There are parallels to the grief you experience for the death of a liv-
ing relationship—where the person is not only alive but a part of your life in some way—yet you also grieve for the dashed hope, the deflated expectations, the disappointment at realizing you won’t ever have the relationship with your parent that you envisioned (or that society has envisioned for you).
As you continue to read and work through grief, it’s important to
have someone to work with—a therapist or a trusted, insightful friend—or
at the very least, a journal you contribute to often. The feelings can be overwhelming at times, and many adult children report sinking into a
deep depression upon learning about their parent’s illness and beginning
to work through the accompanying emotions. (If this happens to you, it’s
important that you seek professional help.)
One of the challenges to grieving are the beliefs you may hold about
loss. Think about the lessons you learned about loss as a child: if you lost a dog, you may have gleaned that it’s okay to cry a little, but that you
should also bury the dog, get a new one, and get over it. If you lost a
favorite stuffed animal or a friend disappointed you, you may have
learned that “these things happen” or that “big kids don’t cry.” “Get over it,” “Don’t dwell on the negative,” “Put on a happy face and you’ll feel
better,” “The past is the past, and there’s nothing you can do about it
now” are all messages you may have internalized. If you lost faith in a
favorite teacher or another adult disappointed you, the message you may
50
Surviving a Borderline Parent
have gotten loud and clear was not to trust adults or have such high
expectations.
Here are some other messages you may have received about loss:
7 Bury your feelings; your feelings are too strong or unreasonable;
no one else has them.
7 Replace the loss; find someone (or something) else who can give
you what you want.
7 Grieve alone; no one wants to hear about your grief—it’s
depressing and sounds like whining. People will think you’re
weak.
7 Just give it time; you’ll get over it if you don’t dwell on it.
STOP AND THINK: Messages about Loss
Which of the above messages about grief and loss have you heard from
family, friends, the media and/or have come to believe yourself? What
other beliefs about grief and loss do you hold, and where do you think
they came from?
Telling It Like It Is
When faced with a person’s grief, most well-meaning friends and
relatives want you to take their advice so they can feel more effective.
They want you to keep your sense of optimism, and they think that deny-
ing or keeping busy to avoid painful feelings helps. But dealing with grief is about improving your ability to communicate the truth, to yourself first and foremost.
STOP AND THINK: Revealing the Truth
Itemize the losses you experienced with your parent. Using a time line or a log format in your journal, mentally scan your life for perceived losses.
What are you grieving for? For example, “I’m grieving for the childhood I missed. I shouldn’t have had to cook and clean for my drunk, depressed
parent when I was eleven” or “I’m grieving because my mother is too dis-
ruptive to be invited to my upcoming wedding.”
Note what feelings are associated with each loss. In the examples
above, accompanying emotions might include anger, resentment, sadness.
Grieving a Lost Childhood
51
Have some of your earlier beliefs about grief led you to deny your
feelings? If so, how will you think about your emotions differently now?
There are different ways of coming to terms with loss. Some of the
exercises below may help. Do all of them, or choose the one(s) that you
think will be most effective for you.
1. Write a letter (which you won’t necessarily send) to your parent
telling your truth. Explain the reasons for your grief and how you
feel. Some of your points may include
. what you experienced emotionally growing up
. what you needed and wanted
. positive interactions (reinforce the positive)
. making amends for anything you wish you could have said
or done differently
. expressing acceptance for what was and is, and acknowl-
edgement of the limitations your parent may have had
. identifying realistic expectations about the relationship
. the emotions and issues you’re experiencing as an adult in
response to your childhood experience.
2. You’re asked to write the eulogy for your parent’s funeral (you
can do this exercise even if your parent is alive). Without regard
for diplomacy or reprisals from other relatives, write your truth.
3. You’re asked to write a eulogy for your ideal parent’s funeral.
Write about the feelings associated with the loss of your expecta-
tions, hopes, and wishes.
After doing one or more of the above exercises, design a spiritual ceremony that will be meaningful to you to mark the figurative death of
the relationship as you knew it (and/or as you may have wished it). For
example, you could take the eulogy for your ideal parent (the third exer-
cise), light a candle memorializing his/her loss and then bury the letter.
Acceptance: Coming to Terms
with BPD
It may sound overly simplistic or obvious, but in order to move beyond
suffering in any area of your life, you must accept the situation as it is, whether you like it or not, think it’s fair or not, whether you have the
52
Surviving a Borderline Parent
power to change the circumstances or not. This concept of acceptance is
based in Buddhist beliefs. Psychologist Marsha Linehan suggests that
acceptance is “the way to turn suffering that cannot be tolerated into pain that can be tolerated. Pain is part of living; it can be emotional and it can be physical. Pain is nature’s way of signaling that something is wrong, or that something needs to be done” (Linehan 1993b, p. 102).
