Why didn't she get help?

[monamurre]

I am chewing on an unanswerable question. Not looking for answers, maybe just others' experiences with their PD parents? Lately I've been thinking a lot about my mom's choices in life, specifically why she never got help for her BPD tendencies. The backstory: I just recently put two and two together and realized that uBPD has been driving a lot of my mom's behavior for as long as I've known her, and seems to fit with many of her pre-kid stories. I immediately saw that I had adopted some of those behaviors and regarded them as "normal, having grown up with that as a role model. Once I recognized what was going on with her and how I was modeling some of the same nastiness....my jaw hit the floor. It was probably in the top 3 most life changing moments I've experienced. Once I could breath again, I started joyously dropping the behaviors that didn't serve me, were hurting my family, etc. Why didn't my mom ever get to this same place?

I know that she wasn't born with BPD. Having grown up with fairly frequent contact with her mother and extended family I can see that she suffered the same treatment from her mother (who probably experienced it from her parents...and so on). The thing is, she got out. She moved out at 18, moved 1000 miles away, rejected so much of what my grandparents stood for and were about. And yet, she seemed to carry all the toxicity within her    She seemed to have had so many opportunities to heal and it just didn't take. She has been single for the last 35 years and living alone for the last 27. How could she not have found time to dig into this stuff in all the time and space?!?! Now in old age she is doing literally exactly the same things she criticized her mother for.....I just can't fathom the inability to have a bit of self-reflection!

It makes me sad to think that she over-came some of the obstacles, like putting distance between herself and her abusive mother (her siblings didn't accomplish that). But yet she didn't really make it out.  Now that she is in her last chapter of life, she is more embittered and angry than ever. Sigh. I guess in her case depression probably played a large part. That, and mental illness being fairly taboo a generation ago.

I feel like every PD out there is just a broken kid. Why do some pull out of it, while others don't?

[NarcKiddo]

It took me half a century to open my eyes, but I did. And before that I did at least recognise that I was probably ill-equipped to be a mother and our family genes most certainly don't need propagating. So at least I have not visited the misery on future generations. However, although I left home the minute I could, and thus physically "got out", it took me many more years to even start getting out mentally.

My mother's mother was a truly vile woman. I am not surprised my mother is messed up but she has not made it out. Not even tried. She is aware that mental problems run in our family and has at times said she is scared she might develop them. Develop??? Hah. But she is also vehemently against the mental health profession. She says they are a bunch of charlatans and would not dream of consulting one. In fact she would explode if she knew I had started therapy.

Have you read "Understanding The Borderline Mother"? By Christine Ann Lawson? She goes into the different types of BPD mothers and addresses to some extent which ones might seek therapy and which not.

[monamurre]

Thanks NarcKiddo. I agree, I didn't have my "lightbulb" moment until age 43. I guess I am just grieving for what might have been. No end to those scenarios, so I just need to get it out of my system and move on.

I haven't read Christine Lawson's book, but a summary of her four types of BPD is what really helped me put my mother's actions in context. She is very much the hermit/waif and not at all the overtly aggressive type that is commonly described. So I had read up on BPD before and thought, "nah, that doesn't sound right". Her behaviors honestly looked more like Dependent PD than BPD. But, the hermit description was spot on, especially the isolation (which it seems you don't see as much with DPD).

I hope in future generations we collectively get more facile at discussing, recognizing and addressing personality disorders. They are such an insidious multi-generational curse.

[Preamble]

I think they don't get help because it is "egosyntonic".  It feels like being the victim of the whole world and although logically that seems impossible, how can you argue with your own experience?  You just can't see how you have created by your own disregulation.  My own delusion was very very very very very persuasive and I can't believe I now get to take vacations from it.   If I knew how it happened, I would be able to do it for others.

"Ego-syntonic ideas match up with the ego's needs, view of the self, and personality." The Interwebs

[Cat of the Canals]

My mother is a BPD Queen, and her entire persona revolves around a flawless facade of self-image. Seeking help of any kind, to her, would be admitting there's something "wrong" or "imperfect." My brother once suggested trying to "trick" her into going to therapy by suggesting family counselling, and I literally laughed out loud because I simply can't envision her in a room with a counselor or therapist, no matter the circumstances. I think she'd rather die.

