topic Concerned Mum in Supporting family and friends

Concerned Mum

Woo1 — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 04:33:57 GMT

Hi everyone, 🙂

I am a Mum to 2 grown up Men & also 1 Grandaughter who'm all suffer from different degrees of Borderline Personality Disorder.

My Eldest son ( whom i have not spoken to for 5 years- His choice) accused His Dad & Myself of terrible things & made up stories of which he believed Himself , not were all fabricated ( he has been Hospitalized a couple of times in the last few years)

Then our Grand daughter started self harming (she is my Eldest sons Daughter)

Now my Younger Son , has been Mentally unwell & recently Hospitalized.

This leads me to believe that part of the condition , must be genetic, is this so??

At the moment we are trying to understand , but its all very complex.

They all distance themselves & I would like to help them & so am reading up about it all,

Worried Mum.

Concerned Mum

Meatballs — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 11:31:52 GMT

It's fantastic you are trying to learn about all this, I'm sure it is quite distressing for both you and your family.

I read somewhere that it is necessary to have a genetic predispotion to develop borderline personality disorder at all, and if someone in your family also has a mental illness such as depression, PTSD, etc, they are even more likely to develop it.

The chances are increased even more if they were raised in an environment where someone close to them has BPD. I suspect it may be a combination of all these factors with your granddaughter.

I hope you can work out things with your family, especially your granddaughter as I assume she is still young? How is your relationship with your youngest son? Does your grandaughter have a positive relationship with her father?

I'd like to add that after effective treatment, it is possible to recover. 🙂

I hope things improve, and don't forget to take care of yourself, too!

Concerned Mum

Lazykh — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 09:38:01 GMT

Hi Woo1,

Welcome to Beyondblue!

Absolutely BPD can be cured. I recommend finding a good therapist as there is no medication that really helps but therapy is great. Schema therapy is particularly helpful, so perhaps look for someone with experience with BPD and schema therapy, maybe have a talk about this with your son and granddaughter. Self harm is much easier to stop if it is caught early. Some therapists don't like working with borderlines (they want quick fixes that don't give them a hard time - if you ask me those ones are in the wrong job!!!) so maybe just mention that the symptoms are like BPD and see what the response is... If it sounds questionable find another.

Re. the genetic component, this is a longstanding debate called 'nature or nurture'. Long story short, different disorders have different heritability and environmental components, but most have a bit of both. You might look up nature/nurture on the net if you want to know more. I'm not sure the specifics for BPD off hand, and there would be different estimates from different studies too... Never a simple answer with psychology!

All the best with it, and remember that you cannot force anyone to have therapy if they don't want to (it wouldn't work anyway if they don't think they have a problem or don't want to change, which is unfortunately too often the case), but you can still show you care and tactfully suggest it might help them to feel better.

Kind Regards,

Lazykh