) who are not compelled to yank out the roots of truth.
Your indy movie idea. It would have to be an indy movie no doubt. Not a blockbuster, though the impact of people coming forward this week about this issue, identifying with having a borderline parent is a blockbusting knock your socks off gift of a revelation to me.
Speaking of movies, I cited Ordinary People over on Bleue's blog. That was a stunning movie and book. Mary Tyler Moore, America's sweetheart especially then when Tim Hutton was a pup of a lad, playing the borderline personality mommy who had the attachment disorder clearly more with him than with her other child who drowned. Hutton's character was more like Mary in terms of temperament Donald S. dad explains. And we watch and our hearts go out to the teenager's processing his grief about his brother's death and we watch this mother who has all the compassion of that proverbial wall for him, and it turns out when hubby Donald calls her out she gives him the wall as well.
I have been trying to find a book I think I have by Maggie Scarf called the Borderline Family this week. Maybe it was a library book. I did find another one of hers, Secrets, Lies, Betrayal. Scarf writes about trauma passionately and astutely. I'm going to cite some of her statements:
"Essence of trauma is the abrupt disintegration of the victim's inner world."
The American Psychological Association defines a traumatic stressor as "an event or process that leads to the disorganization of a core sense of self and safety in the world and leaves an indelible mark on one's world view." One is left with a sense of personal vulnerability.
Scarf defines traumatic bonding: relationships characterized by what is known as "intermittent reinforcement" -- alternating intervals of reward (lovingness and warmth) and punishment (psychological or physical abuse). Inconsistent, unpredictable relating creates a glue-like connection between oppressor and the oppressed, always apprehensive partner. The oppressed partner in the relationship is always trying to get the relationship back to the care and affection that was extended temporarily. [like an addiction to "hope" to retrieve it]
She writes "the reason traumatic bonds are far stronger and far more difficult to sever than healthier bonds is that they are forged in an atmosphere of such high intensity. an atmosphere in which deep-seated bodily fears and alarms alternate with the release of disagreeable mental and physical tension during times of relative tranquility."
Scarf references at one point the "Stockholm Syndrome"... over-identifying with one's captor. Well, that fits to a borderline parent scenario! She also mentions "gaslighting" done by oppressor in a traumatic bond.
3 responses to trauma: fight, flight or FREEZE ... I am thinking as kids the one we were forced to use was "freeze" ... thinking back I realize I barely exhaled around my mother I assumed I "adored" for her strength and goodness. she had those and exercised them at times. but she felt disrespect for me and I fought facing that.
Thanks for inspiring and indulging my continuing brainstorming on this issue, inthisdeepcalm.
to be continued! best, libby
Donegal, thanks for your insights on bpd. "tormented, torn-about souls, many of them victims of severe abuse themselves," ... yes! so well said. The recognition that my mother, and maybe my father, though I feared her more psychologically, him physically (from his alcoholism acting out), needed such patient accommodating, walking on egg shells kind. After so much devotion, it was stunning how in a heartbeat I could become a threatening near stranger deserving no trust or good will with something I crossed her about, even something entirely my own business and right one would think. It could be totally inadvertent. I would put that ambush memory way in the background of my mind, and focus on the "normalcy" and "generosity" in the non-bpd moments. But the anxiety lived in me of triggering the irrational annihilating anger once again. Sometimes when my dad was drunk he told her what she deserved to hear as an oppressor but then it was ugly and, again, he was drunk (his courage from the bottle?) and there was no relief in that reckoning. I scapegoated him more than I should have, not grasping impact of her bpd-ness on their relationship which was HUGE, though his rollercoaster from the drinking brought chaos and fear, also.
thanks for your compassion on this! best, libby
I'll send a pm -keep getting logged off.
