ckpineappleCasual Contributor
Caring for an older parent with Borderline Personality Disorder - all while I've just been diagnosed with Autism
Hi.
I'm new here - only just discovered this forum. I always assumed that, since my mother is not actually living with me, I didn't quality for any support.
My mother's official diagnosis is Bipolar Disorder, but since my father died a couple of years ago her behaviour changed significantly. A psychologist I spoke to at the time said the way I spoke about her made it sound like BPD. Of course, he's never met her so it might be completely off-base. But what I've read about BPD made an awful lot of sense of her behaviour.
She doesn't live with me, but she lives nearby. We live in a lovely area where lots of people help her out, and she's on an aged care package. But she's getting more frail and genuinely needs help with some things. But I think she also gets emotional relief from having people rush around and make a fuss of her. So, while I don't think she actually makes up any of her needs, I'm pretty sure she exaggerates them sometimes. And others she gets in a panic about things that are, objectively not urgent. But either way, the phone calls and demands that I rush over and help keep coming.
Everyone I've talked to about this says to make clear boundaries. So we've organised that she rings me every second day (or I ring her, but I never get the chance - she's always rung first), and once a fortnight I come over and deal with anything she needs dealt with. But while she says having that structure is helpful, she's constantly pushing those boundaries - she tells me this will always happen as she finds boundaries themselves a threat. She knows all the buttons to push to guilt trip me. And, being autistic myself, I find it very difficult to know if I'm being unreasonable or not. But if I don't enforce some boundaries my own mental health suffers - badly. It feels like we have directly opposing needs and I'm really struggling to manage the situation.
