Healing childhood wounds (BPD)

Hello,

Growing up with a mother who has BPD has left many wounds that I have ignored for many years. I am now 27 and feel like these wounds/scars from my abuse is not allowing me peace within myself. I have always been curious about others who have gone through similar/worse situations and have transcended through this. I have personally met someone who has gone through a similar situation who is at peace with herself and I want to know how to get where she's at. I've blocked this out for so long, even though I've done a lot of reading about BPD. I didn't talk to my BPD mother for almost a decade, and due to my father's illness reconnected. If I continue a relationship with her, even superficial, I will make myself miserable, yet I'm hesitant to disconnect again because I don't want to hurt her either (Yes, after all the abuse I STILL am worried about how SHE feels!). Her love was always conditional and the conditions always changed. After a couple of conversations with her, she seems like she has not changed a bit. Sorry, I'm trailing off.

I'm starting counseling today. Aside from that, is there anyone out there that has found peace with what has happened? How do you "get over" this?

Hun, you don't "get over" it per se, but you can learn to live with it, and give yourself a quality of life that you deserve.

You've taken the first step by going for counselling, and if your counsellor is right for you, you can begin to make peace with the past, bit by bit, slowly, and when you've begun to come to a point of resolution, find a sense of peace in the present, which will lay the building blocks for your future.

I can see that you're torn between wanting to distance yourself for your own sanity, and keeping the contact because of loyalty, a sense of concern for your mother and maybe even guilt. These feelings are normal, and no one can tell you what you should do because your situation is unique. I can imagine that you love and maybe even hate your mother simultaneously and you may wonder how these feelings can co exist together. Your relationship with your mother has been a complex and intense relationship, so it is little wonder that your emotions may reflect the complexities and the intensities. Whether you decide to cut the contact or remain in contact, it is important that you establish boundaries for yourself, and counselling can help you to find appropriate and effective ways of doing this. In many ways, because your mother is likely to have a poor sense of identity, she may have borrowed from your identity to an extent, or created such a blurring of boundaries that may have resulted in you feeling unable to express your own identity when you are with your mother. I'm only speculating here, and don't want to put words into your mouth, but these patterns are very common in disordered relationships between parent and offspring.

My father was an undiagnosed narcissist, a classic example and my mother had HPD. I either inherited or developed traits of both disorders as a child as a maladaptive way of coping with my upbringing. Although neither of them had BPD, their disorders were part of the same family or cluster, cluster B, so perhaps in some ways I can identify with you. My self esteem, hidden behind a false construct to compensate, was very low and my sense of identity very poor. My mother died when I was only 18 and my father survived well into my adult life, after I had my own children. He still continued to influence and infiltrate my life, which made me feel disempowered and unable to express my true, submerged personality. Five years before his death he developed prostate cancer and was put on hormone therapy. The hormones had the effect of softening his personality, and for the first time in my life I came to love him, and was able to make my peace with him. He told me for the first time in my life on his death bed that he loved me. Of course the emotional and psychological effects of the abuse took their toll on my own personality, and after many failed relationships and disastrous life situations I had to acknowledge that I had become a hybrid of my parents, showing signs of both their personality disorders, albeit in a much more diluted way. Facing up to my demons was difficult and traumatic and I entered therapy where I was diagnosed with Bipolar Type 2 and HPD. My HPD was of the appeasing type because I had empathy, an unhealthy degree of empathy that created a lack of a sense of boundaries. I had learnt to appease in order to keep the peace and prevent my parents from destroying each other. I was the peace maker, and it's still a role I find myself in today, but no longer to an unhealthy degree.

I then began medication and a long course of therapy, leaving no stone unturned, delving deep into my past and slowly my true personality began to emerge, the personality that had been subdued and stunted by my upbringing. Today I am told that I no longer fit the criteria for HPD, although I still recognize narcissistic traits in myself, which will probably always remain because they have been my defence mechanism. Continued introspection prevents those traits from being maladaptive or disordered, but it's a work in progress, an ongoing process.

My story is different to yours, and it is fortunate that you don't seem to have developed a personality disorder. I shared my story to tell you that there CAN be light at the end of the tunnel. Your mother is still in your life, and as you progress in therapy, you will find your own ways of dealing with her, whether or not you choose to remain a part of her life.

Writing down your feelings here can also help, although the forum can never take the place of therapy. Just knowing that there are others there who can identify with you can help.

Hi Baracuda, I can relate. My father is an undiagnosed BPD and my mother is undiagnosed as well, NPD as well as an Aspie like me.

I'm 41 and finally have peace within myself. It's taken a long time and a lot of work. I saw a therapist years ago who specialized in trauma, just to get over the shock aspect of the abuse I had received. I've done a lot of group therapy, but I've healed the most by praying everyday, reading the Bible, there is so much in the book of Proverbs to help you, if you're open to that. I'm not trying to preach, but I have tried so many things and finds this helps the most amazingly as far as long-term peace. And when I get angry, I take it out on the pillows on my couch or the punching bags at my gym. It's important that I don't hold it in and take it out on other people. Exercise gets my mind off the problems too, or spending some time in nature or by the water.

I also try to be careful around my father. He's 70 now so it can be deceiving, but he's so manipulative that if I don't keep my distance from him, he will act all needy and use guilt to try to trap me. I will get sucked back in, lose my focus and my self-esteem slips. I've realized that the lack of peace that I have felt in the past was the fear about the damage I would do to myself after being exposed to his illness. But giving myself distance (I live separately from him now for many years) and checking my focus afterwards, talking to trusted friends, helps me to stay on track and I feel less afraid. He's no longer the huge shadow that he used to be, and I try to love him for the good person I know is behind the disorder.