Parents
and Adult Children React to My Descriptions of Borderline Family Dynamics
In my post about the
family dynamics of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), I describe the role
of the spoiler. A child or adult
child of a family that exhibits the family patterns described in my posts on
this subject begins to behave in ways which turns things around. The child invalidates
the parents' efforts to "help" or "take care of them" in nasty ways. He or she essentially responds to invalidation by
making comments that invalidate the parent right back.
The reason the children do this is because they believe the parents need a child to be a target for
their anger, and volunteer for the gig. They give the parents just cause by behaving in unreasonable and
infuriating ways.
When it comes to the people who make comments on my posts on this and similar subjects, it always fascinates
me how parents usually think I am putting all the blame on them for the family
problems, while the adult children with the disorder react to the exact same post
by thinking I am putting all the blame on them!
Family systems therapists used the
term punctuation to describe these types of reactions. People take
something that is an ongoing problem created by continual reactions to feedback from two people with each other, and look at just one isolated segment of it - thereby breaking up a process artificially into misleading cause
and effect relationships. They then react accordingly.
Of course, there are
readers who do see the whole of the patterns in their lives but still do not know how to put a stop to
them. In many cases the problems continue in spite of honest declarations of personal responsibility
and even apologies -because there continue to be underlying issues that remain unaddressed.
I have reproduced two
comments and my replies which illustrate these phenomena quite well. The first
comment doubles as a description of spoiling behavior which illustrates it far
better than I ever have.
The Blame Game
Submitted by A Mother of a Possibly BPD Child on November 6, 2016 - 11:39am
Regarding blaming the
parents for "invalidating" feelings: I think it's a dangerous idea
that all feelings are valid. Does anyone truly believe this?
When you are dealing
with someone whose thinking is so distorted that they misperceive all your
motives and react to your natural withdrawal as abandonment after they have
been screaming abuse at you for an hour, you will just distort your own
thoughts if you try to get into their head. If I say to my daughter "When
you told me X it hurt my feelings," she often perceives that as an attack
and starts to mock me: "Oh did that hurt your feelings? POOR YOU!"
This can often escalate, and soon she is telling me what a horrible parent I
am. That she is in so much pain that she'd lash out at me like this (again)
does *not* mean I was abusive to her. She did not learn how to talk that way
from us. We would never say something like that, even though she tells other
people that's how we talk to her, and she probably believes we do. We did not
cause that pain. Her mind did.
And this is the crux
of the matter: just because someone perceives something as hurtful does not
necessarily mean it's time to blame someone for hurting them. If someone trips
and falls on you, and you scream, and they get mad at you for hurting their
ears and making them feel ashamed with your tears of pain, should you feel
sorry for them, since they honestly feel hurt by what you did? Should you feel
mortified at yourself for inflicting such a nasty guilt trip on them with your
tears? Some feelings *are* invalid! We invalidate our own feelings all the
time. We *have to* if we don't want to be complete narcissists. A non-BPD
person might feel a flash of anger at the ear-pain, but they would quell it,
and then feel sorry they fell on you, sorry they hurt you accidentally. And if
the screamer is non-BPD, they will probably be furious for a second at being
fallen on, but then accept the apology and understand that it was an accident,
perhaps even apologize for the loud sound they made - and everything will be
fine afterward.
But if it isn't like
this, the non-BPD screamer might reflect that they shouldn't have screamed and
they certainly shouldn't have cried, since that just escalated things with the
BPD person. But they were just behaving the way they would to anyone who fell
on them. The reason they might think they shouldn't have screamed though, was
because it made things into a conflict they didn't want, and they knew they
could have avoided it.
This is CRAZY-MAKING.
And here's something
else that's important: if (in the scenario with the falling person being BPD)
the screamer pretends nothing bad happened afterward and tries to be loving
again as if the falling person had been apologetic and understanding, are they
*enabling* this bad behavior? Spoiling a tantrum-thrower? And if the falling
person is the screamer's child, is the screamer not providing a terrible role
model for the child? Should the *child* learn to tolerate this kind of behavior
in other people? Should they not stand up for themselves and have high
standards for their own behavior and that of other people?
Parents want to teach
natural consequences, encourage empathy, and model the way one should behave in
certain situations. BPD totally warps this. You start to think it's impossible
to teach anything useful. You start to think that *ANY* response you have is
doing irreparable harm to the BPD person. Walking on eggs to reduce conflict,
or refusing to tolerate bad behavior - it's all bad. So what would be *good*
for a BPD person? How would we recognize it?
