Just in case you ever wonder...

I find it mildly humerus (in the pull-your-hair- out and cry kind of way) that literally every single time I wonder if my mother has changed, or if I've made the right choice or what have you...she comes out of the wood work and exposes herself and what she's really up to.  I feel that God must allow these frequent exposures as a way of confirming to me that I indeed made the right choice, and no- it is not safe for me to return to that relationship.

My mother sent a gift recently. I specifically asked for no gifts, no forms of contact during take a break mode. Has she complied with any of that? no. She has contacted me at least 12 times in the form of phone calls, texts, emails, letters and gifts. She has even upped her game by contacting friends and family suggesting that I am mentally unstable! Oy...Anyway, she sent a gift. I reinforced the boundary by sending the gift back as if to say "mom, this is a reminder- no gifts." What is my punishment for this crime? The campaign of denigration and distortion. What lovely form of punishment is this, you ask? Well...let me see if I can describe it.

"One of the classic behaviors of a person suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder is the vilification campaign. The target is the person against whom the perpetrator Borderline conducts the vilification.  The intent is to destroy the target’s reputation and thereby destroy the target’s relationships with family and friends, employers, co-workers, doctors, teachers, therapists, and others. The intent may even be to force the target to leave the community, put the target in prison, or even kill the target.  As with so many things involving Borderlines and their typical inability to understand or respect boundaries, there really are no limits. They will use basically any means available to them to cause damage to their target, including denigration, endless disparaging remarks, fabrication, false accusations, and even teaching others (including their children!) to lie on their behalf as part of their vilification campaign." (http://angiemedia.com/2008/12/29/bpd-distortion-campaigns/#.Uu7NOval0ZQ)

So, to be specific- my mother called my friend at his office, and his wife at their home. Thankfully, my friend's secretary punted the call and he never called her back. His wife, however, was not so lucky. She forgot to check the caller ID and before she knew it, she was speaking with my mother. She recognized her voice immediately and began trying to get off the phone, but my mom being the lovely lady she is (sense sarcasm here!), pushed right through that and began the distortion campaign. I didn't even have to hear the whole thing- I knew exactly how this would play out, as it has happened numerous times before. My mother began to tell said friend how hurt she is, and how desperate she is to get me back, how she has done EVERYTHING to restore the relationship and just doesn't know what to do. She then began to insinuate that I am mentally unstable and that she is really "concerned" about my "behavior"...The behavior she is speaking of is me setting boundaries that feel the most comfortable and safe to me, and sticking to them. Dear friend shut it down in the most polite way, saying that indeed she was aware of the situation, that she was sorry, but understood that there was much hurt being experienced by all, but that I was in a healthy place, making good decisions, and working the process. This wasn't going to be fixed overnight, so she needed to do what I had requested and NOT contact me. In my opinion, she handled things very well. I knew that my mother would not likely stop at that, and when dear friend didn't give her the affirmation she was looking for, my mother resorted to her next tactic "I just am so sad I want to kill myself. I have nothing to live for anymore..." and on and on she went about that.

A few things I would like to point out- she is misleading and telling half truths all over the place. She refuses to acknowledge that any of this is BECAUSE of her destructive behavior and her refusal to get help. She doesn't say any of that in this phone call. By saying all these things, I begin to look like the mean, evil, crazy one because "what kind of daughter would cause so much pain?".

The denigration campaign or villification campaign is something Borderline's use to garner sympathy and rally others to their side. This is something used publicly, while they tend to use gaslighting in private to get the person in relationship with them to doubt their intuition, feelings, perceptions, etc. If you were raised by a Borderline, you can imagine the kind of effect this would have on one's psychological development over many years.

What is gaslighting?

"Gaslighting is the denial that certain events occurred or that certain things were said when you know differently and the denial of your perceptions, memory and very sanity. Gaslighting is one of the most sinister, sadistic, horrible, and effective forms of emotional and psychological abuse. Gaslighting can make the victim feel as if she's going crazy. If perceptions of reality are constantly denied, and above all denied by your mother (the person you admire the most and think is omniscient), the result is very confusing and destructive. So how did the term gaslighting come to fruition? The phrase comes from the 1940's film "Gaslight", in which an abusive husband dims the gaslights in the house. Then, when his wife questions if the lights have been dimmed, he responds that she's imagining the dimming. The husband is driving the wife crazy, literally, by not validating the wife's reality." (http://thequeenandking.blogspot.com/2011/08/borderline-mother-and-gaslighting.html)

 

So how would this look in a real time conversation: I have a perfect example. When I was 8 years old, my mother grabbed me by the hair and spray painted my entire head white. She did this in a fit of rage over me getting a quarter-sized dab of paint on the garage floor. My 5 year old brother was watching the whole even take place. Fast forward 20 years or so, and we were making jokes about how "crazy" mom gets when mad, my mother walked in the room at that point of the conversation, and my younger brother asked my mom if she remembered doing that to me. Her reply? "No, I would never do something like that."  There are a lot of reasons for this supposed loss of memory- one is that there really is a loss of memory for most borderlines due to the damage that cortisol does to their memory center, and because cortisol is DUMPING during a fit of rage, they likely really do not remember the incident. The other is that they simply cannot imagine doing bad things, and so when they do something bad, they cannot internalize that they were capable of such harm (because of their lack of sense of self). Either way- because they deny an event, the true victim (me in this situation) is left feeling crazy and begins to mistrust their own memory, conscience and intuition. 

One of the main reasons I believe they use these two incredibly damaging tactics is because the BPD individual must preserve her view as perfect, and one of the ways she will try to solidify that position is by smearing me in public. a(http://thequeenandking.blogspot.com/2011/08/borderline-mother-and-gaslighting.html).

At this point, I've stopped asking "why me, God? Why did I get to have this kind of mom? Why couldn't I have had a normal healthy mom who doesn't make my life a living hell?" I've stopped asking because it doesn't change my reality. My reality is the same, my circumstances haven't really changed and it doesn't help me to think that way. Is it hard? yes. I have a really hard time accepting that God will always likely be using this one thing in my life to grow me, and shape me- and I can celebrate that he is good and he WILL work ALL things for good.  I have a hard time accepting that I can't change it, I cant make her get help, I can't force her to seek healing.  I can't help that I am constantly bumping into opinions that people have about why I left and why I choose to stay out, and that it's painful to be judged by other people and made to feel responsible for the mental health of my entire family. I often wonder, if people began replacing the mental illness factor with a drug or alcohol addiction- would they apply the same judgment? Probably not...food for thought.