When your Mom has Borderline Personality Disorder
How to be a Warrior, Heal Childhood Wounds, Build Self-Esteem and End your Suffering
Linsy B.
© 2019 Linsy B.
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Disclaimer
The advice and strategies found within may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher is held responsible for the results accrued from the advice in this book.
Dedication
This work is dedicated to Oje and Sem, without whose help, this book would not have come to light.
Chapter 1
Introduction
No child deserves to experience what children who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) parents experience in the hands of a mother who has BPD. The kids of such parents go through life suffering from the effect of chronic abuse, rage, and torture, so that they become prone to low self-esteem, social misbehavior, and depression. They are usually associated with a lot of explosive tempers, rage, frequent swings in mood, emotional instability, impulsivity, and anger, when you happen to have at least one of them as a parent, then you would know that your life could be a living hell.
So, imagine that your phone rings, and it’s your mother’s calling, it makes you anxious and then guilty, that is the experience of kids who grow up in homes where they had to grow with the trauma of living with mothers who have BPD. Children of parents with BPD live a life that exposes them to a higher risk of exhibiting difficulties in sustaining attention, low self-esteem, social anxiety, aggressive behavior, depression, and even Borderline Personality Disorder itself.
Although BPD is also present in men, women with the diagnosis of BPD make up an estimated 75% of the patient of the BPD population, which is why the emphasis tends to be put on mothers with BPD. Also, it is believed that there are over 6 million women in the United States who are diagnosed with the disorder.
The childhood of an adult who had the misfortune of growing up with mothers who suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is often filled with anguished, pain, chronic anxiety, and contradictions. Sometimes in an attempt to hide their real feelings, they find themselves using humor to deflect speaking about their experiences, preferring instead to speak vaguely about their lives without giving any real details to prevent painting a bad image of their mothers to anyone. Yet, their life is a tale of suffering from emotional blackmail and not knowing what behavior their mom would display at any point in time.
They may also find that they are starting life at a disadvantage of being insecure compared to other children, which makes them seem not to be able to get along with people, affecting their progress in life, slows down their careers, affects their relationship with their spouses and make them bad parents to their kids.
These children pass through different stages of their development having to cope with emotional abuse, threats, intimidation, controlling, and manipulative parents. Imagine having to be told at a very young age that you are not wanted and could be thrown out at any time, the effect it could have on the mental health of that child that frequently gets subjected to that kind of abuse which unfortunately is the lot of children who grow with BPD mothers. Women who are diagnosed with BPD symptoms make the life of their kids a living hell or a heavenly bliss in the twinkle of an eye without any prompting or anything done on the part of the child. She can suddenly perceive the kid as one not deserving of her love, which can be in sharp contrast to the very loving behavior she had displayed a couple of moments earlier.
The effects of mothers with borderline personality disorder on their children can be quite devastating. The kids are made to constantly feel as if they are living in an emotional prison and grow up feeling fragmented, confused which can lead them to develop symptoms of psychological health illnesses, mental health challenges that cause them to be impulsive, hostile, and prone to violence, suffer from anxiety, bottled up rage and depression.
Children also are at particular risk of descending or tipping over into psychosis, when under stress and faced with a real or an imaginary sense of rejection or abandonment. They may find themselves indulging in risky practices that could lead them to develop addictions as a short-term mechanism of coping and dealing with their psychological pain. The risk also of developing Borderline Personality Disorder themselves is also particularly high which is why the vicious cycle of transfer of the disorder from mother to child across different generations becomes almost like a generational cause.
Men with Borderline Personality Disorder tend to be misdiagnosed as victims of other Mental Health and antisocial personality disorders which increases the risk of them being taken out of the society through the justice system by putting them in jails which tends to aggravate their condition.
Not many people know how frustrating and draining the relationship between the child and a BPD mother can be. You have to learn to expect anything as long as a Borderline Personality Disorder parent is involved. Basic casual interactions that go on daily in other homes without incidences would deteriorate very quickly when a BPD person is involved. Even the most innocent of remarks can be considered offensive while a friendly jibe is considered disrespectful. More often than not, she will anticipate problems that have not yet occurred and react to those perceived problems as if the person has already done them and deserve the punishment she is melting out. A person with BPD has a very low capacity for understanding people’s emotions and reading facial expression, yet will consistently insist that she can read the minds of others, except that the only things she is able to read are all going to be threats of abandoning her and not being grateful enough for all the things she has been doing.
The surrounding atmosphere is always charged with negative emotions. Hardly any day passes without a story of how “such and such a person” does not like her, how that colleague is envious of her, how the neighbor is hostile to her because she believed the neighbor looked at her in an awkward manner earlier. You are better off agreeing with her, otherwise, you would be classified as a member of the gang that conspired against her. Her thinking is so rigid and fixated on her negative mindset that she does not find it difficult to conclude quickly. The emotions of her children mean very little to her and will spare no thoughts in lashing out at them in rage, assaulting them verbally, and belittling them when speaking to them.
Many kids generally conclude that their BPD mother doesn’t like them and when they happen to have a father who understands the situation, the best memories of their childhood may be only those that involved their fathers, especially when he protects the child from the destructive actions of the BPD mother and sometimes tries to compensate for the lack of love from the mother by showering the child with high doses of love.
Usually, in such situations, the father has to bear the brunt of their mother’s venom for trying to stand up for the kids. Unfortunately, such fathers and husbands do not stay very long in the relationship where regular fighting, constant guilt game, and pity party is the order of the day, not when they have a choice to either stay or leave, a choice the defenseless child doesn’t enjoy until much later in life when the amount of damage done would have been very extensive. The child basically becomes constantly sad while growing up, who wouldn’t when you have to bear the blame for anything that goes wrong in the house and all of someone’s anger is directed at you? There is rarely any moment of happiness, the lucky ones got frequent gifts, toys, and clothes, with no emotional gift but only regular yelling, and a threat of being beaten.
Because of the mother’s attitude, the adult children of Borderline Personality Disordered mothers become broken children living with a bomb that could be detonated at any time, they become insecure, feel guilty, anxious, and frustrated, living a life that is