Surviving the Borderline Parent

by Freda Friedman

  seeds was withheld or not provided by your parent. This could be a time

  when you were reprimanded for something and the punishment was out

  of proportion with the affront; you confided in your parent and your feelings were ignored; you were told to do one thing and then soon after told to do something else, neither of which was “right”; or you were humiliated or abused. Write them down, including the circumstances, the emo-

  tions you felt, and how you explained the incident to yourself afterward.

  What did you take away from the experience?

  How do you think all of these events and others like them affected

  your development in terms of your ability to feel safe, independent, val-

  ued, lovable? How did these events affect your sense of self?

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  Surviving a Borderline Parent

  How to Bounce Back

  Recalling a difficult past and examining how it affected your development and your life today can be painful. Moving forward may seem overwhelming at times, but humans are amazingly resilient creatures. It’s important to give yourself credit for the strength and other qualities you possess that allowed you to survive and accomplish all that you have, thus far.

  In simple terms, resilience is the ability to overcome adversity. Many

  factors foster resilience, including social intelligence (the ability to interact with others), likeability, adaptability, mood stability, healthy supporters other than parents, curiosity, and physical health.

  STOP AND THINK: Resiliency Builders

  Check the characteristics you relied upon most often as a child coping

  with a borderline parent. In your journal, write about how you used them

  then, and how you use them now.

  Adaptable

  You adjust to new, changing, or difficult situations with rela-

  tive ease.

  Confident

  You feel a sense of competence in at least some of the impor-

  tant areas of your life; you possess a sense of self-respect.

  Curious

  You have an innate inquisitiveness and interest in the world

  around you.

  Engaged

  You have the ability to connect with others, to give and accept

  support.

  Humorous

  You’re able to find humor in situations.

  Intuitive

  You have good hunches when it comes to understanding oth-

  ers and how they behave.

  Inventive

  You have the ability to see things in different ways; to come

  up with alternatives to problems; and to express yourself

  through creative endeavors.

  All Grown Up

  43

  Optimistic

  You possess a sense of hope and a solid belief that the future

  will be fine, or better.

  Persistent

  You’re tenacious and have the ability to work at something

  that’s important to you.

  Self-directed

  When something truly needs to be done, you’re able to recog-

  nize it on your own and muster the inner resources to do it.

  Spiritual

  You believe in some force larger than yourself and your own

  (and others’) human abilities.

  The Importance of Role Models

  Mentors and role models can play a large role in helping children develop coping skills and resiliency by modeling healthy behavior, providing

  insight into a parent’s emotional challenges or simply removing a child

  periodically from a dysfunctional home. Consider the following examples.

  Elisabeth, a forty-two-year-old accountant raised by a mother with

  BPD, recalls going to visit a family friend most days after school. She’d watch TV with the friend, run errands, help her take care of her three

  small children, and simply observe as the friend cooked dinner. Not only

  was it a respite from her own tense, often chaotic home, says Elisabeth,

  but “I saw another way for parents to interact with their children. I couldn’t have articulated the differences then, but I knew it felt better. I also learned that people could enjoy my company. I always seemed to be a lot

  of trouble for my mother.”

  Rick, a twenty-seven-year-old medical resident raised by a borderline

  stepfather, recalls the summers he spent with his paternal grandmother

  from the time he was eight until the year he turned thirteen, when she

  became too frail to take care of him. “I used to get this sinking feeling in my stomach when my parents came to pick me up at the end of August

  and the whole way home in the car. They used to tell me to open the win-

  dow, thinking I was carsick. I wasn’t. I just didn’t want to go back.” Rick and his grandmother would go for walks and pick fruit. He helped her

  with canning, and he’d groom her two big dogs. He felt valued, but most

  of all he recalls the sense of peace that pervaded his grandmother’s house.

  “It was so different from home. There were no sudden rages to worry

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  Surviving a Borderline Parent

  about, no doors slamming or cruel accusations followed by days of silence and cold stares. Looking back now, it’s no surprise I felt physically ill.”

  Mariel, nineteen and a student with a mother with BPD, spent week-

  ends with her aunt starting when she was about twelve. “It might sound

  silly, but among other things, I learned how to fold laundry, towels, from her. Her house was neat. At home, things were disorganized and messy;

  towels were stuffed in closets. I also learned how to organize. I’d watch my aunt sort her mail, pay bills, balance her checkbook, and use a planner to track her business appointments. Seeing her do chores methodically and think ahead to the coming week helped me to know there was a way to

  get through the fog I felt like I was in a lot of the time. I’m not sure I would have made it through high school without learning those things

  from her.”