Years earlier I remember begging my mother to visit a therapist especially because of her super stress with my dad's drinking, and she kept saying, "I don't need a therapist. I have you!" It was part of the flattery which often seduced me into striving harder to please, but this time it utterly chilled and saddened me. Thanks for sharing! best, libby
Yes, primal bullying. So primal the bully-ee can not identify it because it is too horrifying to acknowledge. The children introvert that there is something shameful they are or are doing that is triggering it. And strive to fix it. Appreciate you disclosing and relating! A hard decision, but putting one's mental health first is so important in all of this. best, libby
I am not in any way saying you are wrong in anything here, I just find myself thinking of how completely and wildly attitudes toward parenting have changed, generationally, and the huge response of "Me too" here, makes me ponder even more.
It does sound like a parent of a certain age who didn't follow the instruction of scheduling and distancing of their baby/child, who did love the child unconditionally and not as the one who is meant to exist for the parent, is the more unusual parent of an older generation.
Since I was so loyal and protective of my parent, con-fused + fused with, it would have been formidable for concerned relatives to consciousness raise with me had they really grasped the toxicity of the dynamic with my mother and me or even with my alcoholic father, which I assume most of them did not. Niceness always pre-empted honesty in dealing with "outsiders". Honesty would have been disloyal!
But my heart goes out to this child as you write:
"I wonder about the kid. He lives a long way away and being part of his life without dealing with his mother is impossible. Further complicating the issue is that she gets jealous of anyone the child gets too fond of, and suddenly that person is subject to persistent verbal attacks and the child is told all the same stuff about how evil the victim of the attack is. "
Isolation is how the non-bpd gets so enmeshed with the needs of the bpd person. And I have read self help books that come out and call it "emotional incest" or "spiritual incest" when a parent defines people and situations in black and white terms and demands that a child concurs. It is a very dark symbiosis. Especially when there is a religious righteousness that intensifies the judgments of the bpd. Only after you have left their thrall do you fully realize how overcome you had been.
This also triggers my own guilt. I have been distant from loving relatives still and not disclosed much of this and I know the dynamics went on in other secondary families and are going on with younger ones. I want to be braver and more self-disclosing now if I can, though it takes a courage I have been procrastinating rallying! Your comment helps me with that! thanks! :-)
best, libby
Thanks for your patience and your interest in and support for this highly personal blog!!! best, libby
To be honest I have tended to think of the BPD categorization (or diagnosis, or whatever) as a catchall for the ills that afflict all imperfectly-formed human beings, and I believe this is 99.99999% of the world's population. I found this list in the simplistic WebMD site, and was not too surprised that I would have been diagnosed with BPD if I was interviewed by a professional at certain periods of my life:
"People who are diagnosed with borderline personality disorder have at least five of the following symptoms. They may:
Make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
Have a pattern of difficult relationships caused by alternating between extremes of intense admiration and hatred of others.
Have an unstable self-image or be unsure of his or her own identity.
Act impulsively in ways that are self-damaging, such as extravagant spending, frequent and unprotected sex with many partners, substance abuse, binge eating, or reckless driving.
Have recurring suicidal thoughts, make repeated suicide attempts, or cause self-injury through mutilation, such as cutting or burning himself or herself.
Have frequent emotional overreactions or intense mood swings, including feeling depressed, irritable, or anxious. These mood swings usually only last a few hours at a time. In rare cases, they may last a day or two.
Have long-term feelings of emptiness.
Have inappropriate, fierce anger or problems controlling anger. The person may often display temper tantrums or get into physical fights.
Have temporary episodes of feeling suspicious of others without reason (paranoia) or losing a sense of reality."
"At least five..." Why not 4, or 6? Who are the grandees who decide this stuff? In fact some of the above would be considered "appropriate responses" to having a truly disordered person in your life, as your emotional flight from your mother, or my physical flight from mine. And how many thousands of our greatest artists and writers (like you) have been square pegs in a round hole, or victims of others who were BPD?