My MIL is more of a Hermit type, and I get the sense that she is so broken, she doesn't even know how empty her life is. She has almost no meaningful relationships, but I don't think she realizes it. The fact that she speaks to her son on the phone means their relationship is "good." Never mind the fact that they talk about nothing of substance. That he never confides in her. That he, in fact, just barely tolerates her. Everything is black and white and the fact that they speak at all is "good enough."

[moglow]

Briefly - perhaps because she chose to see herself as victim, that others caused the problems in her life and she's not responsible for anything. I guarantee were you to ask, there's little to no self reflection taking place.

Mine is quick to point out others' [mis]behavior, doesn't see herself in any of it. She's always the innocent, put upon, victim. Anyone who points out the obvious discrepancies is touted as the bad guy who's abusing her.

[Liketheducks]

Why don't they get help???    Because they don't think they have anything to gain by it.    In my mom's case, she's been the victim all her life.   My dad was abusive.....when they split up, my two brother alternated the persecutor role for her......when that stopped, I've been put into that role.       She's not unintelligent.   My mom is REALLY sharp.   She's also has an illusion of being fiercely independent.....but is rarely so.   She's quite co-dependent, but doesn't see it.        My father also doesn't see himself as needing help.    It's all my mom's fault.   

A 3 second google search will give anyone who wants one a road map for steps to take to recover an estranged relationship with your adult children.   Literally, thousands of websites dedicated to it.    They just don't think it applies to them.

[Andeza]

In the case of my uBPDm, she would never look into how to resolve the issue because that might show her that NC was her fault. She can't tolerate the idea of anything being her fault, cannot accept responsibility for her actions or words, because that would ruin the victim persona. Victims get attention. People fawn over them. Healthy people don't generally experience that.

M is happy to believe she has depression and is bipolar (she's not). These are things she is happy to try to treat with pills, and when the pills don't work, she moans about it and gets even more supply.

She's a hardcore waif/hermit. Will never, never seek to improve her situation or self.

[sandpiper]

Well, in my FOO, I was raised mostly by uBPDfather whereas my sisters were raised by my on-the-spectrum but probably not actual PD narcissist trait mother. There were so many N traits in my mother's family that the behaviour was not only normalised but it was all held up as something noble to aspire to. Looking down on the rest of the world and believing that everything that went wrong meant that there was someone else to blame who needed a good kick was probably a factor in shaping all of us but would have been much stronger brain washing with my sisters.
I started T when I was 21 and while I didn't learn about PDs till I was in my 30s, my trauma counsellor certainly identified the behaviours in mother's FOO that were toxic and encouraged me to create a lot of emotional distance and a safe space away from that. When I learned about NPD it was a huge 'aha' moment.
My sisters are much older, one sneered at me when I started T and the other walked out of the room and refused to discuss how I'd been diagnosed with PTSD & my T felt that my sisters may have it too. Already by the age of 30 they were so focused around how they'd created their identity based on my mother's template that the damage was, perhaps, beyond addressing.
I think these days there's a move among trauma counsellors to focus on seeing it as a set of learned responses that kept you safe in childhood but which do a lot of damage to your life and your relationships if you keep using them as an adult.
I think that's a smart move as it takes a lot of the sting of shame out of it, perhaps with that approach there'll be a better uptake among traumatised people.
My sisters are close to 70 now and I'm thankful for NC, I cannot imagine that it would make any difference if they stepped up to the plate to do the work now. The dysfunction is entrenched as habit and I think it would be awfully hard to break.
All I can say is that I went to T because I felt like I was falling apart and I didn't want to end up like my father and I knew that it had been really, really hard to be a child inside my mother's family because of how little empathy they had and I didn't want to end up like any of them.
the work had to be done if my life was to be different.
My sisters were up against a different set of social pressures.
I was a teenager when Oprah started up on TV so I got to think about alcoholism and emotional abuse while I was still forming my sense of identity. I know it sounds twee but it was an Oprah episode about 'dry alcoholics' who had all the behaviours of addicts that really made me sit up and pay attention and I think that also made me think that there might be a kind of therapy that was safe.
If you can't find a safe space, the treatment just won't work because you won't stick at it.
So many different factors, really.
But yeah - like you, very sad that they didn't make different choices.

[monamurre]

Thank you all so much for your replies! It is amazing how validating it feels to just say this stuff and have other people hear it (and get it)!

Some of the points you all shared are also helping me mentally process this as well. Preamble, thank you for the word "egosyntonic". I'm familiar with the concept but hadn't heard that word before and knowing it helped me dig up some new information to add to the mix.