  STOP AND THINK: Positive Influences

  Take a few minutes to reflect on your childhood and the adults who

  served as positive, stable forces, perhaps an aunt or uncle, teacher, grandparent, family friend, or the parent of a schoolmate. Who were those

  influential people in your life?

  How did you feel when you were around them? What did you learn

  from them?

  How did what you learned or observed help you better deal with

  your situation at home and/or your parent with BPD, even though you

  might not have known about BPD then? Did these other adults validate

  your experience at home, for example, telling you that your mother/father didn’t always do the right thing or that your parent’s behavior wasn’t a

  reflection of you? What did that validation mean to you then? What does

  it mean to you now?

  Commend yourself for your resilience. You obviously possessed tal-

  ent, intuition, and knowledge that got you to where you are today. It’s

  easy to criticize yourself for your perceived deficiencies and weaknesses, but it’s important as well to recognize your strengths and your ability to overcome challenging circumstances.

  CHAPTER 3

  Grieving a Lost

  Childhood

  Growing up, you may have suspected that something was wrong, that

  your family seemed different or unhealthy, but you may not have known

  what specifically was the cause. You may have seen isolated symptoms and

  traits of BPD but lacked the knowledge that the traits were part of a larger constellation. You may also have felt you were going crazy since your parent’s actions and reactions didn’t seem predictab
le or sensible, reasonable or rational. Or you may have felt responsible for triggering your parent’s behavior, that if you were better behaved, cuter, smarter, quieter, better at anticipating your parent’s needs, that things would be better. You had no way of knowing what the problem was or that it had nothing to do with

  you.

  Discoveries and Reactions

  Adult children of parents with BPD may learn about BPD in a variety of

  ways. Some say they’ve read a newspaper or magazine article that

  reminded them of their parent’s behavior. Some have learned about BPD

  in the course of their own therapy, often for issues related to relationships and poor self-esteem, where a counselor recognizes the symptoms. Others

  say they recognized their parent’s BPD through college psychology classes, World Wide Web searches of a parent’s symptoms, hospital staff, or

  friends and relatives who work in the mental health field. But even if your

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  Surviving a Borderline Parent

  parent has never been formally diagnosed with BPD, if the symptoms and

  behaviors strike a chord and the effects described in this book fit your

  experience, you’ll be able to benefit from reading further.

  Upon learning about BPD, you may feel an incredible sense of relief

  at finally understanding that you weren’t the cause of the inconsistent,

  perhaps abusive behavior. There was some other explanation for what you

  experienced. You may feel joy at finally receiving validation and learning that your parent’s troubling behavior was indeed real, unhealthy, and that you weren’t alone.

  Other reactions include denial—“Oh, it wasn’t that bad;” “I wasn’t hit that hard,” or “that often,” or “criticized that much”—and rationaliza-tion. You may find yourself thinking, “But my father/mother had such a

  traumatic childhood, he/she doesn’t know any better.” And that may

  indeed be true. About three-fourths of those with BPD experienced some

  type of early trauma. Still, that doesn’t condone the actions of a parent toward a child. Many people have difficult childhoods; many people don’t

  get the unconditional love and support that children deserve. But many

  still go on to be healthy, loving parents. More importantly, the possible reasons behind your parent’s emotional difficulties don’t negate or minimize the truth of your own experience.

  Hope for Change

  Upon learning about BPD and identifying the ways it’s influenced your

  development and outlook, you may be overwhelmed with a multitude of

  emotions, including happiness, anger, sadness, grief, and confusion. Those emotions are healthy and understandable, and they will help you move

  forward. Remember that it is possible to make changes in your life, and

  that you have the power to do so. It’s indeed possible to recast the mes-

  sages you received as a child, to look at your life through a new lens, and to learn to do things differently. It may not be easy, but it’s feasible once you set your mind to it. It’s as if you’ve been an ice-skater all your life, and suddenly someone hands you a new pair of roller skates. You want to

  learn to use them, so you put them on, and you wobble and fall. But you

  continue to try to stand up and skate. Each day you wobble less, and after a while, you hardly fall at all. Soon you’re skating backwards and doing

  figure eights—it becomes almost as effortless as skating in your old ice

  skates. You’ve learned a new way.

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  47

  STOP AND THINK: Motivation

  Think about your motivation for change. What do you stand to gain in

  terms of insight and understanding, and improved relationships with your

  self and others?

  Consider your reasons for reading this book and doing the exercises.

  Perhaps you’re hurting, or thinking, feeling, or doing things that interfere with your relationships and your sense of contentment. What are those

  thoughts, feelings or behaviors you’d like to understand and challenge?

  What else do you hope to accomplish by reading this book?

