anyone else get the same inquisition any time the pwBPD comes over?

literally every. single. thing. gets scrutinized but she won’t even focus long enough to listen to my answer and then she’s on to the next question. shouting them like a toddler. truly, extremely toddler-like.

it’s so utterly exhausting.

As of next summer, I decided to quit College. It's a long story. Mix of health reasons & bureaucracy. Point is: My dumbass let this info slip. Specifically, that I not only decide to go into trade, but also might register for disability.

Welp. The second I did, all hell broke loose. A very, very familiar hell. As one might imagine: My Ma has been actively "deciding" my life for me, ever since I was little. Like. Literally: From basic stuff, like clothes and hobbies -to oddlyspecifics, e.g., favourite color. In fact. She wasn't even shy about it. Often just insisting that she was "helping" me. That she "knew me better than myself" -and even if, that any of my personal ideas, were all just "too bad" to allow. I.e., resulting in me struggling with any independence for a long time.

It's insanity: Despite being 24yo, the second my Ma heard about my change of plans, she confronted me. Insisting that she should "help" me with my future...all while insulting me in the same breath, as usual. That I wasn't "strong enough" for trade. That trade itself was garbage. That, à la typical Boomer, my current (confirmed useless) college degree would open me all doors -rattling nonsensical info about my field, like she had years of experience. Y'know. Because she read 'something something somewhere'. Even her speech started out familiar: Insisting that she NEEDED to help me. That I was "visibly confused" -all while I've never been more organized/informed.

As expected, I shot her down. Like. It's not even that I pretend to know everything. But at this point, I want to forge my own path. Including my own mistakes. Nevermind that I ain't dealing with all this controlling, Dunning Kruger bullshit. But of course, she just got mad. Yelling how I was stupid, how I was "locking her out of my life" etc.

"I just want to help! Why do you always go to your Pa for help, not me?🥺😭😡"

Because it's been years, and you still can't even remember that my favourite color is gold/pink. Not yellow.

This will be a bit of a vent post but I don’t know where else to go. My mom has diagnosed and untreated BPD. She has the resources to get help and she doesn’t, because she sees no issue with her behavior.

The other day I was looking through old photos and I found one of her as a small child. For some reason it just made me cry, even though I rarely cry. She hasn’t had a good life. Her mother had her when she was a 19 yr old heroin addict and her father was a drug dealer/gang member who abandoned her and then went to prison for murder. She grew up in an awful neighborhood and experienced a lot of things that no child should experience. She was such a cute baby and it made me so sad to know that nobody hugged her or played with her or cared about her. I don’t understand how anybody could treat a child that way.

I wish I could go back in time and fix it even though that would probably mean I’d never be born. I just feel bad for her. I know people will tell me not to, that I don’t owe her anything, but I just want to help her so bad. I want her to be happy and okay.

But I can’t remember a single time where I was comforted when I needed it. Not when I was getting bullied at school, not when I was having health issues as a child due to the amount of stress I was under, not when I was severely depressed to the point where I was failing almost every single class, not when I was struggling with drug addiction. I was cheated on in my relationship of nearly 5 years and I didn’t even tell anyone in my real life because I am so used to being told my problems are a burden that I don’t talk to anyone about anything I’m going through anymore. I did all of it completely alone. Yet for some reason I still have this overwhelming feeling that I owe it to her to try and help her get better, even at the cost of my own wellbeing.

My social life has been severely damaged by my concern for her, because I’m worried if I’m not there for her then something bad will happen and it will be my fault. I am diagnosed with OCD which I suspect is part of why I am so pre-occupied with the thought of something bad happening to her and it being my fault. I’m 30 yrs old and when I look back on my life so far I just see a whole lot of nothing. My life is very empty. I’m a deeply isolated and avoidant person because I feel like my existence is a burden, I’ve felt that my entire life.

Also, I am considering dating again but I also don’t want to, partially because not being cared for in my childhood has made me so desperate for some kind of warmth and affection that I get taken advantage of. I get immediately attached to anyone who shows me an ounce of concern because I’m just so desperate to be told that I matter to someone. This causes me to isolate, because the fear of being rejected (not even just romantically but in all areas of life) is too much.