STOP AND THINK: Painful Signals
Consider the following examples of how pain may be a healthy response,
indicating to you that something needs to change:
. You were so busy this morning, you forgot to eat breakfast. Now
it’s 1 P.M. and you’re getting a headache.
. After yet another exchange of hurtful insults with your girlfriend,
you walk away with a lump in your throat and tightness in your
chest.
Can you think of examples in your life when physical or emotional
pain has been trying to tell you something?
What was your reaction to the pain? Did your reaction serve you
well? If you denied the pain, what were the results?
Acceptance doesn’t mean you approve; it doesn’t mean you’re happy
about something; it doesn’t mean you won’t work to change the situation
or your response to it, but it does mean that you acknowledge reality as it is—with all its sadness, humor, irony, and gifts—at a particular point in time.
Imagine you’re taking a calculus course, and struggling with the
homework assignments. But you deny that you’re having trouble. What
happens? You fall further behind and your frustration increases. If, on th
e other hand, you accept that you’re having a hard time, you can change.
You can ask the instructor for help. You can buy an additional textbook.
You can now start to make some improvement. Your acceptance, your
acknowledgment is the first step.
STOP AND THINK: Acceptance as Impetus
What are the issues with your borderline parent that continue to cause
you pain? List them in your journal.
Grieving a Lost Childhood
53
Now write a statement for each item you listed to acknowledge that
it’s a continuing source of suffering. For example: “I recognize that it still hurts when I think I’ll never have the mother-daughter relationship some
of my friends talk about.”
Facing the Stigma
Coming to terms with the realization that a parent may have had
BPD means facing the stigma of mental illness—not a pretty topic by soci-
ety’s standards. In fact it’s one that’s often the butt of jokes, the subject of gossip, or simply ignored because it makes people uncomfortable. And of
all mental illnesses, BPD is one of the most stigmatized, perhaps because the disorder often involves difficulty with anger, volatility, and mood
swings. Loved ones feel helpless, and clinicians don’t always identify the disorder. When they do, some don’t want to treat it.
What about Me?
Many adult children wonder whether they might have the disorder
as well. Chances are good that if you’re even asking the question, you
don’t, since those with the disorder often find it very difficult to take ownership of their thoughts, feelings, and actions. As Simon, thirty-four, says, “My father thought he was perfectly fine—it was just the rest of the world that was crazy.” And while studies have shown that genetics plays a role in the development of BPD, your DNA alone does not dictate
whether it will unfold; it takes a complex interplay of factors.
Still, being raised by a parent with perhaps severe emotional chal-
lenges and limitations may indeed have taught you some maladaptive ways
of seeing the world, of coping with distress, of relating to yourself and to others. Acknowledging this, identifying those beliefs and behaviors, and
then making changes can seem daunting.
Coming to terms with a parent’s illness can also be extremely painful
because adult children may see aspects of their parent in themselves.
You’ve probably heard people joke that as they get older they’ve become
“just like my mother (or father).” On a serious note, adult children may
see their parent’s eyes or other facial feature each time they look in the mirror, see their parent’s hands when they look at their own, hear their
parent’s voice when they speak, or see familiar mannerisms in their own
movements and expressions. “I’ve worked so hard to exorcise him from
54
Surviving a Borderline Parent
my life,” says Simon, “but every time I look in the mirror—we have the
same eyes and mouth—I can’t help but see him.”
Making Sense of Opposites
Facing the truth about a parent’s emotional challenges may also be
difficult for adult children because it entails acceptance of what may seem like polar opposites. A parent who was cruel or neglectful some or even
much of the time may also have had moments when she provided love and
comfort. This may cause you to question your experience since it’s hard to believe that a parent, who in some circumstances seemed functional, was
also capable of inflicting extreme physical or emotional pain in other circumstances. “I guess it wasn’t all bad. She could be a raging ogre, and I’d hide in the closet so she wouldn’t find me, but, you know, sometimes she
was a good mother,” says Deborah, a forty-three-year-old woman. “She’d
play with me or let me have friends over, and I do remember her giving
me hugs sometimes.” For adult children who witnessed the black-and-
white thinking or splitting of BPD, reconciling the two extremes may
prove especially difficult.
