Inspired by Another Blogger's Post

Empaths & Highly-Sensitive People (HSP): Trauma Could Have Been Avoided if Parents Had Listened to Teenager


One of the bloggers I follow recently wrote the post above about how a family could've avoided a tragic event had they listened to a highly sensitive teenager.  I had a similar experience though I was about 22 at the time.  My mom informed me she had scheduled an annual test she was told she needed to have done because of a chronic illness she has.  The sick, sinking feeling in my stomach was enough to tell me it was a very bad idea.  By that point in my life though, I had been taught so much to ignore my instincts and that my feelings were always wrong so I kept quiet.
On the day of the test, I had just started a summer college class and had planned to stay home but got home just in time to go with my parents for my mom's test.  Fast forward two hours...my mom is being rushed by ambulance from the testing center to the local emergency room with a perforated intestine.  That night she is rushed into surgery and the hole in her intestine sewn closed but with a less than stellar outlook from the surgeon.  Two days later she is rushed back into surgery and 7 inches of her intestines removed while a colostomy bag is placed.  The next day she is awake in the ICU but her oxygen keeps falling dangerously low.  Shortly after my dad and I left for the night we were called saying she was being put on a ventilator.  In the next month, there was one more emergency surgery and more inappropriate actions by staff and doctors than I can count.  Finally she was released and took almost 2 years to recover to some semblance of normal though she is left with permanent medical issues.
I still wonder if I'd told her about the horrible feelings I had surrounding that test if I could have changed anything, if she would have listened.  Logic says no, but I still can't help but wonder.

Part 4...More About Abuse by Professionals Than BPD

Shortly before I turned 15 is when I began to actively self injure. This brought about more medications and different combinations that eventually lead to my being on 17 different medicines in the space of 2 years. The psychiatrists changed diagnoses from Depression to OCD to Bipolar to ADHD to Schizophrenia and the back to saying they really had no clue. This time my mom too the initiate to get me a new psychologist, remarking that after the last one I obviously couldn't do it right and got me set up with a lady who worked st the hospital where I'd previously been inpatient. I was doomed from the start, though this woman was raised in America she came from an Eastern European family and her conservative views heavily influenced her ability as a therapist. My tshirt, shorts, and sneakers were defined as "provocative dress" in her notes, and my shy glances at her, only looking up from the floor on occasion were labeled as "seductive behavior". She quickly informed me that she would report all details of our conversations to my parents, and strip searched me for signs of self injury. My few attempts to mention the past abuse or what I was still experiencing were quickly shut down with her telling me she was not going to indulge my hallucinations. I was told I was a troublemaker since my severe anxiety had resulted in my placement at an alternative school program and her treatment goals for me were very simple. 1- Accept responsibility for ruining my parent's lives. 2- Understand and be compliant with taking medications for the rest of my life. 3- Accept and prepare for my future in a state run institution. Her plans to this extent went as far as to present my mom with papers to sign away her legal rights, explaining that she and the psychiatrist she was working with could then place me in a state hospital and begin electroshock therapy. While my mother would've happily signed, my dad refused. My escape only came after she told the psychiatrist to put me on a medication which nearly sent me into liver failure and I got my mom to admit "Well none of the pills they ever put you on made you treat me any better!", she finally let me stop seeing the psychologist and go through the hell of withdraw to get off the medications.

The Impact of a Mother with Emotional Problems on Development of BPD

Taking a little break from putting things in chronological order to side track here.

I really believe one huge factor, after the incredible amounts of abuse in general that I endured as a child, in my developing BPD was being born to an emotionally self-absorbed and frigid mother.  While I believe in her mind she loved me, I also believe she was completely incapable of showing that love or putting a child's needs above her own.  By the time I was born she had been in a subservient role to my dad for 13 years and I can only guess the role she played in her family before marrying.  Suddenly having this little creature who depended on her for everything was probably awe provoking at first but later overwhelming.
Throughout my life, my mom has tried to impose her will and thoughts on me.  I don't remember the first 9 months of my life but I began to speak very early and suddenly having a little human who could express her opinion didn't sit well with my mother.  I also developed severe sensory issues...the cute corduroy jumpers, jeans, and frilly skirts my mom wanted me in sent shivers through me and pains shooting up and down my body.  The daily battle of dressing me resulted in me being pinned to the bed screaming in pain and begging for soft clothes, pleas which were ignored because...as I later learned...appearances were all that mattered.

To say my mom was emotionally cold is an understatement at best.  I would try to crawl into her lap as a toddler, only to be pushed to the floor and told she was "too tired".  Any time I was allowed on her lap, or kissed, or held, was in public or in front of my dad for show.  Despite this hatred of being close to me, she would often come and sleep in my bed instead of sleeping in bed with my dad.  This resulted in me sometimes sleeping on the floor or wedged between the mattress and the wall.  Her excuse was that she knew I was touching myself and "being dirty".  At one point, her solution was to put me in pajamas that were so small they cut into my ankles, wrists, and waist until there were blood bruises.

