My mother had BPD pretty bad then died when I was a teenager. It's really difficult to communicate how awful it was without any direct abuse. I remember just feeling absolute crazy- that I had no agency, that I was always afraid, that I was always angry, that I would do anything just to feel like I had some control in life.

Outside of a few very specific examples which already make me sound like a liar (like her pretending I hit her to punish me for arguing), she was a great parent on the surface. Attentive to my life, sent me to camps and bought me nice things, charming, etc. It's not like physical abuse where you can say, "they hit me," and people will understand. Even more direct emotional abuse would be easier to communicate.

How do you actually tell people what it was like beyond, "they made me feel crazy"?

---

Gentle pads on fresh snow

Winter's silence remains still

Then a bird flies past

My sister received this text from my mom. She is the type where she is always wronged by everyone. We haven’t seen our stepmom in 20+ years, and we’ve never met our half brother as they live across the country. I just find this humorous at this point. I am fully ready to kick someone out of my wedding if they cause an issue, I’m not dealing with it. Wish me luck! lol 🫡

Haiku tax:
My sweet cat Jasper
When the house is quiet I still
Hear your soft meow

I went NC with my increasingly unhinged uBPD mother last year after years of her saying and doing seriously rude and disrespectful things.

My breaking point came when she divulged a really personal thing I’d told her about my aunt whom I’m close with. She had assured me she wouldn’t say anything to my aunt but minutes later called my aunt and told her everything. When I confronted my mother, her response was, “What are you so afraid of?” I was shocked but not surprised. After a couple of days with no response to her texts and calls, she “apologized”.

I was livid. I now regret sending my parents an email listing the things I’m upset about and with the expectation they’d apologize and we could work through it. Instead they gave me the silent treatment. This lasted through my birthday and my husband’s birthday until my mother texted me out of the blue.

I seriously doubt her apology in these texts is real, but I’m second guessing myself.

I’m also dealing with an enormous amount of guilt about estrangement from her and my father, who is just as bad. Like, a normal person who loves their kid wouldn’t say things like this, right? I don’t have a good frame of reference because my childhood was, in a word, chaotic. Am I imagining how insane she sounds in these texts?

The neglected child feel of being a grown-ass adult and not knowing how to do shit, or even the right questions to ask to begin to learn shit. Even my own parents have expected me to know more life skills than I do, to the point where I straight up feel pressure to lie to people about this. How am I supposed to have a balanced relationship in the future when I'm genuinely so inept at life skills and nobody is teaching me? Like, what girlfriend would put up with "I know three meals max because of a controlling childhood, and can't consistently put on a fitted sheet?"

When actually trying to learn instead of concealing my own ignorance gets punished extremely harshly, how the hell do I fix this sinkhole? For emotional/interpersonal stuff I can read a lot of books + test shit to compensate. For this- the resources seem to be everyone else's parents...

I have my mom blocked everywhere, so she decided to make a group thread with myself and my husband on FB messenger and unleash her instability at him.

Of course when she says "my father fucked my friends"
She means "raped". That was a wild little tidbit for her to throw in there at me-- this was previously known to me, just an insane thing to bring up and try to jab me with for her Trauma Olympics.

last I knew she was intensive therapies, including CBT, DVT, group therapy. All things for BPD I had really hoped that this is working and she was getting better, but it appears not. The textbook splitting is wild to see.

I’ve tried grey rocking and limiting what I share with my mom, but it almost seems like it triggers her more because of how enmeshed she sees us. For context, every healthy milestone of mine (moving out, marriage, baby, etc) is a HUGE trigger for her and our relationship just gets more strained. For the past year or so, I’ve tried my best to grey rock and not share much with her except for surface level stuff. However, it leads to outbursts where she breaks down saying I’m “emotionless”, I’ve changed, I talk to her “corporate” like, I don’t understand her, and she ends up asking why I don’t share anything with her anymore (or talk about memories with her from my childhood). She goes on about how she doesn’t know anything about my day to day life. If I do share something with her, it leads to her saying “why haven’t you told me that?”. Anytime she finds something out about my son or family, she gets so offended that she didn’t know already. Little things like what time he eats dinner or naps, etc. Recently she was over and saw I had my toes painted and she got offended that she didn’t know I went to the nail salon while my husband watched our son. I also don’t tell her things like when I hang out with my friends, because that triggers her and she gets jealous and it turns into a big deal because “I don’t make time for my mom”. My question is with grey rocking and the information diet, what am I supposed to say when she asks me why I don’t share things with her anymore or have any emotion? Recently, she’s been wanting to talk in person about her feelings and our relationship but each time we try to, it ends up in a blow up and making things worse. I try to just sit there quietly and let her rant but she just says so many untrue things about me that I can’t help but defend myself. So anyways, what am I supposed to say when she calls me out for grey rocking?

