Difficulty accepting non-BPD parent’s complicity

November 2, 2012

I'm the adult daughter of a mother who I believe has BPD. For years, it seemed

like she was normal and sweet and compassionate maybe 90% of the time. But her

rages made me feel emotionally unsafe, and contributed to generalized anxiety

that I still deal with at work and in intimate relationships. (Since it was

impossible to predict what would trigger my mother's anger, I became and remain

hypervigilant and constantly worried about letting down supervisors, screwing up

projects, etc. In most areas of my life, I realize I believe on a gut level that

if I make an honest mistake, I will have emotional hell to pay.)

During my mother's rages, she alternates between being aggressively mean and

loud, and giving the silent treatment. These episodes can last for several days.

She says hateful things that she doesn't apologize for; she becomes vindictive;

she makes a very focused effort to punish the target of her anger. She reverts

to a victim/martyr mentality.

It was only recently I suspected she might have BPD, and reading `Surviving the

Borderline Parent' has been extremely helpful.

But while I process this, I find myself resenting my father's role in all of

this. My parents are still married, and growing up, my father was around just as

much as my mother was. I know that my mother's anger responses have always been

this way, so for several years before I was born, my father was dealing with

these horrific episodes. I was subjected to this kind of cruel treatment at a

very young age – I remember it happening when I was three or four, and

continuing all through my childhood.

My father himself had a very fearful childhood and grew up in an abusive home.

He believes he developed PTSD from watching his father beat the other kids. As a

result, my father vowed he would be a loving, compassionate father – and he is.

He's accessible. But I never remember him interceding when my mother was

emotionally abusive to me.

I remember feeling like an awful child, getting yelled at for tiny infractions,

and sobbing alone in my room. Sometimes I would become physically ill when my

mother yelled at me. I truly believed that this was how all children had it. My

father (perhaps not wanting to be the target of my mother's wrath) would act as

a sort of go-between, but wasn't terribly sympathetic – he'd often seem cold,

too. Sometimes he would even say " You screwed up. "

It wasn't until I was about 12 that my father explained to me a bit more about

how my mother was – how she lost control of herself when she was angry and said

things she didn't mean. How I couldn't take it too personally. How I was a good

kid.

I resent him for not saying this to me much, much earlier. I resent him for not

protecting me more from my mother's damaging behavior.

Due to financial issues, I've temporarily moved in with my parents again. My

mother's BPD (as I believe it to be) seems worse. My father and I have been

going through hell – she expects us to fulfill all her social needs, so it's

easy to let her down.

I work hard and am planning to move out soon, so I've been distancing myself

from this awful situation. I avoid seeing my mother when she's " having an

episode. " But I'll often get emails from my father giving me advice about how to

" handle " my mother – emails that basically instruct me to appease her

manipulative behavior. When she attempts to punish me for some imagined wrong,

he'll tell me to give in to it. Because she feels abandoned, he thinks I should

make an effort to be home more. I've explained to him how it still takes a toll

on my physical health to be in this constant state of tension when she's like

this; he argues that I can't " resolve " things with my mother if I'm not around.

It's amazing to me that he thinks this way. He knows exactly what it's like to

be on the receiving end of this kind of treatment, and he knows her responses

are never rational.

I believe that at some point, he made the decision to stay with her and because

of that, acts in survival mode. That means not standing up for himself or me,

and I know he will never tell her to seek professional help.

He and I have had a few emotional conversations about this situation in the past

couple weeks. I've been able to tell him honestly how my mother's behavior has

made me a fearful adult. What I haven't been able to say is how disappointed I

am that he didn't do more to help me, or at least comfort me, when I was too

young to know what was going on.

Even now, it's not that I need him to protect me – I just want to know that my

sense of self-worth, and my dignity, is worth something to him.

I feel like my father's reality and my own are diverging: I can see my mother's

mental illness and would like for her to get help but, short of that, I would

like me and my father to stand up for ourselves and stop appeasing this

destructive behavior. My father, however, sees this as his lot. He doesn't think

she'll ever change.

As I prepare to leave home again, I am seriously considering the more stringent

boundaries I'll have to establish with my mother. I don't think my father

realizes how much I need to distance myself from our little family.

So I have a couple of questions:

1) How do you deal with a complicit (even enabling) parent?

2) Should I tell my father what I believe, that my mother likely suffers from

BPD?

Thank you.

November 5, 2012

you might want to check into UTBM- Lawsons book, Understanding the

Borderline Mother. It talks about the types of BPD mothers and the types of men

they partner with and how over and over the child is sacrificed emotionally and

physically to the demands of the BPD mother. To address at least part of what

you said, YES your father is complicite in your abuse. He allowed it and did

little to nothing to protect you and yes, you have EVERY right to be angry at

him as well.

C

>

> I'm the adult daughter of a mother who I believe has BPD. For years, it seemed

like she was normal and sweet and compassionate maybe 90% of the time. But her

rages made me feel emotionally unsafe, and contributed to generalized anxiety

that I still deal with at work and in intimate relationships. (Since it was

impossible to predict what would trigger my mother's anger, I became and remain

hypervigilant and constantly worried about letting down supervisors, screwing up

projects, etc. In most areas of my life, I realize I believe on a gut level that

if I make an honest mistake, I will have emotional hell to pay.)

>

> During my mother's rages, she alternates between being aggressively mean and

loud, and giving the silent treatment. These episodes can last for several days.

She says hateful things that she doesn't apologize for; she becomes vindictive;

she makes a very focused effort to punish the target of her anger. She reverts

to a victim/martyr mentality.

>

> It was only recently I suspected she might have BPD, and reading `Surviving

the Borderline Parent' has been extremely helpful.

> But while I process this, I find myself resenting my father's role in all of

this. My parents are still married, and growing up, my father was around just as

much as my mother was. I know that my mother's anger responses have always been

this way, so for several years before I was born, my father was dealing with

these horrific episodes. I was subjected to this kind of cruel treatment at a

very young age – I remember it happening when I was three or four, and

continuing all through my childhood.

>

> My father himself had a very fearful childhood and grew up in an abusive home.

He believes he developed PTSD from watching his father beat the other kids. As a

result, my father vowed he would be a loving, compassionate father – and he is.

He's accessible. But I never remember him interceding when my mother was

emotionally abusive to me.

> I remember feeling like an awful child, getting yelled at for tiny

infractions, and sobbing alone in my room. Sometimes I would become physically

ill when my mother yelled at me. I truly believed that this was how all children

had it. My father (perhaps not wanting to be the target of my mother's wrath)

would act as a sort of go-between, but wasn't terribly sympathetic – he'd often

seem cold, too. Sometimes he would even say " You screwed up. "

>

> It wasn't until I was about 12 that my father explained to me a bit more about

how my mother was – how she lost control of herself when she was angry and said

things she didn't mean. How I couldn't take it too personally. How I was a good

kid.

>

> I resent him for not saying this to me much, much earlier. I resent him for

not protecting me more from my mother's damaging behavior.

> Due to financial issues, I've temporarily moved in with my parents again. My

mother's BPD (as I believe it to be) seems worse. My father and I have been

going through hell – she expects us to fulfill all her social needs, so it's

easy to let her down.

>

> I work hard and am planning to move out soon, so I've been distancing myself