When I became deathly ill and was admitted to the hospital right after my 7th birthday I would scream and cry from the pain of the IVs, an uncontrollably high fever, and my own fear.  I'd beg and plead to be held or for her to lie in the bed with me, she'd brush it off saying I couldn't ask that!  Did I want her to get in trouble?  Grudgingly she'd submit to letting me hold her hand on occasion...I think more to appear a "good mother" to the medical staff than anything else.  Upon my first night home after almost two months in the hospital - exhausted, weak, and completely overstimulated; she I sister in tossing me in the bathtub, dumping pails of water over me, and yanking at my long hair until every knot from the past two months was out.  Letting me rest my first night back home wasn't important since I "wasn't going to look like that" in her home.

One of the Most Helpful Books in My Recovery

I actually found out about this author through a not-so-great day treatment program I was sent to last fall, it mainly focused on those with addictions and I count finding out about this author as the one silver lining to my wasted two or three weeks there.  He has a few other great books about recovery in general and recovery from abuse, but his book on boundaries has helped me a huge amount with my mother.

Even today at age 28, if my mother could tell me what to eat, dress, speak, and think - she would.  She is completely codependent on my dad and for years took out her need to completely and utterly control something in the world on me.  Whitfield's book on boundaries was the first thing I read to ever give me insight into how messed up her boundaries with me were and how I could start pushing her back from smothering me.  She still attempts to overwhelm me if I give me more than a tiny bit of trust in that area, but it's helped me be able to push back and remember I'm a human being and not property of her.

Hopefully (if I do this right) a link for you to check out the book will show up:

Part 3.....

After I was out of day treatment, the child psychiatrist I was seeing insisted I be in therapy and I insisted I see a female.  So, my mom's wonderfully involved parenting style consisted of throwing the insurance book of providers at me and telling me "Pick someone!".  Unbeknownst to me, I picked someone who actually had a background in personality disorders and ended up diagnosing me at age 14 with BPD.  There were a few problems with that whole situation though.  First of all - I had no clue what it was and her having me read the criteria from the DSM-IV didn't help things any.  Secondly, my mom's view on life was (and still is) minimize and ignore things and they'll just go away.  And third, this woman engaged in some unethical if not fraudulent billing practices.

At this point in time there was no longer any way to hide that I'd been sexually abused, I'd incurred even more of my mom's wrath by saying too much about that already but she quickly made up a cover story to protect her family and the real perpetrators.  I learned it by rote, backwards and forwards, still hoping I could do something to earn my mom's love finally after all these years.

"I've only got hurt once, at my school when I was 8.  I asked for a pass to the restroom that was sort of in a separate building and when I left the girls room a bigger boy grabbed me and pulled me in the boys room.  He took my panties off and put his fingers in here and tried to make me such his thing but I bit him and got away and hid.  Later another girl from my class got sent looking for me and I told her I had got sick and didn't tell anyone what happened for real."

That was what I told this psychologist, nothing about 11 years of severe physical and sexual abuse by relatives or verbal and emotional abuse and neglect by my parents.  My mom quickly talked me out of the idea that I had Borderline Personality Disorder after reading how it was caused by serious abuse or neglect during childhood and going on and on about how anything I remembered of growing up was wrong and I had a 100% wonderful childhood.  (While I do have great memories, I also remember the hours of her screaming over one misplaced toy as long as my dad wasn't home, threats of having me arrested for crying, locking me in my room, etc.  And my dad's drunken driving which nearly killed us all quite a few times).  After the psychologist helped get me transferred to a new high school I found myself quickly running out of things to discuss with her since I couldn't be honest.

Tensions rose between her and my mother since she kept insisting I had Borderline Personality Disorder, and my mom also found out she was doing something slightly shady with billing (I never understood what).  The drive home from appointments would take about two hours due to rush hour traffic and they turned into sheer misery for me due to my mom's hateful tirades about how much time and money I was costing the family.  She had some severe back injuries, a side effect of a medication she'd taken for a chronic illness, and I heard daily how those hours on the road put her in pain for the entire week.  Finally I gave in and did what I thought she wanted - I refused to see the psychologist anymore.  That day was taken up with dozens of phone calls...demands from the psychologist that we arrive at the scheduled time, more calls when we did not saying to be there at 8pm, then demands to talk to me on the phone (which I refused), then a final call that the police and social services were being called.  For weeks I lived in fear anytime I saw a police car but nothing ever came of that last threat.