I also take exception to Dr. Bramhall's blaming it on our capitalist-industrial society, as if the bedlams of the past were not filled with depressed and difficult people like the ones described by others here. No doubt stress levels have risen, but life was not exactly a picnic when starvation, war, and plagues threatened the bucolic countryside for centuries on end.
Often a change of environment is needed. One close friend whose wife was recently diagnosed as BPD has only "improved" with social contact and friendship, and of course even that is not consistent. Thanks again libby, for this, and I hope you do try your hand at a screenplay.
RATED
I, too, have read about the challenge for psychological counselors to work with border lines. I don't believe, even though after so much tragic evidence from my own parent, that nothing can be done, at least not for all.
I keep wondering what would have happened if my own mother wasn't so monumentally enabled, an enabling I had been a mighty catalyst for before I was absolutely jettisoned for daring to assert. Our mother/daughter contract was non-negotiable. Stepford daughter or NO daughter.
I thought it was interesting one expert said that it did lessen with age naturally. Naturally?
"Chaos seeker" says it. I think what is most insidious is how the borderline often crazymakingly passed on their own responsibility for the chaos onto others. The over-accomnodation of the others around the borderline unbalances the system. Ironically, the borderline often looks like the together one and everyone else vulnerably off kilter and confused and self-doubting and even self-hating. FOG ... fear obligation and guilt makes up the FOG according to eggshells book.
You know I watched a Dr. Phil show a while back and there was a mother on the show discussing how her husband and sons all had ADD. The father was reasonable and apologetic and humble. The mother so righteous about the family needing to do things HER way.
I wondered to myself, and not the first time, does a borderline controlling parent create ADD in children and even others around him or her. Dr. Phil was nationally possibly enabling this borderline women to hold up her family as disordered with ADD when I suspected she was the ongoing catalyst for that and their probs. Maybe not ... but MAYBE!!!
ADD has to do with focus, and if your focus on yourself is so sabotaged by the neediness and INTIMIDATION of someone who is demanding you focus so extremely on their needs, you can not focus, you can not cultivate rituals of discipline and a reinforcing sense of empowerment! A sense of mastery. That seemed to be key as to what I was prevented from having during those growing stages when that passage was so vital. I would say yes now to having ADD or ADHD in my struggles with organization.
Also important the capacity to assert. They say a toddler needs to say NO during those "terrible twos". When a toddler's natural development to say no is prevented from fear of an over- violent and irrational parental reaction, that sets the child up to grow into an adult who has little sense of entitlement to his or her own rights, who has no right to push back at aggressors, set boundaries. Another saying, you can't say YES in this life until you have learned to say NO. So by not having the tool of saying no, so many of us are afraid to say yes.
Anyway, looking back I realize I barely exhaled around my mother there was an ongoing intimidation even when things seemed status quo quiet and she was being so solicitous in her caretaking of her family. She was an awesome physical caretaker. I knew there was that potential for unpredictable irrational rage OR pitiable hysteria. I did not want to trigger that nor anything else so vigilance that should have been for myself was spent on her. Having an alcoholic father in and out was another wild card factor to add to the reactivity.
How could we children of borderlines learn to be proactive, when so much of our actual time growing up was locked in reactive mode? Or as they say, 3 reactions to danger: flight, fight or freeze. They were so big we couldn't fight. We couldn't flee. We had to freeze.
The old movie Mommie Dearest. Christine was writing about the surreality of growing up with a parent who behind closed doors could be monstrous. But watching, the audience identifies with the responsive Dunaway since the supposed heroine is so stiff and scared ... an accurate depiction ... but not relate-able or inspiring to the audience. We look at the broad boldness of the disordered one on the screen, even in real life too often, and there is a seduction of the narcissistic entitlement and emotionalism. Not real courage. But we attribute that to them since we have all often been conditioned as sheep.
