difficult child 1 has made it clear she wants nothing to do with us

[BusynMember]

Cedar, I will post to Borderline (BPD) central. It is an excellent site for those who feel they are dealing with adult children or parents or BFFs who have borderline personality disorder. I never understood how my sister could just cut people off for years and go on as if a sister, a brother, etc. meant nothing to her. Now I know how s he can do it. My mother did it as well...to me.

Borderlines think in black and white terms. They don't understand gray area, which is why they desperately need corrective therapy, such as dialectal behavioral therapy. Essentially, you are ALL GOOD to the borderline...they worship you, you can do not wrong, etc. or you are ALL BAD...why, guess what? YOU are the reason for all that is horrible, an evil being, a monster. And somebody who was once a hero can chance to a demon too. They never think, "Mom tried hard. Sure, she wasn't perfect, but basically, although things weren't always perfect, on the whole she meant well." They can't. That is gray thinking...it is not all bad or all good thinking and that is not how their brains work unless they learn about that gray area. And when they think you are evil, even if they change reality in their heads, they usually cut you off. It's classic borderline. It's meant to show you just how horrible you are and, at the same time, to make you suffer for your perceived sins (in their minds).

Borderlines also have a very WEAK CORE IDENTITY, therefore it is common for them to take on the personality and interests of whomever they are closest to at the time. Pretend a borderline is named Susy and her new boyfriend is named Jim. Jim is a conservative man politically who likes rock music, the History Channel, dislikes cats and takes a dislike to you. What does Susy do with this? Well, Susie has no real core sense of "self." So Susy borrows from Jim. She is suddenly also conservative (even if yesterday she wasn't), she watches the History channel (a channel she never knew existed before Jim coming into her life), she also likes rock music, especially Jim's favorite bands, she gives away her cat because suddenly she doesn't like cats either, and she takes a dislike to you. Because YOU are personal to Susy, and are possibly likely to blame Jim for your growing estrangement, she really goes ballistic on her hate of you. After all, JIm is the person she worships right now so if you think he is bad, YOU ARE EVIL.

I encourage anyone who thinks her daughter (or son) may have borderline, take a look at Borderline (BPD) central. It's got very good information. It doesn't just explain borderline, although it does, but it explains how you can protect yourself for their disorder, since most borderlines do not acknowledge they need help and don't get the excellent help that is now out there.

https://www.bpdcentral.com/

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Thank you.

:O)

This is something else that came out of this morning's discussion. Perfectionism plays its part in this for me, too. It would make sense that if there was a borderline person in my childhood, I would question myself endlessly about why this or that thing seemed to have happened, and that I would try to do better. When the kids began having problems, the most hellish thing about it for me was chasing my tail around trying to find out what I had done so I could correct myself and stop victimizing my children and destroying my family.

I feel terrible about the things that have happened to all of us. As many of you know, a big piece of regaining control of my own responses to the things my children do, or the situations they find themselves in again and again, was to let go of believing I was responsible for everything that happened to them. I remember when MWM posted about the possibility of an adult child verbally abusing a parent and it took me forever to admit that this could happen and that it was happening, to me.

I would automatically take responsibility for difficult child son's nastiness, believing I had not handled the situation well enough and so, he could not help but lose his temper and so on.

Anyway, here is the thing I learned this morning about perfectionism even where our children are concerned. This is especially relevant for someone raised as I was, but it might help others of us wondering how to think about what is happening to our relationships with our children and how to respond to them, too.

So here it is.

Perfectionism has to do with locus of control.

And, for me, that has to do with approval seeking.

We all want to do well. We all have a set of standards...but when the balance of a relationship is out of balance, when a child or a parent or a friend drops something in that we never saw coming and blames us for it, it would take a sociopath ~ someone so certain they are always right ~ not to question his or her own interpretation of events. Not being sociopaths, we back away a little. We reevaluate our responses. We listen to the other person's interpretation of the situation and try to accommodate, to come to balance with, their reality. In other words, we give up locus of control. We want the other person to be happy more than we want to stand our ground. Rather than trust our own interpretations, we trust the other guy's integrity enough to try to balance the relationship on what they claim is real.

***

Perfectionism.

A very good thing in many ways, a good moral guiding light and something to hope for. But the question we need to ask ourselves I think is: where is my locus of control in this situation? Am I caught in a trap based on someone else's approval? Or am I responding from my own ethical center? When we listen to our children condemn us, when we react to their perceived reality although it doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to the one we know...that is when we are in that approval seeking place.

***

I also have something to say about shunning, this morning ~ which is what my mother does and so did MWM mother:

I never understood how my sister could just cut people off for years and go on as if a sister, a brother, etc. meant nothing to her. Now I know how s he can do it. My mother did it as well...to me.

So, I was thinking about this whole idea of shunning. Think back to what you know of history. Shunning is one of the harshest punishments that can be inflicted on someone. Fanatic religious organizations employ shunning, both to punish the rebel and to keep those still in the fold from breaking free.

Shunning is done to make the victim feel wrong, to dehumanize the victim, to make them worthless in the eyes of the rest of the group.

And to make us worth less in our own eyes.

As the wolf says in the Red Riding Hood stories: "All the better to eat you with, my dear."

I remember one time when I was condemned like that. My mother told me: "I told you I was going to do this." Those were her exact words. I was never, over the next five years, to learn what I had done. But what I did learn over those years was how much healthier it was possible to be, when I was not in contact with my family. My father had heart bypass surgery during this time. My sister called to tell me. The day it happened, I called the hospital to learn how he was. My mother called me that day, after five years of no contact, to tell me my father had had the bypass surgery, and that he had lived, right? And, meanly, triumphantly even, I told her I already knew, that I had called the hospital and been told my father had lived through the surgery.

It was mean of me to do that, but I wanted to be mean.

My mother directed that I not be given further information regarding my father.

Shunning.

Cedar

 

[TerryJ2]

How painful.
Great explanation, though.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

She
is in contact with difficult child 2 and told him that she is not
giving us her address.

What has transpired with your daughter since she refused to provide her address, Cubsgirl? My son did something similar this summer. Everyone at his house has a summer birthday. I wasn't able to send cards or money, and on the rare occasions my son would deign to speak to me, he was mad as could be.

It was suggested that I might look the address up online. I opted not to do that. I think that while it was hard for me not to send the cards and be part of the family in that way, it was a mark of respect to my son that I accepted his decision.

I think that acceptance on my part, that lack of resistance, gave my son a time away, maybe gave him a time to realize I was not the enemy. It is hard for the kids too, when things go wrong in the family. We are all trying to deal with what we perceive as hurtful, confusing situations as best we know.

These missed opportunities for interaction were a sadness to me all through the summer and early Fall. But that time when he was calling the shots seemed to clear the air for my son.

I am happy with the way the experience concluded.

I don't understand his anger, but I don't see from his perspective, either.

I think maybe we are rebuilding relationship from the bottom up. It must be hard for the kids to always be so defensive and angry. I know I don't like it when I feel that way.

Your child is in contact with her brother, and so, you know she is alright, that she has a roof over her head, that she has food and companionship.

For now, those are good things to know. You will have to love her from a distance for this time.

It's hard to parent adult kids. Mine were using for such a long time too, of course. Drug use complicates everything.

Cedar

I apologize for hijacking your thread as I did earlier, Cubsgirl.

Please excuse me.