That is too bad she is behaving this way. At least that wasn't too bad and dad seems to understand.

This is why.

Unresolved trauma, which is associated with BPD, often obstructs a mother's ability to parent effectively. Parents who are unable to reflect back on their childhood history and integrate their experiences have a limited capacity for emotional availability to their children (Crandell & Hobson, 1999). Specifically, a mother with BPD may lack the capacity to respond appropriately to her children by projecting past material into the mother-child interaction (Crandell et al., 1997). For example, defensive splitting may interfere with the parent-child relationship via the mother with BPD's perception of the child as either "all good," who needs to be saved, or "all bad," who needs to be reprimanded (Newman & Stevenson, 2005, Glickhauf-Hughes & Mehlman, 1998). Even the act of care giving itself may trigger painful memories from the mother's history of trauma, making it very difficult for the mother with BPD to cope with the daily challenges of parenting (Main, 1995). These triggers often causes her to engage in maladaptive, "frightened/frightening" behaviors, whereby the she is both frightening to the child and frightened herself at the same time (Holmes, 2005; Hobson, et al, 2005). In this way, mothers with BPD are often classified as "high risk" parents (Newman & Stevenson, 2005), at risk of child abuse and/or drastically overprotective behaviors.

Crandell et al. (1997) empirically verified that the manner in which mothers mentally organized and accurately perceived their childhoods predicted the manner in which the mothers interacted with their children. Thus, mothers identified as having a 'secure' attachment in childhood interacted more fluidly and synchronistically with their children than mothers identified as 'insecure.' Congruently, a mother with BPD's history of traumatic early experiences and a maladaptive attachment status results in behavioral patterns that are less supportive of child autonomy. Mothers with BPD tend to interact with their children in an "intrusively insensitive" manner (Hobson et al., 2005). These interactions may interfere with the child's developing ability to relate to other people within the environment and yield myriad interpersonal problems for the child.


Mom of 20 years old dd
Diagnosed BP-NOS (09/05), updated to Paranoid Schizophrenia, Consider
BP I Manic Severe (12/11), Borderline Personality Disorder (12/11)
image