Sandpiper, you said something that is really sticking with me about seeing PD as "set of learned responses that kept you safe in childhood but which do a lot of damage to your life and your relationships if you keep using them as an adult." THIS IS EXACTLY the sticking point in my brain. Why didn't she see that her actions were absolutely not serving her in a healthy way? I'm not sure they ever did but especially in the last 5 years her actions seem to have made a bad situation much worse. Isolating her from friends, hastening her health decline, driving a wedge between me and her, etc. etc.

To answer my own question I think that the word "serving" is very subjective here. Her actions weren't serving her in terms of producing healthy, sustainable outcomes in they way we would think of them. But, they were very definitely creating the sort of ending she has always imagined for herself, sick, suffering, and alone. So if her purpose was to prove that she was right all along about herself being a victim of everything and everyone, well then, her actions were serving her just perfectly.

This brings me to your comment, Preamble, "It feels like being the victim of the whole world and although logically that seems impossible." Where is the logic in this mess? How many things in life are completely black and white? I mean even when I am fighting with my husband and I want to blame him for every bad thing under the sun, I reasonably know in the back of my head that it can't be all his fault, and that somewhere in there my behavior is a part of it. Of course its not easy to say this, but the reasoning is there and tempers my words and actions even in the heat of the moment.....how can this be so lacking in someone?

Gah! What a shitshow. I continue to enjoy my distance (mom decided to stop talking to me after our last visit) but obviously am still grinding away looking for an explanation I can swallow.

[frogjumpsout]

I did just a google search and some scary stuff came up, including an article on the aarp website advising estranged parents to keep contacting their children:

"One golden rule," says Cushing, "is based on the principle that a cutoff is not really a cutoff unless both parties co-sign on it." jeezus christ.

Why don't they get help???    Because they don't think they have anything to gain by it.    In my mom's case, she's been the victim all her life.   My dad was abusive.....when they split up, my two brother alternated the persecutor role for her......when that stopped, I've been put into that role.       She's not unintelligent.   My mom is REALLY sharp.   She's also has an illusion of being fiercely independent.....but is rarely so.   She's quite co-dependent, but doesn't see it.        My father also doesn't see himself as needing help.    It's all my mom's fault.   

A 3 second google search will give anyone who wants one a road map for steps to take to recover an estranged relationship with your adult children.   Literally, thousands of websites dedicated to it.    They just don't think it applies to them.

[Cat of the Canals]

I did just a google search and some scary stuff came up, including an article on the aarp website advising estranged parents to keep contacting their children:

"One golden rule," says Cushing, "is based on the principle that a cutoff is not really a cutoff unless both parties co-sign on it." jeezus christ.

YIKES.

I guess it speaks to how widespread this issue is that AARP has an article on it. Too bad it's so off-base.

[moglow]

"One golden rule," says Cushing, "is based on the principle that a cutoff is not really a cutoff unless both parties co-sign on it." jeezus christ.

For any estranged parents out there reading - maybe disregard blather from people who don't personally know you and your situation. One size most definitely does not fit all and you don't want to end up with a restraining order because you don't understand the word No. Learn to respect others just as you'd wish to be respected.

Here's a better [the original] golden rule: Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. I guess in a twisted way that's what they're saying, they don't want you to leave so you aren't allowed leave them. They just conveniently leave out the part where you treat them like something scraped off the bottom of their shoe but continue to insist *they* deserve better.

Thing is, for the most part we choose our behavior and how we treat others. No one else is responsible or to blame for what we do or say, short of imprisonment and acts of desperation. I do believe that when we learn better, we DO better. So clearly she knew something was wrong with her mother's since she escaped it, but still chose those same responses??

[frogjumpsout]

Thanks, Cat and moglow, for affirming that that "golden" rule was not-so-much! A little off-topic, but it was really destabilizing to see that article in a mainstream publication like aarp.

[olivegirl]

My uBpd Queen/Witch mother has bragged to me that she likes being the way she is and refuses to change because she gets what she wants and it works for her.

That is, she is proud and feels powerful and superior when she lies, manipulates, intimidates, dominates, and triangulates.

It makes her feel special and besides, she feels she deserves to get her way.

She enjoys letting her mask slip, giving me a smirk and a long glare and then gaslighting me: "You are crazy!  I love you."

It's all a game to her. 

