Narcissist Mother with BPD - what should I do?

[starrynight29]

Hey guys! I'm new to this forum and my therapist recommended it to me given my current issues with my mother.
I'm currently toying with the the idea of cutting full contact with her (going NC instead of VLC) but I'm really not sure.

My mother has never been a good mum, she has always guilt tripped us, said we don't love her and that we hate her when we don't answer her calls when we're at work. When she asks us to help her keep on track of her diet, then eats bad food and we try to encourage her (like she asked us) she says things like 'I get it, you think I'm a fat f***ing cow it's okay.' She also got to a point where she owed me over half a grand when I was a broke student and would make me feel bad by saying things like she had no food and was starving, or her car broke down and she needed to get it fixed or that she needed $20 for sanitary products when in fact she would go online and buy jewellery or handbags, food subscriptions or any other useless things she could get.

I moved away from home a few years ago for school and to handle this she tries to call me about 5 times a week whilst I'm working or seeing other family. I've been trying to slowly reduce contact because I feel like talking to her is more of a burden than something to look forward to. She has been emotionally abusive towards both me and my sister for years and after speaking to my therapist for a while I think I'm ready to look at going NC with her.

Last week she tried to suggest me her and my sister going to lunch when I come home which I told her wouldn't be fair as my partner is coming up too. She made it abundantly clear that it would just be us 3 and she doesn't want anyone else there. I said that it wouldn't be fair but suggested we do it at Christmas to which she said 'never mind, you don't seem to understand how lonely I am but oh well. It's a non starter anyway. Get back to what you were doing.' I did tell her I love her but I wouldn't talk to her when she acts like this which she also didn't take well.
A week passed and she called me out on our family chat saying 'you still ignoring me then?'. We got into a bit of an argument where I finally said if you continue to treat me like this then I'm going to cut all contact. She pulled the BPD card and how I'm not accepting her for who she is and blah blah blah. She finished by saying that she didn't make me feel guilty, I just feel guilty myself and it's funny that my therapist gave me advice because he therapist 'couldn't understand how her children could be so selfish.' She then said that next time she feels low she'll 'take my advice and keep it to herself' kind of guilting me into the idea that if she hurt herself it would be on me.

I really can't take much more of this guys. Does anyone have any advice on how to go about this or what you did? 

[Starboard Song]

First of all, welcome!

You've come to the right place. We are all amateurs, stumbling through this together. But we're together, and we do understand.

For me and my family, we had a crisis interrupt the sort of behaviors you describe. My in-laws declared one Silent Treat too many, and there were other people involved that prevented us from taking the usual accomodating steps, so it became permanent. We've been NC for almost 6 years.

You are in a real struggle: it is actually hard. So realize that there is no clearly wrong answer. Nobody is in your shoes. But I'd suggest some lessons from my experience. NC is a war. Especially if there are children, other family, or elder care issues, NC never stops. For others, NC starts to get pretty quiet after a bit. That can be a blessing. But it is first a war.

So before going NC, I recommend you run down the line of tactics. Check out our Toolbox for examples.

• Boundaries
• The 50% Rule
• The Three Cs

Boundaries, when done right, are a terrible misnomer. They aren't a fence you erect around others. They are an expression of what you will or will not do, or engage with. Start right there, and study boundaries hard, because they pay off in all of your life.

The 50% Rule is hard love: except for cases of absolute physical coercion, or things that go on behind our backs, like an affair, it says you are responsible for 50% of a relationship. It is saying that it is our job to step up to the plate and not engage in what we don't want to engage with.

The Three Cs are a soft hug, pointing out that you did not CAUSE it, you cannot CONTROL it, and you cannot CURE it. Really getting behind that helps us be kind to ourselves, and you deserve that.

When you've explored tactics that can help you to heal and limit the ongoing harm, you may find this just no longer works for you, and that you need to go NC. That will be fine if it comes to that: you can do it. But in my experience there is a natural flow to these things, and it is often helpful to try limited contact and strong boundaries first.

