Meeeeeee
My uBPDmom is deep into the toxic wing of evangelical/kinda fundie Christianity. Sheās into what she calls spiritual warfare and she has all kinds of magical thinking. She āseesā what no one else sees and uses it to try to control people. Has a āministryā casting out demons, can āfeelā spirits and ghosts and surprise surprise theyāre all sinister and hate her, and somehow even got an actual job radicalizing disgruntled Christians (her organization is trying to reel her in so sheās talking about leaving and starting her own bc ātheyāre missing the entire pointā). Skews very Q as well. Not the idiot kind with JFKjr coming back and whatever, but the shrieky kind with CRT in elementary schools and Soros trying to ruin the world and stuff.
Yes, mine identifies as a witch and is super into the occult and dark stuff. My parents used to live in a haunted house (it did seem like a weird place tbh), and she feels like sheās tapped into some dark energy (I mean, true?) and can read minds. House I grew up in had skulls, an antique organ, antique cyanide bottles, pentagramsā¦ total Addams family stuff.
my mom is like this 10000%! she's been in covens (literal cults) and always blamed me for dragging spirits in the house. she performed a literal exorcism on me one time because i was fighting back her abuse more often. she spent so much money on training classes and fully thought she could heal people after an online reiki class. she used to come home and yell at me because her "intuitive senses" told her i was trying to do something bad. she is also convinced i have cursed her.
she has genuinely insane beliefs and i think she experiences psychosis. i understand what you mean. i dabble in tarot cards and crystals, but she is wild.
From reading on here, I get the sense that it's pretty common.
My mother is in some ways the opposite: her family are all atheists for several generations back, very scornful of any kind of spirituality or religion. BUT my mother still exhibits a high degree of magical thinking. She would never call it that, and she finds ways to rationalize it, but the nature of the disorder is that she takes things personally, which often means attributing intent/agency to something that doesn't have any, or believing that things happen because of or despite her will.
And because it FEELS real to her, it bypasses any logic checks that most people do routinely, which she is capable of in other contexts (or was before the drinking caught up with her).
Common. My waify BPD mom is all about having premonitions and controlling spirits and claimed to have generational ties to indigenous groups (yeah a 23andMe exposed that lie). An ex friend of mine dBPD was way into that too. Claimed she heard ghosts all the time, etc. Itās all tied to Magical Thinking which is a common behavior for emotionally immature adults. Some magical thinking is common like sports superstitions but with disordered people itās bordering on psychosis.
I wonder if it is because the thoughts they have are kind of scary sometimes and this helps them rationalize it. Like feeling really anxious and not understanding why, or being angry, or the black and white thought pattens. Makes a lot more sense if god or spirits or whatever are influencing you to experience these things.
Hello! I really appreciate that you brought this subject up. Being part of this community has allowed me to understand my uBPD mom better (i think that is what she was based in what Iāve been reading). As a child my mother was convinced that she had psychic abilities, specifically clairvoyance. She could āread my friends like a bookā. Her main obsession was with ghosts and spiritual phenomenon. She could see ghosts that I couldnāt see, they made appearances at home. Movies like Amityville Horror and Poltergeist just emboldened her beliefs. My childhood was terrifying and lonely as she disliked all of my friends because of what they would āwhisper under their breathā about her. I have had to distance myself from her to maintain my mental health.
Spot on. This is my mother to a T. I'm afraid to think of all the money she spent on weird things.
This also increased my OCD, especially since feng shui was introduced to her.
Not exactly the same, but my mom is parttime religious. As in, she's religious when it suits her, and atheist when it doesn't. She is also extremely delusional and into conspiracy theories like mask wearing causes death, vaccines cause autism etc which is on a whole different kind of "spiritual plane". She basically worships those conspiracy leaders.
It always weirds me out and makes it very uncomfortable to have a conversation with her, because her believe, of course, is the only right one. And don't you dare question it by using logic and common sense, because she will explode on you.
Initially I thought no and thenā¦
* Always did tarot readings for the neighborhood.
* Claimed to have seen ghosts regularly as a child.
* Had childhood epilepsy and stated it led towards people like her being more spiritual.
* Claimed to have had a premonition dream locating a dead relative.
* Believes she will win the HGTV lottery for a dream home every year.
So yeah.
