A personality disorder is a long-term set of tendencies in one’s thinking and behavior that impair the person’s functioning in the world

… Psychology Today

Didn’t want to start off that way but not easy, in fact, useless for ME to explain the concept of a personality disorder. COMPLICATED. Personal. Painful. It ruffles my feathers. Feels like chalk on a blackboard. Sounds like an infant wailing for hours. Looks like that first incision of a scalpel. Something too piercing. Too nocuous. Been too close to it. Many times. And too many times. You know it when you see it, hear it, feel it. And the discomfort it causes reminds you just how lucky you are that you can escape from the ravages this malady can superimpose on your soundness. As noted by Wikipedia: “Personality disorders (PD) are a class of mental disorders characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience…these patterns develop early, are inflexible, and are associated with significant distress or disability…The definitions may vary… American Psychiatric Association‘s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). There are many subclasses of a Personality Disorder. And subclasses within the subclasses with much overlapping among these categories.”

I do not pretend to be a psychologist. I am no expert on the topic of Personality Disorders. But when you live with one, you become educated. Quickly. The problem is by the time it is realized and verbalized it is nearly too late. Whatever interventions, behavioral or otherwise, the damage to a family can be irreparable. And…coming to terms with this reality IS the therapy. Rationalizing your reactions to it. Accepting them with as little guilt as possible. And, eventually, learning how to forgive… if you can AND if you want to…A process dictated by the knowledge that solving this problem, especially, is almost, if not, impossible.

I think she had friends once. She told me she went to dances, parties, roller-skating, movies. She spoke of roommates, classmates siblings. I’ve seen photos. Of her at a lake, a picnic, a wedding. She had a wedding. A wedding party. A maid of honor. She HAD friends once, dinner parties, day trips, vacations. A seemingly normal life. Or so it appeared. To others. To myself. At first. But that ended years ago because it never really began. That makes no sense. To you. But not to me. Her friends and family, a large one at that, had fallen from her favor consistently and constantly. Bizarre arguments, tales of murky accusations, heated squabbles fueled ALWAYS by some committed ‘wrong’ – her modus operandi – as they all were driven away by her maniputively sinister behavioral procedures: a consistent pattern of destruction to herself, others and most notably to her family. As far back as I can remember, any interactions with ANYBODY, were scattered. Staccato. A set of friends or family coming for a holiday one year would differ the next year. And ALWAYS with a murky ‘reason’… a ‘stolen’ collectible, a late arrival, a negative comment about a dessert being ‘too sweet’. All nonsense! A reason never understood, especially by a small child. Always tinged by anger and resentment. Nervous anticipation ALWAYS preceded SUCH ‘events’ …yet, they were always better than the anxiety ridden monotony of day to day life in a home were ‘things were just not right’. Other people did not know what was behind the scenes. They didn’t know how draining this family relationship can be. That she can often be quite popular and loved in other structured relationships, but not ones that require intimacy, longitude, commitment. They didn’t know …. she has a personality disorder. The sad truth, neither did I. At least for too long a time….

The garden and the kitchen were her sanctuaries, but they were also her dominion over which to rule. Her ruling domaine. She could exert her wishes over ingredients that had no words or free will . Her cakes were never burned. Plants grew exactly the way she planted them. Pets were safe. They didn’t ‘talk back’. Her furniture invulnerable. However, her children were her victims-vulnerable, compromised, insecure, and always wounded. ‘The damage of {borderline personality disorder}on children can begin in the earliest stages of infancy and disrupt the development of secure attachment and engagement. Studies have found that interactions between mothers with a personality disorder and their infant children are characterized by insensitivity, high levels of intrusion, and low levels of positive response to infant distress. These mothers are less likely to engage in healthy infant parenting behaviors, with researchers noting that these mothers smiled less, touched and imitated their infants less, and played fewer games with their babies. Additionally, these mothers demonstrated difficulty identifying and appropriately responding to their children’s emotional state. These unmet psychosocial needs at critical moments of development increase risk of disorganized attachment and rob children of security, comfort, and safety from the very beginning of their lives.’ …Elizabeth Kvarnstrom

For her diseased behaviors affected everyone and bled into everyone around her…into the family. For she was the sun and we all revolved around HER. It makes you very programmable and unsure; troubled. Instead of being taught that I was a normal person going through normal things…having the power and ability to deal with them, I was taught that what I was thinking or feeling were wrong. I would believe everything that everyone else taught me and wasn’t able to discern my own beliefs. People, on the other hand, she could not control. My mother treated anyone disagreeing with her or disobeying her wishes like an enemy combatant. A soldier. A crazed warrior truly convinced that the world is against her, plotting her future to be a war that has no end in sight.

And so growing up you watch, listen and gingerly ambulate the steppingstones of your life. You are unceasingly damaged by her choices, her actions, her words. She causes a permanent internal distress, blaming others, including you, for the chaos and misery of her life. And as you grow up, you hide it well from your friends, your teachers, your Girl Scout Leaders… Your ‘pretend life’ becomes your soothing reality. You eventually learn to set boundaries against which she constantly pushes, ultimately accusing you of not caring when she senses your fatigue. The tension in such a home is palpable. Miserable for much of the time. She continues to anger easily however curbs the physical abuse…the swollen eye, red hand marks can no longer be as easily muted. In defense, I learned to stay quiet unless she posed an imminent danger to myself or to others. Being non-reactive, depriving her of fodder to fuel an emotional eruption was a handy technique I learned to keep us both on good behavior. However, fear and worry still churned inside me no matter how calm I appeared on the surface. Again and again you hear the wailing..that she doesn’t know how long she can continue like this, continually insinuating the blame of her miserable life on you. A child. A teen. Somehow, you’re disappointing her once more, although you’ve bent over backwards to love her and to cater to her moods. But again…Voila! there are sudden, unexplainable times when you feel that stroking of your hair, her voice transformed into a different language, that love reciprocated in an intense, almost intoxicating way. And you cherish it, placing it in your little pink jewel box with the twirling ballerina, to remember and reminisce. And… just as quickly as it arrives, it disappears into a shroud of sudden misplaced anger and irrational complaints.