I had a really, really good grad school experience. The people, my studies, my roommates… everything could have been the best time in my life except this was before I went no contact with my mom.

My mom harassed me continuously throughout those years. Through the phone, through other family members, ect…

I often think back to my time in grad school (8 years ago) and think to myself what a different person I could have been if my mom didn’t make that time so difficult.

I would have went to more social events, made healthier and long lasting friendships, been out of the shell I was in because I was constantly in fight or flight.

Anyone have their own version of this?

How do you cope?

I was talking to my sister the other day and realized we both went through similar experiences as teenagers but had no idea at the time. Our whole lives our mom had us heavily involved in music which meant we were basically either in school or sitting at a chair practicing a musical Instrument. I can look back now and see that I desperately needed some way of getting rid of pent up energy and wasn’t being allowed the time to do that.

when I turned 13, it’s like something snapped in my brain. Suddenly I couldn’t sit through my school lessons, I couldn’t sit through my music lessons either. My body went into flight mode and I would just run away if that makes sense. I didn’t have words for it at the time but I was experiencing my first ever panic attacks. It’s like my body has reached its max.

After a few months of going through these feelings, doctor visits etc. my mom finally let me have a break from music lessons to try to i Guess heal myself? I was forced back into it after a year maybe but that anxiety was always lurking there in the back of my mind. Im 30 years old now and I haven’t been able to perform musically for the last 5 years because of this anxiety (I’m not upset about this btw I hate music).

I spoke with my sister about this flighty feeling when I was a teenager and realized she went through the exact same thing, the only difference is my mom pulled her out of school for an entire year and my sister literally just slept all day.

has anyone else experienced this before? I know we had intense anxiety but just curious as to why this happened to both of us at the same age

Does anyone else’s bpd parent do this? Curious if it’s part of the mental illness or just her. She gets super paranoid and changes her number about every 4-6 months. Her reasoning is always vague but usually relating to someone upsetting her.

It’s funny because then she sends a text “this is my new number” but it’s lost on her that if it’s a new number you need to tell people who you are. lol

Hello! Haven't posted in a while but had a recent escalation and wanted to share and ask if anyone has any advice going forward.

Short backstory: A year ago I went VLC with my mom after an incident that really pushed things over the edge. I went through a couple of months where I blocked her and had zero interaction with her while I gathered my thoughts. This break seriously helped me finally completely untangle from her and since then I've started to finally heal and feel fully myself. I had decided that the relationship would never ever go back to the way it was before. After a couple of months I had a conversation with her and laid this all out. I tentatively started having a low contact relationship where I would occasionally respond to texts.

Fast forward to this year where my wife became pregnant with our first child. I kept this quiet for as long as I could but eventually told my mom. It seemed to actually go well and I stupidly thought that maybe the relationship could be different. We started having the very occasional phone call but I ensured that it was always arranged in advance and contact was on my terms. (I will say that we did have a few calls where she asked about when we would meet etc but I was firm with our contact level). Once our child was born, I would occasionally send her photo updates. I guess because I was excited myself and naively thought things were good? A couple of weeks ago the inevitable happened where during a phone call she asked when she could see my child. I said we weren't there yet and she immediately shut down and became emotional. Then a week later she rings me a couple of times in a row (I have her archived but not blocked on my phone so phone calls do come through). I text her asking what's going on and she never responds. She rings again and I answer (as I think maybe it's some sort of emergency) and she just says she's ringing to see how I am. I say I don't have time and hang up.

A week later she does the same thing again. I ring her back and ask her what's going on. She tells me she is travelling to see me in a couple of days time. I live in another country to her so this means taking a flight. I very firmly tell her that this is not acceptable at all and is exactly the behaviour that led to the difficulties between us the first place. After our phone call I send a text saying very firmly saying that she is not to travel to see me, that I will not be meeting her and that I have not agreed to any sort of contact like this. Even if our relationship was healthy this would be truly unacceptable behaviour considering we have a newborn.

