What you need to know, so you can heal
The Adult Children of Parents with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
If your mother or father has borderline personality disorder (BPD), you likely have a complicated relationship with them as an adult. Or perhaps you’ve decided to distance yourself from them completely as a result of the chaos and dysfunction. Regardless of where your relationship currently stands, the emotional impact and toll on you is very real.
While BPD can be effectively treated and managed with therapy (dialectical behavior therapy aka DBT is an incredibly helpful form of therapy for people who struggle with BPD), if you’re reading this article, my guess is your parent has not sought (or truly committed to) getting adequate support to manage their BPD symptoms.
So, what is borderline personality disorder exactly?
Borderline personality disorder (BPD), is diagnosed when an individual displays a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affect, along with marked impulsivity. While not everyone with BPD has all the same symptoms, people with BPD experience some combination of the following: frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, unstable relationships, identity disturbance, impulsivity in self-damaging behaviors, recurrent suicidal behavior and/or self-harming behaviors, significant emotional dysregulation, chronic feelings of emptiness, inappropriate and intense anger, and transient paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. (Quick note- like all mental health disorders, BPD can only be diagnosed by a mental health professional who has thoroughly assessed someone with BPD. Whether or not your parent has an official diagnosis of BPD, I hope you find this information helpful.)
Growing up with a parent who has BPD is complicated
Growing up with a BPD parent can feel extremely confusing. Some of your memories with them might be wonderful. When they were happy, they were probably incredibly fun and wonderful to be around. But, with a parent with borderline personality disorder, the moments of happiness are not the whole story. Those moments are always found in-between moments of anger and emotional volatility.
And, the reality is, those volatile moments can occur at any time. Something that might not trigger a BPD parent one day can trigger them the next, which is why children of BPD parents often feel like they’re walking on eggshells. When their anger is directed at you, it’s hard not to feel like on some level it could’ve been avoided. This often leads to the adult children of parents with borderline personality disorder feeling an inappropriate (and unrealistic) sense of responsibility for anticipating other people’s emotions. If conflict was terrifying as a child, chances are, it’s not something they welcome as an adult.
As a child, this emotional volatility- from the adult who is supposed to be protecting you and helping you to learn how to regulate your own emotions- is especially destructive.
Because your parent isn’t parenting, you become forced into the role of a parent. And, that parentified child role means you have to take on responsibility that your young brain just isn’t capable of handling. You might have been complimented on being “so mature for your age,” when in reality, you were robbed of the ability to be a child.
As an adult, if you still have a relationship with your BPD parent, it is almost certainly a complicated one. You may find yourself constantly putting your own life and relationships on the back burner in attempts to appease your parent with BPD. You may be so fearful of their reaction to you setting boundaries that you just don’t even try to establish them. Or maybe you do try, but their reaction is so destructive and upsetting that you immediately walk them back. You may actually find yourself comforting them when you were initially trying to express how their actions hurt you.
How do you heal from a toxic relationship with a parent who has borderline personality disorder?
In order to heal from your relationship with a parent who has BPD, you have to allow yourself the opportunity to heal. That means taking the time to really process how this dynamic impacted you during your childhood and as an adult. Therapy is one way you can do this in a safe and supportive environment. If you’re seeking therapy to process this complicated dynamic, I highly encourage you to work with a therapist who has experience working with clients who have borderline personality disorder.
This is because it’s incredibly important for the therapist you’re working with to really understand how this disorder impacts your parent and you, as well as understand how to help you effectively establish healthy boundaries with someone who has BPD. One of the common symptoms of BPD is recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-harming behavior. So, taking into consideration your safety as well as your concerns about how your parent might react is extremely important.
I spent over half of my career working with clients with borderline personality disorder, and I now I focus the majority of my private practice on working with the adult children of parents with BPD. If you are interested in learning more about why I’m so passionate about working with this population, click here.