Living with a Parent with Borderline Personality Disorder (2)

by Beth McHugh | More from this Blogger

17 Jul 2008 05:04 PM

In the first article of this series, we read about the difficulties a child encounters when their parent suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD). We looked at the story of Anna, a 21-year-old woman whose mother suffered from BPD. Anna did well to become a functioning adult, but with her mother's erratic lifestyle and rapidly changing moods, Anna had many difficulties to cope with.

The least was her mother's continual on-off relationships. Always volatile and intense, Anna's mother, Claire, made Anna's childhood a misery. Constantly disappointed in her mother's failure to attend important school days, she would sometimes believe in her mother's promises to attend functions, hold parties and generally be a good mother to Anna.

There was little doubt that Claire truly believed that she would arrange and carry out a wonderful themed 10th birthday party for Anna. Claire would plan the dishes and the decorations and Anna would be naturally excited. But something would invariably happen. A fight with a lover or the illness of a friend would throw Claire into such a state that the party would be all forgotten, and poor Anna would be mortified as she had to tell her friends on the day of her party that it was off because "something came up". After many years of similar circumstances, Anna grew wise to her mother's lifestyle and didn't believe her anymore. But the resentment built.

The crunch came when one of Anna's childhood friends lost a long battle with leukemia. Anna had begged her mother to accompany her to the funeral as Anna felt that she would break down and needed her mother's support. Repeatedly Claire reassured her daughter that she would be there for her. But on the morning of the funeral Claire phoned Anna and, sobbing her eyes out, told her daughter that she wouldn't be able to attend the funeral. Her current lover had dropped her, and so she dropped her promise to Anna.

Fortunately Anna had anticipated this might happen, so she had sought support elsewhere. However, Anna needed therapy in the long term to help her realize the amount of damage her mother had caused her over the years, and how much she had believed there was something wrong with herself, rather than her mother.

With counseling, Anna was able to slowly come to grips with the sorrow and anger associated with having a parent such as Claire and was finally able to move to the point where she could see that her mother had an illness, it was not Anna's fault and thus she could ultimately forgive her mother. It took several years of therapy but Anna now sees herself in a more realistic light and not as an angry, unloved and unlovable child.

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Related articles:

Living with a Parent with Borderline Personality Disorder (1)

Borderline Personality Disorder: Kerri's Story

Borderline Personality Disorder: Hope for Kerri

What is Borderline Personality Disorder?

Borderline Personality Disorder: Diagnostic Criteria

Borderline Personality Disorder: Causes and Treatment

Learn more about Beth McHugh

Beth McHugh began her career as a geologist and worked both in industry and as a university researcher.

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