Be good. Be strong.

[Andeza]

Boundaries are like chicken wire. They keep the chickens in, but don't keep predators out. It's exactly like Starboard says, they're a guideline for you to follow. If she does X, I do Y, etc. And! You can write them down to make your own sort of guidebook and help you keep your resolve.

My experience was a little different. I tried practicing boundaries with my own uBPDm prior to going NC, but it was so exhausting and stressful due to the uptick in bad behavior in response (double-down on the clinginess and guilt tripping) that I gave up altogether. We've been NC for over a year now, and it has been quiet from the get-go. I suspect that my choice to go NC spurred her into a devaluation and discard phase, and so while it was my decision, she treated it as though nothing happened and I wasn't the, as she always liked to say, "most important thing in her life." Yikes. Of course, I left her no avenue of access. She's blocked everywhere.

So what should you do? Only you can really choose. My experience was one of having tried everything, I still found my own mental health affected so negatively that I could no longer continue the relationship at all.

[bostonbound]

^{'couldn't understand how her children could be so selfish}

This hit a nerve with me.....my dad says things like this to me all the time, he says other people say these things.  I wonder if he is making it up. 

Your mom sounds a lot like my dad who is a diagnosed bpd.  Throw on all the guilt  I always feel pulled between guilt and anger that he is manipulating me like this.  Games!  I have gone NC a few time for longer periods of time and thing were definitely better.  I could breathe a bit.  How does your sister handle her?  Can you talk about this with her?

[Spring Butterfly]

Welcome and what the others shared sums it up so well. I'll add that one thing that helped me was realizing the entire purpose of a family of origin is to nurture offspring to the point of individuating then go off to live their life. The entire point of childhood is to be raised to adulthood and then go live in adult life of your own choosing. Except in PD world for some reason they often envision children staying children tethered to the family of origin forever.

Fly free from the nest in the assured that's the intention and purpose of the nest. You choose who to allow in your life and how much to allow. It has little to do actually with PD but is more just how life is supposed to work. That's just not in our programming because it wasn't taught to us that way.

Once I opened my eyes and looked around I noticed other adults who did not have PD family had simply gone on to live their life and it was completely fine, it was expected. That's when it occurred to me my programming was faulty. I decided to own my adulthood and chose to individuate. I no longer cared or felt the need to explain decisions or discuss them ahead of time. I made them, owned them and only communicate on a need to know basis. There's very little the PD in my life need to know!

I'd recommend to disengage. Observe from a safe emotional distance. Individuate and own it.

[Tundra Woman]

BPD is not an excuse for abuse. You are not qualified to treat what ails. I believe you know exactly what you need to do so here's some genuine "permission" to do exactly that, my friend.

You have spent your life this far dancing attendance on Mommy Dearest. Has your presence actually *helped* her-OR you? No, it hasn't.

If your presence hasn't helped, your absence won't hurt.

Our intellect must make decisions our emotions refuse to acknowledge in their totality. Or at all. A clean break heals more readily than a compound fracture.

[moglow]

Hello Starrynight, and welcome to Out of the FOG! It's incredibly difficult to tell another what they should do, particularly knowing little of your history.

For me personally, no contact is a last ditch, there's just nothing left option. As StarboardSong mentions above there are other options before going full-bore NC, several other options that we need to explore regardless. No contact sounds easy and straightforward on the surface but the fact is, we still have our own work to do - we just as likely have scars and trauma that need to be dealt with or we stay stuck in that loop indefinitely whether we're talking to them or not. Not having that PD in our lives is a huge step to take, yes, and certainly clears the way for taking some much needed hard [and often distasteful!] looks at ourselves.

I also love how Spring Butterfly put this: 

'll add that one thing that helped me was realizing the entire purpose of a family of origin is to nurture offspring to the point of individuating then go off to live their life. The entire point of childhood is to be raised to adulthood and then go live in adult life of your own choosing. Except in PD world for some reason they often envision children staying children tethered to the family of origin forever.

