Can a Doctor Have MBP?

Even during a few Christmas' she threatened to leave the family and disappear. Also when I was planning my wedding she told my father she wanted a divorce, actually told us the night I was returning home from my bridal shower. She wanted the attention on her I assume. She tried to break my husband and I up multiple times, even though I think deep down she knows how great he is for me. She would tell me I was like her, a free spirit, and shouldn't marry. She always hoped I would be a vet like her, but is disappointed I forged my own path. Looking for any advice and I'm also researching MBP with other physicians so I will also add any findings. Thanks for reading.

I don't know why my whole post didn't make it, but here is the whole story...

My experience growing up was not the typical MBP environment, which is my I am not sure that my mother actually had it. My mother is a veterinarian who grew up in a very abusive environment .Her mother was mentally abusive, yelled at her how she was adopted one day just out of spite. She actually was adopted and this is how she found out. She has been diagnosed with manic depression and possible bipolar disorder due to it. She self medicates with her own medicine and would do the same to me. I was never taken to the doctors growing up, until it was absolutely necessary. This is why I feel like my case is not be the typical MBP. She was the one who would treat me whenever I was ill. In my younger years I was my mother's shadow, like most children. However she is a workaholic and would take me to work at the clinics she worked at.

She stopped caring for me around ten years of age. The only time she would be caring would be when I was sick or having a tantrum, otherwise I was too old for her care. This is around the time she adopted a very sickly dog who had various medical conditions. I didn't need caring like the dog did, therefore I was often forgotten at school because the dog was sick or hungry. I feel like her caring for sick animals gives her the same satisfaction as a mother with MBP with her child. She is always the hero and doesn't let anyone else have the spotlight. I have often experienced her lying about finding new cool things (that I introduced her to) to seem cooler with her younger workers at the animal hospital.

My mother would always come to school for career day with our dog and got much pride out of that, even though she barely cared for me by this time. I know she loved me, but I felt she despised me as well. My mother would often become enraged at me. I was told that I was spoiled and didn't deserve what I had. This exasperated with alcohol. There were many fights where she would victimize herself and tell me that I was horrible daughter for fighting with her, even though many were enticed by her. She would then say she was horrible mother to get me to not be mad at her and tell her how much I loved her. It was like she didn’t know how to love me unless I really needed her.

She threw various parties when I was growing up, and still does, always the center of attention .She often ignored my step father because he was able to care for himself. By the time I was 12 I had been sexually molested for four years, however it took me till the age of 14 to admit it to my parents, who did not believe me. My mother often didn't want to admit how traumatic my childhood to me, but would tell others and therapists. I began seeing a therapist around 14, her friend, of whom I didn’t like. He would believe her stories over mine. I ran away at 15 and to get me home she had be Baker Acted and I was left (against doctors orders) in the mental institution past my 72 hours. The physician didn't think my living situation was suitable and that there was nothing wrong with me. When they tried to discus that with her she screamed at them and took me out. I was then placed in a therapy boarding school and was kept there by therapists who said that my mother was toxic to me. That was when she developed alcoholism.

I was often told by friends and clients how amazing my mother was and how lucky I was to have her as a mom.

I truly believe she used her profession as an outsource for her illness. Always the hero doctor who looked like an angel. I don’t think I was ever poisoned, but I was malnourished as a kid. I barely ate and was always made feel guilty over it. My mother still asks me if I am eating at the age of 30. Because of my malnutrition I was constantly sick as a child and still get severely ill every month or two. Sometimes I wonder if I am actually sick or if I am doing it to myself. It’s hard for me to hold a job due to this, but I am currently working on a good medial treatment for myself. I often deny being sick and wouldn’t seek medical help and would self diagnose myself. This I am working on. My friends constantly ask why I am always sick and if I have seen a doctor. I definitely think I am affected as an adult, but I only recently come to the realization that my mothers may be MBP.

When I was moving away to finish college she tried to get me to stay, telling me that I couldn’t mentally handle the move. There was a huge heated argument with my fiancé at the time present. During my time in college she would become drunk and call me or send hateful emails. When I started to plan my wedding she interjected telling me my husband wasn’t right for me and that I was too much of a free spirt like her. While on my flight home, returning from the bridal shower she threw for me, she sent an email telling me she was divorcing my step-father, which is like a real father to me. I didn’t handle it well at all. I spiraled into a deep depression during my final months at school. She began innovating me with horrible emails to the point I had to block her.

For the last few years my mothers has caused an episode nearly every Christmas. A few were from drunken rages, one where my mother and father were in the middle of a divorce that nearly wrecked him, although she never left him. One year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, where she still drank throughout doctor visits and treatment, often flying off the handle. When she does this my father and I are chewed out, told to ‘###$ off’ and various things. She hired a veterinarian during this time of whom she let stay with us for the holiday. She told us she was going to help her at the animal hospital and take care of her during treatment. We ended up having to take care of this woman because she refused to even prepare her own meals, let alone would take out her trash. I wasn’t ever sure if my mother regretted this decision or not. My mother told my father and still believe that he gave her cancer. She says she had it from years of depression, even though she smoked her whole life, gave it up for ten years only to start smoking again after cancer.

She does various things for attention to get others to feel sorry for her. Often telling me how important a mother is, even though she had a horrible relationship with her own. That I’ll miss her when she’s gone. Growing up she told me she had cancer a lot, especially when I was a bit older.

I think MBP has various spectrums of the disease. I definitely see the caregiver aspect in all cases while I don’t believe that every case has a mother who physically sickens their child for a doctors attention. It could be mental trauma that the abuser brings on. I think it is a condition where when the abuser doesn’t feel needed they are often abusive and when they feel that need they jump into ‘caregiver mode’.

With being a MBP child the abuser deliberate makes the child sick for attention, usually through poisoning and the sickness is genuine can alter the child's long term health outcomes and sometime death.

The relationship with your mother has issues, but I would hesitate to call her MBP. It appears to be very intense both ways.