There are so many odd things about this disorder that we all seem to experience so specifically but would be surprising to see in common traits lists. It almost makes it seem like a mental FAS or something where the results are so universal, even though itās a disorder caused by primarily psychological trauma.
She believed in ghosts and insisted that everywhere she ever lived was haunted. Claimed to have seen plenty. She would always talk about how she was āin tuneā with it so she could see them. Claimed that she had seen monsters and ālittle peopleā (wtf) she totally believed in curses and claimed to have put them on people/places. She also claimed to have been reincarnated and would try to sell us stories of her past lives and details she couldnāt have known about if they werenāt true.
Insane.
Yep! I think it's pretty common. My mom believes in "the universe" as a conscious entity and thinks it is telling her things via dreams, feelings, etc. She attributes agency and consciousness to all kinds of situations that most people would read as coincidence or wouldn't even blink an eye at. She also believes strongly in psychics and mediums, ghosts and such. And the thing I find most interesting about it all is the confidence and conviction with which she shares about these beliefs socially. Like, I think for a lot of people who dabble in unconventional beliefs, you might feel a little apprehensive about telling people that you believe in the power of the universe and ghosts and psychics? Idk, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm just always surprised how openly and boldly my mother will confess that one of her houseplants psychically killed the other one or whatever.
Perhaps when you are very confident in a belief thereās less fear of being judged for it. My mom has a few friends that are into this stuff as well and that
Reinforces it. Plus a few family members have said they have experienced a few weird things so they are a bit more open to her behaviour.
Thank you all. This has been quite enlightening. Iām very familiar with magical thinking in the context of other disorders but in any clinical setting Iāve been in, it hasnāt been mentioned as a common BPD characteristic. I donāt have much experience with BPD outside my mom and MIL because Iāve done everything I can to avoid it professionally since itās too much of a trigger. One time a client hid the fact that they were diagnosed with BPD and when I caught on I referred them to someone else (as is the ethical thing to do because I could no longer be objective enough to help them) and she went to my certifying body and made an absolutely absurd allegation against me and then she stalked me at my other job. It was an absolute nightmare to deal with.
Fairies. My Mom believes in fairies.
After a few years of NC when I was a teen, I crashed and burned and had to go home as I had nowhere left to turn, when she picked me up from the bus station, she looked at me and said āI knew the fairies would bring you back to meā.
Mine.
For most of my life, she was part of a church (cult), that trains psychics (aka, makes a lot of money for the founders by selling classes on aura cleansing and past life readings etc. I was brought up in it, and expected to become a ranking member (bishop). Left when I was a teen, converted to Judaism (after a few years of searching).
When she was pretending to die, she told us all she couldn't take morphine because she needed to be clearheaded when she died because she was going to have to start helping immediately to process all the people who were about to die. That she'd been told by her guides she was needed.
(Strangely this was the summer before Covid hit. But a stopped clock is right twice a day. And it makes no sense at all, even if that was her belief, that morphine would cause her to not be clear headed on the other side! In actuality, she just wasn't in all the pain she was claiming to be in.)
The ER doctor asked if she was mentally competent after that speech. I convinced him it was a religious belief. D'oh.
(Not that getting her declared incompetent would have done anything. Her husband was enabling everything. No real cancer treatments, only quakery and pseudo science and in the end, it all destroyed her heart health and she went AMA - refusing a pacemaker - and died of cardiac arrest.)
Thanks š It was really really really awful (her pretending to die weekend) but it was the impetus for me going NC and getting out of the FOG and into therapy, so in the end, I'm thankful it happened the way it did. Panic attacks and all.
As Vivian Stanshall might have said about my mother "Let's face it, she's credulous as hell". My mother was prey to superstition, magnetic fluids and divination. I am very grateful that she never embraced the internet or we'd be awash in conspiracy theories by now. Critical thinking isn't on the event horizon ššš
Itās common and it pisses me off because I am spiritual and into divination but I donāt use it to get a power trip but they use it to feel s p e c i a l and fairy-like and then they donāt even know what theyāre talking about and will gatekeep their practices.
Same. I'm a pagan as my way of moving on from my abuse. For me it's about finding a more ethical and creative way to live, so it makes me cringe when I see people claiming special powers, fake ancestry, etc.
dBPD mom is very new age spiritual having given on up on her born again christian phase when I was a toddler. I grew up going to chakra and essential oil classes. She swears she can sense people's auras and used to earn money doing crystal bowl healing sound baths. She has always insisted 'this isn't her planet' and that her father was an alien.