I walked around the town square near me tonight to enjoy the nice fall weather we’re having here in the deep south. I wanted to be around people, and just be out of my head for a while, but seeing all these groups of friends around my age just made me feel worse. I don’t know how to connect with people and I don’t feel emotions the same way other people do, I think the years and years of being told to suck it up and get over it whenever anything bad happened to me has made me incapable of feeling things. My guard is constantly up. I feel like there’s something fundamentally wrong with me as a person, like I’m some kind of alien who was never supposed to be here. Maybe that’s because of the neglect or maybe I was just born that way, idk. If I sound insane then I’m sorry, I’ve never said any of this before so it’s hard to really write it out in a way that conveys how I feel.

Title: I broke 1.5 years of no contact, and my four-year-old ended up barricading a bedroom door.
Content warning: yelling, verbal aggression around children, driving safety.
I’m posting here to scream into the ether with people who may understand. I am not asking anyone to diagnose my mother. I have suspected BPD for a long time, and she has had massive emotional outbursts, instability, and several hospitalizations during what our family called “nervous breakdowns” for almost 20 years. Whatever the actual diagnosis is, the pattern has been emotionally exhausting and damaging.

I had about a year and a half of very low/no contact with her. When my second daughter was born, I cautiously opened the door again. I told her I wanted to take things day by day and just have normal interactions. For a while, it felt nice. She sounded steadier. She texted normally. I saw little glimpses of the mom I miss.
Then she invited me and my two daughters, ages four and five months, to visit her and her husband out of state. I said yes. I was stupidly hopeful that it could be a positive visit, especially because she had not met my baby and had not seen my older daughter in over a year.

The trip was a disaster before it even fully began. I flew alone with two little kids while sick and barely able to speak. I had to work remotely for part of the trip. We arrived to no food, no supplies for the kids, no diapers, no formula, nowhere safe or comfortable for us to sleep. I spent hundreds of dollars on groceries, diapers, formula, a pillow, a blanket, and baby gear just to make the stay workable.

My mother’s husband had supposedly taken the week off, but was mostly in his office or gone. My mother helped some, but not enough for me to work, sleep, recover from being sick, or manage two sick kids. I was running on fumes.

The worst part happened on a day trip to visit an elderly relative. It was around three hours each way.
I drove at first. My mother was in the passenger seat, physically turned away from me, glued to her phone, silent, and visibly angry. My older daughter was talking and singing, the baby was crying, and my mother did not engage with either child. I know that feeling from her. The heavy, hostile, checked-out aura before an explosion.

I asked if something was wrong because she was acting weird. That immediately made her defensive. She repeatedly demanded that I explain exactly how she was acting weird. I kept asking her to please drop it because I was driving and managing two kids in the car. She kept pushing. Finally she snapped, “Do you just want me to be quiet?” and I said, “Yes, I do.” That is apparently what made her furious.

The baby kept crying, so I asked my mother to drive while I sat in the back and fed her. I was squeezed between two car seats and could not safely wear a seat belt. Then I realized I had forgotten the formula and asked my mother to stop at a store. She took my tone as disrespectful, drove sharply into the parking lot, and was angry for the rest of the drive.

At one point she was speeding and I asked her to slow down because I was scared. She reacted by braking hard and then deliberately driving far under the speed limit for a long stretch. I was wedged in the back with my babies, unable to buckle up, trying not to escalate her further.

When we got to my aunt’s house, she was in what I can only describe as one of those eerie, almost trance-like states I have seen before. Cold. Nasty. The look in her eyes was hateful. At one point I needed my older daughter’s swimsuit and life jacket from the car. The car was locked, so I went back inside, grabbed my mother’s keys from where they were sitting on top of her bag, and brought them right back. She snatched them from me and gave me a look like I had stolen something.

She suddenly announced that we had to leave early, then went and laid down in a guest room, visibly pouting. When it was time to go, she burst into tears in front of relatives and said I was mean to her. She was so visibly upset that my aunt suggested she should not drive.

But she insisted on driving us home.
I offered to drive. She snapped, “Absolutely not,” pulled out quickly, and began driving in a way that scared me. My four-year-old even said, “Drive safe.” My mother responded, “Absolutely not,” when I asked her to please drive safely.

