Surviving the Borderline Parent

by Freda Friedman

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  Surviving a Borderline Parent

  marriages, hospitalizations (for physical or mental reasons), and so on.

  You’ll also want to know what your parents’ childhoods were like, as well as how others saw you as a child.

  The following list contains some sample questions, just to get you

  thinking:

  7 Why did your family move from . . . to . . . ?

  7 Why was your sister sent to live with . . . ?

  7 How come there are no pictures of . . . around? Or how come

  . . . is never smiling in pictures?

  7 How come your mother never spoke to (or of) . . . ?

  7 How come . . . would get so angry whenever anyone mentioned

  . . .’s name?

  7 What was . . . like? What was his/her childhood like? Others said

  h/she was . . . ; why might that be?

  STOP AND THINK: The Reporter’s-Eye View

  . Pretend you’re a journalist and you were just assigned a story

  about a family (yours) and its dynamics. As you think about your

  investigation, what do you want to know? What are the family

  secrets? Who do you want to learn more about? What mysteries

  intrigue you? What’s the story of this family? What are some

  recurrent themes and patterns?

  . Decide whom you want to speak with and from what other

  sources you’ll gather information.

  . What questions will you ask?

  . As you investigate, take notes and also write in your journal

  about your own reactions to the project.

  . Write the story of this family (imagine you have a kind editor—it

  can be any length, style, and format you want).

  . Is the story you’ve written different from the story you believed

  as a child and as an adult? If so, how?

  . Are there beliefs you held about your family or any of its mem-

  bers that you can challenge now? Are there any beliefs you’ve

  held that you can confirm as a result of your research?

  Reconstructing the Past, Assessing the Present

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  Your Role in the Family Drama

  Things may look very different to you now as an independently

  thinking adult than they did when you were a child. As you challenge

  some of what you previously held to be true, you may realize that judg-

  ments you made about people or things you did were unfair. Where possi-

  ble, you may want to consider making contact with those people, perhaps

  to hear their side of the story or to apologize or to simply call a truce and try to navigate a new relationship based upon who you both are now.

  Ricardo recalls how when he was about ten his mother called the

  police because she wanted his father to leave (she was planning to initiate divorce proceedings). She told Ricardo she expected him to back up her

  story, which wasn’t entirely true, and say that he’d seen his father hit her.

  He did as he was told, and his father was arrested and spent a few days in jail. By the time he got out, Ricardo’s mother had taken him and his siblings and moved across the country. He didn’t see his father for more than fifteen years.

  “I felt guilty for years,” he says. “I lied to the police, and I contrib-

  uted to something that caused my father a lot of pain—he lost his job after the arrest. And the separation from him was hard on me. He wasn’t a perfect parent, but no one is. He didn’t deserve to lose his family for so long.

  I know I was young, and I was following what I was told to do, but it did-n’t ease the guilt and it doesn’t stop me from wondering what could have

  been. It’s hard to think about. It was tragic, but you can’t change the past.

  You just have to go on with what you have left.”

  When Ricardo’s son was born, he contacted his father to tell him.

  Over time, the two reconciled. Ricardo’s father told him he was never

  angry at him for lying to the police; he knew his mother had put him up

  to it, and he didn’t hold the ten-year-old responsible. “Having the opportunity to talk to him, to hear that from him, made all the difference in the world,” said Ricardo.

  As with any loss, you may experience grief over a separation or con-

  flict with a family member that resulted from the borderline-like behavior in your family. You may also experience frustration at not being able to

  reconstruct the past entirely. There may be many questions to which you

  can’t get satisfying answers, for any number of reasons. The people

  involved may have died; they may not wish to have contact with you. You

  may hear several accounts of the same incident and not know whose ver-

  sion is right (chances are good there are elements of truth in them all).

  With some questions you have, it may just prove impossible to ever really know the answers.

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  So, in addition to working through grief and loss, you may also need

  to practice acceptance. You may not like the answers you’ve found. You

  may not feel good about how things played out. You may regret things

  that you said or did or that were said or done to you. But now that you

  are no longer a child, you have a choice about how you handle these situations from here on.

  Will the Real You Please Stand Up?

  Who are you? It sounds like a simple question, doesn’t it? You know your

  name, you know where you live, you know what you do for a living, how

  you spend your days, whether you’re a mother or father, aunt or uncle,

  son, sister, friend. But who are you? As the child of a parent with BPD

  and/or other emotional and cognitive difficulties, it may be surprisingly difficult to answer this question. You likely didn’t have much mirroring, or validation, when you were young, which babies need in order to know

  where they stand in the world, that their feelings and observations and

  perceptions are healthy and normal. Without that early mirroring, it was

  difficult to see yourself, to know yourself.