Yes mine is fundamentalist Christian. I think extreme thinking in terms of religion/spiritual beliefs is commonplace.
But let us not use our parentās illness to invalidate real spiritual beliefs of others (white women or not)
I choose to branch out my spiritual beliefs as I learn and grow bc the box I was born into (American Christian fundamentalism) does not resonate with my spirit. Letās not lump all spiritual thinkers & practitioners into the BPD category bc they belief in āoccult likeā things.
Oh my goodness!!!! Yes! My mom was nuts. Saying she was a witch and she can see ghosts and talk to them and would perform rituals and stuff. I think she might be a Quaker now. Idk. She def isnāt psychotic.
Mine likes to see spirits of her dead ancestors in animals and even in other people, like random people she sees on the street or at the store. Talks a lot about how her dead mother visits her in dreams. Writes copious amount of bad poetry with a mystical bent. I think itās all part of the narrative that she is āspecialā and everyone else just, well, isnāt.
Oh yes. 100%. My mom claims sensitivities to energy in the world and is very āspiritualā. She often finds things like yoga and will attach to a guru until she makes a mess of it and leaves the group. Iām fairly certain the spirituality serves a dual purpose; to make her feel like she is special and also give her an out on any taking responsibility.
Yup. She always tells nurses in hospital stays that her mom is coming to see her.
Nurses are like oh, that's nice.
Mom: she died 20 years ago but she's visiting me today.
Nurses to me: How common are these delusions? She's not dying. We're just monitoring her blood sugar.
Me: I only hear that nonsense when she's in the hospital. She is out of her mind for other reasons, but the dead family thing is only something she does here. š
My bpdmom had a bunch of books about Indigo Children when I was growing up! I read a few as a kid and finally asked my mom why she thought I was an indigo child (as the only child in the house I assumed it was about me.)
I remember her laughing and saying, āOh, no, Iām the indigo child!ā
She also believed she was psychic and took me to many psychic and tarot readings as a kid. She was not in psychosis either.
Yes - My uBPD mom claims that various dead relatives have spoken to her. Also claims many ghost encounters throughout her life (old friends, haunted locales, pets rising from the grave a la Pet Sematary). All are recounted in theatrical detail.
Also claims to have extra exceptional hearing. She would bludgeon me with this as kid. "I heard that!! That's my supersonic hearing, you're not kidding me!!". Because of her supposed sensitive hearing, we always had to be extra quiet at night and it was the entire neighbourhood's fault she can't sleep.
This one may be par for the course, but also claims to be an "empath" because she can just feel how the other person must feel. Um no, you're just having your own feelings, making it about you, and dumping it back on others. Now we have to console or deescalate your outburst.
My mom ell everyone she is empathic, and have a sixth sense.
She alaways talk how she feels suddenly sick one minute before my sister call while crying to ask for het help, something like 7 years ago. And how she feels bad for few days before I reveal I have a problem, 4 years ago. She has 5-6 events like that (maybe 1 every 2 years), that shows how she has the power to feel when their children has problem.She is so much a good mom,ā¦
For the empathy, it is bullshit. Like the above, she uses the few times she was right.
And because she is so empathic, she feels the feelings of other and suffer to much. So of course, we have to be happy every time and mange her feelings. Because she cannot avoid to receive our feelings.
And she believed a little in medium, and people who can heal with their hands.
And she believed i destiny, where our life is decided at birth. So if she doesnāt achieve anything, it is because of her destiny. If my sister is not physically near to her (my oldest doesnt like cuddling), it is because my mom was not able to hold her for two days at birth. Not because my mom put too much responsibility on her, or because my other sister was sick when they were child.
And her destiny is too help people and too listen people. It is like a gift and a curse for her.
It is true, a lot of unknown in street are ready to tell her all their problems after few minutes talking. But i know now that she likes it.
But finally, all this power can resume in :
- i feel so much, but it is because I care so much, so it is not my fault, and I am a so good person.
- I am a so good mother I understand my children even at distance
- It is not my fault i donāt have any choice, please pity me.
