Welcome new members

[Guest guest]

Hi and Sublime and all other new members,

Welcome to the Group. Sorry your circumstances led you here, but, you have

found a group of adult kids of mentally-ill parents who " get it. "

We're each on our own individual path to peace and healing, but its really

supportive to share the company of fellow KOs (adult kids of pd parents) along

the way. So many of the posts we share with each other are about eerily similar

incidents and behaviors, and that is oddly comforting. It makes the abuse seem

less personal, I guess.

Some of us choose to remain in contact with our pd parent(s), some choose to

have no contact. Its a very individual issue and choice.

Some of the members' parents were/are only mildly affected by bpd and did

minimal damage, others of us here have had to endure shocking, criminal-level

child abuse and neglect, and some pd parent behaviors range in-between or swing

back and forth from relatively nice and normal to abusive.

Our bpd parents express their personality disorder in different ways, also. Some

behave like demanding, spoiled children, others are fearful, clingy and

dependent, others are rigid and controlling and obsessive, others are hostile,

bullying and punitive. Or all of the above. Bpd has many faces.

Some key points I've learned here:

*We did not cause our pd parent to be the way they are; they were disturbed and

dysfunctional before we were born. Some of our parents were horribly abused

themselves, others came from ordinary, average, mentally healthy homes. Go

figure.

*Nothing we can possibly do or say can cure our mentally ill parent or make them

happy inside themselves. Personality disorder is " ego syntonic " . This means

that individuals with pd do not accept that there is anything wrong with them;

they do not accept personal responsibility for their own behaviors and words or

the consequences of their choices. They blame others for all their problems,

nothing is ever their fault, so they do not seek therapy. The ones who do seek

therapy on their own are remarkably rare.

*We do have the right to protect ourselves from abuse, even if the abuse is

coming from a parent. It does not make you a bad person or a bad daughter or

son to protect yourself from abuse.

*All we have the power to do is to decide what behaviors of our pd parents' we

are willing and able to tolerate, or not. We have the power and the right to

set boundaries regarding what behaviors we will accept. This is not the same as

telling our bpd parent what to do; its just deciding what we ourselves will do

if they behave abusively toward us. We have the power to walk away from abuse.

So... to wind up: although we were trained from infancy to feel responsible for

our own mistreatment, that we somehow deserve it, and trained to believe that we

are responsible for nurturing/care-taking our parents and putting their desires

before our own needs, its possible to overcome this unhealthy enmeshment and

achieve a more normal level of healthy detachment, peace, and healing, which may

or may not involve remaining in contact with the pd parent.

Each of us must find our own path and our own way of dealing with our situation,

and overcoming the Fear, Obligation and Guilt (FOG) unfairly and inappropriately

given us to carry. There is no single right way or best way to do this, its

about what works for you. But it is possible to hand this load back to its

rightful owner.

That's my take on it, anyway.

-Annie