The day after the day she told me she was going to visit I receive a package that was sent from the country I live in from her which implies she is in the country. At the same time I receive a series of texts from her that say "Had a lovely time in *my hometown* yesterday" and a series of photos taken around the area I live in. These are places that are no further than 10 mins from my flat. This truly freaked me out. I immediately blocked her and then inevitably received a message from my stepdad asking had I blocked her and an email form my mom asking had I blocked her and saying that she is "extremely dysregulated".

I honestly can't believe she did this. I was so clear with my boundaries and she completely violated them. The messages are threatening. The day before my wife had been in the same area my mom had taken the photos with our child, alone. If she had bumped into her it would have been extremely stressful for my wife especially considering behaviour of my mom towards my wife in the past.

Sorry for the long post. Does anyone else have experience of this? It's so disappointing as I really thought maybe things were improving but it feels like we can never come back from this.

Been lurking in this community for a while as I (a minor) live with my bpd mother and grandmother. Just wanted to officially join. Thank you for this resource

I’ve recently learned about hyper vigilance after going down an AI rabbit hole after a fight with my fiancé where I yet again realized, I was the problem. I’ve realized that I get extremely anxious in social settings with him. It’s not entirely me, I do think he can sometimes struggle to handle his alcohol but overall he is great to be around and my friends love him. The problem is that I feel like I am wound so tight worried about what he’s going to say or do. I’m so worried he’s going to embarrass me to where i’ve noticed I have been mean to him in front of others. Other people notice it too. I genuinely love him with everything in me so it really worries me that I’ve been like this. My uBPD alcoholic mother has always been so critical of me and always embarrassed me so it’s obvious where this comes from.

The other thing I’ve noticed is it happens in work settings. I work with a manager and we meet frequently with other teams. He’s a solid 3/10 at his job and I frequently interrupt (also have adhd) and take control of the conversation. Many many times the meeting has gone better as a result of me taking over, but other times I feel like I’m just so anxious his incompetence will make me look bad that it’s my responsibility to fix it.

I feel so exhausted from this and it’s making me feel trapped. Does anyone else do this or have ways to correct this behavior?

Daughter of a uBPD mom. I’m having a hard time accepting the trauma surrounding sex/lack of physical boundaries I experienced at the hands of my mother. She never touched me inappropriately (so sorry if anyone experienced that).

Mostly I just constantly saw her naked, like she wanted me to see her naked almost and was mad when I felt uncomfortable. And she would just barge into my room to see me naked as well, breaking that boundary and getting upset when I was upset. She always inquired about my sex life (from a very young age), would make sex jokes when I was young, tried to intervene into any relationships I had by “making sure I was sexually satisfied.”

Ugh. I have a daughter now. I’m struggling with this. Why do they do this? Where does this come from?

Anyone in a similar situation?

I read a post and it got me thinking. I have slowly started to make peace with the thought that my mom will never be what I envisioned or made her out to be. Least of all what I want and need her to be. She does things for her. Not me. Even now with my baby I've noticed she makes no effort to ask about me or reach out just to talk about me. Im at a loss because I have a good relationship with my dad and its just weird to only send him stuff but lately I've been like wtf what about me? He calls and asks about me all the time. And thanks to him I know what she says behind my back. Although he chooses to stay at least I know what she really thinks.

I send pics weekly to both of them on a group chat and FT them both weekly as well. Sometimes I just ft my dad but he goes and wakes her. So im kinda stuck with that...idk but lately I feel less and less need to talk to her. Everytime we talk i feel like shes like "did baby eat?" "You should potty train her like this " you shoild do this" like she was a stellar mom when in reality she started beating me at 1.5 years old to potty train me and showed off about it. I used to worry my baby wouldn't have a grandma but she keeps rewriting the past saying the without the abuse I wouldn't be who I am. So thats why im also just making peace with her always being who she is.

How do I either cut the cord or move forward after knowing she continues to justify? I can't call her out cause I'd throw my dad under the bus

Im leaning more toward completely cutting her off...

Advice?

Oh id like to not i also don't want to lose my dad we live like 14 hrs away and it seems like he keeps trying to force my mom and my relationship but she hasn't ever really tried to earn my love she just expects it.

