Reddit reviews It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

Oh boy do I sympathize with you, this sounds eerily similar to my own issues with my uBPD mother trying to manipulate my wonderful but BPD naive in-laws. My mother always felt entitled to holidays with me and my SO's family celebrations because she is "just one person" and she has "no one".

My uBPD mother had a habit of calling my MIL, waifing her into lunches or phone conversations where she proceeded to bleed information out of my MIL that I'd been gray rocking her from or relying on my MIL for advice on how to handle our relationship.

Recently, my uBPD mother escalated her bad behavior in a spectacular way and so it was a convenient time to address it with the in-laws. In your case, you could possibly lead with "After (pwBDP's) behavior at our wedding and with a new little life on the way, we acknowledged that things had to change. We have decided to significantly limit contact with (pwBPD), it will be difficult and painful for (OP) and here is what we would like to ask of you."

Here's what I chose to do, feel free to use any of the language word for word if it would be helpful to you or your SO:

- Because this dealt with my husbands family, I had him reach out to my uBPD mother via text (I wanted it in writing) and tell her in no uncertain terms that she was not to reach out to his family whatsoever. He wasn't unkind - I'd describe it a business professional. Granted, my uBPD mother knew unequivocally that we were taking a period of NC when he sent this so it didn't come out of the blue.

- I also had my husband speak to his family without me - I think he called his mother. It didn't feel appropriate to have me speak with them about it because it's his family. I didn't want them to feel like I was chiding them. He shared with his mother about some of the troublesome behaviors my uBPD mother had, explained that we were going NC with her for a while to start creating healthy and firm boundaries with her as she really struggles with them. He explained that we needed to do this to protect his child from suffering similar behavior and that it was important to him that his parents respect that. He told them he didn't feel it was fair of my uBPD mother to manipulate them into the middle of a difficult situation. It was best for them to simply leave her calls unanswered and unreturned but to let him know if she reached out. He reassured them they were not being unkind by not responding to her as their first priority was him and his family, not his SO's mothers feelings. She (my uBPD mother) is a grown adult woman and she can handle it. He also reached out to his siblings and basically said, "Hey, if my MIL calls or emails you just ignore it, but let me know. We're going no contact with her for a while and she's been told not to contact my family. Sorry to be awkward and dramatic, but it's serious and we appreciate it. Feel free to ask any questions of us - we're happy to explain more." (We didn't need to - most people don't want to touch that with a 10' pole)

A few weeks later my MIL and I spoke about it, because she is kind and wanted to know how I was doing. She mentioned feeling fear, obligation and guilt (not in those words but I understood the interpretation) about anticipating having to ignore calls from my mother and how she worried it would sink my mother into a depression. I told her I understood that it was difficult to do, how as (uBPD mother's) daughter I have the same very intense feelings and doubts. However, I was working on not taking responsibility for other peoples feelings and subsequent choices. If my uBPD mother wanted to behave in a certain way because she simply didn't like that I had emotional and physical boundary limits, that was her personal problem not mine. I gently encouraged her to adopt the same mindset.

- When inevitably my MIL asked questions like "I just don't get it, she seems like such a nice lady", "I think she just wants friends, she's very lonely." I would follow up with a few questions that seemed to "click" for her. I asked,
•When you meet/speak with my mom does she often seem to be relying on you for emotional support related to her and my relationship?
•Does that seem appropriate or normal to you as my in-law?
• When you meet/speak, does she ever ask you any questions about yourself or does she just ask questions about me?

She answered as you'd expect and several times since she's said, "You're so right, she never asks about me!" I reminded her that healthy friends and family don't use manipulation and pity to extract information on others. I explained that my mother has BPD and it makes healthy relationships hard. I earnestly told her "It isn't right to accept that type of treatment from anyone, especially your DIL's mother, and it was absolutely not okay with me that she does that to you as I deeply valued our relationship. You are my friend as well as my MIL and I won't let people treat you that way even if those people are my own mother."

I was really surprised with how well my in-laws handled it (I'm conditioned to expect a fight when I create a boundary), but like the relatively normal people they are they said something to the effect of "Absolutely. We want to do whatever is best for you and our grandchild, regardless of what we don't or can't fully understand." Then we played a card game, ate lunch and talked about mundane things. It was a HUGE growth moment for me, seeing healthy communication modeled in that way and "parent figures" respecting boundaries without question was incredible. It. Felt. So. Good. I actually thought in my head "Am I a grown up now?! I feel like I might be a grown up." I am 38 years old. I bet a lot of RBB's can relate to that forever a child feeling. :)

OP, I hope you get to have that feeling as well. You deserve it, your marriage deserves it and your new baby deserves it!

Side note: When I was pregnant with my first (and only) child I didn't know what BPD was or that my mother had it. I just called it "30+ years of bat shit crazy". I recently read a book called It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn. I would have LOVED to have read this before my child was born. It's about inherited family trauma which many of our pwBDP's suffered and subsequently they inflicted back on us with their atrocious behavior. Maybe it will resonate with you, and possibly others reading this post as well.

