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Most often, single women who dream of starting a family and meeting a loved one turn to a psychologist. Among these clients there is a special category, the cause of loneliness of which is a mother with borderline personality disorder.
Some mental disorders manifest themselves in emotionally close relationships, and not immediately. There are many people who are classified as «borderline» by clinical psychologists. Borderline disorder is no longer the norm, but not yet a severe pathology. In addition, depending on the circumstances, people with a borderline personality organization can shift both towards the pole of the norm and the pole of pathology.
Circumstances that manifest the disorder
The birth of a child, and especially the first years of his life, is a serious burden even for a balanced woman. And when the psyche is unstable, serious problems can begin.
Men are not always ready for the burden of fatherhood. Sleepless nights, diapers and other difficulties are a test that not everyone passes with honor. To this is added the imbalance of the wife with borderline disorder and the difficulties in the relationship. Many fathers choose their comfort and leave the family.
As a rule, such a woman does not go to a psychiatrist and is hardly aware of her own characteristics. She alone brings up her daughter, and the girl remains a hostage of the «mad» mother. (We will use this common expression — not to stigmatize people with borderline disorder, but for the convenience of reading the text.)
The strongest bond
An innate sense of attachment makes for the strongest emotional bond in the world—mother and child. Evolutionarily, it ensures the survival of the infant. And the less stable the mother’s psyche, the stronger this connection — the more dangers, the stronger the attachment.
The paradox of a child’s attachment to a «crazy» mother is that the danger comes from the mother herself. This is how codependent behavior is formed. Psychological survival, and sometimes physical survival, depends on the emotional state of the parent. To survive, a girl needs to scan her mother’s emotions all the time, not paying attention to her own.
As a rule, in such a family, impeccable obedience and service by the child to the mother in everyday life, her idealization and a ban on aggression towards her are accepted. The mother transmits to her daughter her experience in which the outside world is hostile and cruel. Someone may envy «crazy» mothers, because there are no more caring daughters, accustomed from childhood to save their mother from unfair and cruel people.
Daughters are focused not on relationships, but on achieving material success, because, as a rule, they live in need. “Crazy” mothers have difficulties with socialization and, accordingly, with employment. In such a situation, money is the only guarantor of stability in a hostile world.
Distorted Perception
Money and a mother who needs to be saved from an unfair world — this is the coordinate system with which an adult daughter enters life. Her perception is turned upside down. White is declared black, black is white, especially in interpersonal relationships.
The adult daughter of an insane mother sees aggression where it is not there or its amount is negligible compared to her aggressive reaction to what is happening. The aggression against the mother, repressed into the unconscious, has not gone away; it breaks through in close relationships, falling upon partners.
The daughters of insane mothers are prone to sex without commitment, promiscuity, because they do not have the experience of healthy emotional intimacy and attachment. The safest form of intimacy seems to them to be physical. They see even good partners in enemies, while the enemy attacks from the depths of the psyche of the woman herself.
Hard road to intimacy
In psychotherapy, working with such clients is especially difficult. The psychotherapist should help a woman see the world as it is, calling a spade a spade. Mom is often not a victim, but an abuser. But for a daughter, recognizing this is often tantamount to undermining the foundations of the world order…
The therapist runs the risk of a very aggressive transference from the client (repressed negative feelings towards the mother are transferred to the therapist). The psychopathic mother became part of the psyche of the young woman who sought help. She is hidden inside her and ready to break out, like the crazy wife of Mr. Rochester in the novel Jane Eyre, who lives locked up in the attic of the house and is ready to escape at the opportunity, deceiving the guards to set fire to the house.
Both the client and the therapist must have the courage to wade through aggression, resentment of the world and pity for the mother, creating an objective picture of the world. Daughters of insane mothers need to strengthen their ego in order to be able to cope with psychotic attacks and control their manifestation in personal space. And then they have a chance to build a healthy close relationship.