Hi reddit

Cute kitten pic https://photos.com/featured/funny-kitten-retales-botijero.html?srsltid=AU7gw4Vxec7DwONTzipThyIDvVnd83v0ou-8Amq2I294PdiMMZwBK6Tv

I'm not super active on reddit but really struggling with this and feel like I really need some advice from other people who have experienced what I have. I'm (29f) unable to cut my mum off because of my brother (14m) who still lives with her and everytime I see her I'm just filled with grief and blind rage. Long story short, she was very abusive, manipulative, the BPD works throughout my childhood/teen years, moved out at 16, went minimal contact for a few years followed by some stretches of NC, missed my family too much and she was somewhat of a gatekeeper, and turned a few of them against me too. Things are better now and she has been doing better , but the last month or so she's acting like when things were really bad and she's started to be abusive towards my brother (which she never really has, she's not been a good mother to him by any means but it's never been anywhere near as bad). I've switched between just wanting a relationship with her and setting aside my personal boundaries and being so angry that I can't even see her name pop up on my phone. But I've been going through an especially bad mental health episode for the last month or so and I realised I'm never going to get better if she's doing new shit every week. I can't dissapear from my brothers life though, especially now things have started to get worse. I don't know what to do

Haiku:
Orange fur, warm bowl
Kibble softened by kettle
Wet food? No, thank you.

Context:
I got off of work and made myself lunch. As I was walking to my room my mother starts asking “why don’t you like me?” And “what did I do wrong?” I don’t answer and use vague nondescript statements to get out of the situation. She starts crying so I feel bad just leaving but I’ve entertained the crying before and it turned out to be another tool to suck me into this and make me feel bad.

Anyways I got the courage to stand up for myself later about this situation. So I texted her and shared how her action made me feel, and how I would like our interactions to go in the future. I wasn’t expecting her to respond but she did. My first reading of her message was oh just another blanket apology with no real intention to change.

upon a second reading I was like wait she figured out how to dismiss my feelings (by that not being her intent), not take accountability for what I said made me feel bad, blame me for making her feel bad, apologize for “everything else” and of course add an I love you.

Update:
She responded again while I was asleep with “would you like me to just not talk to you”. I’m not engaging further other than something along the lines of “I’m not engaging with that question”, but even that might be too much. Such a dark irony in saying you’re going to change just to do exactly what you said you were going to work on. I didn’t expect her to change when she said that so I wasn’t overly shaken by this, but it still hurts that she can’t see what could be wrong.

in response to me asking my emom why she thinks that one day the abuse by my ndad will "eventually stop" she says that apparently he "stopped with me"

which is obviously messed up already, because why would you have the revelation that verbally and emotionally abusing one child is not okay but not with the other children? but now im wondering if it's possible for parents with bpd to split on one child more than the other.

nowadays my dad may "treat me better" than how he treats my other siblings but that doesn't make me feel good at all, and it's not like he still doesn't do messed up stuff to me too

im also wondering if this reveals anything about their awareness regarding choosing whether or not to be abusive

not helping this time (:

I wish this was a celebration post but it’s not. I finally signed a lease to move out SOLO after moving back home after college for a year and a half. I swear I feel like a shell of myself.

From finding this apartment to saying I’m 100% moving out and signing the lease, this process has been horrible with my uBPD mom. She has so much contempt for me. She’s upset I’m leaving and has certainly made it known. I’ve spent more time worried about her feelings about this move than actually being excited for myself. Anyways, the biggest riff has been today when I said I wanted to hire movers. Not that I feel like I need to explain why I want movers but I’m exhausted physically and mentally and I want this process to be stress free. I included the text messages between me and her. Keep in mind she originally told me moving in one weekend wouldn’t be feasible - but all a sudden now it actually is. Clearly I was triggered by the “not enough” aspect. I’m just so tired of her drama and inability to understand my decisions don’t have anything to do with how I feel about her. And if they did it would be that she’s uninvolved from my life COMPLETELY. But she couldn’t even handle that truth. I just wanted to vent.

Cat (Haiku)

Sleeping in the sun
Warm, furry, soft, contented
No troubles at all

After all these years trying to save and watching others attempt to rescue, I get it now. My late father was BPD.

Wow, was that man a tragic case, a mystery of craving, anguish, struggling, wounds, and colossal need. And yet I really wanted him to have a beautiful life, which he kind of pulled off (leaving shattered relationships and destruction in his wake).