Years and years ago there was a tv movie about an alcoholic father with Martin Sheen. A newspaper review said that Sheen's acting was superb but he was disappointed with all the actors who played family members. I remember writing or intending to write (can't remember, so long ago) the reviewer to witheringly explain that THAT IS HOW AN ALCOHOLIC'S FAMILY BEHAVES. Not "normally" and "easily" and "naturally". They walk on eggshells. THEY ARE ACTING not living! that is what the reviewer, clearly a lucky person not enmeshed with alcoholic family behavior, was missing and thus was clueless!!!
I think the borderline personality disorder stuff needs to be studied. I like that the children of borderlines on one website talk about "fleas" .. how they do not think of themselves as junior borderlines ... but as having been infested with "fleas" of lousy communication skills and beliefs to be shed. Conflict resolution is so tough for children of borderlines. Resistance is futile with an unrecovered bpd parent. So one gets conditioned to prematurely surrender in conflicts or escalates the fight because of hopelessness and lack of trust in receptivity of others for compromise or exploration, or one withdraws in shame and fear, or one becomes adept at passive aggressiveness and manipulation.
Froggy, I am no expert. I would like to hear more from people like your husband who have the education and the experience with this particular FORMIDABLE disorder.
But I will confide I have been reading for decades self help books to try to learn how to shed my baggage of pain carried for so long. In fact, they should put a plaque with my name in the self help section in my local B&N.
Take care and thanks.
best, libby
YOUR open-heartedness, strength, curiosity and courage is a role model for all of us at open salon! You have been such a STRONG, leading and nurturing presence since your arrival.
Your blog on shame really touched me and encouraged me to blog about the personal here as well as the political. You and Hayley and erica and bleue and ande and so many others. Putting it out there.
Yes, stathi, how large an ocean of tears do we have to cry from our confusion and frustration and sorrow? How much gratuitous and undeserved self blame, guilt, and the cruelest as you wrote, SHAME, must we inflict on ourselves because of disorders in others whom we loved and pitied and depended upon and whose disorder had such chilling dimensions, deep dimensions that were too truly terrifying to fathom, especially as young, vulnerable and needy children.
We had to cling to illusions, but our hearts knew the truth so we had to repress or suppress or DEPRESS the truth we knew to consciously function in our toxic orbits, poisoned by unrealistic attributions and expectations that debilitated us in the long run. Poisoned our quality of life!
We can't let ourselves stifle and abandon our own "inner children" for the sake of a system supported confusingly by others threatened by truth to enable sentimentalized hypocrisy, while a very damaged person as our parents or damaged persons who follow in their wakes take up the reins of our oppression again, with borderline control they recognize is possible from our conditioning. To take advantage of our goodness and willingness to love and sadly our need to rewrite history and finally get the specter of the borderline to love us which is just asking for more pain if we can't surrender to the reality.
We need to live henceforth as sadder but wiser survivors, no longer victims. We need to assert TOUGH LOVE to ourselves. We need to detach when we need to, make boundaries, stop only loving ourselves if we perform perfectly and become the nurturing parent to ourselves we deserved from them. Give our egos and those "tapes" that punish us daily for never being good enough the heave-ho. To realize the strongest most stable person will eventually have their confidence eroded when isolated with a pathological narcissist! It happened. Time to give us what we deserved all along. Peace and freedom.
Another great quote I have read and shared here, "honesty without love is brutality and love without honesty is sentimentality." When reading about people with pathologies that block them from empathy, which is tragic for them and for others again, it has been written that all they are capable of appreciating bottom line when it comes to others is cultivating (besides control) "affinity". Affinity is not "intimacy" (into-me-see) and to be content with that "affinity" tous is a real loss for ourselves and isolates us from finding people to mutually share intimacy with. (all this I write and talk the talk ... sigh.. so much work I have to do in bravely walking the walk of emotional freedom still. all that irrational conditioning in my hard-wiring so to speak... easier said than done)
Years ago I read a book called "Do I Have to Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?". That seems to be the tragic contract borderline parents make with their of course desperate to be loved and to be protected children. I think it is a harsher contract with some of the children than others. But it is still there.