Part 2 of How Borderline Personality Disorder Has Impacted My Life

By the time I hit 14 things had disintegrated from barely manageable to a complete disaster.  Because I had embellished some things, the adults who I had come to rely on as "safe people" at school now disbelieved anything I said.  Throughout 8th grade I had been repeatedly harassed by a boy at my school, near the end of the school year it came to a head when he touched me in a sexual manner.  My emotions were so overwhelming and given my past history, no one believed me despite there being witnesses.  After being trapped in a small room and questioned by multiple adults for over 4 hours, I was threatened with arrest for making a false statement but released without any charges filed.  I was still too naive to see that the people I'd considered my protectors had completely turned against me.

A month later I was admitted to a locked psychiatric unit for the first time.

Most of the week or so I was there is a blur.  I know I was there over a weekend so what little therapy was available was even less.  Forced to wear green scrubs and God forbid if a boy and girl say on the same couch.  Since I was the second youngest there, I got to play Mario 64 with the 11 year old girl who was my roommate.  I remember passing out from having blood drawn and getting in trouble for trying to comfort my roommate when she was crying.  They gave me Prozac, which made me fall asleep so quickly and often that I'd fall out of chairs.
The next week at the day treatment program is a little more clear.  I was still very sleepy but managed to stay awake most days.  We'd have therapy groups for half an hour a few times a day, the rest of the time was spent sitting on broken down couches talking amongst ourselves while being watched through a glass window by a psych nurse and social worker.  I was thought to be odd for bringing up how when my mom had been sick a few years back I'd had to keep it secret from everyone and hushed for trying to "bring up the past".  The social worker was known for trying to get you to "lose it" on your last day during group therapy so that you'd have to stay longer.  On my last day she attacked me for not wearing make up (my parent's didn't allow it), for being a brat because my dad had bought me a new bike that week, and for being too much of a child instead of a teenager at age 14.  I was saved from whatever else she planned to say by being called out for the family meeting that marked my exit planning from treatment.

A First Attempt at Explaing How Borderline Personality Disorder Has Impacted My Life

(A side note - I'm not sure how long or in depth I will get, its a week today since a nasty fall which left my with post-concussion syndrome, neck and shoulder injuries, and week of doctor and lawyer issues.)

Until a few months ago, anyone who brought up even the most remote possibility that I had BPD would've seen me explode with fury about how it was just a diagnosis that put the blame on a person who had been abused and blamed them for all the pain they suffered from what happened to them at some point in their life.  It was only after I spent 28 days at an inpatient program and the doctor who oversaw my treatment there (who happened to be the one person I formed any sort of bond with as far as the staff went), spoke to my outpatient psychiatrist that I began to accept the diagnosis.  My regular psychiatrist and I spent about two hours discussing it and for the first time ever there wasn't any disgust or blaming or judgement.  The main part of the discussion was actually how abuse sets up the factors that make it so easy to develop this disorder later on.
When I spoke about this to my outpatient therapist she said she'd known this all along but knew the topic was off limits for discussion, I asked if she was able to handle it and she assured me she was.  Her ability to handle it lasted about a month.  The second to last time I saw her she made the remark that the way I felt about something was "crazy", which I took offense to.  When I wanted to discuss it at our next session she began to accuse me of being manipulative in everything I did, including my choice of topics to discuss in therapy.  After verbally ripping me apart she asked "Well, what do you think about that?" when I told her I felt like melting into the couch I was sitting on, she reminded me where the door was.  After a few months of bouncing to some other less than stellar therapists, I now have a psychologist who is one of the sweetest and most caring people I've ever met.

So...how do I think my BPD began?
Well, I'm not sure if I would have developed it regardless but some things when I was 12-14 played out in a way that definitely taught me that drama = affection or caring.
I began to have my first severe panic attacks when I began junior high at age 12.  The school counselor began to try and help me deal with them and in the course of the first few times I spoke with her I mentioned some things going on at home - how my mom had been very sick the past few years and how my dad drank heavily.  For the first time ever, I got sympathy and support from an adult for what I was going through, and even a hug which was a completely foreign thing in my frigid family.  Not long after, my dad nearly killed the whole family while driving drunk the wrong way on a rural highway.  Today I realize that should've warranted an immediate call to protective services, but instead it got me more sympathy and affection.
I had been severely sexually and physically abused up until age 11 and truly was still enduring daily verbal and emotional abuse.  I shamefully admit though, that I wasn't above embellishing things after awhile to get more caring and love at school - I exaggerated the dangerousness of my dad's drinking and my mom's verbal outbursts...knowing those wouldn't get me taken from the home (had I spoken of the abuse that stopped when I was 11, I'm sure I would've been taken away within hours).
In my mind, if there wasn't chaos going on at the moment there was no way for me to have love.