  The mask you may have worn might have been the result of other

  things as well. As a child, you wanted to please. If Mommy wanted a little ballerina for a daughter, you tried hard to excel in ballet class, even

  though you really wanted to be out playing kickball or at home reading a

  book. If Dad needed someone to guide him into the house when he was

  too drunk to find his way from the garage, you probably associated being

  a good person with downplaying your own feelings and needs.

  You may also have served as a video screen of sorts when your par-

  ent projected the traits or feelings she had trouble facing in herself onto you. For example, if your mother was frequently angry but had trouble

  owning it, she may have accused you of being angry. As a child, when a

  parent tells you you’re a certain way or you have a certain problem, well, you usually believe it.

  In dysfunctional families of all sorts, it can be easier at times to sim-

  ply suppress your feelings. They’re not often validated anyway, and given the chaos, the rules, the inconsistency, the hurt, anger, and frustration, life may seem a whole lot simpler without feelings.

  In all these ways, you may have lost touch with your true self.

  Reconstructing the Past, Assessing the Present

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  STOP AND THINK: Taking in Messages

  Think about what messages you received from your parent about who you

  were and who you should be. Write them in your journal. Examples might

  include mess
ages like the following, which came from adult children,

  recalling what a parent told them.

  . “You’re too smart to be an artist. You should go to law school

  and practice law. If you still want to be an artist, you can pursue

  it later. You’re a good painter, but you’re not naturally gifted.

  There are others out there who are.”

  . “I really hope you can afford to eat out a lot when you’re on

  your own—you’re a terrible cook.”

  . “You’re really not the nurturing kind. You probably won’t make

  the best parent.”

  . “You’re cold, and you’ll never have a good relationship. No one

  will ever love you.”

  . “You’re selfish (or clumsy, accident-prone, sickly).”

  . “You’re just like me.”

  . “You’re nothing like me.”

  . “You’re a slut.”

  Where and how did you learn the messages you received? To what

  extent do you believe them? Do you find them difficult to change, even

  when you know they’re not true?

  Remember, the messages you received didn’t have to be as direct as

  an explicit statement. You picked up signals from how others treated you, from their body language, from what you overheard them say to others,

  and so on. If you got the message that you were a cold person, for

  instance, you may not be able to recall a specific time when someone told you that you were cold. You absorbed the message in other ways.

  You’re in There, Somewhere

  A fundamental skill for surviving a parent with borderline traits is

  sifting. Think of the process of panning for gold. You scoop the pan in a

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  stream and pull up a lot of slimy rocks and mud. Shake your pan (gently), though, and the muck and pebbles fall through. You’re left with, hopefully, nuggets of gold and other minerals (what’s left may not seem like all gold to you, but all minerals have valuable properties). In the past few

  chapters, you’ve been starting to go through much the same process. Your

  authentic self is the gold and minerals. The muck, mud, slime, and pebbles are the guilt, blame, criticism, anger, resentment, fears, and projections you have lived with that sift out as you shake the pan. The questions and exercises that follow will help you isolate those valuable nuggets of gold and other natural resources.

  The sifting process doesn’t happen all at once (it’s not something

  you can start and finish using an exercise in this, or any, book in an evening), but rather it happens little by little, over time. One day you might remember that you used to love pistachio ice cream, but you never ate it

  at home or ordered it in restaurants because your father was allergic to

  nuts and he’d always make some annoying remark. And so you reacquaint

  yourself with pistachio ice cream. A few weeks later, you might cook a

  wonderful dinner for a few friends and realize that you are a good cook, despite how your parent used to tease you for “screwing up a box of mac-aroni and cheese.” Maybe you decide to get some different cookbooks

  from the library to experiment. Or you might take a class through your

  community college or a culinary arts program. Perhaps a few weeks later,

  you catch yourself singing along with the radio and realize you don’t

  sound half bad. You can clearly remember your mother telling you in sec-

  ond grade that you couldn’t carry a tune and didn’t have a sense of

  rhythm, for that matter, either. That was the last time you ever let anyone hear you sing or watch you dance. But now you realize that maybe you

  can. And even if you’re not destined for a career in opera, there’s no reason you can’t belt it out in the car, in the shower, with your friends or kids.