My mother wanted me desperately to "keep her company in her isolation". She wanted control over me which has nothing to do with real connection and with an orbit of mutual respect. Her lack of respect I pretended was the opposite situation, and I think the lack of respect was from that she couldn't respect herself and I was a symbiotic projection of herself to her. I tried so hard to deny and change that debilitating reality. I tried to PERFORM what my mother wanted and liked to convince her to change her image of me. It was FUTILE.
Serenity prayer was needed there. Accept the things I cannot change! I am glad eventually I got to that prayer and the concept of detachment.
Take care, my friend. To be continued. :-) Thanks again!!!
best, libby
xxx
One of my brothers-in-law once said, "If I was married to your mom, I'd drink, too." Sad thing is, dad drank 20 years, was sober 30 and you'd never know it to talk to my mother. He tried so hard and that changed him, made him so much less than he could have been. Should have been.
... parents not realizing the ENORMOUS power and conditioning they do to their young children. Dr. Phil was it who talked about maybe 8 defining moments in your life that have enormous influence on how you see life and yourself. I was all set to apologize about bringing him up but since you did ... he says it best, frequently, I think, with "You. Change. Who. They. Are."
It's going to take me a good week to digest all of this, not to mention the links. It's huge. Thanks. I think.
http://open.salon.com/blog/vcorso/2012/06/08/pick_up_the_pieces_-_how_i_survived_my_borderline_parents
best, libby
I appreciate your view of hope.
I meant above the hope that you can earn your way into a breakthru of acceptance with the borderline parent. Hope that might cause you to underestimate just how ferocious the capacity for paranoia in an ubpd person is when triggered.
I tried to use tough love with my mother finally, and it ended up in estrangement for a long time. There was no capacity for conflict resolution in her and I had used up all my courage and stamina just asserting. The sustained rage and defensiveness and hysteria I did not know how to get through. I did feel some healthy anger finally as it happened, too, along with some fear and awe.
I faced a wall of paranoia and then the additional sustained pain of my parent recruiting family allies against me which was based on a lie. I supposed she would soon after come clean but she didn't.
That assertion about hope was a serious discovery for me. I was not strong enough to continue to engage with her with the paranoia. Also, because I had been so focused on my mother's and father's needs I had not seriously cultivated at that point an independent support network. I needed a base camp for my family base camp. I needed it particularly then.
After that I found the 12 step network though I focused on my father being the main cause of family dysfunction with his drinking, but I also got to explore my painful and crazymaking relationship with my mother.
FWIW.
best, libby
http://open.salon.com/blog/donegal_descendant/2012/06/11/surviving_a_borderline_parent_a_response_to_libbys_post
Thanks so much! I wrote this with my own goosebumps, believe me. It was very cathartic.
There were two Scott Peck books that especially helped me, too. One was Road Less Travelled and the other was People of the Lie. In the second he is very firm calling out personality disordered people. I particularly appreciated his labeling some people necrophilic, in that they encourage all about them to freeze in a subservient and predictable manner, and biophilic people who encourage others to expand and grow and are not threatened by the vitality of others and the will-asserting of others.
In the first I think he talked about our primal need for a family as base camp in climbing the mountain of life. Some of us, he counsels, have a dysfunctional base camp. In those cases, we need a base camp for the base camp. I felt like for a great part of my life I was not allowed to even leave the base camp, or not without a certain degree of guilt. I was codependently bound to stay there as my role. Then when I asserted to leave I was locked out of the base camp which was also traumatizing. Then I did have to reach out for other base camps. Open salon happens to be one for me today, speaking of which.
