Counting Days without Drama

For our child with borderline personality disorder, drama is like an addiction. Even when she knows it is bad for her, even when she recognizes that she is creating drama, she is compelled to indulge in it. Always with results that end in her losing control of the situation, sometimes with results that hurt someone or many people around her.

The way we have chosen to deal with it on a day to day basis is to think of it exactly like an addiction. AA teaches alcoholics to take things one day at a time, and that every day without a drink is a good day, a day that they are in recovery. One drink will start it all over. They are taught that there is no permanent state of recovery, and vigilance every day is the only way to stay in recovery. So we have my daughter count days without drama. We know that every day is a battle for recovery, and any day could be a bad day. But every day without drama is a good day.

State of Catastrophe

I'm learning about borderline personality disorder now. It turns out that we can now semi-officially acknowledge a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder for the daughter that now still officially carries the diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

The articles on BPD tell us that it is a difficult condition to treat, but that there is hope. The medical professionals tell us that it is a difficult condition to treat, but that there is hope.

The family members on the support forums tell us, "it will never get better."

Of all the hard things I have done in my life - and with lots of disabilities and debilitating diseases in my family there have been many - this is by far the hardest so far. I see in front of me a perfectly ordinary young woman who is thoughtful, intelligent, and often delightful to be around. But what I know is that she is unreliable, manipulative, a liar, and completely oblivious to the normal rules of ethics and morality and empathy if they are a hindrance to what she wants at that moment.

This mostly delightful, ordinary child who we have long thought of as having some difficulties took a tailspin during the last two months of the year into places that I would have previously said there was no conceivable way she would do anything like that.

And yet, she did.

Which means she could do so again. No matter how ordinary and normal she seems at any given moment.

I can no longer afford to trust anything she says or does. There is simply too much danger in being wrong, both for her and for the rest of the family.

The ultimatum we have had to give her, and the choke collar that we now have her on, are some of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. And there will be no end. I cannot ever let down the guard and just believe what she says.

So I have had to reshape my relationship with this girl. I have had to form her into a different person in my mind. I don't like what she is now to me, and until I learn to completely accept the person that she is, as opposed to the person that we all thought she was, it will continue to be painful on a daily basis. She is handicapped far more than her brothers, and will be just as unable to take care of herself int eh future as they will be. The difference is that she has the capacity to do harm to others.

It is hard to dislike your child.