YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Although she's never been diagnosed, I'm fairly certain my mom has BPD.

I'm also pretty sure she used to hide my stuff. I'd "lose" something that was very important to me. She's scream at me for hours while telling me that I was irresponsible, ungrateful, etc. (I was nine-ish) I'd usually be grounded until I found it. I could never find it.

A few days to a week later, my mom would "find it" in my older sister's room (11-ish) and then my sister would be in trouble for being so cruel and hateful to her younger sister. It was always the same pattern.

I don't have any proof that it was my mom. My sister and I had a contentious relationship at that point and one time she did hide my shoes. (She was mad at me and we were maybe 8 and 6.) She's admitted to that. She's admitted to feeling guilty for stealing 25 cents from me 20 plus years ago. She says she didn't do this other stuff and I believe her. We have younger siblings but this feels a little too sophisticated of a plot for them. I don't think my dad was the culprit either; it just doesn't feel in character for him.

That leaves my mom or ghosts. I think my mom is the more likely choice


I guess my question is two-fold
1) did any of you with family members with BPD experience anything like this growing up? Is this gas lighting or is something else?
2) I really need to understand the feelings and motivations behind why she would do this. I don't understand the reward. These were really upsetting situations. I can't just ask her because she would deny it so I'm really relying on anyone with BPD to help me out. Do you recognize any feelings that might make you act this way? (Obviously you don't live in her head, and you aren't her, but I don't know where else to go for answers)

P.S. Please don't bash people with BPD in your answer. I really just want to understand what was happening.

They're trying to express a trauma that is wordless, dangerous and ungraspable. Possibly because it was a trauma that occurred before they had a grasp on language in a moment when their level of understanding extended the trauma to infuse the entire world with danger; that is to say at quite a young age. They will generally find through an unconscious, improvised process, the 'safest' way to find expression for that traumatic sensation. Their adult mind can't easily process the child's sense of overwhelm, that's been frozen inside them. They will 'innocently' gaslight children to confirm that what they are feeling is real. If the child responds in a way that mirrors how the adult feels, the adult is 'released' temporarily from their own short-circuiting agony. This is of course abusive. There is an aspect of the adult thinking the child is the only person who can understand, but this is abusive too because it simply serves to imprint the child; intergenerational passage of trauma.

There is also an urge to recreate the trauma; if it is kept fresh, the damaging consequences are somehow kept at bay. It's vaguely possible that your mother was playing a children's game with you in which her being an adult guardian, a fact her condition 'switched off', made the outcome for you much more distressing than if she were a similar aged playmate.

Gaslighting to me suggests intent. While certainly the person needs the experience of release from their trauma, it may be so overwhelming for them that they are effectively 'brought' kicking and screaming to a point where they engage in an absurd and hurtful (sometimes criminal) behaviour such that the recipient is helpless to either predict or resist.

In my own experience, the only response I could make was a confrontation much later in life, in which I could hear my own voice speak the reality of what happened; in front of that person, and thereby experience the real relationship to what they had done, and hopefully, escape further imprinting. And, to do therapy (for several generations ahead and behind me).

I am not an expert on BPD however it seems that those who suffer from it need to be the center of attention - your mother needed to make sure that your sister did not become a relationship of solace - therefore she needed to create tension between the two of you.

Then she would be the center of all attention good or bad it would be hers - its not right but I think that when the brain wants to have a rigid life to be happy this happens - then the world needs to be controlled... And yes it was gas-lighting to make you see her world. I think it is part of the issue she was dealing with and it sucks that it affected you this way - I am sorry for your experiences - but hopefully you and your siblings can bond share and heal now