Surviving the Borderline Parent

by Freda Friedman

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  Surviving a Borderline Parent

  reactions reinforce your core beliefs. They act as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  They allow you to say, “See, I really am bitter.”

  That’s the bad news. The good news is that once you can identify

  and challenge such beliefs, your experience changes too. As you stop see-

  ing yourself as a bitter, unlovable person, you’ll increasingly act with

  openness and acceptance towards others. People will notice and respond

  in much the same way. You’ll seek out healthier folks to surround yourself with and, rather than reinforce your earlier beliefs, new experiences will help you change them.

  It’s Really Possible

  With negative or inaccurate core beliefs, it’s hard to imagine change.

  It’s hard to envision what your life could be like with healthier, more

  self-supporting core beliefs. It’s hard to imagine all that’s possible.

  But it can be done. You’ve probably heard that your personality is

  pretty much fully developed and ensconced by the time you’re just a few

  years old. However, some recent research has found otherwise—personal-

  ity actually evolves over a lifetime (Helson 2002). Additional research has shown that your thoughts and beliefs have a tremendous impact on the

  happiness, contentment, and meaningfulness you experience in life

  (Seligman 2002). So you’re not stuck, not destined to be bitter, unlovable, or any other negative self-perception you may hold.

  STOP AND THINK: Imagine There’s No Limit

  Using these categories of responses—difficulty trusting, shame, guilt, negative self-concept, boundary identification, judgment, polarized thinking, social deficits, difficulty managing emotions, or self-harming or

  self-defeating behaviors—what are one or two specific issues that resonate for you and really get in your way? For example, you might think of the

  anxiety you frequently feel—an example of a social deficit and a negative self-concept—which keeps you from acting with assertiveness at work. As

  a result, you’ve gotten the most undesirable projects when your boss delegates assignments.

  Now imagine life without those disabling thoughts and/or behaviors.

  If that’s too hard, imagine recognizing those thoughts and feelings but telling yourself that that’s your old habitual pattern of thinking, and doesn’t necessarily reflect how other people feel about you. Specifically, imagine the scenario in which, for example, you feel anxious but picture yourself feeling slightly less so and able to feel more confident doing something to

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  change the outcome. Imagine raising your hand in a meeting and saying

  that the project you were given to manage isn’t the best fit for your skills and strengths, and instead you’d like to manage another one that was discussed. Imagine that your boss agrees and suggests that you two talk about your strengths further so that she can give you more suitable assignments in the future.

  Imagine what you’d feel in such a situation. Imagine that in spite of

  feeling quite anxious, you also notice a boost in your confidence and

  energy level. Do the feelings you’re experiencing and the potential out-

  come seem like motivation to work on this issue?

  Do this visualization for each issue you wrote down.

  STOP AND THINK: Create Your Vision

  Set aside some time alone to relax and reflect on what you’d like your life to be like—the sky’s the limit. What do you want to do? How do you

  want to live? Who do you want to be with? What kind of person do you

  want to be?

  Pick a medium of expression that suits you, such as paint, collage,

  pen and ink, a musical instrument or composition, or writing, and create a representation of your vision.

  The Opposite Might Detract

  In your effort to identify and challenge the messages you received

  and your core beliefs, you might be tempted to do things that are in direct opposition to your parent’s beliefs and expectations for you. For instance, if your father wanted you to be a physician, you might rebel and decide to become a sculptor, an occupation your father disdained. Or if your

  mother told you you’d look much better with long hair, you might have

  cut all of yours off just to prove her wrong.

  Defining your own self, though, and making changes in your life

  isn’t just about acting in opposition or defiance to a difficult parent. Even saying “I don’t want to be anything like my mother” may actually limit your ability to realize your own potential. Again, no one is entirely good or entirely bad. Perhaps your parent was a good story-teller and adept at handling people in certain situations. By saying you won’t be anything like her, you may be denying yourself those opportunities. In a way, you may

  still be letting a parent define who you are or who you aren’t. Defining

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  your own self and making changes are, instead, about being true to your

  inner resources, your goals and dreams.

  Accepting Limits

  While the world is your oyster, and you have the opportunity now

  to define yourself, your choices, your life, reality is that not all the

  changes you want to make may be realistic or possible, for a variety of

  reasons. Some you may not feel ready to address, and some may not

  change drastically even if you give them your all.

  Recent research has shown that our moods and temperament do

  have some genetic underpinnings. Just how much isn’t exactly clear.