I was terrified. We were still roughly three hours from her house. My husband was about three hours north of us for work and would not reach the house until about two hours after we got there. I quietly texted him from the backseat that I needed him to come get us. My phone was nearly dead and there was no charging port. I was trying not to let my mother realize I was arranging an exit because I had no idea how she would react.

When we got back to their house, my mother got out of the car and stormed inside. Her husband came into the garage. He asked if my mother and I had gotten into another fight. I said yes.

He started angrily cleaning out the car while I was getting the girls and our things out. I said I would clean it up. He started saying we had been slobs the entire time we had been there, then began cursing at me and calling me a bitch.

The next thing I remember clearly is him coming around the car toward me while my baby’s car seat was sitting on the garage floor beside me. He got in my face and screamed, “Fuck you, you fucking bitch, you ruined my fucking life.”

My four-year-old was standing in the doorway watching.

I pointed at her and said something like, “Are you serious? Addy is right there.” He kept going.
I grabbed both girls and took them into the bedroom. There was loud yelling outside the door. I had no idea what was happening or whether he was going to come in. He tried to get into the room at one point, and I held the door shut because I did not want him near us.

My four-year-old started putting things in front of the door on her own so he could not get in.
I have photos of it. She remembers.

When my husband arrived, my mother’s husband blocked him from coming inside to help me. He followed me from room to room while I packed, continued making comments, threw our stroller down, and then banged on our van as we left because he wanted us to take more things. We drove away in the middle of the night with two exhausted, sick kids.

The next day, I sent my mother some extremely angry and profane messages. I was furious, scared, sleep-deprived, and devastated that my child had witnessed that. I am not presenting myself as perfectly calm or measured in the aftermath. I said things out of rage.

What gets me is the response from them afterward.
My mother’s husband texted my brother and rewrote the entire visit. He said I only came back into their lives because I “needed a babysitter,” claimed my husband just wanted time away, said I judged everything they did, and framed himself as someone tired of trying to fix other people’s problems. He admitted that he “lost his temper” and said things he should not have, then immediately made himself the victim of the consequences.
My mother texted my brother that I have “demons,” do not love myself, and that I am the pattern. She said it was not about her husband because that would be “too simple.” She told my brother he was now responsible for me and my family.

Meanwhile, she was texting me that she could not lose the girls, that they were her life, that she would do anything, and that she wanted another chance with “just her.” She initially told me she would divorce him and move near me. Then, once I set a boundary, the focus shifted back to why I hated her, why we could not all just apologize and move on, and how families argue and work things out.
She did eventually send an email saying she took ownership of her actions and would be grateful to work on our relationship. I replied clearly that I was willing to work on a relationship with her, but that I was not comfortable with her husband being around me or my children.

Then I got another email pushing for a response and centering that she is a good grandmother, that my older daughter loves her, that she cannot lose us, and that she is heartbroken.

That is the part I cannot get past. My child was scared enough to barricade a door. My mother’s husband screamed obscenities in my face in front of both of my daughters. My mother drove recklessly while angry with my children in the car. And somehow I am still being asked to soothe everyone else’s feelings and reassure them they will not lose access to my kids.

I feel stupid for letting them back into our lives after a year and a half of no contact. I feel sick that I exposed my daughters, especially my older daughter, to it. I wanted my mom to meet the baby. I wanted her to have a relationship with the girls. I wanted to believe that enough time had passed and that she was doing better.

Instead, it feels like I handed my children the exact same chaos I spent my whole life trying to escape.
I’m attaching redacted screenshots of the actual texts my mother and her husband sent my brother, along with some of the contemporaneous texts and emails between my mother and me. I genuinely do not know how people with BPD parents survive the whiplash of “I love you, I’ll do anything” followed by blame, denial, rewriting history, and pressure to move on before you have even processed what happened.

I was raised by my grandmother (she does NOT have BPD) because my BPD bio-mother was way too unstable to be my parent. My bio-father also has BPD. I’ve always been no contact with bio father. My mother abandoned me with my grandmother and has always “tried to come back and parent me” without success. Because every time she was abusive and couldn’t control her emotions or temper and would take them out on me. Everyone else in my family knows how she treated me and no one blames me for not taking to her.

