Young Woman with BDL mother...

[Guest guest]

Dear Everyone,

I am so glad I found this group. I am 23 and I have a borderline mother. My

situation is rather particular and currently I have no professional or emotional

help or support. I hope that by getting to know other people who know what I am

going through, I will learn how to cope with the situation, how to help my mom,

and how to stay mentally healthy myself. Please, also feel free to contact me if

you feel like I could help you in any sense.

Here is my story:

I am almost 24 right now. My father died when I was 8. Since my mother has

always treated everybody around us badly, my other family members completely

left us, and I grew up without knowing any of them. Having said this, I grew up

with a full-blown borderline mother, without any other adult examples or

friends. She also feared that I would leave her, so she never allowed me to have

friends or romantic relations and when I had any of these, she destroyed these

relations immediately.>

Since I am her only child, I am financially dependent on her. I am not American,

I live in Europe, and here, students live with their parents until they don't

find the financial means to move away, which can occur at the age of 30 or even

later...My mother knowing that I am dependent financially, uses it to force me

to live in her " borderline world " and I don't have a way to get out of it....

This life has been so terrible that I completely lost any hope in the future

until last year when I received a scholarship to the US for a year. A year

without my mother! You can't imagine what has gone through in me.....It turned

out that I am cheerful, lovable and loving person, always ready to smile! I

regained my self-confidence and my hope in the future. Although I felt deep

inside that I am not the emotionless, depressed woman I seem to be next to my

mother, this was the first time I could ever act on my own, I was financially

independent, and I could do whatever I wanted without anybody telling me what to

do or that I am bad, ugly, selfish etc. I also learned to respect my mother more

and listen to her more attentively in the phone (I called her almost every

day...)

Now, I'm back in my country, my mother's condition is worse than before. This

year all by herself just confirmed her sense of abandon. Now, she is convinced

that everybody hates her, especially me. I only came back a week ago, but she

has already been accusing me of everything bad, criticizing my looks, calling me

names etc. Her behavior is even less reliable than before and she is much more

aggressive than when I left....

You have to know about me that until I was 18, I though that I was mentally ill,

because my mother told me so. Than I finally met my grandmother, who told me how

my mother had behaved in the past and reassured me that I am normal, and she is

the one who has problems. After this, I read a lot on the issue and discovered

that she has borderline. She has never been diagnosed but she has all the

symptoms, there is little doubt about it. Since than got familiar with this

problem and I developed certain techniques to cope with her behavior on a daily

basis, but this consumes ALL my energy and I am always sad, depressed, hopeless,

and bitter as a consequence.

I am somebody who is very rational and I hate conflict (you can imagine

why....). So my technique in the past was that since I can't change her

behavior, nor can I move away, I have to listen to her whatever she says and try

not to absorb it and even if I react to her accusations or criticisms, I only do

it in a rational and not emotional way (I read a lot on non-violent

communication). Since I am dependent on her financially, I have to do whatever

she wants me to do. That's it. You can imagine my self-esteem after all these

years living like this.....(and of course, there was nobody to talk to about my

problem)

Right now, I am going through a very difficult period. I am finishing my

masters, which is stressful in itself, I have no income (it would be complicated

to explain this here but my mother doesn't really support me financially, I

always had to work besides my studies but now, due to the economy, I can't), due

to the current economic situation and other reasons, I will have to leave my

country again in January/February to find a job, and I am living in a place

right now where I don't have friends, family, emotional support etc. So my

situation is hard enough without my mother and I really don't have the strength

to deal with her every singe day....

She is, of course, pressuring me, because she doesn't want me to leave but in my

present situation, not only it is an emotional necessity but also a financial

one...

I am worried that the more she feels that I am growing up, that I will leave,

that I become financially independent, the more she will try to tie me to

herself, to call me incompetent, to do everything to stop me from starting a new

life........

I am also afraid that she will suck away again all my energy and joyfulness,

which I desperately need to carry on in this difficult situation... .

I have also noticed that my mother deliberately doesn't want me to be happy and

either ignores if I am happy or even destroys my happiness if she can. Other

mothers would for instance be proud of their daughters for certain achievements,

or would be sad to see that they are still single at the age of 24. I interpret

her attitude toward my happiness as a reaction to her own misery. Since she got

married late and her marriage was a disaster, she doesn't want me to ever get

married and that way she " feels herself luckier than me " . Also, she doesn't want

to have grandchildren. She was also not too successful at her professional life,

I think, so whenever I am successful, she ignores my achievements, and rewards

them with comments about me being incompetent. ...So, I guess, she is trying to

make my life more miserable than hers, in order to feel better about

herself..... however, as a consequence, I cannot express happiness, since it has

always been a forbidden feeling at home....

I love my mother and want to help her. Of course, no matter what I do, I " only

want to harm her " ...I try to let it go.....I will continue on trying to help her

easing her solitude by finding her programs she can go to, encourage her to meet

people, or listen to her whatever she says.....but I got to a point when I have

to make a very serious decision between my mother and my own future and

sanity...... ..This is a very difficult thing to do because I am my mother's

only relative, and nobody will ever help her in anything because of her

" personality " . So if I leave, she will remain alone with everything and she is

getting old and who knows when she will become sick (of course, she smokes a

packet of cigarettes a day and never goes to the doctor...).. .....But I just

simply cannot sacrifice my life for somebody, who never showed any sign of real

love towards me and who can only tell me how terrible I am......Rationally, I

understand that I will not make her happy, only she can make herself happy, and

it will be not me but her behavior that causes her solitude.... but she will be

in a situation which is

hard to handle even for completely healthy people too, not to mention somebody

with such a need for love and attention... ....

So in a week, she managed to completely destroy my fragile self-esteem, and now

I doubt again that I will carry out this important move in my life......

For the moment, I don't have the " Walking on Eggshells " book (since, Amazon

doesn't deliver in my country, so I have to have somebody send it over....), but

I can't wait to read it!

Until than, can you provide me with advice on how to:

-maintain my self esteem (both about how I look and what I am capable of doing)?

-how to deal with my mother's (rational) fear of separation?

-how to stay emotionally healthy and cheerful if I hear all these terrible

things at home and I am controlled in my activities? How do you let things go if

there is nobody else around me to confirm the opposite?

Thank you so much for your time and help in advance,

Please feel free to ask me further details if you need so,

Regards,

C

>

> P.S.: I'm sorry if this e-mail is a bit confusing... .at first, I though it

will be easy to write about this but than I realized that telling a story of 23

years is harder than what I imagined....