I agree, it sure is a lifetime quest for recovery, isn't it? Thank you for confirming: "It's harrowing, potentially debilitating, and takes so much from our souls." I wish you peace and comfort and love back, Michelle, in this marathon for our very souls! best, libby
(((Beth))), thanks. Once I really grasped that, the "disorder" -- particularly the paranoia of my mother only at times which was impervious to "tough love" I became more recovered (though I know it is a lifetime marathon). I constantly introverted the problem to myself who was not good enough, smart enough, perfect enough. If only I could be what she wanted she would be FINE. I had taken all the guilt and shame of her dysfunctionality and attributed it to my dysfunctionality I saw in myself through her eyes, what she told me during her darker moments. It was not personal, it was a disorder that my chronic access to eroded naturally or unnaturally but powerfuly my self esteem and spirit. I am sorry if you were exposed to similar toxicity. Thanks for commenting. best, libby
"Jawohl! So damned true it's probly illegal to acknowledge."
The sentimentalized mythology of parental roles in our society can not abide the strain of too much truth and reality on pathological woundings of those with power who profoundly harm their children. How many of us sacrifice our lives to support the myth destroying us? I
know you were being funny, but wry truth lit up the sky with your exclamation!
best, libby
Best, libby
take care, my friend! best, libby
All the courageous sharings of people at os and this week indignation re the Sandusky scenario sent me back here tonight and i am grateful. Hearing from fellow survivors is additionally empowering to me. Such a marathon of exploration intellectually and emotionally for recovery for all of us. When a child is thrown back and forth with two dysfunctional parents trying to negotiate safety it is heartbreaking. And then there is the confusion which results in self-blame, guilt and shame ... so undeserved!! "I did not pass it on!" What a powerful and admirable statement that is you make. My eyes burn with tears reading it. Thank you!
Best, libby
I have been thinking about that metaphor, that a borderline is like a third degree burn victim, that all feelings are excruciating to. My mother became either hysterical or super-enraged that was triggered so incredibly easily and mostly inadvertently by others.
This in particular struck me from the article:
"What defines borderline personality disorder — and makes it so explosive — is the sufferers' inability to calibrate their feelings and behavior. When faced with an event that makes them depressed or angry, they often become inconsolable or enraged."
and this:
"Generally," she writes, "I have patients follow their breath ... and try to let their focus settle into their physical center, at the bottom of their inhalation. That very centered point is wise mind." Lily remembers this sensation clearly; she came to feel that her dark moods had a physical location in her body — her solar plexus — and when she focused on it, she could deactivate a destructive emotion."
You know I assumed I adored my mother she could be so generous at times to me, but I also recognized that I never was able to fully exhale around her. What was that about? It was dangerous and treasonous to be healthily willful and grounded around my mother. She needed predictability, absolutely and accessibility if she needed it. Otherwise one had better be "on call" or it was looked on as abandonment! She seemed so devoted but that devotion came at a huge price.
Another sad saying I heard in 12 step rooms, "She demanded company in her isolation." That kind of accessibility from a loved one takes away their own opportunities to grow from genuine intimacy with others. Into-me-seeness .. which fosters trust in oneself and others and in life itself.
Take care of your precious self.
best, libby
I think I recognize the MO of 50s parenting. But I also think understanding and appreciating that may hide the pathological degree of some disordered parenting from then and even contribute to it going undiscovered for decades that make the victim or survivor of such treatment place the blame and responsibility on themselves.
I believe ANGER is a conversion process that all victims/survivors have to go through. The above was written in a kind of trance of surrender and weariness and some bitterness and clearly anger ... but it was a seasoned anger and my having been reading of so many other fellow adult children who had been through the wringer of self-hate and confusion and shame and guilt that they did not deserve at the hands of crazymaking dual personality ubpd parents.
I wonder if the pendulum has swung the other way re the generations, or maybe the same dangers still lurk in the next generation of parents that can talk a different talk, but is their walk so different and maybe the discordance between walk and talk is crazymaking for the next crop of survivors?
