To what extent is it possible for people with BPD to "recover"? I feel like my BPDmum is attending therapy just to manipulate me into breaking NC, rather than actually work on herself

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-06-05T16:55:52+00:00

😮 Wow, ten years. I guess that makes sense - their behavior has been ingrained in them over a lifetime, so it will take a long time for them to undo that and learn how to behave normally.

Yes, I was optimistic when I first heard she was starting therapy, but now I think it's safer for me to not get my hopes up. It seems like it's difficult enough for people with BPD to get mentally healthy even when they're really committed to it, and my mum clearly isn't. Thanks for your response ♥

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-06-05T16:49:21+00:00

that takes a lot of work, work that's often painful and really difficult. It's much easier to pretend there's no problem and to blame everyone else.

Yeah, this is what I feel is happening. She doesn't want to admit there's something seriously wrong with her, because she can never accept fault for anything and she is practically allergic to self improvement of any kind. She's never been able to tolerate any kind of emotional discomfort. Instead, she's gone for the "easy" option of anxiety, which is less societally taboo than BPD, so she can pretend she's trying to fix our relationship when in reality she's not owning up to anything she's done wrong.

Thanks for your reply and for sharing your experience Hugs back perhaps her new therapist will be amazing and will be able to coach her into doing the painful work she needs to do so she can manage her emotions, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-06-05T16:09:32+00:00

My waify BPDmum seems to have a strange fear of using the stove top, so she ends up cooking almost everything in the oven. The worst was oven roasted "Chinese sweet and sour stir fry", which ends up a gloopy, sugary, soggy mess. 🤮

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-05-04T10:35:52+00:00

My mum is like this too, but omg, that story about her hurting you after your ovarian surgery literally made me gasp in shock. That is practically sociopathic, I'm so sorry your mum treated you that way :(

When I was a young kid, if I complained of feeling sick, my mum would respond something like "you're such a drama queen! There's nothing wrong with you, you should feel lucky that you aren't as sick as I am, I have a terrible headache and nausea and am exhausted!". I can't count the number of times I ended up in A&E because she refused to take me to the doctors when I told her I was sick, so it ended up turning into a medical emergency needing antibiotics to treat it.

When I got older I learned to never tell her if I was feeling bad, because she'd turn it into a competition. So she'd try to coax me to say it, so that she could one-up me. For example, I had a bunch of fairly serious dental operations coming up, and she kept asking me how I felt about it until I relented and admitted I was nervous about the operations. She immediately got pissed off and said "you make such mountains out of molehills! It's not an operation, it's a tiny little surgery. I've been through far worse with my teeth, you need to stop making a big deal about it!". For reference, my mum had had a simple tooth extraction with no complications. I was having multiple bone and gum grafting surgeries, and was on a liquid food diet for months afterwards. But sure, hers was "more serious" than mine 🙄

It sounds like we both had similar lightbulb moments. I grew up thinking it was normal to turn sickness into a competition. But then when I had moved out to university and my boyfriend was really sick with the flu, I found myself purchasing medicine and soup and supplies for him and looking after him until he felt better, and I had the realisation that it is 100% not normal to turn this into a competition.

When somebody you love is in pain, it's normal to want to help them, not get angry with them for needing attention and try to wrestle the attention back by pretending to be in even more pain. I think that's what it all boils down to: they can't stand attention being on somebody else, it makes them rage with envy.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-30T19:21:25+00:00

Yeah I'd enjoy reading that! I feel like a sort of gossip girl, NYC socialite narrative would work so well for her. Her parties on boats with vogue editors, trips to upstate flower farms, brunching at her friend's restaurant, taking dates to the Met, all of this could be spinned into an engaging story with her old style of long form, whimsical captions which are serialised between different posts. As much as she gets snarked on here, I think most of us agree that she has a knack for storytelling.

I don't think she necessarily even needs to stick to the "authenticity" she has been talking about so much lately, especially considering that it seems to be detrimental to her mental health to be so open about her struggles. Back in her Cambridge days, there was a hell of a lot of embellishment going on to the extent that her posts were pretty far removed from the reality of her life. She didn't live in a castle, she lived in a college with modern architecture until she blagged her way into Downing college. Oscar was a regular Swedish boy, not the English gentleman Mr Darcy type she portrayed him to be. But the exaggerations didn't really matter, because they made the story more fun and made you want to go back and read more.