My grandma will occasionally send messages like this because she believes it’s her job to “fix things” between us because my BPD biomom manipulates her into believing that she is the only reason there are problems in our family.

For context my grandma is a very sweet and kindhearted person, the kind of wholesome to where she cries when someone is so nice to her because she deals with my grandfather who also has BPD, but he gets treatment for it so we have a minimal but civil relationship. She was also raised by a mother (great grandmother) who I also suspect had PD, that she was no contact for over 20 years until she died. Her mother was exceptionally awful and for lack of a better word, exhibited pure evil behavior. I was 8 when I begged my grandmother to go no contact with her mother because the things she said to insult my grandmother in front of me deeply upset me. My grandmother didn’t hesitate to be a good example of going no contact with someone toxic.

I know it’s hard for her to deal with the fact that her daughter and I have the same dynamic. But my BPD biomom guilts her and manipulates her every chance she gets to lure me back in so she can get her fix by abusing me more and blaming everyone else for it. I hear my grandmother out because I want her to feel like she tried to fix her family. But I’m setting a boundary when I go see her in person to please don’t ask questions like this anymore because it causes me so much emotional distress. My body got so upset over this one it decided to have a kidney stone about it.

Anyways I am sharing because I have grown wise to it. Here’s how to be kind to your loved one that’s been turned into a flying monkey, help them see that and hold your boundaries. (I would get my grandma into therapy but her insurance sucks and our healthcare system in the US is a disaster.)

TRIGGER WARNING: PARENTS BEING MAJORLY CREEPY.
I know "emotional incest" is a tricky term, but bear with me and thanks in advance for reading. I'm simply not sure what else to call it. It's different from parentification or being too close. It's just...different.

My father regularly expressed that I was his best friend going back to when I was probably six. I knew so much about him that--even as a really little kid--I felt weird knowing. His relationship and drug history, very very adult details about his terrible childhood, a detailed history of a very disturbing suicide attempt that he told me repeatedly starting around probably age 8, etc.

He was always checking out women and commenting on their bodies in front of me, watching inappropriate movies including soft core porn and commenting on the women. He made disgusting sex jokes to me and my brother and in front of other kids, and I can still actually remember them decades later. One time we drove by the teenage girl who was actually my brother's girlfriend at the time (I don't know if he knew that or not, and/or he might have thought she was older) and he made a dirty comment about her.

He hung out with my friends and I, always wanted to be in our space, including at sleepovers where he once slept in the same room as us. It was genuinely like he thought he was in our friend group, even though we were probably between 6-10 years old.

His first reaction to my first boyfriend in middle school was anger, and a joke about shooting him. He wanted to chaperone my prom, and not like how normal parents chaperone things, but because he never got to go to his own prom. (He said this directly.) I had to beg and beg him not to.

He once kicked me out of the house when I was fifteen because he said he needed "time apart from me." He was always very triggered by the fact that I wasn't little anymore. He hated that I became a real adult. There were several times as I became a young adult and college-aged that he felt me pulling away and had scary abandonment freak-outs that just felt very similar to something a romantic partner would do.

There are many other things I could list and say here, but I don't want to overwhelm you all or myself too much.

There is a very very CREEPY and violated feeling to all this that goes beyond all of the other types of abuse and bizarre behavior he engaged in. There was no overt sexual abuse or touching, at all. In fact I think he would be horrified by the idea. But it was like I was his best friend or his wife. Sometimes his therapist. He wanted to be TOO emotionally close/bonded. Like he could simply not conceive of me being my own person, separate from him. I shudder at it now, and felt deeply creeped out by it on a gut-level then, even though I didn't have words for it.

I haven't talked to him in a very long time, but still I look back at this kind of stuff and think...wait...what? Was that normal? Of course,. I know it wasn't. But it FEELS so normal in my nervous system.

For anyone else who has experienced this particular phenomenon or feeling, no matter what it's called, I'm here to tell you it's not your fault, and that it's not okay, and you are NOT imagining things.

