Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[imhermother]

I'm so lost, my beauiful daughter of 27 and diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder is so unreasonable, disruptive, volatile, aggressive, illogical, hateful, spiteful and every other difficult behaviour you can think of and usually all in minutes or seconds ofeach other. She blames most of her behaviours on me because I was and am such a horrible and bad mother, she self medicates on illegal substances but doesn't take her prescribed medication, she's had no income for over 3 months because she just can't handle the interviews at centrelink, she steals from us and then behaves as though she had every right to do it and how dare we question her. She has paranoid episodes and we have found knives under bed and sitting around her room, she has the worst kind of friends- we even had someone hiding in our roof space one week end (luckily we weren't home) but she was home and found that these people had a diary with some kind of kidnapping fantasy in it. I'm trying so hard to get support services and all I seem to keep getting are more and more phone numbers for more services but no one seems to really care I just keep getting told she's to difficult. It's so frustrating because this is her illness- this is how it presents- I keep taking time off work to try and help her and it goes well for a couple of days and then it turns and its just horrendous. My husband just thinks shes got bad behaviour and has no patience for her, her sister seems to be away frome home as much as she can so she doesn't have to deal with her. i don't want her living with us but I've had no luck getting a support service on board to try and get her housing assistance and i cannot throw her out onto the street...... I'm so lost

[Outlanderali]

 Hi @imhermother and welcome to the forums.

Thank you for being brave enough to write you post. From what I read it seems you are having a devastating and horrible time with your daughter that you love dearly.

It is often so hard, when you can see someone needs help, but they just can't see it themselves, and you try and try but just can't get the support you know your daughter needs. 

Hopefully the other carers on the forum can give you some really practical tools and ideas as to how to support your daughter.

Have you thought about contacting a carers organisation in your local area? It is really important that you look after yourself and your husband and other daughter, while you look after your daughter who is unwell.

Outlanderali

[imhermother]

Thank you for you words of support , which honestly are the first I've had-this ilness segregates and separates friends and associates from families. Hopefully I will find people in a similar situation and find some useful and practical do's don'ts and coping tools.

[Faith-and-Hope]

Hi @imhermother

I am so sorry to hear you are going through such a hard time with your daughter.  I am sure it is heartbreaking, and I am sorry also to hear you refer to yourself as a bad mother .....  as mothers we do the best we can in the moment and we are not perfect, we won't always get it right .....  but that doesn't make us terrible either as mothers or as people .....

There is a baseline of care that we are obliged to provide as parents, and there are many different ways of expressing love and concern .... I imagine you have provided well for your daughter in both of these instances .... as it appears your other daughter appreciates her home - just needs to avoid her sister at the moment ....

BPD is not within our family's experience, but there are many other people on this forum who are dealing with it in a family member every day.  If you browse through the topic and thread headings, you will find many, and you can chat to them on their threads too.  While they may not yet have picked up your thread post, chatting on a thread they have posted on will cause them to be sent an email that notifies them of your response.  When people are in a very time consuming or exhausting carer role, it can take a while for them to pick up Ne threads themselves, as I am sure you can relate to, but the email notification flags them, which is really useful.

Others of us here, while not dealing with BPD can certainly relate to how exhausting and frightening it can be to be a carer in a situation not of your own making, and in which you feel totally out of your depth.  In that we can offer you empathy, and the critical advice of carers to respect your own needs as paramount in your situation.  It is so easy to over-balance when all the focus goes onto the sufferer you are caring for, and not enough care and attention is directed towards your own suffering.  You will need to develop strong self-care strategies, and a circle of support people through other means, if family and friends are standing back too far to be of any use to you.  You are just as important as your daughter.  Seek out counselling support for yourself.  It's critical for your own health and well-being.  If you need a starting point, the Mods on this site can help to direct you further.

Take care, and we are here listening to you.  Keep chatting ..... I think you will find it really helps to talk things out in the anonymity of this forum.

🌷💕

[imhermother]

Thank you so so much for your sincere reply and words from the heart, it's almost as f you've read into my mind a little.

I think as a mother I've come to grips with my faults from the past, my daughter often likes to refer to my faults past and present however and it is her who refers to me as the bad mother. Most of the time I can ignore it and always find myself making excuses for her  and then there's THOSE days which I'm sure all of us here in this foreum endure daily. I'm glad I've found a place to RELEASE as such. I am of late often being told to make sure I am looking after myself but find that I just cannot focus on that at all as long as I am functioning, until I am able to find some kind of help for my daughter I can't think of much else.

 I look forward to being able to visit this forum I think this will be my safe place at the moment and maybe that's all I need right now to look after myself.

Thank you Thank YOU Thank You

[Faith-and-Hope]

I know that feeling @imhermother - the one of not being able to focus on anything else ....

My husband has an undiagnosed eating disorder that has been slowly imploding our family ..... when I realised what was happening, and that it was invisible to everyone outside our four walls, unmasking the issue and getting help was all I could focus on, trying to stem the collateral damage, and fully aware that it can potentially cost him his life .....

Deaf ears everywhere !!!   For a long time.  And collateral damage.  But there are rainbows .....

There are support services - this forum is a life-saving sanity preserver ....

