Q. My mother was given a diagnosis of BPD in 1992. She was about 50 at the time. I have been at this site for hours now reading many of the letters written by people with BPD and where I have always questioned my mothers diagnosis, I question it even more strongly now. Growing up for me was a nightmare, my mother was very abusive and bazaar in her behavior. I need to list just a few things she did on a regular basis for you to understand what I mean by "bazaar."

1. She threw up on a regular basis. She was always overweight, had been her entire life, but she would all of a sudden become sick to her stomach and would throw up. In stores this would happen frequently and she would run outside or to the bathroom, be ill, and then be seemingly fine again. She even did this at the dinner table more than once, she would be eating and talking , then all of sudden get up from the table, vomit in the sink, sit back down and finish eating.

2. She would lie, say just terrible things, like someone had died, that hadn't died, just to get a reaction from someone and then would laugh when the person got upset and she would then tell them it wasn't true as she laughed about it.

3. She became obsessed with almost every boyfriend I ever had as a teenager and would force me to stay with them, and encourage me to sleep with them, and would threaten to kill herself if I attempted to break up with them.

4. One of my youngest memories is of this. She locked me in my bedroom, I was 4 or 5 years old. She stood outside the room telling me she was leaving me and never coming back and that I would starve to death in that room. I of course, was sobbing and begging to be let out. She then said she was leaving now and I heard her go down the stairs and out the door. When I got my nerve up enough to reach for the door knob I found it wasn't locked and made my way down the stairs. When I hit the bottom step, the front door was right there and I reached for the door knob to go out, I was going to my neighbors as I was too scared to stay home alone in the house all night. Just as I opened the door my mother jumped up from behind a chair and said, "Boo!" She laughed and laughed about how I had thought she had left me and how scared I had been. She did this type of thing many times, always threatening to leave me and not come back, just until she would get me in tears and petrified, and then she would laugh about it.

5. Threats of suicide were continuous, and many times she ran out the door telling me she was going to go jump off the train trestle that was down a wooded path by our house. But she always came back within a half hour acting like nothing had happened.

6. She many times threw herself onto the floor, rolling around, spit flying from her mouth, moaning, and then all of a sudden just stop and lay still and silent. The first few times she did this I ran to the phone to call for help but as soon as I picked up the receiver she would jump off the floor and tell me I wasn't going to call anyone and she would then either laugh or physically beat me.

7. She would in a fit of rage grab my breasts and twist them, cover my arms with bruises, by giving me little pinches all over them, one time she slammed my head against a bath tub, and other times just out of the blue, she would be walking by me and she would make a fist and punch me in the face as she walked by. When I asked her why she hit me, she told me "she didn't know what I was talking about, she never touched me."

8. She would take me out in the car on back roads, and tell me how since there were hardly any houses along the road, and no street lights, that anyone could come along and drive us off the road, beat us, rape us, murder us, and there would be no one to hear our screams for help. Even the highway was not safe according to her, she told me she knew a man who was stabbed on the highway and he crawled out to the road for help and no one would stop to help him and he died as a result.

9. Everything was a big deal with her. Just the smallest infraction, if I was 5 minutes late getting home, it meant to her that I didn't love her, that she should die, that it was my fault she was not loved and she should have never have had me.

10. There were many times when I and other family members, (I was an only child so by other family members I mean, her sister and my cousins) would hear her in the bathroom, sounding as though she was being violently ill, and when we would open the bathroom door to see if she was ok, she would be sitting on the toilet, just making the sounds of being ill. There was nothing she would not do or say for attention, even though the attention she received from her behavior was not good attention but she drove everyone who knew her away rather than bringing them closer.

11. My entire childhood, from very young, she told me if I ever went anywhere without her, that I would get sick and die. That no one could help me but her.

I could go and on with the bazaar things she did, they are too numerous to describe and I have spent the better part of my adult life putting these times behind me so do not want to dredge up all these painful memories. I do tell you these things only so you will understand why I question the diagnosis of BPD and to give you a real idea of the types of things she did. She knew these things were wrong when she did them. She told me all the time that if I ever told anyone she would be put into a mental hospital and if that happened she would kill herself and it would be my fault because I told. So you see ,that proves right there she knew the things she did were not right or normal.

I did try to tell a couple of people and there were family members who witnessed some of the bazaar behavior, but those I did try to tell, could not believe it, or did not know what to do or say and so nothing was ever done, and the family members who witnessed anything were in denial of how really bad it was. They did tell my mother the things she did were wrong and asked her to stop but my mother always just told them it was none of their business and they left it alone.

