Finally had major lightbulb moment about uBPDM

[yellowdaisy]

I originally started researching PDs to help myself and support H with dealing with an uPDMIL. We've been NC for months and now since my life has calmed from that, I began examining my FOO. I have an uBPDsis, who is aware she has uBPD. I have gone LC with her and she actually has cooperated with that just fine.

The relationship I have always struggled with is with my mom (you can check out my previous posts for me info)
It's amazing, I've been researching PDs for well over a few years now and M never really fit any of the descriptions, and so for years now I just chalked it all up to her severely lacking emotional intelligence. This past weekend though, after having a triggering phone call with M, you know 'the straw that broke the camel's back' kind of triggering, so I really began taking a deeper look into our dynamic. I've always had big chunks of time from childhood that were fuzzy or all together I couldn't recall, but taking this past entire weekend to think about how my mother's actions have made me feel and allowing myself to get unapologetically angry, the fuzzy and forgotten memories began flooding back into my mind.

It was like I had suddenly woken up from a decade long daze and was looking around thinking, "what am I doing?"
And I suddenly had the confidence to trust my own judgment and memory and I just knew none of it was okay.

That's when I decided to go where, now looking back, I was always afraid to go. The FOG was holding me back. I jumped online and spent hours reading posts from AC of PDs and discovered that the hermit bpd exactly describes M. After realizing it, I went to my H and said "Holy s***. This is it."

This all feels so relieving. I was so deep in the FOG, even with learning about PDs, I was still so deep in it and didn't realize. I finally feel validated and have an answer to why everything was so chaotic and scary during my childhood. That M's paranoia wasn't "normal", that her telling me to "not walk too closely to parked cars because a man could be laying under one and grab you" wasn't normal, that her discouraging me from hanging out with my male friends because "they could rape you" wasn't normal, her telling me every time I used the stairs to "not fall down!", why I wasn't allowed to use the stove when she wasn't home (even as an older teen), why she locked her bedroom door when she wasn't home, why it always so happened she just needed to get into the bathroom whenever I was in there and would get angry/annoyed if I locked the door, why she was a germaphobe but then hoarder with an inch of dust in every corner of our home, why she would leave us alone every weekend to stay at her boyfriends and drink herself into black outs, and then upon returning home rage at us for the house not being clean, why during drinking binges, she would revert into an oversized toddler, needing me to take care of her and help her pull her pants down to pee and why she wouldn't just lay down and would keep getting up from bed while drunk and suddenly would forget how to even walk??, why she was always so hot and cold with her "love" and moods, why she was so emotionally unavailable and only showed me attention to soothe HER anxiety, why I had to listen to her complain for decades about issues she could easily fix as an adult and would lean on me to support her through, but always refused to ever do anything about it, why she has rituals of checking if the doors are locked, if the stove is off, if the water is off, if the curling iron is unplugged before going to bed or leaving the house that she just had to do and we weren't allowed to interrupt, even if we were running late, why she has always said "I just have to say/ask xyz otherwise I feel like something bad will happen if I don't!"

There's so much, I could write forever. I just want to say thank you so much, to all of you. I may not have made it to this moment if I didn't have this forum. Here's to the end of the FOG and the start of healing.

[ShyTurtle]

WOW!! This is so awesome!! I'm so happy for you! I also have a ubpd mother and I recently determined that she was dominantly presenting as a witch when I was younger and now she is more of a waif. Understanding what actually went on has been important for my healing too.

When you said you allowed yourself to feel really angry about everything and all of your lost memories came out the fog - I'm really fascinated by that! I hope you continue to reach new levels of understanding and inner peace for yourself!

[Hepatica]

Dear yellowdaisy,

You've had a huge breakthrough.  It must be a great relief to finally feel so clear and yet also you must be filled with feelings of grief and anger. That would only make sense. Please be so kind and gentle to yourself as you unpack all of this. And know you are not alone. Many of us here have survived very chaotic childhoods - and I'm happy to say that even though I had a very difficult childhood, I have a peaceful life now. And I really believe that implementing no contact with my abusers has greatly calmed my nervous system.

Be so very proud that you are taking your life back and taking control of your recovery. And be patient. This is a long term healing process filled with all kinds of ups and downs. But at least now that we know what we went thru, so we can find the support to heal. I am so grateful there are more and more therapists trained in trauma bc this has really helped me in my recovery process.

Well done and all the best to you and thank you for sharing.

[SunnyMeadow]

yellowdaisy,

What a great post! I'm happy for you. 

I'm glad you've had a breakthrough and feel validated! I've haven't heard much about the hermit bpd. Interesting to read about it and I can see why your childhood was scary and chaotic. As if childhood with a PD parent isn't bad enough; add hermit to it and wow, that ramps up the anxiety.

I'm glad you're here to share your experience with others who are dealing with a hermit bpd person.

[yellowdaisy]

Thank you everyone for your replies and support! I've been trying to take good, gentle care of myself since making this discovering and since writing this post I've been feeling the guilt... like I've betrayed uPDM by anonymously airing out her dirty laundry from my childhood. I'm sure you all have had the same feeling at one point.

The memories coming back has been wild and exhausting, I am still getting more. I think my brain was either protecting myself or it was the conditioning of protecting my mom that was keeping those all blurry, with each new thing that pops up I'm telling myself "Yeah that wasn't fair." and checking my feelings about it and then moving to accepting the memory and using it as further validation for my feelings and own judgement. So far this seems to be working out well. 

It took some digging to finally come across the 4 "types" of BPDMs and from reading online it seems some AC find it eye opening like I did and others, not so much. It seems the hermit kind is also more rare? Or least talked about, so I am glad in that aspect that I pushed myself a bit to share here in case there's anyone else out there struggling to find these answers too.

Currently looking into finding a T I can work with on this, I have always been afraid to see one (not surprisingly considering the hermit M thing) I've always found it difficult confiding in others and trusting, and like I said above, I gotta work through the guilt of admitting the abuse happened, I don't owe my mom any protection, that's what she should have given me all those years ago.

Thanks again everyone

[Cat of the Canals]

If you haven't read Understanding the Borderline Mother by Christine Lawson, I highly recommend it. It was what gave me the breakthrough to realizing my mother was a BPD queen.

I'd previously read Will I Ever Be Good Enough? by Karyl McBride, which resonated with me because of the way the daughters described their relationship, but the specific behavior of the mothers wasn't right. My mother does a lot of lovebombing and is, if anything, overinvolved. The narc behavior in the McBride book skewed more toward either overt physical abuse or neglect, which was almost the opposite of my experience. So I'd still been doubting my mother was a narcissist until I read the Lawson book, and EVERYTHING clicked.

Lawson goes pretty in depth into the four types of BPD. I originally read it for free on openlibrary.org, but it's so good I just bought my own copy and one for my brother, who has recently shown signs of coming Out of the FOG. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8515205W/Understanding_the_Borderline_Mother?edition=understandingbor00chri