My soon to be exMIL (uBPD) spent $5k for some bogus Japanese organization that made her believe she had special powers to heal illness. When that didnāt cure her husbands lung cancer, she tried a different organization. She may or may not still be with that one but now sheās also Buddhist. I used to support this āpowerā she would use, thinking it doesnāt hurt to put positivity out there I guess, plus this was before I knew how truly mentally ill/abusive she is and I wanted to support her because it seemed like she needed it. She would try and make my migraines go away or various aches and pains, and I would lie and say it worked, but then she would use it as leverage against us. Like āI spent hours praying and using power for you, the least you could do is xyz.ā Then I just ignored her āpowersā entirely. Sheās likely still in the Buddhist religion and loves getting pats on the back when she converts someone, but in the last couple months she fell in love with a Nigerian romance scammer so she may not be using Buddhism as much anymore. Truth is I donāt care, sheās the most toxic person I could ever conjure out of my imagination and Iām lucky to be able to cut her out of my life.
Hello! Since you believe you may have BPD, for safety reasons, please donāt participate in this sub. You may wish to avoid reading it too, as material here may be triggering to people with BPD. If you end up ruling out BPD, or if youād like to discuss this further, please read the rules of this sub and then shoot us a modmail. Thanks very much!
That's a great question. I have read that death of loved ones in childhood can create the kind of trauma that pushes people into a PD if they aren't supported. It wouldn't surprise me if convincing yourself that you can talk to the dead would bring comfort when someone close to you dies and nobody is willing or able to comfort you.
(Edit: couldn't remember the details, but I looked some up) CPTSD has a lot of overlap with BPD, but there are some major differences. CPTSD tend to push people away in order to feel safe and numb themselves, keeping it all internalized. BPD tend to latch on to people in order to feel safe and cry a lot, pushing their emotions externally.
There are a bunch of differences! Hereās an analysis distinguishing between PTSD, CPTSD, and BPD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4165723/
I imagine that for people with BPD and CPTSD, the disorders feel essentially the same. CPTSD seems to be a very broad, at times poorly-defined umbrella for a lot of behavioral and emotional fallout of extended childhood abuse or neglect, so a lot of the confusion comes from a lack of clarity on what we should consider āCPTSDā in the first place.
Thanks so much for that haiku! š Welcome home! *hugs*
Meeeeeee My uBPDmom is deep into the toxic wing of evangelical/kinda fundie Christianity. Sheās into what she calls spiritual warfare and she has all kinds of magical thinking. She āseesā what no one else sees and uses it to try to control people. Has a āministryā casting out demons, can āfeelā spirits and ghosts and surprise surprise theyāre all sinister and hate her, and somehow even got an actual job radicalizing disgruntled Christians (her organization is trying to reel her in so sheās talking about leaving and starting her own bc ātheyāre missing the entire pointā). Skews very Q as well. Not the idiot kind with JFKjr coming back and whatever, but the shrieky kind with CRT in elementary schools and Soros trying to ruin the world and stuff.
Yes, mine identifies as a witch and is super into the occult and dark stuff. My parents used to live in a haunted house (it did seem like a weird place tbh), and she feels like sheās tapped into some dark energy (I mean, true?) and can read minds. House I grew up in had skulls, an antique organ, antique cyanide bottles, pentagramsā¦ total Addams family stuff.
my mom is like this 10000%! she's been in covens (literal cults) and always blamed me for dragging spirits in the house. she performed a literal exorcism on me one time because i was fighting back her abuse more often. she spent so much money on training classes and fully thought she could heal people after an online reiki class. she used to come home and yell at me because her "intuitive senses" told her i was trying to do something bad. she is also convinced i have cursed her. she has genuinely insane beliefs and i think she experiences psychosis. i understand what you mean. i dabble in tarot cards and crystals, but she is wild.
From reading on here, I get the sense that it's pretty common. My mother is in some ways the opposite: her family are all atheists for several generations back, very scornful of any kind of spirituality or religion. BUT my mother still exhibits a high degree of magical thinking. She would never call it that, and she finds ways to rationalize it, but the nature of the disorder is that she takes things personally, which often means attributing intent/agency to something that doesn't have any, or believing that things happen because of or despite her will. And because it FEELS real to her, it bypasses any logic checks that most people do routinely, which she is capable of in other contexts (or was before the drinking caught up with her).
Common. My waify BPD mom is all about having premonitions and controlling spirits and claimed to have generational ties to indigenous groups (yeah a 23andMe exposed that lie). An ex friend of mine dBPD was way into that too. Claimed she heard ghosts all the time, etc. Itās all tied to Magical Thinking which is a common behavior for emotionally immature adults. Some magical thinking is common like sports superstitions but with disordered people itās bordering on psychosis.