STOP AND THINK: Exploring Extremes
Think of a situation in which you yourself had quite different or seem-
ingly opposing reactions or feelings. What were the reasons (was it related to your thoughts, to the person or people involved, or something else
about the context, for example)?
Now imagine your reactions amplified by a factor of ten, or one
hundred. How do you think you’d feel?
The purpose of this exercise is to help you gain some insight into
how your parent might have been feeling during a situation where he
showed a seemingly contradictory or opposing reaction. Everyone has
some fluctuations in how they respond to circumstances they find stress-
ful, but for someone with BPD, who already tends toward extremes, the
fluctuation is magnified and sometimes has very little to do with the situation at hand. This isn’t to excuse the behavior, rather to help you understand what you may have experienced.
Grieving a Lost Childhood
55
Banishing Self-Blame
Part of accepting a parent’s affliction is understanding that how you were treated as a child wasn’t your fault; it had nothing to do with you being bad, but was about the disorder and the parent’s issues. Yet it’s extremely difficult to avoid self-blame. Children need to believe their parents will nurture and protect them. If the parents don’t nurture and protect, if they are physically or emotionally abusive, if they blame the child for their or the family’s problems, their children are left to believe it’s due to some inherent flaw in them rather than the parent’s deficits. To a child, who
derives most everything but the air she breathes from her mother and/or
father, it’s unthinkable to her that the parent can’t meet her needs—it
must be her fault. The thought pattern begins in infancy and is reinforced throughout childhood, leading to profound feelings of shame and
self-blame.
STOP AND THINK: Banishing Self-Blame
In Children of the Self-Absorbed, Nina Brown explains that even though a narcissistic parent may blame her adult child, you don’t need to blame
yourself for “not being perfect; failing to anticipate your parent’s needs or wants; appropriately meeting your own needs; being different or less satisfying than others; disappointing your parent” (p. 87).
On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “not at all” and 5 being “very much”)
evaluate how much you blame yourself for
being less than perfect
failing to satisfy your parent’s needs, desires, or expectations
asking for what you need
seeing and telling the truth
disappointing a parent
situations beyond your control, such as a family member’s ill-
ness or financial strains
Now consider to what degree you subscribe to the following beliefs
using the same 1 to 5 scale:
56
Surviving a Borderline Parent
If I had said/done . . . I could have changed my parent’s beliefs
about me.
My parent will accept me if I would only change . . .
My parent will change.
My parent ultimately knows what’s best for me. If I don’t meet
his/her expectations, I’ll never be satisfied with myself.
Deep down, I know I’m defective in some way.
I deserve to feel the shame I feel.
If I explain how I feel to my parent the right way, I’ll be able
to help him/her change.
&
nbsp; If I were just more loving toward my parents, they’d come
around.
Now take each of the above beliefs for which you answered with a 2
or higher and challenge it. Write your responses in your journal. For
example, using the first belief: “If I had said/done . . . I could have
changed my parent’s beliefs about me,” your challenge might be: “There is nothing I could have said or done—or could say or do today—that would
have changed my parent.” Or “Even if I had been the world’s most perfect
child, my parent would have found fault with something because it wasn’t
about me at all—it was about him.”
While it’s indeed possible for those with BPD to change their feel-
ings, beliefs, and behaviors, it’s not likely, especially after so many years.
As you try to accept your situation and move beyond it, you must give up
the hope, the fantasy, the wish, that your parent will change significantly.
Think of it this way: If they do change, it will be a wonderful gift, a
bonus, but it’s not something you can realistically expect.
Feeling What You Feel
Yet another challenge of coming to terms with a parent’s mental illness
may be feeling and accepting your own emotions. It’s not uncommon for
parents with BPD to deny or invalidate the emotions of others when they
perceive those emotions as threatening. Adult children often remember
how they weren’t allowed to express feelings. As a result of keeping your emotions bottled up for years, you may have come to block them, hide
Grieving a Lost Childhood
57
them, deny them, numb out with food, drugs, or alcohol, and you may
have trouble
7 identifying your emotions
7 recognizing when you’re beginning to feel an emotion
7 experiencing an emotion
7 accepting that you feel an emotion
7 trusting yourself to express your feelings to others
7 feeling safe to express emotions to others
You may also have trouble managing your emotions.
7 Do you feel that you’re controlled by your emotions?
7 Do you feel out of control when you’re feeling upset, anxious,
angry, or sad?
7 Do your emotions sometimes feel like they’ll last forever?
7 Do you say or do things when you’re very emotional that you
regret later?
Surviving the Borderline Parent Page 8