[sandpiper]

Olivegirl - your mother sounds like my eldest sister.
I asked her one time 'What do you think would happen if you treated your friends the way that you treat me?'
She snarled 'I don't NEED to treat my friends the way that I treat you.'
That was shortly before I started setting boundaries and she went NC. She tried to reel me back in by proxy when her husband died but I knew that was simply performative (keeping up appearances at his funeral). So I politely declined and said to the flying monkeys that if my sister wanted me then she knew where to find me and as she'd made no effort to contact me I was going to assume that her boundaries were still in place and I felt it would be disrespectful to violate them at such a difficult time as her husband's funeral.
That moment was an eye opener for me as it showed me that she just wanted an emotional punching bag and some part of her obviously really enjoyed being abusive to me and deceitful to her friends.

[Granny May]

I just can't fathom the inability to have a bit of self-reflection!

I'm really sorry for the confusion that you're feeling.  Not putting my situation on to you, just telling you what helped me in case it could help you as well.  I'd spent about 60 years of my life wondering what I had done wrong to cause all of the uNPDs to be so hurtful towards me.  There was at least 1 uBPD in every situation of my life, just waiting under a rock to crush me.  Finally, watching literally thousands of YouTubes, it really got through to me that none of this has been my fault.  I didn't cause them to want to hurt me, they just love hurting people and I was the gentle soul that couldn't/didn't stand up to their first attacks so they just kept on going.  I can accept my part in the 'dance' because I didn't have the self-esteem or confidence to stand up to them, but their behaviour was *not my fault*.  I feel so much stronger now I can lay the blame for that solidly at their feet and start to move on.  And to be wholesome, I must work on my own strength to say no to people.  Although it is still work, it is a much smaller task than trying to figure out how 100% of everything was my own burden to bear.  If that makes any sense.

On the self-reflection score, my diagnosed BPD (and ADHD) DIL has finally, after almost a year in therapy, had both her own psych and her couples counsellor realise that she is totally incapable of any self-reflection at all.  Whether this is a normal part of BPD or not I don't know, but I'm guessing not because she was diagnosed nearly a year ago.  But it sounds as if lack of self-reflection could be one of the BPD characteristics.  If so, and if yours is the same, then you could maybe just be messing up your own thoughts trying to figure this out.  It just isn't in their make-up.  They can't do it if their lives depend on it.  If that could give you some peace to have that knowledge?

I hope your healing journey continues smoothly.

[monamurre]

Thanks for all you replies. As I said at the outset, I know it is an unanswerable question. I'm sure it is a unique situation for every person. There are probably some common PD traits, like lack of self-reflection, that are partially responsible and then some unique issues in each situation as well.

I guess I'm just ruminating to process it all. My mom has terminal cancer and her time is short, so it is just an awful lot to process all at once. She recently seems to have discarded me and my family. This choice is so baffling, I can't imagine giving up my last few months with my only child, grandchild. So, I am trying to understand her behavior so I can accept it and put it behind me. Easier said than done.

My husband keeps reminding me that it is a mental illness and people with mental illnesses do things that others just can't understand or relate to. I keep thinking, I don't really want to talk to her that much, so perhaps this is a gift? But, wouldn't it be nicer to have a little low key contact, to have a proper goodbye, at least for the grandchild (who is 9 and totally confused by all this).

I was settling into accepting this and then her siblings were (finally!) informed of her illness and are now calling me several times a week with updates and questions. They all assume I am in close contact with here and totally involved in her medical decisions and other affairs.....as one might normally be at the end of a parents life. 

It is so bloody awkward! I keep having to say, "I have no idea, mom isn't talking to me.....I don't know if she already did that/tried that/etc. because she isn't talking to me." Needless to say, they are confused and probably think I am being a drama queen. One of them sort of gets it because she saw similar behavior with their mother at the end of her life.

On top of all that, she is doing the totally predictable routine of slandering me to any family member who manages to reach her. She told my aunt she hasn't seen or heard from me since I moved her into her new house (that was August). I was just there for 4 days in early November (just four weeks ago!) and she was nasty, distant, and obviously uninterested in visiting with us. She made no effort to contact me on my birthday a week later......which hurt....all I expected was a phone call.

My relatives aren't really buying it, but I still feel like I have to defend myself and get the facts out there......no I haven't abandoned her, I just flew 2000 miles and spend a thousand dollars trying to visit her last month! I guess I should take the discard as a gift and just muddle through the conversations with her siblings until she is gone. They are doing their best, I am doing my best, she is just a very difficult person.