Consequently by the time I was 5 and started school I was having panic attacks on a regular basis and experienced severe separation anxiety from her because I always thought I would die if she was not with me. One time when I attempted to stay at my aunts camp (much against moms wishes buy my aunt insisted, she knew the things mom said to me and wanted to prove to me they were not true....I was 7 years old) I was so afraid I broke out in shingles that night and mom had to come get me as I was screaming in extreme pain and the shingles had broken out under my left armpit, which of course only reaffirmed for me that what mom said was right.

Even as a teenager I could never just spend the night at a friends house without getting ill with diarrhea and such from being so afraid of being away from my mother.

To make a very long story shorter, I ended up in counseling as an adult. I had sever panic attacks, and PTSD, to the point of Agoraphobia due to my childhood, never having felt safe.

I got married and had 2 children and continued to have panic attacks constantly which almost ruined my marriage and completely incapacities me, even to the point of agoraphobia which left me completely dependent upon my mother to go the stores for our groceries and just about everything else. Which of course was what she wanted and had strived so hard my entire life to attain,....my complete dependency upon her.

Now, where she threatened suicide all the time, she never once actually attempted it. And I have been told by family members who grew up with my mother, that my mothers behavior was always very bazaar even when she was a young child. As a matter of fact there are relatives who are moms age who to this day will not speak to her because of the things they say she did to them when they were kids growing up together. I'm told mom was late to walk and talk, even as an infant.

Now in light of all this......does this sound like BPD to you? From what I have read on BPD I have not seen a lot of my mother's symptoms or behavior in the descriptions of this disorder.

I am now 35 years old, and being the only child she ever had, am now her primary caretaker. Mom has had a leg amputation and her health is very bad. She never took care of herself physically, and diabetes did a job on her. I have not had panic attacks for about 6 years now, and have forgiven her completely and am still happily married to my husband of 17 years and my children are doing great. I was blessed with the intelligence and determination to get well and attribute much of my healing to The Lord. But I will always wonder what illness my mother suffered from that caused her to do such things and that ruined her life and almost ruined mine. As an adult, when I was getting help and going to counseling, I had anger issues for sure. I questioned mom many times about why she did the things she did, what she was thinking when she did them? For a long time she denied even doing them, she later claimed she may have done them but did not remember doing them. Then finally in 1992 during a counseling session my counselor had wanted with both of us together, she admitted to him right in front of me that she did do and did remember doing all the things she had always denied. When asked by the counselor why she did these things her reply was , "I don't know, I think I just knew I could get my daughter to do whatever I wanted her to do by doing those things." But the big question is, "Why any parent would want their daughter to do the things my mother wanted me to do? Like sleep with boys at a very young age? Like be afraid to go anywhere without her and so on.

I would truly appreciate your opinion on this. As I said, I hold nothing against my mother at this point in my life, she has had a very lonely, just awful life from the things she has done, she is in such a physical state with her health that I cannot feel much but pity and love for her. My own life is more than she could have ever dreamed of, or can even comprehend and I am grateful for this opportunity to take care of her and hopefully salvage some real sort of relationship with her before she is gone.

What is really weird is that she does not seem mentally ill any longer. She does not do or say anything cruel, or bazaar, and is the most normal she has ever been. I chalk that up to answered prayer but I still find it strange that she is better at this stage of her life, considering she never had any counseling, any medication for BPD or any other type of disorder for that matter and I was told by the counselor who diagnosed her with BPD in 92 that BPD was a progressive disorder that would only get worse.

I know this letter is extremely long and am thinking you may not even have the time to read the entire thing, let alone reply to it, but I write you anyway as I will wonder my entire life if BPD was a correct diagnosis. I know she was mentally ill, but unlike some people, to have a name to put to it and to feel confident that is what it really was, would bring even more peace to my life.

  A. Your mother definitely sounds like she has borderline personality disorder (BPD) based on her behaviors. She may have other mood, anxiety, or personality disorders along with it, but the behaviors are consistent with BPD.

I am glad you came out intact from such a difficult situation. Make sure you take care to not become overly enmeshed with her at this time. While it is good she is healthier behaviorally, this may be because you were less available for her to manipulate. Your family comes first at this time in your life. Discuss it with your therapist or minister or psychiatrist if you have questions about what to do.