Borderline Personality

[wlynx27]

My mother was diagnosed as Borderline Personality about 50 years ago but no one is my family believes it, they say she is just plain selfish and manipulative. She had a sudden personality change when I was born. So, I have never known my mother as my older brothers and sisters have known her. I am the youngest of 5 children. My mother was the youngest of 5. Her mother died when she was 9. My mother left home and never returned right after I turned 9. She does not remember leaving us. I can not help to believe that my birth set something in motion for my mother that exploded the closer I got to the same age as she was when her mother died. My brothers and sisters have refused to communicate with my mother over the years. She is now 81, denies she ever left home and distorts the truth, blames my father for something she thinks happened in 1952. My whole family is fixated on this and it has been a horrible emotional heartbreak for all of us for the past 50 years. My brothers and sisters refuse to believe she has a mental illness. I can only attribute this to their experience with my mother before I was born. My eldest sister is very anger and bitter and now is my mother's caregiver and constantly reminds my mother she left her and was left to care for her siblings.I have forgiven my mother and have a good relationship with her. I spent 14 years in therapy. My oldest sister calls me and tells me Mom is lying to her, she says horrible things to Mom which then sets into motion Mom calling me and crying. What is Borderline Personality? Do they know what they are doing? My mother buys food she does not need to the point where it is out of control. She once bought $265 of Avon, the entire book! She drinks alcohol and smokes cigarettes even though she is a diabetic with constant pneumonia. Does she sound Borderline? I don't understand most information out on the web about it.

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

The borderline personality disorder has a specific meaning to psychiatrists that would be hard to fully explain here, but your mother does have many of the characteristics assosiated with this, including the narcissistic descriptive aspects, manipulative, unstable, etc.

That said,there is not much for you to do about it...it is a mental illness, but it is also hard to treat. Medications can quiet things down, but the nature of the personality is that it usually causes the kind of family split you have described.  It might be useful for you and some of your siblings to sit down together with a family therapist to see if you can heal the family split.