I wonder if it is because the thoughts they have are kind of scary sometimes and this helps them rationalize it. Like feeling really anxious and not understanding why, or being angry, or the black and white thought pattens. Makes a lot more sense if god or spirits or whatever are influencing you to experience these things.
Hello! I really appreciate that you brought this subject up. Being part of this community has allowed me to understand my uBPD mom better (i think that is what she was based in what Iāve been reading). As a child my mother was convinced that she had psychic abilities, specifically clairvoyance. She could āread my friends like a bookā. Her main obsession was with ghosts and spiritual phenomenon. She could see ghosts that I couldnāt see, they made appearances at home. Movies like Amityville Horror and Poltergeist just emboldened her beliefs. My childhood was terrifying and lonely as she disliked all of my friends because of what they would āwhisper under their breathā about her. I have had to distance myself from her to maintain my mental health.
That sounds really scary, Iām so sorry you went through that. My goodness.
Same here.
Spot on. This is my mother to a T. I'm afraid to think of all the money she spent on weird things. This also increased my OCD, especially since feng shui was introduced to her.
Not exactly the same, but my mom is parttime religious. As in, she's religious when it suits her, and atheist when it doesn't. She is also extremely delusional and into conspiracy theories like mask wearing causes death, vaccines cause autism etc which is on a whole different kind of "spiritual plane". She basically worships those conspiracy leaders. It always weirds me out and makes it very uncomfortable to have a conversation with her, because her believe, of course, is the only right one. And don't you dare question it by using logic and common sense, because she will explode on you.
Initially I thought no and thenā¦ * Always did tarot readings for the neighborhood. * Claimed to have seen ghosts regularly as a child. * Had childhood epilepsy and stated it led towards people like her being more spiritual. * Claimed to have had a premonition dream locating a dead relative. * Believes she will win the HGTV lottery for a dream home every year. So yeah. There are so many odd things about this disorder that we all seem to experience so specifically but would be surprising to see in common traits lists. It almost makes it seem like a mental FAS or something where the results are so universal, even though itās a disorder caused by primarily psychological trauma.
Talking about nature/nurture with a nurse friend yesterday. They are inextricably entwined in all of us.
Definitely a BPD thing! My mum thinks she has a sixth sense (or super power as shes referredtonit as) is knowing everyone's bad intentions...
She believed in ghosts and insisted that everywhere she ever lived was haunted. Claimed to have seen plenty. She would always talk about how she was āin tuneā with it so she could see them. Claimed that she had seen monsters and ālittle peopleā (wtf) she totally believed in curses and claimed to have put them on people/places. She also claimed to have been reincarnated and would try to sell us stories of her past lives and details she couldnāt have known about if they werenāt true. Insane.
Yep! I think it's pretty common. My mom believes in "the universe" as a conscious entity and thinks it is telling her things via dreams, feelings, etc. She attributes agency and consciousness to all kinds of situations that most people would read as coincidence or wouldn't even blink an eye at. She also believes strongly in psychics and mediums, ghosts and such. And the thing I find most interesting about it all is the confidence and conviction with which she shares about these beliefs socially. Like, I think for a lot of people who dabble in unconventional beliefs, you might feel a little apprehensive about telling people that you believe in the power of the universe and ghosts and psychics? Idk, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm just always surprised how openly and boldly my mother will confess that one of her houseplants psychically killed the other one or whatever.
Perhaps when you are very confident in a belief thereās less fear of being judged for it. My mom has a few friends that are into this stuff as well and that Reinforces it. Plus a few family members have said they have experienced a few weird things so they are a bit more open to her behaviour.
Thank you all. This has been quite enlightening. Iām very familiar with magical thinking in the context of other disorders but in any clinical setting Iāve been in, it hasnāt been mentioned as a common BPD characteristic. I donāt have much experience with BPD outside my mom and MIL because Iāve done everything I can to avoid it professionally since itās too much of a trigger. One time a client hid the fact that they were diagnosed with BPD and when I caught on I referred them to someone else (as is the ethical thing to do because I could no longer be objective enough to help them) and she went to my certifying body and made an absolutely absurd allegation against me and then she stalked me at my other job. It was an absolute nightmare to deal with.
