Competition between parent and child for attention in the borderine family

It is a common experience for children of borderline parents to turn to the parent for comfort and feeling worse afterwards. Similarly, borderline parents find that their parents rarely enjoy their child's happiness and success unless it reflects somehow positively on them. The borderline parent will often "horn in" on the child's success and want to share the spot light with them or even to steal their thunder. The borderline parent usually wants to be the center of attention and when the child takes away the attention, the borderline parent will do something to bring it back on themselves.

Christine Lawson, in her book, Understanding The Borderline Mother, says:

"Emotionally stable parents share their children's joy and quiet their fear. But caretaking roles are reversed for children of borderlines whose mothers are chronically upset. Children repress their fear in order to calm their mother. Situations that should frighten children may not because they have learned not to feel. A dramatic (an hopefully rare) example occurs when cildren rescue the borderline mother from suicide attempts." p.23

Children growing up with this upbringing often develop a false self putting a public face on to please people, but inside feeling confused, perplexed, and empty. There is a fear on the part of these children of being successful because they do not want to garner attention of which the borderline parent might feel jealous. One client told me that his mother always told him, "Do your best, but don't stand out." While he was competent, capable, and widely recognized for his good work he had a hard time completing projects out of fear of getting attention and acknowledgment for a job well done.

This is post #6 in a series based on Christine Lawson's book, Understanding The Borderline Mother.

Comments

[borderlinecrazy]

I just wondered if you have read "Women Who Hurt Themselves," by Dusty Miller. I found it enlightening in a way similar to the book on which you are posting a series ("Understanding the Borderline Mother").

[Sid]

I linked over here from Borderline Crazy's blog because of mention of this series of posts you were doing on borderline parenting.

I read Christine Lawson's book several years ago after receiving the diagnosis of BPD. I'd read so much negative information in other books and online about this disorder that when I came across Christine's book, I needed to know how I compared as a mother with BPD. My own child was about 11-12 yrs old at the time I was finally diagnosed and found this book.

I think it's very important to point out that not all mothers (or fathers) with BPD engage in the behaviours discussed in this book and on your blog with respect to their children. Raising my daughter properly with plenty of love, attention, support, appropriate boundaries, etc. has been the one area in my life where I have been able to keep my borderline behaviour in check. My family, ex-hubby, friends, therapist, her teachers and even strangers can vouch for that.

My daughter is a happy, smart, outgoing, friendly, quite well-adjusted child who is driven to succeed. I support her 100% in all her endeavors and she knows I'll always be there for her through all the ups and the downs. While I am extremely proud of all her accomplishments, particularly her academic achievements, never have I, nor would I ever even consider trying to steal the spotlight from her. She's the one that's putting forth the effort, she deserves to bask in the glory of her successes.

While I know I'm definitely in the minority, having BPD doesn't automatically guarantee a person will be a horrible parent. It does take a lot of work and a strong commitment to do the right thing, to end the cycle of abuse most people with BPD experienced themselves, but it is possible to keep your own borderline symptoms from physically or/and psychologically damaging your children.

Just needed to put my 2 cents in on the subject so others reading this know that there is some hope.

[West]

My mother suffered from borderline PD and I loved her dearly, although at times I was really at a loss with the situation. Hyper-vigilant, anxious, she would awake at the drop of a pin. As an adult when I was able to understand her childhood, I realized finally she was a tremendous survivor who had done the best she could. When she came down with cancer she never complained, except perhaps once about how she felt "waiting around to die".
Plus a lot of what she was angry about did have meaning. But this is a society that condemns anger in women. So she could only express it in furtive ways and eventually fell into clinical depression. The world had shamed her into silence and suddenly all she could do was cry.
She never received the psychotherapy that might have helped her out of her pain. Her generation hid their mental illness, it was the days when the most one would ever admit to was a "nervous breakdown". The medical profession continued to treat her as a naughty child, as they had done to the point of her dismissing her cries of pain as prenatal, then postnatal and twenty-four hours after childbirth she almost died from a ruptured appendix... whatever, the doctors never took her pain seriously. And that included her emotional pain.

I won't say her choleric moods and her depressions weren't hard on me - they were. But she could be gay, she wanted to live, and all she ever really craved was forgiveness, love and acceptance. That's not a crime.

Except for a brief period in my life, and unlike another sibling, I never used her as an excuse for my own problems. Perhaps that's why I have empathy, whereas others, even in my own family, seem to have made a career out of hating their parents. It really seems like a lot of people out there wish that they had not been born.
Borderline personality runs the whole gamut of personality traits from introverted to extroverted, so in the layman's hands it's actually the most at risk of being used inaccurately and pejoratively. In it's purest form it's a person's defense system gone haywire, an affective regulation problem and (perhaps) an insecure attachement problem. That's it. It's dangerous and unfair to generalize with this disorder. All psychological problems are multi-generational. Why signal out
this one?