post-mortem validation (note: long post)

[Guest guest]

Its rather rare to receive validation from one's bpd parent, at any time... but

I recently received a great deal of validation from my deceased nada, via her

journal.

While sorting through yet another stack of our deceased bpd mother's effects,

Sister and I came across a small collection of journal pages written in my

nada's hand. Nada's psychologist had urged her do this to help nada understand

her bpd condition and why her actions had finally driven Sister and me away from

her. (Sister remained in limited contact, but I felt I needed to cut contact

totally for the sake of my own mental health.)

Reading my mother's own personal, private thoughts, speculations and reasoning

was a deeply affecting experience. Oddly, my bpd mother showed flashes of

personal insight in her journal but then she apparently chose to forget or

ignore these insights (that her own words and behaviors had created problems for

her) and instead she would fall back into her standard blaming-and-projecting

mind-set.

I've been in this Group for several years now and have posted about my own

theories and speculations RE how my bpd mother's mental illness impacted our

mother-daughter relationship. So I was both surprised and gratified to hear my

speculations and theories validated so closely. My instincts about my nada were

right on target.

I've posted here over the years how it seemed to me that my own mother didn't

like me and took care of me only because she had to, because its a mother's

duty. I also speculated that perhaps my mother related to me as though I was

her own older sister whom she hated passionately; we were both first-borns. In

her journal my nada wrote that she was ashamed to admit that she did not like

me; she felt I was cold and unloving toward her. Nada wrote that there must be

something wrong with her because mothers are supposed to like their own

children. My nada then speculated that perhaps she had been putting me in the

role of her own older sister, the first-born: a rare insight for my nada. Nada

also admitted that while she hated her older sister she also seemed to crave her

attention and approval at the same time, but offered no further insights about

that particular issue.

However there was NO mention, admission or insight on nada's part regarding the

fact that she was so violent and abusive with me from my toddlerhood on, that

she'd made me physically afraid of her. I'd actually flinch or startle if my

mother made a sudden, unexpected movement near me. If nada saw me do this it

would enrage her, so I had to learn to squelch my involuntary startle reflex.

I was a nervous, jittery, anxious child and tended to stiffen up if nada wanted

to hug or cuddle me. Nada shamed me for this, calling me " Miss Touch-Me-Not. "

I think the fact that her own child was so obviously afraid of her badly

embarrassed my nada and she couldn't accept responsibility for causing it, so

she decided that I was to blame: I was a rejecting, cold, unloving child.

Sister shared with me that our nada was kind and loving to her up until she was

about 4 years old, then nada began directing her screaming rages, constant

criticism and physical abuse at Sister as well as at me. Sister has few

memories of her childhood until she was in her mid-teens.

I've written here before that I believe that my nada was operating at about a

3-year-old's level of emotional maturity. Nada wrote in her journal that she

hoped that the psychologist could help her " grow up and be as emotionally mature

as her daughters. " Her tone of writing and the way she referred to herself was

child-like; she really had arrested emotional development, it would appear.

In her journal pages, my nada admitted that she didn't really love my dad,

either. She wrote that she married him against her own better judgement. She

even stated that she believed that God would be angry with her if she did marry

him, but she did anyway. She did not go into exactly why she felt it would be a

bad idea to marry my dad, but she stated that several years into the marriage

she felt she had to stay " for the sake of the children. " So, in effect, nada

blamed us kids for making her stay married, giving her another reason to unleash

her rage at us.

My earlier posts regarding my belief that my nada had a tendency to seek revenge

against those whom she felt had slighted her or disrespected her, was also

validated. My nada wrote in her journal that she realized that she had this

need to " get back " at people for thwarting her, ignoring her, or hurting her

feelings in some way. She wrote that she hoped her psychologist could help her

get past this need, that it made her feel like a bad Christian to seek revenge

against people.

My nada's life, corroborated by these journal pages made it clear that she was

extremely religious, obsessively so, but she wielded her religion like a weapon

against Sister and me; unfortunately that has had a very negative impact on my

ability to find comfort in religion.

In general, my nada's journal pages reflect her lifelong habit of histrionic but

vague and generic apologies for " whatever she did " that upset Sister or me,

without any actual admission of having done or said a specific wrong,

thoughtless or cruel thing to us. That was nada's style; she'd explode with

rage, verbally decimate me or Sister or dad (sometimes based on something we'd

actually said or done, but sometimes based on a bizarre paranoid or delusional

belief on nada's part.) Sometimes these rages included physical assaults on

Sister or me. Afterward nada would cry and sob and say she was sorry and that

she'd never do that to us again. This cycle of domestic abuse by my nada

happened over, and over, and over again. I learned very early in life that my

mother's weeping apologies and sob-choked promises meant nothing; she was going

to explode at me again, scream abuse at me and possibly beat me again at any

time, if I said or did something to trigger her or if I simply appeared to nada

to be disrespecting her in some way. So Sister and I grew up in a field of

hidden land-mines. Dad would just leave the house when nada exploded at him,

leaving us kids behind to endure the verbal and sometimes physical abuse until

our nada wound down from sheer exhaustion.