As I attempted to describe earlier, as much as she was single-minded, deceitful, and conniving, she was equally passionate, charming, and loving. I felt love when she felt like giving it. But was always in her way. She controlled it. Peacefulness was fleeting and timed. Had a price tag. Always cooking, cleaning, watering and weeding the garden. She cared about her house. But why did she NEED to garden so early! Moaning loudly outside the open-windowed bedroom on a sleepy July morning….she planned this! For she could not allow my ability to enjoy a morning relaxing in bed. Not Fair! Why would she need to change my bedsheets at 10pm on a school night? Or clean out my closet at 1am, heaving hangers and dirty socks around the bedroom as if it were a tornado. Yet! Her cooking could be joyful. O! Those yummy summer burgers and fresh corn. The heavenly pot roast. The broiled chicken only she could so perfectly season. Her holiday meals unsurpassable yet weighted with the exhaustion a child should not feel due to the midnight hours of ‘helping’ bake those precious Christmas cookies…dust the legs of a dining table one never saw? Scrub the bathroom floor for holiday ‘company’ until your knuckles bled? However, paying the price for normalcy was the worth it when you are so young. You did not know any differently and happily eating a leg of lamb on Easter was better than the stomach aches in July at 7am….

When she does lash out, and this could be quite unpredictable, she would later rewrite history and deny any wrong-doing in the first place. This is due to a psychological defense called “splitting,” which causes people to see themselves and the world as either all good or all bad. And as a child, it necessitated me to learn to adapt to her use of ‘splitting’ and therefore I found it difficult to trust my sense of past events. To question what I DID to cause the upset. Did I have the right to be angry? Was it my fault? What really did just happen? I would then often avoid attempting to hold others accountable for their actions and remain in this modus operandi for many years to come…

Being a child of a parent with a personality disorder, I tend to routinely become overly sensitive to the moods and needs of others. I can be needy, shameful, easily guilted, protective. I am quick to wound and can be overly critical of myself. The tools I have cultivated and flourished in dealing with this family member cost me the capacity to navigate conflict effectively. I lack a healthy ability to stand up for myself, to allow someone else to take care of me when I needed it. Educating myself about her struggles, working with a therapist, and becoming aware of her effect on my behavior finally would set me on a path to build the much-needed emotional resources I lacked. I learned to take responsibility for what was in my control and release what wasn’t.

It took a very long time for me to grasp the idea that ‘something was TRULY wrong’ with her. It was a process. With maturity, education and leaving home, little by little I was able to realize that my attempts to hide her didn’t really work. It was thought she was ‘odd’ and ‘mean-spirited’. But it took years, until I was in college, that I realized that the ‘what was wrong with her’ might actually an ‘illness’. A bonafide ailment with a name, instead of what I referred to as her homemade recipe for ‘crazy’. But it took many more years, until I had young children and was in therapy, that I truly understood her disorder and the contamination it precipitated throughout my lifetime.

I guess you can say, over time and by this I mean a very long time, my mother started to make sense to me. In the framework of her craziness and my craziness in response. Nearly a folie à deux. Not to be misunderstood with an empathy I wish I could feel. It IS there, somewhere, to some degree…hiding for fear of allowing forgiveness. And that is a whole other story. Another lifetime..

She’s gone now. Nearly 10 years. And, even with time, self-awareness and insight, I’m left feeling lost again, and with more questions than answers. Was there anything more I could have done for her? Did anything I did make a difference? Did I enable her to cause more hardship? Why didn’t I provide more medical services? Or act more aggressively upon suggestions from my therapists in dealing with her behaviors? Ignore her more? Listen to her more?

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The basic problem in this kind of family- this disorganized diagram of a family -is to try to oversimplify its complicated foundation. Why does it seem parents in such families see the role of being parents as the one and only reason for their existence? And this conflict over the ‘parenting role’ leads to a pattern in which the parents seesaw between contentious hyper-involvement with or without abuse, and contentious hypo-involvement with or without neglect. It appeared to me that subconsciously my mother hated being a mother. Did she see me as a handicap to a different…a TRUE ambition? Or that ‘motherhood’ was just too onerous? Too thankless? Too unrequited?Most likely all of these. And the teetering inherent in this pattern can and DOES lead a child to perceive a confusing and DAMAGING message from their mother that translates into “I need you, but I resent you’. This polarity can become a model for the child, ME, to learn to interpret either as a design to emulate or one to discard due to the destruction it can generate…

Yet, in the end…,I can finally talk TO her without the fear of being chastised for ‘talking back’. And I find myself doing it often . After her death I was overtaken by another kind of sorrow. The sadness that I would never again see the person I had spent most of my life trying not to become, and without whom I would not be who I am today. Painful, but oh! so very true. PLEASEREADTHIS🗽