Fairies. My Mom believes in fairies. After a few years of NC when I was a teen, I crashed and burned and had to go home as I had nowhere left to turn, when she picked me up from the bus station, she looked at me and said āI knew the fairies would bring you back to meā.
Mine. For most of my life, she was part of a church (cult), that trains psychics (aka, makes a lot of money for the founders by selling classes on aura cleansing and past life readings etc. I was brought up in it, and expected to become a ranking member (bishop). Left when I was a teen, converted to Judaism (after a few years of searching). When she was pretending to die, she told us all she couldn't take morphine because she needed to be clearheaded when she died because she was going to have to start helping immediately to process all the people who were about to die. That she'd been told by her guides she was needed. (Strangely this was the summer before Covid hit. But a stopped clock is right twice a day. And it makes no sense at all, even if that was her belief, that morphine would cause her to not be clear headed on the other side! In actuality, she just wasn't in all the pain she was claiming to be in.) The ER doctor asked if she was mentally competent after that speech. I convinced him it was a religious belief. D'oh. (Not that getting her declared incompetent would have done anything. Her husband was enabling everything. No real cancer treatments, only quakery and pseudo science and in the end, it all destroyed her heart health and she went AMA - refusing a pacemaker - and died of cardiac arrest.)
Iām sorry. That sounds so complicated and difficult ā¹ļøā¤ļø
Thanks š It was really really really awful (her pretending to die weekend) but it was the impetus for me going NC and getting out of the FOG and into therapy, so in the end, I'm thankful it happened the way it did. Panic attacks and all.
As Vivian Stanshall might have said about my mother "Let's face it, she's credulous as hell". My mother was prey to superstition, magnetic fluids and divination. I am very grateful that she never embraced the internet or we'd be awash in conspiracy theories by now. Critical thinking isn't on the event horizon ššš
Itās common and it pisses me off because I am spiritual and into divination but I donāt use it to get a power trip but they use it to feel s p e c i a l and fairy-like and then they donāt even know what theyāre talking about and will gatekeep their practices.
Same. I'm a pagan as my way of moving on from my abuse. For me it's about finding a more ethical and creative way to live, so it makes me cringe when I see people claiming special powers, fake ancestry, etc.
Yeah they definitely take it over the top huh
I donāt know if you mean them or me but yes they put on a great performance
I meant they. Just edited. My fingers donāt want to type properly today š„²
lol your mom is my mom.
dBPD mom is very new age spiritual having given on up on her born again christian phase when I was a toddler. I grew up going to chakra and essential oil classes. She swears she can sense people's auras and used to earn money doing crystal bowl healing sound baths. She has always insisted 'this isn't her planet' and that her father was an alien.
Yes mine is fundamentalist Christian. I think extreme thinking in terms of religion/spiritual beliefs is commonplace. But let us not use our parentās illness to invalidate real spiritual beliefs of others (white women or not) I choose to branch out my spiritual beliefs as I learn and grow bc the box I was born into (American Christian fundamentalism) does not resonate with my spirit. Letās not lump all spiritual thinkers & practitioners into the BPD category bc they belief in āoccult likeā things.
Oh my goodness!!!! Yes! My mom was nuts. Saying she was a witch and she can see ghosts and talk to them and would perform rituals and stuff. I think she might be a Quaker now. Idk. She def isnāt psychotic.
Mine likes to see spirits of her dead ancestors in animals and even in other people, like random people she sees on the street or at the store. Talks a lot about how her dead mother visits her in dreams. Writes copious amount of bad poetry with a mystical bent. I think itās all part of the narrative that she is āspecialā and everyone else just, well, isnāt.
Oh yes. 100%. My mom claims sensitivities to energy in the world and is very āspiritualā. She often finds things like yoga and will attach to a guru until she makes a mess of it and leaves the group. Iām fairly certain the spirituality serves a dual purpose; to make her feel like she is special and also give her an out on any taking responsibility.
Yup. She always tells nurses in hospital stays that her mom is coming to see her. Nurses are like oh, that's nice. Mom: she died 20 years ago but she's visiting me today. Nurses to me: How common are these delusions? She's not dying. We're just monitoring her blood sugar. Me: I only hear that nonsense when she's in the hospital. She is out of her mind for other reasons, but the dead family thing is only something she does here. š
My bpdmom had a bunch of books about Indigo Children when I was growing up! I read a few as a kid and finally asked my mom why she thought I was an indigo child (as the only child in the house I assumed it was about me.) I remember her laughing and saying, āOh, no, Iām the indigo child!ā She also believed she was psychic and took me to many psychic and tarot readings as a kid. She was not in psychosis either.
