Carers of family members with BPD\MH issues - are you out there?

[floramckitchen]

Hi - I have an 18 yo dd who is a recently diagnosed BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) sufferer. I am coping as best I can and working full time but could do with some support from some fellow carers.

I have had some brilliant advice on the Borderline Personality Disorder thread (thankyou SirBoob and Heffa) but feel we could all support each other in times of crisis.

Hi All
Flo - oh you are just up the road to me. Sadly, we too have experienced the delights of Basildon hospital. Thanks for Brentwood Mind tip, I will look into it.

Fiji - sorry to hear about problems with school. My d is at her 3rd secondary school, exactly the same pattern in each. First half term she loves it and has lots of new friends, then starts to act out to gain popularity but instead makes herself notorious, the friends start to back off, d starts to become distressed and wants to leave and make a fresh start. The self harming then escalates until we withdraw her from the school. She hasn't attended the current school since Easter and now says she will never return to school unless we move out of the county. We now realise that wherever we move her the problems will follow but sadly she has yet to make that link herself. It is so sad because she could do well academically if she gave herself the chance but I fear that with all the disruption she might come away with no qualifications. I just hope that when she is older and more stable she might be able to go back to her studies.

Fifi more info on Maudsley DBT would be great. How do I PM you? IT is not my strength.

Hi Boogie,

never actually done it, but if you look at one of my posts, at the top right hand corner it says message poster...try that and see if it works!

Fifi

Hi All
Hope you had a peaceful and drama free Christmas. My d is still in the adolescent psychiatric unit but she came out on leave on Christmas Eve. We had a distressing night as she kept cutting and getting upset and I was really anxious that we might have to take her back to the unit or go to A & E and I didn't want Christmas morning to be ruined for my younger daughter. Anyway my d was quite cheerful Christmas Day and we made it through until after dinner when she decided she wanted to go back to hospital. We didn't make any effort at all New Years Eve as i just felt too drained and didn't feel like celebrating the start of another year. I feel like I spent the rest of the Christmas holidays driving to and from the hospital.

Anyway at my d's recent CPA meeting it was decided that she needs to go to a residential therapeutic community for treatment and education. I was pleased with the decision but have now been told it may take up to 6 months for the arrangements to be made. Nobody at the meeting was able to suggest a community nor did they seem to know how to go about bidding for funding. Those from Education were already bickering with Health as to who would fund it. Grrrrr. It is all so frustrating.

My poor d seems to be getting worse, she absconded from the unit on one occasion so cannot have any ground leave and has now started tearing her hair out and looks very bald at the front. She has been crying solidly for last few days. I feel guilty for leaving her in the unit but the risk is just to high too have her home. Sorry for the big moan i'm having a particularly low day today. Anyway roll on 2014!

so sorry your Christmas was so stressful - it seems to me that bpd just seems to effect the happiness and wellbeing of the whole family and is especially hard on us mums.

Our Christmas was a bit of a non event too although nowhere near as difficult as yours. Dd decided to spend it with her bf but couldn't handle it and we had to drive over and bring her home because she was so upset. She has since split up with her bf and instead of having a meltdown she dealt with it brilliantly is saying she is feeling much much better.

Early days though!

Take care of yourself you are doing absolutely everything you can for your dd.

Hi all, I was moxie but thought no one had posted here for ages as it fell off my 'threads I'm on'!
My dd is still in her placement, she nearly got transferred to a long term hospital due to her increasingly aggressive and erratic behaviour but managed to pull it together and she is now relatively stable and has just started psychotherapy.
Christmas was quite stressful even with her home just the 2 nights but we all survived
Hope you are all doing well!

Hi everyone - it's been ages since I posted but I think of you often and it's good to see that you're hanging in there. My DD is stable, inasmuch as someone with bpd can be stable. She hasn't self-harmed since September, which I think is a really encouraging sign, though she was very low over Christmas. I'm hoping that she will pick up a bit as the days get longer, as this time of year is so tough.

I've learnt a lot about how to support her from this book and thought it worth recommending to you all. It's been especially useful to understand the DBT approach, since my DD's psychiatrist has decided that she doesn't meet the criteria even to go on the waiting list, such is the demand for places. Very frustrating, but it's out of our hands and learning how to behave around her is the only solution I can think of, following the belief that you can't change other people, you can only change the way you react to them!

It's really helped me to stop feeling resentful and angry towards her when she appears to be behaving badly and I hope in time that we can get her onto a more settled path with a clear view of the future. For now she is doing an undemanding job and has started a distance learning course about (of all things!) Psychiatry and Social Work! I hope she might venture into something more challenging which would get her mixing with people her own age a bit more, but am trying to remain patient.

Sympathy to you all, and do remember that it's OK to put yourselves first at least some of the time!

x

That book looks good Sij - I need all the help I can get.

Quick question - do you think its a good idea for a bpd sufferer to become friends with another bpd sufferer? My dd has formed a very strong friendship with a member of her therapy group who is so similar to my dd its quite scary. They get on like a house on fire and dd says that she has finally met someone who understands her and she also fully understands her new friend.

I feel a bit worried about it but not sure why.... Maybe its a good thing

Flora my dd spends her life making new 'best friends' with girls similar to her (she lives in a home with 7 or so girls with the same issues) but it doesn't last due to the erratic nature of bpd! But I do think she learns a little more from every 'friendship' too.