Now the wreckage is sort of cleaned up for me, and the best thing is that unlike some of my siblings, I’m not perpetuating the multi-generational cycles of abuse, poverty, trauma and neglect.

I’ve posted on here a few times. If you search my user you can probably see my previous posts. The TLDR being I’m 25 with a 12 year old sister in my mom’s care. I raised my sister and have done absolutely everything I can to try to be present in her life since moving out of the house 7 years ago. Unfortunately this has been an impossible task with the worsening state of my mom’s mental illness. I have been very low contact with my mom the last year but am realizing I cannot continue this way. The constant attacks, guilt, manipulation, and control are killing me slowly. When I talk to her, I try to redirect the conversation to my sister, but if I don’t placate her the exact right way (and of course the rules are always changing) she will remove my access to my sister as a “punishment.” I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.

She has been in therapy for the last year to “fix our relationship” with absolutely no substantive improvements whatsoever. I’ve begged her to change no less than a million times. I’m coming to terms with the fact that it’s just never going to happen. My mom is seriously sick and I have to accept that.

I’m scared she’s actually going to kill herself or do something dangerous when I tell her this. She’s been making these threats my entire life.

I’m feeling the full weight of it all this week and have just been feeling so down. Like I’m in a hell I can never get out of. Need some kind words :(

Hi all,

I know that it isn’t normal to have grown up with a mom who threatened suicide as regularly as she did (starting when I was about 6 years old). It wasn’t until I was in my late 20’s that I realized how her behavior affected me, and that it wasn’t something everyone’s mom did too, and how very very wrong it was.

But lately I’ve been struggling with thinking maybe I’m being dramatic or that I’m too sensitive. That it doesn’t matter and I should be able to brush it off.

So if you have time/energy, can you please comment with your thoughts? I am seeking validation from the group. Sounds mildly pathetic to put that in writing but I need the support.

Thank you 💜

My dad is BPD+, and I'm not changing details, because I was a child and did nothing wrong.

Going NC with him and his entire family fifteen years ago was really hard for me, I looked up to a lot about my dad and he made me feel special and loved, but I couldn't keep ignoring how much he hurt most everyone around him all of the time, and how much he ignored of how his wife treated me.

I feel incredibly redeemed today that I made the right decision - he is going into retirement facing possible incarceration for the 4th or 5th time (I'm unsure, he has ASPD as well so truth isn't really a thing with him but I know of at least 4 bench trials), this is the second time in less than five years.

My uBPD stepmother really put me through the ringer, their children were young (and golden) when I was last there so I'm not sure about them. But she would violate boundaries (she literally held up my training bra when I was 12 to a friend to have them mock my size), humiliate me, bully me, lie to my dad about disgusting things I'd supposedly done (told him I was leaving menstrual blood everywhere when I hadn't started having a period yet as an example, see that training bra above... she was intentionally leaving soiled paper upright in the bin and making messes in our guest powder room and I'm still not sure if my dad believed me or not), and she loved doling out physical punishment with a belt or a strong slap across my face for every single offense, real or otherwise.

So much of what I internalized as "stupid" and "wrong with me" because of her careless and unending criticisms as a young teenaged girl was actually just undiagnosed fucking autism - such as interoception about hunger, bathroom and temperature.

Being told I "got what I deserved" while dry-heaving and tremoring in a public bathroom at age eight because I was hungry but couldn't force food from sensory issues and anxiety kinda made me feel like she got what she deserved while my dad strangled her because she wouldn't stop bringing up his custody agreement with my mom. I know she didn't deserve it and I didn't either, but one of us chose my father, and it was not me. Instead of using her energy to fix her own life and improve her children's, she just used me as a punching bag with a face vaguely like her husband's.

He just filed for divorce against her after she pressed charges and filed a civil suit against him, over thirty years into them slugging it out on a regular basis. The other recent charge was unrelated to her, but seemed to be violence with an unrelated woman - possibly affair partner. The riddance was good.

(thank you for the space to get this off my chest. I know about these things from searching for his future obituary - serious mental illness reduces lifespans so we are getting there fast now. I want to mourn him, for his childhood, and for me and the children I did not have when he departs.)

peace and stillness found
safety is a sacred place
love walks on all fours