Sister and I each needed a drink after reading those journal pages; but we're

both glad that we did read them. It helped me to gain more trust in my own

instincts. As a child I *sensed* on some level that my own mother did not

actually like me (and I felt that it was my fault, that there must be something

terribly wrong with me) yet my survival depended on my pretending that I wasn't

aware of that fact. My denial of reality, inappropriate self-blame and hope for

a change in my nada lasted up until the last few years of my nada's life.

Sister and I gained more insight and compassion for each other as well by

reading our nada's journal together: reading nada's view of us, her daughters,

and our oddly different but equally abusive relationship with her has made

Sister and me closer than ever.

Our story is even more complicated and convoluted than I've gone into here, but,

this post includes a good chunk of the main issues.

Hopefully writing about this can supply useful information to researchers who

are making scientific studies of borderline pd and the negative impact that

being unwanted, unloved, disliked or rejected by one's own parent can have on a

child. Even if the parent is denying it to herself (or himself), the feelings

come out in displays of abuse, neglect, or exploitation toward the child. Being

*told* that you are loved, but being *treated* in a horrifically unloving way,

will mess up the child's head severely. Its an act of inhumane cruelty to

mind-f**k a child like that.

My gut feeling that my mother was too mentally ill to have been raising children

virtually alone and unsupervised, was corroborated by my nada herself in these

journal pages.

In conclusion I'll repeat one of my main points about children's rights: No

child should be left in the care of a parent who actively dislikes them, resents

them or doesn't want them; no child should be left in the care of a Cluster B pd

parent: it virtually guarantees severe emotional damage to the child.

-Annie

PS:

Since this is such a long post, please edit or trim it if you have a response;

thanks!

[Guest guest]

That was a fascinating post, Anuria. Your experience sounds very, very

much like mine, except that my Nada never did the tearful apologies part.

Ever. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse, though. Is it better

to have a mother who acknowledges she's done cruel things to you, but who

can't seem to stop, or to have a mother who can't seem to even acknowledge

that her behavior was bad? On one level my Nada's deep denial is

infuriating and invalidating in the extreme, but on the other hand I don't

know if I could have handled tearful faux-apologies that did not result in

better behavior, without exhibiting some BPD-like rages of my own.

In the past, before I learned about BPD, I tended to refer to my Nada and

people I thought were like her as a " horse " , in the sense that I had a

horse while growing up, and I didn't expect him to apologize for stomping

on my foot because even though my foot was being crushed, he literally had

no idea my foot was there -- no intent to harm and no awareness of it

either. Basically, a version of " Don't attribute to malice what can be

adequately explained by stupidity. " I suppose it was slightly comforting,

in a way, to believe that my Nada continued to be cruel to me because she

simply had no idea how much damage she was doing, no more than my

foot-stomping horse did.

I no longer quite believe this, as I think that my Nada is more aware of

how bad her behavior is than she ever let on; her failure to ever apologize

isn't horse-like unawareness on her part, but rather a terrifying fear that

if she admitted she had behaved really badly and KNEW that, she would be

validating my desire to get as far away from her as possible -- a desire

she has always insisted, and continues to insist, she " can't understand. "

If she admits that she can, in fact, understand why I don't want to be in

the same room with her (or heck, even the same state, really) , she feels

that she's giving me permission to stay away and that's not acceptable even

if it's actually the best thing for me. Unfortunately for our

relationship, I have figured out (at long last) that, if indeed she is a

" horse " then I have to deal with her like I dealt with my horse: get my

foot out of the way of his much bigger feet if I don't want to get hurt.

If she really is unaware and not capable of gaining awareness of the harm

she is doing, then the only thing to do is to avoid her, because there's no

hope of change, just like I can't expect to be able to talk a horse out of

stepping on my foot. He just can't understand, so it's my job to get out

of the way. Period.

But if I could find a journal of my Nada's where she was actually honest, I

would crave to read it and try to figure out just exactly how aware of what

has really gone on in our relationship she has been all these years.

Unfortunately my Nada's denial is so deep I suspect that if she wrote a

journal, it would be full of the same horsecrap she hands out to people

publicly -- she would be all too aware of the possibility of it being read

after her death and would write it with a view toward telling the world

exactly how badly her children have treated her when she just loved them so

much and only ever wanted what was best for them and they never appreciated

her blah blah blah etc.