  While some shyness, for example, may be learned, some may be a

  part of your makeup. It’s unrealistic to think that if you’ve long been a shy person that you’ll suddenly feel at ease running up to strangers at a big party to start a conversation. On the other hand, it is realistic to think that you can do things to lessen your discomfort. Maybe you would feel more

  comfortable if you arrived early, before the party got crowded. Or you

  could offer to help the host or hostess with some task that would take

  your mind off feeling ill at ease. You could think of some conversation

  topics and scan the newspaper for interesting news items to discuss with

  other guests. A goal of complete change in any area of your life may be

  unrealistic, but a goal to lessen the troublesome thought patterns and behaviors, to take your anxiety down a notch, to feel slightly more confident at parties, may be attainable.

  As we’ve discussed elsewhere in this book, acceptance plays a key

  role in the process you’re going through. That means showing your-

  self—flaws and all—compassion. It means acknowledging the current situ-

  ation (“Granted, I do . . . , and I have some changes I want to make in

  that area”) without making judgments (“I should have mastered this a long time ago; I’m always so inept”). Acceptance doesn’t mean complacency. It doesn’t mean you won’t work to make things different. It means that, here and now, this is the way things are, which is okay.

  STOP AND THINK: Find Your Balance

  Refer back to those issue(s) you identified in the Stop and Think: Imagine There’s No Limit exercise. Write an observation for each one that includes both a statement of the situation as it currently is (without judgments) as well as your desire or intention to change it. For example, “I may not like that I tend toward making quick, negative judgments about people when I

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  first meet them, but I’m more aware of it now and I am going to continue

  to work on
it” or “I may not be the most confident, outgoing, comfortable person at parties, but I go anyway—I don’t sit home because of my discomfort, and I’m little by little feeling more confident.”

  Being Your Own Caretaker

  If you had insufficient or inconsistent nurturing from a parent when you

  were a child, you may still be dealing with feelings of grief, anger, and resentment over the lack of unconditional love. You may still crave the

  love and nurturing that children need and deserve. But it’s unrealistic at this point in your life to expect unconditional love from anyone other

  than yourself. Certainly, you should expect—you deserve—love and nur-

  turing from those close to you (as well as companionship, respect, sup-

  port, validation, patience, and acceptance), but truly unconditional love and selfless nurturing—it’s no one’s responsibility but your own to provide now.

  How to Nurture Yourself

  You may not have had a good role model for learning how to nur-

  ture yourself, but you may feel quite comfortable taking on the role of

  nurturing others. Just as you would do for your own child, taking care of yourself in the sense of providing unconditional love involves developing your strengths and accepting your weaknesses without judgment. It

  involves tapping your own inner resources, as well as seeking healthy

  external sources for some of what you need. Think of a plant that grows

  in a drought-prone area, where it doesn’t get as much water as it really

  needs. The plant survives, though, on less water (it may even have become hardier for its experience); it has adapted by taking additional moisture from the air through its leaves and extending its roots further under the earth. Just like this plant, you can seek additional sources of nourishment beyond what your parent provided. You can accept the nurturing offered

  by friends, by other relatives, by yourself—by accepting yourself as you

  are and through engaging in those activities that bring you pleasure and

  make you feel competent.

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  STOP AND THINK: Go to the Source

  Consider some of the people in your life and the ways they nourish you.

  Who is the first person you call when you have good news to share? Who

  do you vent to? Who do you like to joke around with the most? Who’s

  your biggest cheerleader? Who helps you feel a sense of peace when

  you’re together? Who seems to really get what you’re about, and vice

  versa? Write down each person’s name and describe the ways in which

  you call upon him for support.

  Think of how you nurture others. Make a list of the people in your

  life that you nourish with your words, your deeds, or simply your com-

  pany. For each, describe how you offer sustenance. Are you there to listen to problems? Do you celebrate that person’s good news? Do you help

  brainstorm solutions to challenges? Do you validate her feelings? Offer

  support? Do unsolicited favors?

  Go back through your list. Are there some ways in which you nur-

  ture others that you could apply to your own life? By way of example,

  you agree to drive carpool once a week for your friend who has to work

  late every Thursday. Can you think of a favor you could do for yourself

  on a weekly basis that would help you in a similar way? Could you treat

  yourself to takeout on a night you work late, or once a week when you

  just don’t feel like cooking? Could you enlist a family member to do a

  weekly chore that you dread doing? Write down the ideas you come up

  with, and then work on putting them into practice. What can you start

  doing today, this week, this month?

  Old Habits Die Hard

  Your habitual ways of thinking, of seeing the world, of behaving, are the result of a number of things: the messages you received as a child; the subsequent core beliefs you developed; and the messages you continually

  communicate to yourself, to and from your own inner critic.

  Your inner critic, unfortunately, may have a lot of tools at its dis-

  posal to reinforce your negative perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, and

  actions, including the following, adapted from Self-Esteem (McKay and Fanning 2000).