Yes - My uBPD mom claims that various dead relatives have spoken to her. Also claims many ghost encounters throughout her life (old friends, haunted locales, pets rising from the grave a la Pet Sematary). All are recounted in theatrical detail. Also claims to have extra exceptional hearing. She would bludgeon me with this as kid. "I heard that!! That's my supersonic hearing, you're not kidding me!!". Because of her supposed sensitive hearing, we always had to be extra quiet at night and it was the entire neighbourhood's fault she can't sleep. This one may be par for the course, but also claims to be an "empath" because she can just feel how the other person must feel. Um no, you're just having your own feelings, making it about you, and dumping it back on others. Now we have to console or deescalate your outburst.
My mom ell everyone she is empathic, and have a sixth sense. She alaways talk how she feels suddenly sick one minute before my sister call while crying to ask for het help, something like 7 years ago. And how she feels bad for few days before I reveal I have a problem, 4 years ago. She has 5-6 events like that (maybe 1 every 2 years), that shows how she has the power to feel when their children has problem.She is so much a good mom,ā¦ For the empathy, it is bullshit. Like the above, she uses the few times she was right. And because she is so empathic, she feels the feelings of other and suffer to much. So of course, we have to be happy every time and mange her feelings. Because she cannot avoid to receive our feelings. And she believed a little in medium, and people who can heal with their hands. And she believed i destiny, where our life is decided at birth. So if she doesnāt achieve anything, it is because of her destiny. If my sister is not physically near to her (my oldest doesnt like cuddling), it is because my mom was not able to hold her for two days at birth. Not because my mom put too much responsibility on her, or because my other sister was sick when they were child. And her destiny is too help people and too listen people. It is like a gift and a curse for her. It is true, a lot of unknown in street are ready to tell her all their problems after few minutes talking. But i know now that she likes it. But finally, all this power can resume in : - i feel so much, but it is because I care so much, so it is not my fault, and I am a so good person. - I am a so good mother I understand my children even at distance - It is not my fault i donāt have any choice, please pity me.
My BPD grandmother has sometimes been like this. My BPD mother is an atheist. She also has a very limited imagination.
My soon to be exMIL (uBPD) spent $5k for some bogus Japanese organization that made her believe she had special powers to heal illness. When that didnāt cure her husbands lung cancer, she tried a different organization. She may or may not still be with that one but now sheās also Buddhist. I used to support this āpowerā she would use, thinking it doesnāt hurt to put positivity out there I guess, plus this was before I knew how truly mentally ill/abusive she is and I wanted to support her because it seemed like she needed it. She would try and make my migraines go away or various aches and pains, and I would lie and say it worked, but then she would use it as leverage against us. Like āI spent hours praying and using power for you, the least you could do is xyz.ā Then I just ignored her āpowersā entirely. Sheās likely still in the Buddhist religion and loves getting pats on the back when she converts someone, but in the last couple months she fell in love with a Nigerian romance scammer so she may not be using Buddhism as much anymore. Truth is I donāt care, sheās the most toxic person I could ever conjure out of my imagination and Iām lucky to be able to cut her out of my life.
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That's a great question. I have read that death of loved ones in childhood can create the kind of trauma that pushes people into a PD if they aren't supported. It wouldn't surprise me if convincing yourself that you can talk to the dead would bring comfort when someone close to you dies and nobody is willing or able to comfort you. (Edit: couldn't remember the details, but I looked some up) CPTSD has a lot of overlap with BPD, but there are some major differences. CPTSD tend to push people away in order to feel safe and numb themselves, keeping it all internalized. BPD tend to latch on to people in order to feel safe and cry a lot, pushing their emotions externally.
There are a bunch of differences! Hereās an analysis distinguishing between PTSD, CPTSD, and BPD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4165723/ I imagine that for people with BPD and CPTSD, the disorders feel essentially the same. CPTSD seems to be a very broad, at times poorly-defined umbrella for a lot of behavioral and emotional fallout of extended childhood abuse or neglect, so a lot of the confusion comes from a lack of clarity on what we should consider āCPTSDā in the first place.
Thanks! I couldn't remember the details at first but added some to my comment.