Fly free from the nest in the assured that's the intention and purpose of the nest. You choose who to allow in your life and how much to allow. It has little to do actually with PD but is more just how life is supposed to work. That's just not in our programming because it wasn't taught to us that way.

Once I opened my eyes and looked around I noticed other adults who did not have PD family had simply gone on to live their life and it was completely fine, it was expected. That's when it occurred to me my programming was faulty. I decided to own my adulthood and chose to individuate. I no longer cared or felt the need to explain decisions or discuss them ahead of time. I made them, owned them and only communicate on a need to know basis. There's very little the PD in my life need to know!

I'd recommend to disengage. Observe from a safe emotional distance. Individuate and own it.

Well ... YES! Being caught in the guilt trips of daring to build your own life, it's easy to lose sight of this. You don't have to explain your decisions to her or anyone else. You can [and probably should, for your own well being] step away when it feels intrusive or demeaning. You don't have to engage when she implies you're doing these things to her - that's not the case and you know it. Why argue it? My mother about had a meltdown when I stopped sharing my life with her - first off she really didn't want to hear it, but the reality is I was just giving her ammunition for the next round. More often than not, anything I told her was seemingly ignored but thrown back in my face as yet another offense next time she had need of an argument. Boundaries!

And seriously, you can absolutely accept her for who she is - and still refuse to engage when she's being unreasonable. There isn't always an answer nor do you have to argue the point just because she insists on it. You're not there to fix all her [or anyone else's] imagined ills, you know.

By all means, take a few steps back and find your own boundaries. You don't have to explain yourself to her or anyone else, but you deserve peace. If she's wrecking that peace, you may need to figure out how best to disengage from her internal dramas. Just understand, no contact doesn't automatically turn off her voice in your head. She can only rent space there if you allow it - and honestly, eviction even then is a process.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Hi and welcome! You've been given so much good food for thought.

Much of your experience sounds familiar to me too. My parents are not diagnosed with any personality disorder as far as I know. But you are the only person I've ever encountered who also had a parent "borrow" money from them when they were a student and blow it on useless stuff.

Similar to Starboard, I am permanently NC without realizing or intending it would be permanent. I was going through a seriously difficult time in my own life and my parents were piling stress on top of stress by treating me in stunningly terrible ways. I said I needed a break while I took care of myself and I'd be in touch when I was ready.

Well, they started harassing me and put in motion a horrible smear campaign that became increasingly invasive. It ended with me threatening legal action.

I tell you this as how I learned the hard way what was said above about boundaries. Boundaries are for YOU to guide what you will and won't do in certain situations. In my case I initially merely stuck to the boundary I set, which was that I would call when I was ready. It wasn't dependent on them, not really. There was no path to get me to do what they wanted, which is partly why I think they went so insane. I simply "abandoned" them and how dare I. I pulled the rug out from under them, from their perspective.

The other thing about boundaries being for you, is it's not always necessary to state them. Similar to the idea that NC is a war (which it truly is. Something I wish I had known), a boundary is also a war to someone who would push into your life at every opportunity. So we see behavior like, someone says, "Mom, I can only take your calls at work if it's an emergency." And then suddenly there's an "emergency" every day. Or when you said, "I won't talk to you when you act like that," merely triggered more rage and what sounds like DARVO. (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.) Boundaries are something you do, not something you say. In fact, it's often wise not to say them with people you can expect to try to bust them. And yes, NC is the ultimate boundary.

From the little snippets you share here it appears your mother's fear of abandonment is extreme. You hate her because you won't take her calls at work?  Please. Your partner and your potential financial independence appear to be major threats she is trying to sabotage.

It looks like you are building your own life despite your selfish mother's training to put mother first always. It's great that you are in therapy and that you are here. Looking forward to hearing more from you!