  Overgeneralization. Drawing universal conclusions from a single or small (and not representative) sampling of incidents. For example, if a colleague arrives late to a meeting, you conclude, “He’s always late.” Watch out for always and never. They signal that your inner critic is at work.

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  Global labeling. Using all-encompassing and/or pejorative labels to describe someone or something. If someone accidentally bumps into you

  in a store, you think, “What a jerk.” Signals that your inner critic is glob-ally labeling include broad, sweeping absolute statements about a person

  or incident: “She’s a bitch”; “He’s a computer nerd”; “I’m incapable of

  doing that.”

  Filtering. Selectively focusing on the negative while disregarding the positive. (Diane, a woman raised by a mother with BPD traits, likened filtering to feeling like she was covered in room-darkening shades—“the good stuff

  [light] just doesn’t get through. You have to really be more like

  light-filtering shades, and let at least as much of the good in as the bad.”) Signals of filtering include self-deprecating statements and minimizing

  accomplishments. “Oh, it was nothing”; “It really wasn’t that big a deal.”

  Polarized thinking. Seeing things in all-or-nothing, black-and-white terms and categories: Life is fantastic, or it’s terrible. You need to do things just right or you’re no good. Signals of polarized thinking include words such as “always” and “never,” “can” and “can’t,” “should” and “shouldn’t,”

  “all” or “none,” and hyperbolic phrases like, “It’s the best,” “It’s the

  worst,” “You’re the greatest,” or “He’s a terrible person.”

  Personalization. Thinking (assuming) that everything has to do with you.

  The budget for a program you oversee at work is cut, and you believe that your boss is trying to send you a message about the quality of your work.

  Signals include frequently asking, “Are you angry at me?”, “Did I do

  something wrong?” and/or feeling that things are your fault or directed at you when they’re not.

  Control fallacies. Feeling like you have complete responsibility for everyone and everything and/or feeling like you have no control, as if you’re a victim of circumstance. You notice tensions rising during a dinner at a

  restaurant with your borderline parent, and so you feel you have to

  appease him by agreeing to stay longer, and you pick up the tab. Signals

  include feeling guilty or victimized, frequently apologizing for letting others down.

  Catastrophizing. Expecting the worst to happen. You’re on guard against the worst possible outcome and assume that crises will ensue. Your boyfriend is late coming over one night, and you start thinking that he must have been in an accident or cheating on you. Signals include asking, “But

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  what if . . . ?” and fatalistic statements such as, “I don’t know how I’ll survive if that happens” or “I’ll lose absolutely everything.”

  Emotional reasoning. Assuming “feelings equal facts” (Kreger and Mason 1998), that things are the way you feel about them. If you feel unworthy of praise from your spouse, you assume that you truly don’t deserve it.

  Signals include a changing self-concept based on temporary conditions

 
such as mood and emotions, acting on an emotion and then discovering

  your feelings and impressions weren’t really based on the truth after all.

  STOP AND THINK: Challenge the Critic

  Consider which of the cognitive distortions above your inner critic might use to maintain the status quo. For each one, write a recent example of

  the critic at work. For instance, if your son chose to watch TV instead of doing his homework first, you might have thought or said, “Michael never

  does his homework when he’s supposed to,” when really there have only

  been a couple of times when he hasn’t.

  Now challenge the distortion and rewrite the statement. You can do

  this by asking yourself if it’s really true. Are there exceptions? Might there be another way to look at the issue? Could you have made an incorrect

  assumption? Using the previous example, you might instead think or say,

  “Michael usually does his homework before he turns on the TV. I wonder

  if something is bothering him…Maybe he’s tired and needs to relax first.”

  Develop your own list of responses to the critic, affirmations that

  you can repeat whenever you catch yourself in a negative pattern of thinking. Here are a few examples to prompt your list:

  . I don’t always do anything; there are exceptions.

  . I don’t never do or not do anything; there are exceptions.

  . It’s not fair to make assumptions; I need to find out the facts

  first.

  . Everyone makes an isolated mistake or two.

  . Come to think of it, I could just as easily choose to see the glass

  half full instead of half empty.

  . Because I feel a certain way about something doesn’t make it

  absolutely true. Feeling and being are two different things.

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  . It’s not always about me. People have their own reasons for doing

  what they do—I don’t have to take it personally all of the time.

  . It’s not the end of the world. I’ll find a solution.

  Planning Your Work

  Now that you’re becoming increasingly aware of the cognitive dis-

  tortions that reinforce the issues and patterns you’ve identified, the next step is to prioritize how you want to address them. It bears repeating here that change occurs slowly over time, and that you can’t expect to break