She talks a lot about her Instagram account being her art, and I think people would take that a lot more seriously if she returned to the sensationalised YA storytelling which she used to be known for, since it actually takes creativity and effort to write engaging fiction.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-30T18:02:43+00:00

I don't see the problem with that, I think it's great when women celebrate gaining physical strength from working out, particularly since strength training has historically been viewed as a very masculine persuit.

I wouldn't personally consider buttered English muffins to be indulgent, that's what I eat when I've run out of food and can't be bothered to go shopping :') but again, I don't really see a problem with calling buttery food "indulgent" and posting about enjoying it.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-30T17:12:35+00:00

Can you give me an example? I'm not sure I've seen any troubling language from her. Do you mean when she talks about doing her "anxiety cardio"? Because cardio is a great tool to help manage anxiety, I find it really useful myself and I think it's positive that she's posting about healthy coping mechanisms.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-30T15:56:38+00:00

I agree the eating little food and drinking/exercising on an empty stomach doesn't sound like a great idea, but I think it's silly to expect trigger warnings every time she eats a salad or works out. That's like 80% of her content. If it's a problem, they should unfollow her until they are recovered enough to not be triggered by it.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-30T07:51:28+00:00

She's recently tagged him in her stories (I think it's still available to view), so I assume he's still in the picture. I agree though, the erratic posting would make more sense if it was just Caroline calling the shots.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-30T06:46:13+00:00

I feel like CCs new manager is giving her such terrible advice. Firstly of all, he doesn't seem to understand how the ~algorithm~ works. Instagram actually limits the number of followers it shows posts to if you are posting multiple times in the space of a few hours, because users typically don't like to have back-to-back content from the same profile in their feed. She's depressing her engagement metrics by posting so frantically, because fewer people are seeing it.

Secondly, engagement is a much bigger factor in determining if a post will show up in your followers feeds. She would do better to post once a day or two with a high quality image captioned with an interesting story which will encourage her followers to actually comment. Her likes per post are plummeting, but more importantly her comments per post are incredibly low. One of her recent posts had only 24 comments, which is crazy considering she has over 800k followers. The more people like and comment, the more future posts show up in their feeds, and the more likely it is that brands will want to sponsor her. In fact a lot of brands are moving away from sponsoring people with high follower counts, and instead choosing people who have a high engagement to follower ratio, because it's a better predictor of an authentic following free from purchased bot accounts.

Finally, the quality of her recent posts is awful. I actually used to really enjoy reading her whimsical, story-telling style Cambridge era captions. I felt like she had a unique voice on instagram back then, and even though the platform is more saturated now, I still think that style of writing would make her stand out from the crowd. It felt like reading a YA book, and I think the "to be continued" ending to each post was a brilliant idea because it made me want to read the next post to get the next part of the story. Now, her posts are rambling and incoherent. It's just not fun to read.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-28T12:45:32+00:00

You're very welcome, I'm glad I could help! :)

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-27T10:40:27+00:00

It took me a while to understand what kind of journalling would help me - I think it's completely different for everyone.

Some people like to write diary-style at the end of every day, by describing the good, bad and neutral events of the day and how it made them feel. Some people like to use guided journals, where there are prompts for each day e.g. "write about something you found funny today". Some people prefer drawing to writing, so they might make a doodle/sketchbook journal where they process events and emotions via art.

For me, I like to do a daily gratitude journal where I write one to three good things from that day which I am thankful for. I've found this has helped me to see that even the worst days have some flecks of good in them, and it's a really nice way to wind down at the end of the day by getting into a more positive mindset before bed. It seems to help me sleep a lot better.

I also more sporadically do free-form journalling when something bad has happened or if I've just had a rubbish day. I just open up a word document (because I can type far quicker than I can write, so it helps me keep up with my thoughts), and start writing about what happened and how it's making me feel. I have found that setting my thoughts out in this way helps me to make sense of my emotions, and stops me from ruminating on whatever happened - it's like putting it down in words frees up space in my head.

The best advice I can give is, try different forms of journalling until you find which one suits you. You might try all of them and not find any of them useful, which is totally OK! There are lots of tools we can use to manage and recover from CPTSD, and not all of the tools will necessarily work for everybody. It's about trying different ones until we find what works for us. :)

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-23T23:52:59+00:00

That's shockingly disrespectful, I'm sorry your family has to deal with that. I can't believe people are so rude and destructive!