And as an aside dd is bi sexual as are most of the girls there - that adds an extra dimension to the hormones drama and confusion!!

My Exh had bpd..Can I recommend a book stop walking on eggshells..I read it and found it really helpful

That's interesting ashtray - I have a feeling my dd might be bi sexual or maybe gay. She hasn't said anything and has always had boyfriends in the past but I wouldn't be surprised.

More drama ahead is an absolute certainty.

I found this book both sympathetic and supportive and really easy to read.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1572245077/ref=pd_aw_sims_1?pi=SL500_SY11

Hi, my dd also has very short, intense friendships with girls (they usually last about a month) which often flip over into a gay relationship. I'm just generally quite relieved that I don't have to worry about underage pregnancy! (apologies for being flippant). My dd is still in the psychiatric unit. She seems to be picking up other patients symptoms almost daily, being able to read other peoples thoughts, needing to run away etc. It is quite worrying but we are hoping that we are on the cusp of finally getting her some treatment so we don't want to discharge her just yet. I also went and saw my MP on Friday to moan about the useless Childrens Mental Health system and he was hopeful that he might be able to get some results. Fingers crossed.

Good luck boofie, an mp on board does tend to speed things along! Any more mentions of potential residential placement?

Hi Sij - Glad that things seem to be on the right track for your dd.

Ashtrayheart - no more news other than the Social Worker told the ward it ws highly unlikely they would fund a residential stay. I wore myself out last week chasing my tail, phoning round for information and getting nowhere so taking a week off and hope the MP gets stuck in. The next CPA is not until 18th Feb so highly unlikely anything more will get done until then.

Glad that Mental Health in young people is hitting the news. Hopefully it might improve matters in the future.

Boofie I don't blame you, sometimes you have to take a step back and recharge for a bit! Am here if you need any help x

Thanks Ashtrayheart. Appreciate your help.

Hi all. Just a quick question about self harm. Just been to a parenting group discussing SH and everybody else's children in the group were very secretive about it. My d self harms a lot and we have had to go to A and E on a few occasions but she always shows me as soon as she has done it. I was made to feel that because her SH is so explicit that it is behavioural and not a mental health problem and I feel a bit upset that her problem didn't seem to be taken seriously. I'm just interested to hear others accounts of SH.

Hi Boofie

I don't really have an answer to your question, but it's good that you have some support in the form of a parenting group. Did someone specifically tell you that your DD's self-harming is not a mental health problem? Whatever the cause, it is certainly something to be taken seriously.

You might find this video interesting. The speaker is a Human Givens therapist with a great deal of experience working with teenagers and self-harm issues.

Stay strong and be proud that your relationship with your DD is good enough that she can communicate with you about her self-harm.

Thanks Sij

The video was really interesting and informative. I think I'm going to send it out to some of my relatives who really don't understand the SH.

The parenting group is run by a psychologist at the psychiatric unit where my d is staying. I just felt that the psych was implying that her SH was manipulative behaviour or a way of communicating rather than a reaction to emotional pain. She is also trying to abscond a lot and now hearing voices which I think are getting branded as manipulative and behavioural rather than mental health issues. My thoughts go round and round in my head but at the end of the day all I can think is that regardless of whether it is mental health or behavioural if she was happy, stable and able to cope then she would not have to/feel the need to do these dysfunctional things.

My dd 'hears voices' and sees things usually when something has happened she doesn't like or she has been particularly aggressive - they put hers down to 'pseudo' hallucinations.
I'm not sure if it's due to manipulative behaviour or if in times of extreme anxiety she genuinely experiences these things. The professionals are adamant she is not suffering any form of psychosis.
My dd is always very open about her self harming, I think bpd sufferers are less likely to be secretive about it maybe?

I think there's a very fine line between behavioural and mental health issues. When dd took 3 od's in quick succession health refused to section her resulting in ss having to get a court order for a secure unit (no nurses). Then after a few months they decided to section her and she was transferred to hospital. The only difference was a change in the person who assessed her!

Yes, i thought that it may be the case that bpd sufferers are more likely to be open about their SH. I agree as well that there is a fine line between 'mental health' and 'behavioural' problems. Shame the experts always seem to use these 'labels' to their own advantage i.e. we are not entitled to a Social Worker because d's problems are mental health and so we come under the CAMHs umbrella, then at the unit they imply her problems are behavioural rather than 'mental 'health' which makes me feel that somehow her problems are devalued.

How is your d getting on at her residential school?

Remember too that many people close to bpd sufferers can feel manipulated. It's not deliberate behaviour by our DDs! The book I recommended upthread helped me to understand my reactions as well as DD's behaviour, and more importantly to learn some ways to communicate that help her.

It is easier now she doesnt live at home, but sometimes I find myself getting drawn in to some manipulative behaviour (she often says one thing to her Dad and another to me) but I am getting better at not reacting to things and keeping my mouth shut rather than pulling her up on any discrepancies in what she is saying! It means we get on much better.
Boofie she is doing ok thanks, although the test will be after her birthday (its tomorrow, we are staying over in a nice hotel then going out for the day). Last year she was ok until after her birthday then it all went pearshaped!
She really likes it there though and desperately doesnt want to go into long term hospital so hopefully that will keep her from doing anything drastic. She is doing lots of gcse work at school and getting on well there.
I hope the next CPA is productive for you and your dd and the mp has made a start on helping to get things moving!