BPDRecovery.com: Forums

My beautiful, brilliant 19-year old has dropped out from her second attempt at college. She was abusing drugs and self-harming, all while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and sees a therapist twice a week. College does not seem like it is something she can do...at least not right now. She is at home, she doesn't drive, I take her to a minimum wage job (which she enjoys), but all of her friends are still off and having fun at college. They are (understandably) doing "their own thing"...applying for internships, getting apartments in the city, etc., while she is at home, rather isolated, being driven to work and her therapist.
I am reading "Stop Walking on Eggshells," but being bombarded with so much information at one time is really scary...to our whole family. I am realizing that this is a different paradigm...nothing is happening the way any of us expected...and there are new rules for everything. She has made three serious suicide attempts over the last 6 years...and that makes us unconsciously react to things differently.
I am just beginning to explore this site, but would really love it if someone could give me a tiny ray of hope.

mvang,

Since mostly everyone here has BPD we probably can't give you the family perspective very well. I know for me I have severe guilt over the torment I put my family through. My husband goes to therapy & of course I twist that into "my husband has to be in therapy just to deal with me". This twisted thinking leads to more self hate, which leads to self harming thoughts & behavior, which leads to me hurting my family more. It's such an awful cycle!

I came from a family where my father was emotionally absent. My mother went from extremes of constant praise to guilt & shaming me, depending on how happy she was with me that day. So the concept of unconditional love was really foreign to me. The best help I have received is from my husband & kids because they give me unconditional love. They don't love me inspite of my illness, they just love me as I am. It's slowly been a road to recovery for me, knowing that I don't have to change to earn their love actually makes me more capable of changing. If that makes any sense! I don't know what your daughter's twisted thinking is centered around, but maybe this is a piece of information that can help you.

As a mother myself I fear one of my daughters ever having to deal with mental illness. I can only imagine your fear & pain. ((((hug))))

Mayberry

If it helps any, I started college at age 16 and dropped out after three semesters. I dabbled at it afterward here and there but didn't get serious about it again for a good long time. I just got my BA in Sociology in December at age 39. Dropping out of college to get one's head screwed on straight isn't the end of the world.

Does she have any plans to begin driving herself at any point in the near future? The personal freedom of that might make her feel less isolated.

Also, is she on any meds? It seems as though there are brain chemistry issues at play which don't offer a level playing field. That makes it infinitely more challenging for someone to try to regulate their emotions effectively when their hormones & such are swinging about wildly.

And lastly, do you know what sort of therapist she's seeing? I've found that CBT is quite effective for BPD and DBT is a subset of CBT, a specialized, commercialized packaging of the CBT techniques. It doesn't seem like traditional therapy methods are nearly as effective and/or they take considerably longer to produce tangible results. (Sometimes decades of sessions versus two or three years of CBT-type therapy in my observations.)