Anyway, thanks for provocative questions. Also, I wouldn't have been as wounded if my dark-sided mother didn't have a beautiful and loving side as well. But for the purposes of the above blog, I did not embrace that duality. I think the blog above had something important to say about the right of survivors not to be sucked into confusing pity for which makes them vulnerable for manipulation from their victimizers, even if they do deserve pity. The victims deserve protection from the irrational malice that wounds so deeply, especially if it is unpredictably repetitive.
best, libby
Thanks for your validation of the post. I had no idea it would resonate so. It was an act of courage and recovery for me.
I hear you re the normal gamut of emotions re bpd checklist. But I do think it has to do with degree and intensity. With my mom and father, too, their feelings reached quick and horrifying levels which was especially traumatizing as a young child. I have no doubt they sadly went through similar trauma growing up.
I think the most toxic thing was not the acting out, but it was the lack of acknowledgement after, of expression of respect and concern for the "loved" one who was so traumatized by undeserved projections of irrational malice and contempt! With my mother it was as if she switched into a different nicer personality with NO memory of the annihilating anger that had burned me.
This is interesting. Thanks for sharing!
"People who are diagnosed with borderline personality disorder have at least five of the following symptoms. They may:
Make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
Have a pattern of difficult relationships caused by alternating between extremes of intense admiration and hatred of others.
Have an unstable self-image or be unsure of his or her own identity.
Act impulsively in ways that are self-damaging, such as extravagant spending, frequent and unprotected sex with many partners, substance abuse, binge eating, or reckless driving.
Have recurring suicidal thoughts, make repeated suicide attempts, or cause self-injury through mutilation, such as cutting or burning himself or herself.
Have frequent emotional overreactions or intense mood swings, including feeling depressed, irritable, or anxious. These mood swings usually only last a few hours at a time. In rare cases, they may last a day or two.
Have long-term feelings of emptiness.
Have inappropriate, fierce anger or problems controlling anger. The person may often display temper tantrums or get into physical fights.
Have temporary episodes of feeling suspicious of others without reason (paranoia) or losing a sense of reality."
end of quote
That last one, re paranoia. That was so dangerous to me. I sensed that in my mother and pretzled myself for years, which caused me to disrespect myself for my cowardice for years. When I finally applied "tough love" to break through that subservient fear and enabling of my mother, I experienced the horror of such paranoia, I WAS AN INSTANT ENEMY and there was no memory and no connection with our entire history, not even the history of five minutes before her rage at me for challenging her. I became estranged from the family. I had the choice of being Stepford daughter or OUTLAW. My mother lied to ALL our relatives and social network that assassinated my character that broke my heart and wondered if she knew it was a lie or had lied to herself about the lie.
I could not emotionally flee from my mother until I physically fled. I was so caught up in the rollercoaster of pity and rescuing in an alcoholic family to really detach and my ubpd parent would not abide any degree of detachment without serious emotional and social punishment.
I asked myself if I am ubpd but I prefer and decided to regard myself more as with complex-PTSD (no easy malady) and what survivors on bpd family websites call "fleas", that we were role-modelled such horrifying behaviors of relating that we can't help but expect them from others and fall into them ourselves. We are cut off from real intimacy with others if we do not unlearn that terrible role-modelling.
When others say they want to be honest with me, I am terrified since I equate honesty with rage and violence. Truth only as anger flew between my parents after their turns at egg shells walking with each other. I overly placate people because somewhere in my hardwiring is my irrational fear of easy abandonment and punishment. I wrote about all this on Donegal's blogsite. Let me find it. And if you will indulge me I will quote from part of that long comment I made to his fine blog on surviving his own ubpd parent.
------------
When I was three I remember announcing to my mother that I hated her. I don't remember what she had done. But she had really pissed me off. Dr. Phil talks about 8 or so powerful defining moments in your life. (The moments of shaking and crazymaking you describe above as a vulnerable youngster had me holding my breath and my heart racing. Thank you for echoing my experiences and so many others of similar traumas so graphically and poignantly and honestly.)