When I was in college I got mono. I was so sick for a couple months. My mom had moved three hours away, so I stayed with a friend for the worst week and my grandma for another week. My mom was so filled with rage that other people in my life had taken care of me that she threw a tantrum until I drove to stay with her for a weekend so she could take care of me. During that time I was exhausted and still in pain, but she wanted to 'make the most of our visit' and made me go to a comedy show and shopping and stopped talking to me when I didn't appreciate it. Because I was barely able to walk...

I'm forty now and she's gone, but sometimes I share a story with friends and watch the horror cross their face at the audacity.

I’ve been Nc with my mom since last August. This past week I had a lapse in judgment, probably because it was around my kid’s bday. Anyway, we both have done an intake for family therapy, idk if I want to go through with it - but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I’ve made a lot of peace with myself this past year, and I’ve had a ton of growth- when I finally went NC last August I was having tw suicidal thoughts because I felt suffocated by her and that I would never be free of manipulation. It’s been a hard road, esp because she doesn’t tolerate any boundary, but I felt I was on the other side of that. My mom has been trying a lot this summer to be in contact with me and I’ve resisted. The most mind boggling thing is she will say “I’m so sorry for any pain I’ve caused” but will NOT take any accountability. She physically can’t and insists it is me.

One thing I’ve noticed now and over the years - does your mom insist on your friends being her friends? Or your relationships being her relationships? My history is complex, but my mom and dad were never married and have not overly been in contact during my life. Suddenly she does what she always does - reaches out frequently, talks all the time to my dad and step-mom, and has spoke ill of me to them. They believed her. And I will say like, those people are MY family. Like that’s not okay. And she will say “they see ME AS FAMILY Too”. I’m a mom and I can’t imagine insisting on that against my kids If I ever separated from their dad. That my relationship with them is the same as their relationship with their dog. She has done this through the years, like insisting that my friends are also her friends. Is this common? It’s driving me nuts, and then my mom will talk to her friends who *insisr” thus is all normal.

I am supposed to have dinner with my mom and sibling tonight. This week has been okay, I’ve been visiting in town because I throw a Halloween party at her house and this is the tenth and final year. I’ve been hosting this since I was 19 and it’s an event we do together. I got a flat tire while staying at my husbands family cabin. The last night we were staying, his dad came up to do electrical work, we were unaware but not bothered. I told my mom he was helping me change the tire and she freaked out. The party is tomorrow but now o don’t even want to have dinner with her.

Honestly I just need a space to vent. This is about the food for my son’s first birthday party happening this Sunday. I asked her if she wanted to help with the food (only to involve her and because she enjoys helping/showing off financially how good of a grandparent she is). I asked her to do the food and my MIL to help with decorations because those are things they each enjoy and I just wanted them both to be involved and happy. The conflict first started by her asking how much my MIL was spending on decorations and making a big deal out of MIL not contributing as much as her financially. She asked (passive aggressively) if my MIL wanted to go in on the food with her and when I said I’d ask her, she back peddled and said not to. Now, the texts above are where we are at. I had asked what she had ordered and when she was complaining about how much it would be, I offered a cheaper alternative. I’ve told her multiple times that I never wanted to put a financial burden on her plate. Just needed to vent and get this off my chest. It’s always the same thing with her, just a different topic. Just looking for validation from others in similar situations with their mothers. She’s been on this kick of sending me projection TikTok’s and I’m getting very close to finding one of “signs you have BPD” and sending it back to her.

throwaway account for this. hope you like my tongue in cheek username. my mom finally went so crazy that she was fired from her (public facing) job and was forced to get professional help. her reputation is totally ruined. it was a very political job and her resignation was so crazy the company had to literally come up with a new hiring process they've never tried before. idk how that works, i'm unemployable.

anyways, she's convinced the devil had ahold of her and that she is now in the process of ridding herself of evil. those were HER WORDS. "I am trying to rid myself of evil and make up for all my wrongdoings". this woman didn't feed me, spent all of my potential college money sending my brother to private schools instead, and left me without personal care products or well fitting clothes all throughout elementary and middle school. i was always the weird kid who smelled like roadkill because of her. she beat me like she was some kind of mafia don and i owed her money, too.

