Re: Parents that will never change

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

Welcome to the Group. That sounds like an excellent book, thanks for sharing

the info about it. There are other good books about the parent-child

relationship in regard to borderline pd, such as " Understanding The Borderline

Mother " and " Surviving A Borderline Parent " , and " Stop Walking On Eggshells " .

I understand where you're at, so to speak. When it finally truly hit me that my

mother is mentally ill, not interested in accepting any personal responsibility

for her own behaviors, seems to feel justified in treating me like a servant or

like I owe her perfect and unquestioning obedience, has turned everything around

so that she was and is the perfect mother and Sister and I are the hateful,

abusive, bad, lying children (etc., etc.) and there was little if any hope of

change... when all that finally sank in I went through a spasm of grief and a

mourning period, as though I'd been told that my mother had died.

So, perhaps the grief and mourning are part of the healing process for

ourselves. I think I was grieving the death of my fantasy or my hope that my

mother was ever going to change.

-Annie

>

> I am a newcomer to this group and only learned about BPD within the past year.

Up till now I have considered the greatest failure in my life my inability to

change my parents. In other words, no matter what I said or did as a child or

as an adult I was never able to communicate what I felt and thought to my

parents. My words and deeds hit a brick wall of rejection. My sense of being a

failure in general is profound.

>

> I am reading a good book called My Parents Keeper - Adult Children of the

Emotionally Disturbed. The author says that most KO's try to " heal " their

parents but fail. " Slowly but surely your self-esteem becomes entwined with

your success or failure in restoring your parent to more adequate functioning.

The sad truth is that most of you are fated to fail in your task. And as you

do, your self-esteem becomes more and more eroded. "

>

> This is starting to sink in. My parents were mentally ill, and they were and

are incapable of change. It is not my fault that I failed to change them. This

is a relief. Maybe as this sinks in I can feel less like a failure.

>

> On the other hand, if they are incapable of change it means that they will

never be able to hear me. No matter what I say or do they will not love me,

appreciate me, or feel proud of me. This realization feels like a terrible

loss.

>

> Thank you for letting me share.

>

[Guest guest]

Hello ,

Accepting that we can only change ourselves is an important part

of learning to deal with relatives with personality disorders.

Many of us were taught that it was somehow our responsibility to

make our parents happy and none of us could actually manage to

do so because their expectations were never reasonable or

possible to fulfill. No matter what we give/do, they want more.

I hadn't heard of that book before, but it sounds like it has

good things to say.

The terrible loss you feel sounds like the loss of hope. The

hope that our parents will somehow change and act like normal

loving parents is a hard thing to lose. Once you get past the

worst of the grief from that loss, it is freeing to realize that

nothing you do will change them though. Once you know that, you

don't have to devote so much effort to trying to do the

impossible and you can devote more of your time and energy to

yourself and to more constructive pursuits.

At 11:09 AM 08/30/2010 christopherlove53 wrote:

>I am a newcomer to this group and only learned about BPD within

>the past year. Up till now I have considered the greatest

>failure in my life my inability to change my parents. In other

>words, no matter what I said or did as a child or as an adult I

>was never able to communicate what I felt and thought to my

>parents. My words and deeds hit a brick wall of rejection. My

>sense of being a failure in general is profound.

>

>I am reading a good book called My Parents Keeper - Adult

>Children of the Emotionally Disturbed. The author says that

>most KO's try to " heal " their parents but fail. " Slowly but

>surely your self-esteem becomes entwined with your success or

>failure in restoring your parent to more adequate

>functioning. The sad truth is that most of you are fated to

>fail in your task. And as you do, your self-esteem becomes

>more and more eroded. "

>

>This is starting to sink in. My parents were mentally ill, and

>they were and are incapable of change. It is not my fault that

>I failed to change them. This is a relief. Maybe as this

>sinks in I can feel less like a failure.

>

>On the other hand, if they are incapable of change it means

>that they will never be able to hear me. No matter what I say

>or do they will not love me, appreciate me, or feel proud of

>me. This realization feels like a terrible loss.

>

>Thank you for letting me share.

--

Katrina