Dazed and Confused

[Guest guest]

Hello all.

I am new to this so bare with me if some of what I say makes no

sense. My brother and I recently had a diagnosis for our mother of

BPD. After a suicide attempt on december 26th. She had always been

needy, and needed attention all the time, needed to be told she was

the best, that we loved her and that we where not abandoning her

We have never had a normal relationship with her. everything has

awlays been tense and never felt quite right. I stopped hugging her

when I was ten because it always felt incestuous ( not sure why) and

that she just sucked all the love out of me with each hug, and then

demanded more.

So since the 26th our life has been kind of weird, not knowing what

to do and doing our best to not take her accusations and demands of

love too personnaly, freaking out inside at each phone ring and

dreading opening email.

We know she had a really rough chilhood with a lot of abandonment

issues and sexual inadequacies from her father. My dad left after 4

years of marriage and took off as far as he could from her ( a patern

he had with his parents as well) and he never really looked back. we

saw him about once every 2 years on average, for 2 weeks, while he worked.

So after the suicide attempt and the subsequent BPD diagnosis, I did

all the research I could staying up till 4:00 in the morning and

reading all i could about this disorder. The more I read, the more I

understood and saw my life unravelling before me. I knew she was

different and that something was not right with her interpersonnal

relationships, she can't keep friends for more than a year, and she

always makes friends with people that need her help somehow. And as

soon as they don't need the help anymore, something happens and my

nada starts bad mouthing them.

for as long as I remember she has said that she has extreme fatigue

syndrome and fibromyalgia. So the shrink she sees, beleives in these

things and when we confronted him with the BPD he said that it would

do nothing to confront her with that and that it would just create a

stigma and nothing could be done about BPD anyways. My brother and I

where dumbfounded and could not believe that he was rejecting this out

of fear of stigmatizing my nada.

For our next meeting with our nada and her shrink, my brother and I

drafted a letter outlinning with examples the reasons why the BPD

diagnosis fit for us, that we wanted a third opinion to either

displell or confirm the diagnosis, and that we would only see our nada

in the presence of her shrink. we let the shrink know this in private

so that he could let our nada know ( fearing the explosion of rage and

accusations if we told her directly). The next day, I got a call from

my nada. What was up with that??

So we made further inquiries into the BPD diagnosis and found out

that she had been diagnosed with BPD over 25 years ago. her sister (

whom she hates, is a bad person etc... typical ) took her to the

hospital for severe depression ( history there with my nadas mother

also, very mentally ill).

I have been the good guy for a while now and my brother the bad guy.

With this telling her that we would only see her with her shrink, I

feel torn inside, like I am doing the very abandoning that she is

accusing us of. I have almost always gone to he rescue and have been

there most of my life for her, but now I resent her for it and feel

totaly used by her BPD. This totaly sucks, damned if you do and

damned if you don't.

During the phone call on friday night I let my self get tricked into

telling her that I would see her today. I am not going, no way no

how. She wrote and email to my brother and me yesterday, inviting for

brunch today so she could get her fill of feeling like a family, and

finishing off with a vague suicide threath ( we called a support

center immediatly to check in on her). My brother wrote her back and

said that, according to what was discussed with her shrink that we

would only see her next thursday. Have not heard from her since then,

so I am a litttle worried. Not sure what to do now.

Thanks for reading all the way ( sorry it wa so long but I had a lot

to share) Thanks to the person who got this started. I feel good and

validated in my feelings as I read all your posts.