As parents, we are
not mind-readers. However we respond to behavior, it should teach something
(how to respond, how not to respond, natural consequences, etc.) If the
behavior is terrible and entirely lacking in empathy and remorse (just
self-loathing, which doesn't do a darned thing to enact change), and if normal
parenting only makes it worse, that cannot be - and is not - our fault for not
knowing what would set the kid off this time. Of course we guess, of course we
suspect - but we don't *know*. If we knew, we would necessarily be mentally ill
too!
If we as parents
caused this escalation by "invalidating" some feelings that
originated in a distorted version of reality, or if we offended the child by
refusing to be her punching-bag, that means LIFE itself would have provoked the
same outburst. We just happen to be here trying to get her to have some self-knowledge
and resilience. We are trying to help her learn how to deal with the real
world. The real world will never be as careful as we are trying to be. The real
world will never ask itself "Should I try not to take this personally,
since she's clearly in so much pain she doesn't know what she's saying, or
should I just react the way I normally react, since those are the natural
consequences??"
The real world will
react to BEHAVIOR. Often wrongly, often nonsensically, often (sad to say)
maliciously. We are supposed to prepare kids for this! And as parents, we are
supposed to train our kids to control their behavior and take responsibility
for their actions. But what if, despite our best efforts, they don't learn
this?
Many of the families
that seem to shun someone who stops behaving so abusively were probably put
through hell and just can't take any more. It's like they were holding up the
car out of sheer adrenaline, and now the car is gone, they are burned out and
need a break. Castigating them for shunning the person is asking way too much
of them. Those were the natural consequences. Natural consequences usually
teach non-BPD people how to control themselves and take responsibility for
their actions. But what works with BPD people?
Parents of BPD kids
need support and skills, not blame. They need tools to cope with a situation
that is literally crazy - and quite possibly crazy-making.
Hi A Mother of a Possibly BPD Child,
"Blaming"
and finger pointing are counterproductive, but all adults - both parents and
adult children alike - have to take responsibility for their part in the family
dynamics if these dysfunctional patterns are ever going to stop.
What you have written
is a beautiful description of spoiling behavior by a child (or an adult child)
with borderline personality disorder. It is designed on purpose to invalidate
YOU. The child thinks for various reasons that you need them to do that,
believe it or not.
For an explanation of
how this seemingly crazy situation may arise in families even if there is no
obvious abuse, see the posts
and
Communication
to Estranged Children
Submitted by Ria on November 12, 2016 - 2:10pm
I am so grateful
for the comments of adult children on this page. It gave me insight in the
feelings and minds of adult children who cut off parents. My daughter has cut
me off a year ago - it happened a few times before she had children, I always
reached out and tried to mend the relationship, but now the grandchildren are
used as pawns. Although I am broken with the loss of my daughter as well as
grand children, I have decided it is final this time. I was not the perfect
mother, not even a good one. At 64, after many years of therapy, after two
marriages, I understand that.
I know my daughter
is angry and anxious and use this cut-off defense after irrational anger
outbursts - this time in front of the kids, which was the final straw for me.
But you cannot cut off love and wipe out precious memories. I wonder all the
time if she is happier without me in her life. Perhaps she has a better chance
of growth, sorting out her own anger and pain without me. I want her to be
happy and content within herself. It saddens me even more when I read of the
bitterness and pain adult children express here and I cannot help to think: is
there anything more I can do for her? Can I help her? Or is letting go the
better option? I know no one can really answer, but let's talk about this. I
know there are really evil people, but many parents were simply damaged as
children. When they have children, usually when they are very young, they have
no skills or boundaries or knowledge of parenting to care emotionally for their
young, especially 38 years ago when information and education was not a given. The
result is emotional abuse, neglect, and / or physical abuse. The horrible old
cycle - how do we break it?
Hi Ria,
Of course I can't say anything about your situation in particular, but in general, of course it is best for parents to acknowledge their problematic behavior in the past, explain what they had experienced with their own parents, and apologize.
However, if the parent then goes on to continue to feel too guilty and beat themselves up for their past flaws, that may backfire. The adult child may then start to think that the parent is better off without them - just as you say you wonder about your kids being better off without you - because the child sees that his or her presence makes the parent feel really bad. In response, they may continue to avoid the parent so as not to add to the parent's burden.
Additional point not in my original reply: Alternatively, they may act nasty to feed the
parent's guilt because they think the parent wants to be punished for various
sins - or they may go back and forth between the two depending on whether the
parent seems to need to be punished or then starts to feel too guilty.
