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Hello,

 

I am really grateful to have found this list.  I can relate so well to many of

the posts I've read.  Just learning the term “nada” has been a tremendous

comfort!  I have ordered the book “Understanding your borderline mother” and am

looking forward to reading it.

 

I am a 39 year old woman.  My nada is 63 years old.  She has bi-polar disorder,

and borderline personality disorder.   I have known for a long time that she has

bi-polar disorder, but only recently realized she has co-morbid borderline.  I

think some of the more extreme bi-polar symptoms she had masked some of the

borderline stuff for a long time.   She has one brother from whom we are both

estranged.  He could not stand her manipulative behavior so he cut her out of

his life.  I think I got included in it merely for being her daughter.  I have

been estranged from my father since childhood.  I have no living grandparents,

no siblings and no extended family.  I am blessed with a loving and level-headed

husband.

 

My nada focuses the glare of her obsessive attention on me alone.  She hates

anyone close to me presumably because she sees them as a threat.  She behaves

like a jealous spouse more than a mother.  She tells me I am a bad daughter for

not taking care of her, but ignores any practical advice I have ever given her.

 She tells me she is older and wiser, and that I should not try to tell her how

to live.   She says extremely cruel things to me in private (about my

personality, my appearance, my choices), and showers praise on me in front of

other people.  There have been times she has made ugly faces at me in public

when no one else was looking.  She seems to hate me, but won’t let me go.

 

I feel like I am in a fight for my life, and sanity.    My nada’s attempts to

merge with me are becoming increasingly more frantic.  For many years I have

been LC.  For me LC has meant that I see her on mother’s day,  my birthday, her

birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  She does not know where I work, she does

not have my home number.  She has my cell number, but I have no voicemail and

have set her ringtone to “silent” so her calls don’t interrupt whatever I am

doing.  However, she calls so often every day that I usually keep it turned off

or else she runs the battery down. 

 

I have tried to go NC, but she always steps up the pressure until I crack.  The

more I pull away the harder she pursues me.  It isn’t out of love for her that I

finally agree to have contact, it is out of self-preservation.  For example, in

my early twenties I was accepted to a small college 2 hrs away from where she

lives. I did not give her my number but I did tell her where I was.  She had a

complete meltdown and began calling the administration frantically saying she

was dying and needed help to contact her daughter.  At the risk of being judged

I told people, “If she is dying, she needs a doctor.  I am not a doctor”.  Soon

I found notes addressed to me posted on campus buildings saying “Call your

mother, she is sick and needs help.”  I ignored her drama the best I could until

she showed up at school.  She began soliciting help from random students walking

through campus saying she was having a heart attack and needed to find her

daughter.  I came home to find her in the lounge of my dorm with several girls

“helping her” with glasses of water, cold compresses and aspirin.  I had a

meltdown myself at that point.  I ended up feeling forced to leave school out of

concern that I couldn’t keep up while under such stress, and that she wouldn’t

stop until I came home.   I eventually had to hospitalize her and became her

guardian for a time.  I put my life on hold for hers.  This has become a common

pattern in my life. 

 

I can name many other similar episodes.   I literally moved from the east coast

to the west coast to get away from her destructive presence in my life.  I

didn’t tell her where I lived.   Somehow she found my address and showed up on

my doorstep with her purse, and her cat in a carrier and announced her intention

to live with me.  I called the police and they told me it was my job to take

care of her because she is my mother.  I told them she is mentally ill and

needed treatment from a doctor.  They said she wasn’t a threat to herself or

anyone else, so they left her in my care.  But she was a threat to me!  She was

a threat to my stability!  That is how I learned I cannot tell her where I work,

or mention any full names of people I know or work with for fear she will go

into detective mode.   I would literally need to go into witness relocation to

escape her clutches and even then she could probably give me a run for my money.

 

She says she doesn’t remember any of this.  She denies it ever happened.  She

re-writes history all the time.  She takes no responsibility whatsoever for

interfering in my life over and over again.  She has said if I hadn’t made

decisions without her, things would have worked out better for me.  She says

“families talk things over with each other before they make decisions.  You

didn’t discuss these choices with your family”. 

 

I hate her.  I can honestly say that.  I feel sorry for her, and I stay in

communication for two reasons.  1) sense of obligation which comes from a belief

somewhere down deep that she cannot help this because it is a mental illness. 

2) I cannot escape her clutches.  She always pursues me harder when I withdraw. 

The next thing I know she is showing up at my work, or arriving at my house

uninvited. 

 

I have managed to have a stable career for several years.  I am happily

married.  I do not want her to destroy the two good things I have managed to

sustain in my life.  She recently created a big drama over financial problems

she is having.  She rejected my help when I was her guardian, but now expects me

to bail her out financially when she gets herself into trouble.    This is the

kind of mixed message she has always sent. 

 

Just before Thanksgiving she asked me to sell a family heirloom she gave me when

I got married.  She wants the money.  She’s already sold anything of value she

inherited from her parents.   She seems to have no capacity for

sentimentality.   Things and people are valuable in so far as they can get her

what she wants/needs.   She wields gifts like weapons.    She’s asked me to sell

this ring and give her the money every year since she “gave” it to me.  She said

“you don’t need it, but I do”.  She told me she “earned it” for visiting her

grandmother (to whom it belonged) in the nursing home.  I told her I was angry,

hurt and disgusted with her.  I told her I would not see her for her birthday,

Thanksgiving or Christmas.  This, of course, just gives her ammunition.  She

will tell the people in her condo how awful I am for ignoring her on a family

holiday.   I have stuck to it so far.  I don’t care what they think of

me.   But I have had a monster headache for several days now.   I suppose it is

a tension headache. 

 

I decided to keep the ring.  I sent her money and told  her I sold it.    I

didn’t do this to help her.  I did this so she will have to stop asking me for

the damn thing every year.   She sent me a nasty note saying I was punishing

her, and that she will pay me back.  I feel so guilty for leaving her alone on

Thanksgiving.  And yet, I hate myself for feeling guilty.  I have felt like the

mother in this situation ever since I can remember.  Why do I feel so obligated

to put her needs in front of my own?

 

This type of thing has been going on for years.  I am really so very tired. I

don’t know how to stop this cycle but I know I must for my own well-being….

 

I guess my questions for this group are:

 

How much control does a person with BPD have over their behavior? 

Have any of you successfully gone NC from a nada like mine?  How did you do it?

 

Thank you for sharing your experiences and your hard-won wisdom with me. 

               

 K