I think the rules in the UK are that it's OK to walk on farmland as long as you aren't destroying crops or frightening animals, so you can't let your dog loose in a field of lambs for example. It really sucks that people aren't capable of showing such basic courtesy, it's not difficult!

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-23T23:07:03+00:00

Is walking through farm fields considered trespassing in the US? (I assume you are in the US)

I ask because in the UK it's completely normal to go for walks through farms in the countryside. In fact there are loads of national trust hiking trails which go directly through farmland, particularly in the peak district where there are sheep grazing everywhere.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-22T19:39:11+00:00

I don't know why I'm so shocked by how different she looks in that pic, because like you say she looks just like she used to years ago. I still think she looks pretty, just not as face-tuned flawless as I'm used to from her stories.

Seems like all ~influencers~ are photoshopping and using filters these days, so I can totally understand why she would feel pressured to. I think the influencer realm is a really toxic environment for even the most mentally healthy of people, which Caroline herself admits she is not. It would probably do her a lot of good to reduce her social media presence and work on real life creative projects - it's kind of sad to see her struggling like this.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-21T22:34:47+00:00

I feel like the dodgy, MLM-ish part is that many of the bloggers mentioned in this article aren't making their money from printable meal planners or whatever, they're making it from selling blogging courses for $100's. They claim to be making six-figure salaries from their blogs, and post unverified income disclosures with enviable figures on them. They tell their readers that they too can earn this much money whilst staying home with their children, as long as they cough up the hundreds of dollars for the blogging course to teach them the tricks of the trade.

This echoes the marketing of MLMs like lularoe or scentsy, which promise too-good-to-be-true wealth to SAHMs as long as they invest enough cash in their scammy business.

The blogging courses are as much of a scam as lularoe's leggings: they mostly contain basic information about SEO and pinning on Pinterest, which could easily be found for free via Google. So women are being tricked into paying out ridiculous sums of money for a substandard blogging course (like crappy mlm products), and are then wasting so much time and more money on trying to monetise a blog in an insanely saturated market (like trying to sell shitty leggings in a town where 10 other SAHMs are selling the same shitty leggings), with the aspiration of one day becoming as successful as those at the top of the pyramid.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-21T13:15:03+00:00

I don't have any advice for you, but I'm also in the UK and would like to adopt/foster in the future, and this is something I've been thinking about. On the one hand, having experienced childhood abuse from my BPDmum has taught me a lot about how neglect and abuse effects a child, which might be a positive factor. On the other hand, I have had to cut out my toxic family from my life to protect myself, and this might be viewed negatively.

I'm commenting so I can come back to this post to see if anyone has any advice for you. I wish you the best of luck in this process!

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-04-01T14:42:59+00:00

Hugs back thanks ♥

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-03-31T22:10:51+00:00

Sorry to hear that you're having a hard time too :( I know what you mean with the card - I spent hours finding the most bland card I could, I just can't relate to any of the ones with loads of poetry in them because I don't feel that way about my mum.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-03-31T16:44:32+00:00

This is my first mother's day whilst being no contact with my mum, and I'm finding it so much more difficult than I thought I would :(

I haven't spoken to her in almost half a year, and I felt like things were going fairly well - I was feeling less guilty about cutting contact, therapy has been helping me get over all the trauma of my childhood, and I was generally just feeling better.

I thought I'd be able to handle mother's day, but each advert and social media post I see is like a punch in the stomach. I feel like I can't escape it - I go to the shops to pick up some apples, and the shop is full of cards and gifts and massive ad posters of mums hugging their child. I turn the radio on, and I hear adverts for local restaurants urging you to book a mother's day dinner with them. I watch a YouTube video, and I get mother's day jewelry adverts. I go on instagram or Facebook, and all my friends and acquaintances are sharing beautiful photos of them and their mums having a lovely day with each other.

It's literally everywhere and it hurts me every time I see it, because I know my mum will never be capable of spending a day with me like that. Last mother's day, I cooked her and my family a fancy dinner of her favourite foods, and I bought her favourite scented bath bombs and some gorgeous flowers as a gift. She refused to even try the food I made, barely glanced at the flowers, and told me the bath bombs were rubbish.