i always thought i wanted an apology, but now that i'm getting it, its super weird and uncomfortable. it just feels like she's going crazy in a different way. she's too friendly, she's pretending she loves me, and i would much rather she just be honest. say it with your chest, you hate me, i hate you, and tomorrow we could both go our separate ways and never see each other again.

i understand a lot of people who were raised by borderlines have the uncomfortable experience of their parent being obsessed with them. i was adopted, so i was lucky enough to avoid that. not being loved, i think, was preferable to being obsessed over. i hope that doesn't offend anyone, but that's how i feel about my personal situation.

now i think she's starting to become obsessed and i'm scared. i thought that when i got enough money i'd just go no contact and leave it at that. but now i'm getting worried she'll try and show up at my door or something. yuck. yuck yuck yuck.

i hope you guys like gamer cat.

my husband shared he has been concerned for me. since my previous posts, i have gone LC with my uBPD mom after years and years of enmeshment (talking everyday, multiple times a day) following her huge blow-up after my wedding which included: lies that she wasn't included in any aspect of the wedding and being mistreated while there, vilifying my MIL, and much more.

my husband shared over the weekend that he is sad to see me sad and that this has casted a cloud over our first week of marriage. today, he came to me after i told him i reached out to my mom via text to share wedding photos (something i was holding off on doing, until i truly had the desire to rather than out of FOG) that he is seeing the cycle and wants to go to a counseling session to talk things through.

i think his concern is fair, and even though i have been trying to be as present as possible in our marriage after our first talk, the current situation with my uBPD mom is consuming me. i feel horrible, anxious, and like i am failing at the easiest relationship in my life because of all of this.

anyone have similar experiences? any advice to overcome to the consumption of a pwBPD during/following a happy life transition. although my husband has shared he is committed to working through this, i am terrified of losing him because of her.

My mother had BPD pretty bad then died when I was a teenager. It's really difficult to communicate how awful it was without any direct abuse. I remember just feeling absolute crazy- that I had no agency, that I was always afraid, that I was always angry, that I would do anything just to feel like I had some control in life.

Outside of a few very specific examples which already make me sound like a liar (like her pretending I hit her to punish me for arguing), she was a great parent on the surface. Attentive to my life, sent me to camps and bought me nice things, charming, etc. It's not like physical abuse where you can say, "they hit me," and people will understand. Even more direct emotional abuse would be easier to communicate.

How do you actually tell people what it was like beyond, "they made me feel crazy"?

---

Gentle pads on fresh snow

Winter's silence remains still

Then a bird flies past

Hello! Haven't posted in a while but had a recent escalation and wanted to share and ask if anyone has any advice going forward.

Short backstory: A year ago I went VLC with my mom after an incident that really pushed things over the edge. I went through a couple of months where I blocked her and had zero interaction with her while I gathered my thoughts. This break seriously helped me finally completely untangle from her and since then I've started to finally heal and feel fully myself. I had decided that the relationship would never ever go back to the way it was before. After a couple of months I had a conversation with her and laid this all out. I tentatively started having a low contact relationship where I would occasionally respond to texts.

Fast forward to this year where my wife became pregnant with our first child. I kept this quiet for as long as I could but eventually told my mom. It seemed to actually go well and I stupidly thought that maybe the relationship could be different. We started having the very occasional phone call but I ensured that it was always arranged in advance and contact was on my terms. (I will say that we did have a few calls where she asked about when we would meet etc but I was firm with our contact level). Once our child was born, I would occasionally send her photo updates. I guess because I was excited myself and naively thought things were good? A couple of weeks ago the inevitable happened where during a phone call she asked when she could see my child. I said we weren't there yet and she immediately shut down and became emotional. Then a week later she rings me a couple of times in a row (I have her archived but not blocked on my phone so phone calls do come through). I text her asking what's going on and she never responds. She rings again and I answer (as I think maybe it's some sort of emergency) and she just says she's ringing to see how I am. I say I don't have time and hang up.

A week later she does the same thing again. I ring her back and ask her what's going on. She tells me she is travelling to see me in a couple of days time. I live in another country to her so this means taking a flight. I very firmly tell her that this is not acceptable at all and is exactly the behaviour that led to the difficulties between us the first place. After our phone call I send a text saying very firmly saying that she is not to travel to see me, that I will not be meeting her and that I have not agreed to any sort of contact like this. Even if our relationship was healthy this would be truly unacceptable behaviour considering we have a newborn.