Really, it's too bad. I would very much value a genuine window into my

Mom's true thoughts -- if I could get a grip on the demons she's wrestling

with, maybe I could understand her enough to feel more compassion than

anger. But I suspect she's not even that open with herself about her

demons, so there's really no chance she'll ever be open with me (or even

better, a good therapist.)

-- Jen H.

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 8:37 PM, anuria67854 anuria-67854@...>wrote:

> **

>

>

> Its rather rare to receive validation from one's bpd parent, at any

> time... but I recently received a great deal of validation from my deceased

> nada, via her journal.

>

> While sorting through yet another stack of our deceased bpd mother's

> effects, Sister and I came across a small collection of journal pages

> written in my nada's hand. Nada's psychologist had urged her do this to

> help nada understand her bpd condition and why her actions had finally

> driven Sister and me away from her. (Sister remained in limited contact,

> but I felt I needed to cut contact totally for the sake of my own mental

> health.)

>

> Reading my mother's own personal, private thoughts, speculations and

> reasoning was a deeply affecting experience. Oddly, my bpd mother showed

> flashes of personal insight in her journal but then she apparently chose to

> forget or ignore these insights (that her own words and behaviors had

> created problems for her) and instead she would fall back into her standard

> blaming-and-projecting mind-set.

>

> I've been in this Group for several years now and have posted about my own

> theories and speculations RE how my bpd mother's mental illness impacted

> our mother-daughter relationship. So I was both surprised and gratified to

> hear my speculations and theories validated so closely. My instincts about

> my nada were right on target.

>

> I've posted here over the years how it seemed to me that my own mother

> didn't like me and took care of me only because she had to, because its a

> mother's duty. I also speculated that perhaps my mother related to me as

> though I was her own older sister whom she hated passionately; we were both

> first-borns. In her journal my nada wrote that she was ashamed to admit

> that she did not like me; she felt I was cold and unloving toward her. Nada

> wrote that there must be something wrong with her because mothers are

> supposed to like their own children. My nada then speculated that perhaps

> she had been putting me in the role of her own older sister, the

> first-born: a rare insight for my nada. Nada also admitted that while she

> hated her older sister she also seemed to crave her attention and approval

> at the same time, but offered no further insights about that particular

> issue.

>

> However there was NO mention, admission or insight on nada's part

> regarding the fact that she was so violent and abusive with me from my

> toddlerhood on, that she'd made me physically afraid of her. I'd actually

> flinch or startle if my mother made a sudden, unexpected movement near me.

> If nada saw me do this it would enrage her, so I had to learn to squelch my

> involuntary startle reflex. I was a nervous, jittery, anxious child and

> tended to stiffen up if nada wanted to hug or cuddle me. Nada shamed me for

> this, calling me " Miss Touch-Me-Not. " I think the fact that her own child

> was so obviously afraid of her badly embarrassed my nada and she couldn't

> accept responsibility for causing it, so she decided that I was to blame: I

> was a rejecting, cold, unloving child.

>

> Sister shared with me that our nada was kind and loving to her up until

> she was about 4 years old, then nada began directing her screaming rages,

> constant criticism and physical abuse at Sister as well as at me. Sister

> has few memories of her childhood until she was in her mid-teens.

>

> I've written here before that I believe that my nada was operating at

> about a 3-year-old's level of emotional maturity. Nada wrote in her journal

> that she hoped that the psychologist could help her " grow up and be as

> emotionally mature as her daughters. " Her tone of writing and the way she

> referred to herself was child-like; she really had arrested emotional

> development, it would appear.

>

> In her journal pages, my nada admitted that she didn't really love my dad,

> either. She wrote that she married him against her own better judgement.

> She even stated that she believed that God would be angry with her if she

> did marry him, but she did anyway. She did not go into exactly why she felt

> it would be a bad idea to marry my dad, but she stated that several years

> into the marriage she felt she had to stay " for the sake of the children. "

> So, in effect, nada blamed us kids for making her stay married, giving her

> another reason to unleash her rage at us.

>

> My earlier posts regarding my belief that my nada had a tendency to seek

> revenge against those whom she felt had slighted her or disrespected her,

> was also validated. My nada wrote in her journal that she realized that she

> had this need to " get back " at people for thwarting her, ignoring her, or

> hurting her feelings in some way. She wrote that she hoped her psychologist

> could help her get past this need, that it made her feel like a bad

> Christian to seek revenge against people.

>

> My nada's life, corroborated by these journal pages made it clear that she

> was extremely religious, obsessively so, but she wielded her religion like

> a weapon against Sister and me; unfortunately that has had a very negative

> impact on my ability to find comfort in religion.