  The Need to Grieve

  Among the myriad emotions you’re likely to experience when thinking

  about your childhood, grief may be chief among them. There are numer-

  ous losses associated with learning that someone as important to you as a parent struggles with mental and emotional challenges. Grief is a normal

  and natural response to loss, such as the death of a loved one. It is also possible to grieve in response to a figurative death, such as the loss of a relationship or the loss of the hopes and expectations you had for a

  relationship.

  For adult children of a parent with emotional deficits, this is a com-

  mon experience. They grieve for what they never had, or what they may

  have had only periodically: a stable, validating, and reliable caretaker who allowed them to consistently feel loved, accepted, valued, and respected.

  Adult children may grieve for a lost childhood, since they may have

  assumed the role of a miniature adult and parent to their parent.

  Parentified children, raised by their parents to be the caretakers, have to grow up quickly, seemingly bypassing the years when children are playful, free, and curious. As adults, they may feel old, tired, and have few memories of their childhood.

  Adult children may also grieve over the realization that they may not

  have been loved for who they were; instead love was conditional, based

  on looks, intelligence, behavior, or a parent’s whim. In Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller writes:

  It is one of the turning points in therapy when the patient

  comes to the emotional insight that all the love she has captured

  with so much effort and self-denial was not meant for her as she

  really was, that the admiration for her beauty and achievements

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  Surviving a Borderline Parent

  was aimed at this beauty and these achievements and not at the

  child herself. In therapy, the small and lonely child that is hid-

  den behind her achievements wakes up and asks: “What would

  have happened if I had appeared before you sad, needy, angry,

  furious? Where would your love have been then? And I was all

  these things as well. Does this mean that it was not really me

  you loved, but only what I pretended to be? The well-behaved,

  reliable, empathic, understanding, and convenient child, who in

  fact was never a child at all? What became of my childhood?

  Have I not been cheated out of it? I can never return to it. I can

  never make up for it.” (1996, p. 39)

  Adult children may grieve too for the loss of their own false self, the

  mask they learned to wear to secure a parent’s love. After a while, the

  mask becomes nearly indistinguishable, even to the child who’s wearing it, and the thought of removing it to reveal the real self underneath can be

  overwhelming. “Who am I if I’m not my father’s [or mother’s] little girl?”

  “Who am I if I’m sad, needy, angry, furious?”

  Adult children may grieve over the idealized mother or father they

  never had. They may grieve at suddenly understanding that even if they

  thought they had a close relationship, it may have been due to the mask

  they wore, to how they focused on a parent’s needs and denied their own.

  Adult children may grieve for their parent, who likely experienced

  trauma and/or didn’t receive unconditional love, acceptance, or validation himself. And they may grieve as they watch their pa
rent struggle with

  BPD. “I wouldn’t wish this [disorder] on my worst enemy,” said one man

  about his mother. “For her to act the way she does, she can’t feel good

  about herself. There’s no way she could possibly be happy or feel secure.

  Yeah, I feel robbed at times, but I still feel sad for her because I know she’s been robbed too.”

  Finally, adult children may grieve over their disillusionment with the

  other parent for not protecting them, saving them, or for not validating

  their experience with the abusive or neglectful parent. “My father in effect threw us to the wolves,” says Johanna, who had a mother with BPD. “He

  kowtowed to her, to the point of defending her after she’d said something horrible to one of us—‘Oh, she didn’t really mean it,’ or ‘Well, you really shouldn’t have done (or said) that to her.’ I’m sure he did that to keep the peace, but I wish he had stood up for us. I mean, we were children, his

  children, and he was the parent—wasn’t that his responsibility?” Others

  may grieve for the nonborderline parent who left the home or for a parent who was unable to protect them due to her own mental health issues or

  other reasons.

  Grieving a Lost Childhood

  49

  Dealing with Grief

  When it comes to dealing with grief, there’s no magic formula.

  Everyone grieves differently, for varying periods of time. There’s no finish line for grief. You may go for months or years thinking you’ve dealt with your feelings, only to be reminded by a memory, a photograph, something

  someone says to you, that you’re not quite done yet. “When I see certain

  movies or a mother being very patient and loving toward her child, I’m

  sometimes sad about what might have been,” says Patricia, who has a

  mother diagnosed with BPD. “I accept that this is the way things are and

  they can’t change. I know that I’ll never have a real mother. I’ve done a lot of work on this issue. But I’m still sad sometimes.”

  In her seminal work on grief, On Death and Dying, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1997) identified five stages that define the path to

  acceptance of death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

  The stages don’t occur in a precise order, to the same degree or for the

  same length of time. Grief is a long process and one that’s unique to each of us.