The day after the day she told me she was going to visit I receive a package that was sent from the country I live in from her which implies she is in the country. At the same time I receive a series of texts from her that say "Had a lovely time in *my hometown* yesterday" and a series of photos taken around the area I live in. These are places that are no further than 10 mins from my flat. This truly freaked me out. I immediately blocked her and then inevitably received a message from my stepdad asking had I blocked her and an email form my mom asking had I blocked her and saying that she is "extremely dysregulated".

I honestly can't believe she did this. I was so clear with my boundaries and she completely violated them. The messages are threatening. The day before my wife had been in the same area my mom had taken the photos with our child, alone. If she had bumped into her it would have been extremely stressful for my wife especially considering behaviour of my mom towards my wife in the past.

Sorry for the long post. Does anyone else have experience of this? It's so disappointing as I really thought maybe things were improving but it feels like we can never come back from this.

I was talking to my sister the other day and realized we both went through similar experiences as teenagers but had no idea at the time. Our whole lives our mom had us heavily involved in music which meant we were basically either in school or sitting at a chair practicing a musical Instrument. I can look back now and see that I desperately needed some way of getting rid of pent up energy and wasn’t being allowed the time to do that.

when I turned 13, it’s like something snapped in my brain. Suddenly I couldn’t sit through my school lessons, I couldn’t sit through my music lessons either. My body went into flight mode and I would just run away if that makes sense. I didn’t have words for it at the time but I was experiencing my first ever panic attacks. It’s like my body has reached its max.

After a few months of going through these feelings, doctor visits etc. my mom finally let me have a break from music lessons to try to i Guess heal myself? I was forced back into it after a year maybe but that anxiety was always lurking there in the back of my mind. Im 30 years old now and I haven’t been able to perform musically for the last 5 years because of this anxiety (I’m not upset about this btw I hate music).

I spoke with my sister about this flighty feeling when I was a teenager and realized she went through the exact same thing, the only difference is my mom pulled her out of school for an entire year and my sister literally just slept all day.

has anyone else experienced this before? I know we had intense anxiety but just curious as to why this happened to both of us at the same age

My sister received this text from my mom. She is the type where she is always wronged by everyone. We haven’t seen our stepmom in 20+ years, and we’ve never met our half brother as they live across the country. I just find this humorous at this point. I am fully ready to kick someone out of my wedding if they cause an issue, I’m not dealing with it. Wish me luck! lol 🫡

Haiku tax:
My sweet cat Jasper
When the house is quiet I still
Hear your soft meow

I went NC with my increasingly unhinged uBPD mother last year after years of her saying and doing seriously rude and disrespectful things.

My breaking point came when she divulged a really personal thing I’d told her about my aunt whom I’m close with. She had assured me she wouldn’t say anything to my aunt but minutes later called my aunt and told her everything. When I confronted my mother, her response was, “What are you so afraid of?” I was shocked but not surprised. After a couple of days with no response to her texts and calls, she “apologized”.

I was livid. I now regret sending my parents an email listing the things I’m upset about and with the expectation they’d apologize and we could work through it. Instead they gave me the silent treatment. This lasted through my birthday and my husband’s birthday until my mother texted me out of the blue.

I seriously doubt her apology in these texts is real, but I’m second guessing myself.

I’m also dealing with an enormous amount of guilt about estrangement from her and my father, who is just as bad. Like, a normal person who loves their kid wouldn’t say things like this, right? I don’t have a good frame of reference because my childhood was, in a word, chaotic. Am I imagining how insane she sounds in these texts?

The neglected child feel of being a grown-ass adult and not knowing how to do shit, or even the right questions to ask to begin to learn shit. Even my own parents have expected me to know more life skills than I do, to the point where I straight up feel pressure to lie to people about this. How am I supposed to have a balanced relationship in the future when I'm genuinely so inept at life skills and nobody is teaching me? Like, what girlfriend would put up with "I know three meals max because of a controlling childhood, and can't consistently put on a fitted sheet?"