>

> In general, my nada's journal pages reflect her lifelong habit of

> histrionic but vague and generic apologies for " whatever she did " that

> upset Sister or me, without any actual admission of having done or said a

> specific wrong, thoughtless or cruel thing to us. That was nada's style;

> she'd explode with rage, verbally decimate me or Sister or dad (sometimes

> based on something we'd actually said or done, but sometimes based on a

> bizarre paranoid or delusional belief on nada's part.) Sometimes these

> rages included physical assaults on Sister or me. Afterward nada would cry

> and sob and say she was sorry and that she'd never do that to us again.

> This cycle of domestic abuse by my nada happened over, and over, and over

> again. I learned very early in life that my mother's weeping apologies and

> sob-choked promises meant nothing; she was going to explode at me again,

> scream abuse at me and possibly beat me again at any time, if I said or did

> something to trigger her or if I simply appeared to nada to be

> disrespecting her in some way. So Sister and I grew up in a field of hidden

> land-mines. Dad would just leave the house when nada exploded at him,

> leaving us kids behind to endure the verbal and sometimes physical abuse

> until our nada wound down from sheer exhaustion.

>

> Sister and I each needed a drink after reading those journal pages; but

> we're both glad that we did read them. It helped me to gain more trust in

> my own instincts. As a child I *sensed* on some level that my own mother

> did not actually like me (and I felt that it was my fault, that there must

> be something terribly wrong with me) yet my survival depended on my

> pretending that I wasn't aware of that fact. My denial of reality,

> inappropriate self-blame and hope for a change in my nada lasted up until

> the last few years of my nada's life. Sister and I gained more insight and

> compassion for each other as well by reading our nada's journal together:

> reading nada's view of us, her daughters, and our oddly different but

> equally abusive relationship with her has made Sister and me closer than

> ever.

> Our story is even more complicated and convoluted than I've gone into

> here, but, this post includes a good chunk of the main issues.

>

> Hopefully writing about this can supply useful information to researchers

> who are making scientific studies of borderline pd and the negative impact

> that being unwanted, unloved, disliked or rejected by one's own parent can

> have on a child. Even if the parent is denying it to herself (or himself),

> the feelings come out in displays of abuse, neglect, or exploitation toward

> the child. Being *told* that you are loved, but being *treated* in a

> horrifically unloving way, will mess up the child's head severely. Its an

> act of inhumane cruelty to mind-f**k a child like that.

>

> My gut feeling that my mother was too mentally ill to have been raising

> children virtually alone and unsupervised, was corroborated by my nada

> herself in these journal pages.

>

> In conclusion I'll repeat one of my main points about children's rights:

> No child should be left in the care of a parent who actively dislikes them,

> resents them or doesn't want them; no child should be left in the care of a

> Cluster B pd parent: it virtually guarantees severe emotional damage to the

> child.

>

> -Annie

>

> PS:

> Since this is such a long post, please edit or trim it if you have a

> response;

> thanks!

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Fascinating Annie. It took courage to read that.

[Guest guest]

I kept the last portion because it sums it up so well. My husband was raised by

a mom that hated him but loved the older son. She was quite vocal about her

feelings as well. Now at age 62 he still struggles with feeling like he's

stupid, a loser and worthless. He's accomplished a lot in his career, is a

wonderful husband and was a great Dad to our kids. But he still feels worthless.

It makes me angry.

I never could tell if my nada liked me or hated me. Even now she bounces back

and forth.

If you were here, I would give you a great big hug. You've learned a bit more

about your own life and were willing to share with us. You give us all hope.

Thank you.

> Hopefully writing about this can supply useful information to researchers who

are making scientific studies of borderline pd and the negative impact that

being unwanted, unloved, disliked or rejected by one's own parent can have on a

child. Even if the parent is denying it to herself (or himself), the feelings

come out in displays of abuse, neglect, or exploitation toward the child. Being

*told* that you are loved, but being *treated* in a horrifically unloving way,

will mess up the child's head severely. Its an act of inhumane cruelty to

mind-f**k a child like that.

>

> My gut feeling that my mother was too mentally ill to have been raising

children virtually alone and unsupervised, was corroborated by my nada herself

in these journal pages.

>

> In conclusion I'll repeat one of my main points about children's rights: No

child should be left in the care of a parent who actively dislikes them, resents

them or doesn't want them; no child should be left in the care of a Cluster B pd

parent: it virtually guarantees severe emotional damage to the child.

>

> -Annie

>

> PS:

> Since this is such a long post, please edit or trim it if you have a response;

> thanks!

>