There are caring friends and relatives who don't know what to do in the moment who freeze and nod politely, or even withdraw, aware that they do not have the resources to support you outright ..... until you become a bit more stable .... can recognise the bigger picture of the dilemma ..... seek all the appropriate support .... and find a path to step forward on tentatively .... and then the friends and relatives begin to unfreeze, acclimatise, offer small comforts and understandings, and you begin to appreciate that the wave was too big for them in the moment but they can see your bravery in riding it anyway ....

It's other "surfers of the big waves" who can truly understand your plight, and cry with you, and hold your hand, and guide you via their own experiences of trial and error.

In my case the truth is beginning to surface, as it must .... many chapters still ahead .....

Keep your head above water and just keep swimming .... 🐠🐳🐟🐬🐋🐠🐟🐬 

[Sangel]

Hi Yes I can relate to this..But I have 2 sons My older son is 18 with ASD .He is my nightmare and his brother & I have  had enough too! I am with MISF Q & I have made contact with Community Disability support and FSG. Get emergency RESPITE! to start with or you can get a Carer to monitor your daughter, while the family can get some sleep at night! I have locks on all my bedroom doors /handles. So I know me and my son will be safe.Windows have security grilles. I have the keys.If all does not improve I am considering putting him with State Guardian..as a last resort.If I cannot get accomodation assistance..I dont know how I can continue myself some days.My son brings all his upsets to me when retiring for the night. As your daughter has a drug issue whereas my son doesnt, it would be best to have her "committed in to a drug rehab..." there she will get all the care ,she justs needs a referral!!! then see if they can rehabilitate her into the community and her own place with a carer who can monitor her progress.

I am sorry us mums cop such abuse ,but sometimes you have to do such measures to do what is right for your child...otherwise you will go insane.Go with your gut..take a leap of faith and be strong and do what is good medicine for your daughter and the sanity of the family.. Prayer will only go so far..push..& go for it..she has to hit rock bottom and you cannot be there when she does , let the professionals in and let them do this. Like me, WE have not got alot of life left to squander, we need to have me time too, remember she will have to cope when we are not here too!.......your husband copes by turning a blind eye & does not want to be hassled by what he knows would involve him..its a male thing they all seem to do it! goodluck! from another desperate mum

[not_real_life]

what do you do in these situations... i have a best friend who has all sorts of similar. she has been through alot just of recent her Dad died after 10+years being astranged and seeing him only 1 day before he died in hospital. Outcasted at his funeral by her own BRother and Sister. she was always fighting with her sister and i just flew back from Perth for her funeral death is still under investigation for suicide or murder.
She has been an alcoholic for sometime now she is at about 3 bottles of wine a day.
her and her mother built a house together so they both live together with my best friends 2 younger daughters....
Now all that occurs are unlogical, cruel acts of yelling and screaming and tantrums and her blaming everyone else around her

IT literally doesn't seem like real life anymore.

WE do not know what to do. She asked me for help while i was there - so we went to tthe doctors he then gave us all these directions and referrals to get her into a rehab that day, which led us down one disappointment to another and fnished off our day back at home defeated and rejected. Since then this spiral has gone off the rails.

Hate, hate , hate for her mother - who naturally does the best she can and more so
This lady hasn't even had a minute to herself to grieve for the loss of her daughter! can you imgaine. NO instead she is abused every day, sometimes to the poinnt of locking herself in her room while the rant and rave continues on all over the house which now involves a Male Cousin who are suspected sleeping together and in a relationship....
He was a guest in their house who know rules over the whole household.

This is our life and there is no one that can help us so it seems. WE are not equipped to deal with this. i Have gotten advise from friends in mental health and it turns out everythig i did iniitally like trying to get her to see how ridiculous she sounded was the very worst thing to do - instead of should have validated her feelinngs instead and so on,... if i told you some of the stories just from lately i think most people would find the validating a tough pill to swolllow - and yet the only ADVICE so far is this
Call the police, children services etc etc get her detained get her RA RA RA
It's all acts of violence ourselves and force.. When is it that the people who are trying to do the right thing - CROSS THE LINE on trying to help,

I am getting asked when am i coming back, everyone needs me back there to help - because i am the only one that can .... Yep.
that is not directed at those people that is directed at the NO HELP FROM THE PROFESSIONALS THAT DO KNOW WHAT TO DO BETTER THAN I DO.

WHere is it? Help - so lost

[Faith-and-Hope]

Hi @not_real_life

I don't have answers for you, but I hear you .... 

That's a terrible emotional burden to be bearing.  You are going to need some support yourself, or the trauma cycles in this terrible situation will be impacting on your health as well.  There is only so much you can do, and yes, it sounds like intervention is in order .... so hard when you can see that, but the responsibility for intervention should not be resting on your shoulders ...

So glad you have found the forums.  There is some support here for you, and I hope you keep posting .... in the meantime, the moderators like @NikNik @CherryBomb @suzanne @Fancy_Pants or any others who answer the tag here may be able to provide you with other support services to talk to.

It must be a "can't see the wood for the trees" situation for you too, where you have empathy for all those involved, but it doesn't actually resolve anything ....

Take care

🌷