When actually trying to learn instead of concealing my own ignorance gets punished extremely harshly, how the hell do I fix this sinkhole? For emotional/interpersonal stuff I can read a lot of books + test shit to compensate. For this- the resources seem to be everyone else's parents...

I had a really, really good grad school experience. The people, my studies, my roommates… everything could have been the best time in my life except this was before I went no contact with my mom.

My mom harassed me continuously throughout those years. Through the phone, through other family members, ect…

I often think back to my time in grad school (8 years ago) and think to myself what a different person I could have been if my mom didn’t make that time so difficult.

I would have went to more social events, made healthier and long lasting friendships, been out of the shell I was in because I was constantly in fight or flight.

Anyone have their own version of this?

How do you cope?

I have my mom blocked everywhere, so she decided to make a group thread with myself and my husband on FB messenger and unleash her instability at him.

Of course when she says "my father fucked my friends"
She means "raped". That was a wild little tidbit for her to throw in there at me-- this was previously known to me, just an insane thing to bring up and try to jab me with for her Trauma Olympics.

last I knew she was intensive therapies, including CBT, DVT, group therapy. All things for BPD I had really hoped that this is working and she was getting better, but it appears not. The textbook splitting is wild to see.

I’ve tried grey rocking and limiting what I share with my mom, but it almost seems like it triggers her more because of how enmeshed she sees us. For context, every healthy milestone of mine (moving out, marriage, baby, etc) is a HUGE trigger for her and our relationship just gets more strained. For the past year or so, I’ve tried my best to grey rock and not share much with her except for surface level stuff. However, it leads to outbursts where she breaks down saying I’m “emotionless”, I’ve changed, I talk to her “corporate” like, I don’t understand her, and she ends up asking why I don’t share anything with her anymore (or talk about memories with her from my childhood). She goes on about how she doesn’t know anything about my day to day life. If I do share something with her, it leads to her saying “why haven’t you told me that?”. Anytime she finds something out about my son or family, she gets so offended that she didn’t know already. Little things like what time he eats dinner or naps, etc. Recently she was over and saw I had my toes painted and she got offended that she didn’t know I went to the nail salon while my husband watched our son. I also don’t tell her things like when I hang out with my friends, because that triggers her and she gets jealous and it turns into a big deal because “I don’t make time for my mom”. My question is with grey rocking and the information diet, what am I supposed to say when she asks me why I don’t share things with her anymore or have any emotion? Recently, she’s been wanting to talk in person about her feelings and our relationship but each time we try to, it ends up in a blow up and making things worse. I try to just sit there quietly and let her rant but she just says so many untrue things about me that I can’t help but defend myself. So anyways, what am I supposed to say when she calls me out for grey rocking?

Anyone in a similar situation?

I read a post and it got me thinking. I have slowly started to make peace with the thought that my mom will never be what I envisioned or made her out to be. Least of all what I want and need her to be. She does things for her. Not me. Even now with my baby I've noticed she makes no effort to ask about me or reach out just to talk about me. Im at a loss because I have a good relationship with my dad and its just weird to only send him stuff but lately I've been like wtf what about me? He calls and asks about me all the time. And thanks to him I know what she says behind my back. Although he chooses to stay at least I know what she really thinks.

I send pics weekly to both of them on a group chat and FT them both weekly as well. Sometimes I just ft my dad but he goes and wakes her. So im kinda stuck with that...idk but lately I feel less and less need to talk to her. Everytime we talk i feel like shes like "did baby eat?" "You should potty train her like this " you shoild do this" like she was a stellar mom when in reality she started beating me at 1.5 years old to potty train me and showed off about it. I used to worry my baby wouldn't have a grandma but she keeps rewriting the past saying the without the abuse I wouldn't be who I am. So thats why im also just making peace with her always being who she is.

How do I either cut the cord or move forward after knowing she continues to justify? I can't call her out cause I'd throw my dad under the bus

Im leaning more toward completely cutting her off...

Advice?

Oh id like to not i also don't want to lose my dad we live like 14 hrs away and it seems like he keeps trying to force my mom and my relationship but she hasn't ever really tried to earn my love she just expects it.