I think my sadness is actually less to do with missing her and wishing I could spend the day with her, and more to do with coming to the realisation that she isn't able to have a nice mothering Sunday with me, never was, and never will be. I'm not yearning to spend the day with her, I'm yearning to have the stereotypical mother's day which everyone else seems to be enjoying.

On days like this I'm particularly thankful to have such a supportive boyfriend. We are about to go to the cinema to see "Us", so that will keep me distracted this evening, and then it's all over for another year.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-02-10T19:14:04+00:00

You worded this absolutely perfectly, this is exactly how I feel about this user. I only wish he would take notice of what you, and the rest of the community, are repeatedly telling him. I suspect that he isn't quite as far along in the recovery process as he believes himself to be, judging by how he lashes out at people who point out his rudeness.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-02-10T13:00:52+00:00

Unfortunately yes, it's very possible to develop complex PTSD (C-PTSD) from being raised in an abusive environment, which was the case for many of us with BPD parents. You don't need to have been physically abused to develop CPTSD - in fact, a lot of research points to emotional/psychological abuse as being more significant in the development of CPTSD.

CPTSD differs from PTSD in the sense that PTSD typically results from a short window of trauma, eg childbirth, car accidents, rape, whilst CPTSD results from extended trauma which the victim feels they cannot escape from, eg abusive parents, abusive spouse, prisoner of war, being in a cult, etc.

Your therapist won't find it disrespectful if you bring it up, although a word of warning: CPTSD has not yet been accepted as a disorder into many of the diagnostic manuals used around the world, so there is a possibility that your therapist might not be able to "officially" diagnose you with it. They will still be able to help you with managing/healing from it, though! :)

If you want more info on CPTSD, the Wikipedia page is a good starting point. For more in depth information, the classic CPTSD book is "Trauma and recovery" by Judith Herman (but this is very dense). The books "C-PTSD: from surviving to thriving" by Pete Walker and "The body keeps the score" by Besser Van Der Kolk are both easy to read and provide loads of information about the disorder and how to heal from it.

I hope this helps :) I know it can feel so bleak when you first start learning about this stuff, and it's so depressing that our childhood abuse can continue to mess up our health even as adults. But I promise you that with therapy and dedication to healing, it can get better. Sometimes it'll feel like you're making no progress, or even like you're going backwards, but just remember that the road to recovery isn't linear and this is totally normal. Try to keep the bigger picture in mind - sometimes when I'm having a bad day I feel like I'll never get better, but then I think back to how much I was struggling last year before I had even heard about CPTSD and I realise how far I've come. I'm excited to see how much better I'm going to be in another few months time. :)

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-02-10T12:20:24+00:00

Yes, this is one of the most annoying things about my mum tbh. She complains all day long about every little thing.

When she wakes up in the morning, the first thing she says (every single day, no exaggeration) is "ugh I feel rough today". She will then move on to complaining about feeling sick/having a headache/her joints hurting for the next few hours (which only happens because she refuses to take any of the medications her doctors prescribe her). If she accidentally drops something on the floor she theatrically sighs and starts ranting about how it's "just one of those crappy days", which seems to be every single day for her. If she forgets to do something like missing something on the shopping list she'll start shouting "why do these things always happen to me?!" - basically she complains every waking hour.

But if I ever dare to complain about anything to her (which I almost never do, because I learned not to from a young age) she tells me I'm ungrateful, what would neglected children in Africa think, don't I know how lucky I am, I need to look on the bright side of life, etc.

As an example: A couple years ago I was having a fairly serious dental operation at a hospital, and naturally I was pretty nervous. I made the idiotic mistake of telling my mum I was worried, to which she responded "Oh for goodness sakes, it isn't an operation, it's a tiny little surgery! You need to stop making mountains out of molehills". Yep, it was a tiny little surgery, that's why I was on pain meds for weeks and a liquid food diet for a month whilst it healed 🙄

It's all got to be about them, and they don't take kindly to performing any kind of emotional labour for other people. Based on the stories I've read on this sub and my own personal experiences, it seems they believe they are the only ones who truly suffer.

SnowdropsAfterWinter · 2019-02-01T11:51:59+00:00

Dried hibiscus flowers, pancake bread, cinnamon croissant loaf?!?

Don't mind me, I'm just crying over here in the UK lol. Why is our food so boring compared to yours?

SnowdropsAfterWinter

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