So I told my mother I hated her. I was venting my feelings. Certainly the right of a three year old learning to healthily assert her boundaries in a challenging world. My mother lifted off her chair with not a look at me but I knew I had provoked her into acton suddenly and I stopped breathing and began watching. I even numbly followed her.
She went to my bedroom and began packing my clothes. No eye contact, no words. Just a cold, chilling deliberateness. I stood there watching in horror and my three year old mind asked itself, "Doesn't she know I am too little to be alone out there?"
I learned instantly at 3 this woman played hardball, and placating her was about basic physical survival. HARDBALL.
Years later I brought up that memory to family and WE all had a good laugh. It was referred to as the day my mother had used "psychology" on a naughty little girl. How clever of her to put an end to a tantrum it was collectively appreciated. It was the day I began the egg-shell walk with all the debilitating hypervigilance required. Second guessing mommy's feelings was my number one priority. My own feelings were not to be respected, in fact were a menace to my safety. It was a PTSD day and they say if you have to continue on in a traumatic environment, being a captive or hostage to it, that constitutes something called complex-PTSD. (what multiple deployments are doing to our troops, for example).
The legacy of those experiences have left me shell-shocked from and often still reluctant to express honest feelings, even to seemingly safe and benign and encouraging people. I often panic when others fulfill their rights to feel and express their emotions whether about me or anything. And when people say they need to be honest with me, I want to crawl under the nearest table, because when I saw the switch with my mother and with an alcoholic father to their "feeling" mode, it was off the charts. I equate honesty with violence. Not conflict resolution but VIOLENCE and punishment and futility.
Also it left a legacy of my not coping well with authority figures who were even the least bit threatening or unfair, which is pretty normal in this life at times. The "resistance is futile" message in my head made me too passive for too long, and then too emotionally rebellious ultimately and I often escaped jobs that only required some small mastery in conflict resolution to stay and thrive. But I would regress to that threatened, helpless, doomed child in too many scenarios. Why I "temped" so much of my working life. "Temping" was not a full commitment. Temping gave me a backdoor to leave a toxic "work family" faster.
And the worst thing was, as you explain above, it became surreal when such a parent or parents re-normalized and never acknowledged the hysteria happened, the violent words and posturing and threatening, the malicious things said. TOOK RESPONSIBILITY. Exercised the ability to "respond" to what they had done and to our terrified statuses. Also so confusing (fusing with) especially, when the seductive "niceness" was back, the flattery and idealization of one (another trap one as a child couldn't know the ramifactions of -- living one's own ego rollercoaster of grandiosity to self hate and back again).
I read that children who best recovered the bombing of England by the Nazis were not the children most out of harm's way. They were simply the children who got to talk and cry and yell about how frightened they had been and how shocked they had been. Downright got to simply address it all. Were not encouraged to forget about it, to shut up about it. To be good little stoics and pretend it didn't happen. Again, to get to cry about it, rant about it, and then move on with their lives. Not have to stifle not for their needs, but their over-controlling and fragile parents. They got to do a REALITY check which those of us with urecovered bpd parents were not privy to.
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I love the sensibility of this and the way you wrote it in this passage, Joe!
"In fact some of the above would be considered "appropriate responses" to having a truly disordered person in your life, as your emotional flight from your mother, or my physical flight from mine. And how many thousands of our greatest artists and writers (like you) have been square pegs in a round hole, or victims of others who were BPD?"
Joe, thanks for your wisdom and support!!! Take care of your precious self. I never thought of being this honest or using this experience in writing a screenplay or play, but maybe that is something worth considering!
best, libby
xxx
Thanks for your honest comments. best, libby
"Warrior, survivor and outspoken advocate, you are capable of touching many hidden souls who have remained in silence, your personal revelation is inspiring and exemplary."
I thought the same about you one paragraph into your SF letter!
We know the marathon involved when fighting for personal AND social justice. Bless YOU in your fight and your courage!!!!
best, libby