  You may find that once you’re open to seeing things, yourself, in a

  new light, that these discoveries, both mundane and weighty, pop up often and at odd times—while you’re walking the dog, during coffee and a chat

  with a good friend, in the middle of the night, as a result of a dream. You might want to keep a small notepad nearby to record your insights. The

  process of documenting them may help them become more real to you.

  Then you can go eat pistachio ice cream, cook a delicious meal, or do

  whatever it is that will reinforce your insights. Enjoy the process too.

  Think of this as cultivating a relationship with yourself, discovering new things all the time. It can be exhilarating!

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  STOP AND THINK: Date Night (or Day)

  On a calendar, organizer, or whatever tool you use to manage your sched-

  ule, set aside time on a regular basis to do something special—alone.

  These dates with yourself can be once a month, once a week, even once a

  day. Use the time for an activity you enjoy (taking your dog for an extra long walk or hike, having a cup of coffee at a bookstore, and so on) or

  simply to sit and think, to get to know yourself better.

  In your journal, jot down the qualities that for you contribute to a

  healthy relationship. Examples include respect, understanding, patience,

  support, acceptance. As often as you can, but especially during the time

  you set aside, be sure to make a concerted effort to foster those qualities in your relationship with yourself.

  STOP AND THINK: Shaking the Pan for . . .

  The sifting process isn’t one you can (or should) force. And the hardest

  part about it is that you may not realize what you should be sifting out

  and keeping in, it’s so ingrained. However, you may find that once you

  start thinking about and even challenging long-held parts of yourself,

  you’ll have periods of time where the insights come in quick succession.

  The following list includes some of the areas to consider:

  . your beliefs—about spirituality, material possessions, politics,

  social issues

  . your feelings—what makes you happy, sad, angry, frightened,

  anxious?

  . your opinions

  . your preferences

  . your interests

  . your priorities (and, likewise, your obligations). What things do

  you do because you feel you should do them; which do you do

  because they’re important to you and you want to?

  . your goals

  . your strengths

  . your talents

  . your hobbies.

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  In your journal, write down any thoughts that come to mind imme-

  diately that you want to challenge—the messages you received and what

  you believed. As others come to you, whenever they may come to you, jot

  them down too.

  Note how your views now differ from the views you held before.

  Write a statement for each that affirms what you’ve discovered. For

  instance, “I used to feel self-conscious about my singing voice. Ever since second grade, I wouldn’t sing out loud if anyone was around. Now I realize I don’t have to sing perfectly, but my voice sounds good. I like to sing.

  I may even join a community choir.”

  STOP AND THINK: Inside or Out?

  It may be helpful to identify your true self visually and more

  actively, using this exercise adapted from Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin (Katherine 1993). You’ll need a twenty-five-foot piece of string or twine and a lot of index cards. Make a large circle on the ground with the string. On the index cards, write your preferences, beliefs, hobbies, talents,
goals, opinions, interests, dislikes, what makes you happy, sad, and mad (only one idea per card). For instance, you might write “rooms

  painted warm colors” on one card. On another you might write “whole

  wheat bread.” On another, “funny people.” You might have other cards

  that read “spend more time with friends”; “read Billy a bedtime story each night”; “visit Dad at least once a month”; “get Billy to school on time

  each day.”

  When you’ve made all your cards, stand inside the circle. Take one

  card at a time, and if it contains something that indeed represents you or something you want as part of your life, put it on the floor inside the circle. If the card contains something that doesn’t represent you, or some-

  thing you want out of your life, place it outside the border of the circle. If after thinking about it, you realize you really don’t like whole wheat bread after all, place that card outside the circle. Cards with high priorities go inside the circle. As we’ve said before, you get to decide now.

  Keep this exercise in mind whenever you’re faced with a choice

  you’re not sure how to make. For example, a colleague asks you to com-

  mit to helping him with a long-term project at work. You feel obligated to help, yet at the same time, you already work long hours and this colleague isn’t your favorite person in the world. Visualize an index card with the scenario written on it, such as, “Commit to helping Roger with his project and working late for the next three months.” Do you put the card inside

  or outside your metaphorical circle?

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  STOP AND THINK:

  What Do You Do to Be You?

  Without really thinking about it, you may do many things on a daily basis that give you pleasure, that calm and soothe you, that help you express

  yourself emotionally or creatively, that help you achieve a state of flow (that sense that you’re on a roll, when you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing that you lose all track of time).

  Stop and think about what some of those things are for you. What

  do you do that makes you feel grounded? Examples might include

  . yoga

  . hiking

  . running

  . spending time with friends

  . enjoying a good bottle of wine

  . taking a bath with essential oils

  . watching a football game and rooting for your alma mater