Sorry this was so long. Heh.

Edited: brevity and grammar

Check out It Didn't Start With You - it might help. It helped me.

Why would there be a beginning to it? Nature's natural state, as opposed to our artificial separation today (although we are not really separate), is not nice. Nature is indifferent and brutal. "Trauma" could be construed as protective generational/cultural memory. I do not think that explanation is adequate, but it is an useful consideration to begin with:

In a prehistoric environment, you can imagine a member of your tribe beating you half-to-death for daring to encroach on a space deemed impassable. It doesn't make sense to you, but before you were born, perhaps a human who traveled in that area was stalked by a warring tribe who used to live there. They followed that human back and nearly wiped out your tribe. There is no time (and possibly no clear way, pre-advanced-linguistics) to explain to you why that transgression is so bad. Your attacker may not even know why. It may not even be relevant today; perhaps the warring tribe is long gone. But the individual is not the primary concern, the species is.

Humans do not need to be traumatized to commit horrific acts. Every one of us is a monster. Watch some footage of soldiers talking about their combat experiences. As often as someone comes home with PTSD from something that happened to them, they come home with PTSD from something they did. They cannot grapple with the horrors they watched themselves commit, not only for immediate survival, but in unnecessarily vengeful brutality. Rise Against has a beautiful and haunting song about this.

Similarly, concentration camp guards, spanish conquistadors, jihadists, conquerers of other sorts - they are not psychopaths. They are not (all) damaged individuals. They're regular people just like you and I. There is literally nothing separating you from being one of them, at least without the integration of that knowledge (the integration of the shadow). I think this is part of why people who believe so strongly in the "love and light" theory of the universe and seek "healing" from psychedelics commonly encounter traumatic hellish experiences instead of getting what they were looking for. The healing experience actually comes from acknowledging and marrying your darkness, not from banishing it. Objectively, love and light does not cut it. Welcome to Earth; it's a hostile alien planet in a completely indifferent universe. Compassion, love, and trust are miraculous and should be supported and protected. Focusing only on them, however, is a path to destruction and powerlessness. It can pave the way for evil. There are left and right paths to totalitarianism.

We are sheltered and naive in our culture. Problems that have been temporarily solved are quickly forgotten, collectively. For this reason only is it easy to protest and criticize the restrictive laws of our society; we are more-or-less completely ignorant of the chaos they protect us from. You would break to see the things you would do to preserve your own life. "Civilization" is a very thin veneer atop our natural proclivity for violence. This is the major problem with frustration with democratic capitalism, patriarchy, technological primacy, the widespread influence of Christian values, and the other "oppressive structures" which organize modern life.

They didn't come from nowhere, suddenly. They evolved. We will only see what they have saved us from when they are destroyed, and by then it will be too late. Some of those problems, like the warring human tribe from my example, no longer exist. But the majority of them do still exist, as they concern precisely this problem (the human proclivity for evil), and only have fallen from view. Education is the alternative, but not too many of us are interested in considering the fact that we are all capable of practically unspeakable monstrosities. Few want to actively confront their biases. The dialogue between conservatism and progressivism is increasingly polarized as a resultant function of our ignorance. We need effective dialogue to continue to adapt without ripping the floor up from under our feet. This is why history repeats itself, despite the widespread dissemination of information.

In Jungian psychology, this aspect of ourselves which we usually ignore is called the shadow. It's Freudian counterpart is component to the id, but the concept of the id is more general than the concept of the shadow.

As for your personal experience with trauma, I highly recommend the book It Didn't Start With You: How Inhereted Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. It's available as an audiobook too. Helped me with forgiveness.

Here's a good one:

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.

And here's her Ted talk on the same subject.

Another good one is:
It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle.

Enjoy!

It's very likely. It's unfortunate that our life is so molded by the past we had no control over in adolescence. I've been reading a book about this that you might find helpful too.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1101980389/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503431529&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=it+didn%27t+start+with+you

It's called "it didn't start with you", he goes over how anxieties can absolutely be inherited from family or your families actions. More notably he talks about how it's not too late to fix or mend these problems by addressing them with those who may be responsible, even if they didn't realize it or mean to be.. I haven't bought it yet I just keep stopping in the Barnes and noble to slowly finish it 😂 already made some headway with my father because of it. Though we've got a ways to go.

This is a very interesting story and I have a serious case of the willies now.

For what it's worth, I'm going to give my thoughts about this. It may not make any sense to you, but I hope it at least gives you something to think about.

The fact that your mom had a dream the same night about the same creature is very interesting to me. It suggests a link between your psyche and your mom's.

It is a scientific fact that traumatic events are encoded in our DNA and handed down through generations (see the book "It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn. Trauma can be so horrifying that it confuses our sense of reality. And when not sufficiently processed and released, it can be passed down through generations. Inexplicable feelings of terror and unreality can spring on people out of nowhere because of trauma incurred generations ago. Lacking a way to understand or process them, the mind can manufacture an image or symbol. Such as a reality-bending monster.

I don't know if I've explained myself sufficiently but I just wanted to point you in a possibly stabilizing direction.