I was 28, working in television, living in Manhattan. It was a Friday evening after a high-pressure 60-hour week, when I drove down to visit my mother for the weekend. It was pouring rain, traffic was insane and it took me 5 hours of white-knuckle driving. The whole time I was driving, I was having a vicious IBS attack. My insides were twisting in pain, feeling like knives were stabbing my intestines.
I had in my luggage an herbal tonic and peppermint tea that helped relax my insides and ease the pain. As soon as I reached my mom’s house, I went to the door to ask her to put on the kettle. My plan was to go back to my car and get my overnight bag with the tea and tonic inside, and then come in and have the tea and tonic ASAP. I told my mom I was in extreme pain from an IBS attack and asked her to put the kettle on while I went to the car to get my tonic. When you’re in extreme pain, EVERY SECOND COUNTS.
Anyway, this happened….
My mom started telling me all about her latest craft project that she was very excited about. I stood in the doorway, in pain, waiting for her to pause for breath so I could politely say I needed to go out to my car and get my tonic for my IBS. She did not pause for breath. I stayed standing in the doorway instead of sitting down, so she would hopefully remember that I needed to get my tonic. She was oblivious.
After standing there for 45 minutes (seriously, not exaggerating), I finally had to just walk away while she was STILL TALKING. As she continued talking nonstop (imagine a three-year-old telling you about something they’re really excited about), I brought my overnight bag inside, went to the kitchen and put the kettle on, crouched over the counter waiting for the water to boil, finally made my tea and put tonic in it, then sat in the living room sipping the tea and feeling numbed by pain and also fatigue from the drive. During this whole time, my mother kept happily talking.
If I’d known how to set a boundary back then, I could have handled this situation so differently. I would not have stood in pain for 45 minutes, wanting to be polite to a person who was oblivious to my needs and meanwhile secretly feeling hurt about her behaviour. I would have focused on my needs, which needed to be a priority right then. But as you can imagine from this one (very typical) incident, I grew up receiving the message that my needs were not important.
What I was thinking about most, right then, (in addition to my horror of rudely interrupting a person, instilled by my strict father), was that I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings by seeming uninterested in her latest project. Imagine if a happy three-year-old was excitedly sharing with you their joy about one of their favourite things. It would feel mean to not listen to them with interest. (I can hear you saying “But…!” and I know. You’re right. Keep reading.)
In a psychologically healthy relationship, it would have gone something like this:
The daughter comes to the door and tells her mother she’s having an IBS attack, and asks her to put on the kettle. The mother expresses sympathy, puts on the kettle, and at the same time, she tells the daughter to sit down and she will go get her stuff for her. After the mother puts on the kettle, she fetches the daughter’s bags from the car and brings them to her daughter who is lying on the couch. The daughter gets her tea and tonic from her bag while her mother brings her a cup of boiling water. Maybe then, while the daughter prepares and sips the tea and tonic, the mother begins to tell her about her exciting new project.
I wonder how many people have been trained from birth, to ignore their own needs.
When your childhood trains you to play the role of parent to your dysfunctional parents, you don’t even realize this pattern is happening half the time, or that it’s not the way things are supposed to be, or that you deserve for your parents to care about YOUR needs. For many years, it does not occur to you that you are like a loving, nurturing adult constantly focusing on the needs and happiness of a small child. You probably don’t notice that there is no adult around, giving YOU that same kind of love and nurturing. Additionally, the mere thought of NOT playing your assigned role as nurturing parent, if you even HAVE this thought, makes you feel GUILT. I would never have considered saying to my mother back then, something like this:
“Please stop talking, and help me. I’m in pain and I can’t concentrate on anything right now.”
I would have felt guilty for making her feel like I was uninterested in her creativity and accomplishments. I would have felt selfish.
I finally learned to flip situations so that I can see them more clearly. For example, imagine this situation if it were reversed. Picture YOURSELF in the reversed situation. Imagine that your child or other loved one comes to visit you, is suffering some kind of health issue that is painful, and asks you to boil water. Would you ignore that and talk about your work or hobby for the next 45 minutes while they stand in the doorway in pain? If that person reminded you that they were in pain, again asked for your help, and said they couldn’t concentrate on your story right then, would you think they were being selfish? No, of course not. And yet, when we givers who’ve been trained to parent our parents, need help the way I did in this incident, instead of noticing the selfishness of our needy, childlike parents who ignore our needs, WE feel selfish for wanting their help. Crazy, right? But it doesn’t FEEL crazy in the moment, thanks to our childhood training in a dysfunctional family.
The communication experts might say that I should have expressed my feelings to my mother during that incident. Or maybe shortly after it happened. The problem is, life is not a textbook. You can do the psychologically healthy thing, know all about boundaries, apply the tools and techniques the experts teach us, but often the other person is just too dysfunctional, and unlike the movies, they are not going to suddenly respond in a healthy way and you all live happily ever after.
If I’d told my mother she’d hurt my feelings, she would have become defensive, felt sorry for herself that I was attacking her, shut down and given me the silent treatment. Heck, if I’d even just asked her to stop talking about herself for a few minutes while I focused on getting my tea and tonic ready, myself, she would have felt hurt. And I would have felt as guilty as if I’d crushed a three-year-old’s excitement over their newest accomplishment. If you have a parent who has Borderline Personality Disorder, you’ll be able to picture exactly what I’m talking about.
I feel like I need to add this next bit, so that people with a BPD parent/other loved one don’t collapse in a puddle of despair at this point. (And so all the experts don’t banish me to a deserted island.) There are therapists who have the specialized knowledge and experience to help spouses and relatives of people with a personality disorder such as Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, to use specific methods of interacting with them. (The consultant for my Deluxe Givers course is THE most amazing therapist of them all!) Improving a relationship with a BPD takes a lot of work. I have recommended books on this subject, in the Resources section, which could help, in ADDITION to working with a therapist. Although I am a PASSIONATE fan of self-help books, I have learned from my own experiences and from observing others, that books cannot replace the effect of working with a therapist.
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