Reddit reviews Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

To be fair, a lot of traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder are shared with other personality disorders, especially Borderline. The different between an NPD person and a BPD person is that the BPD person actually has good intentions, they just are not capable of understanding or controlling their emotions, so they end up lashing out in ways that are abusive and appear narcissistic.

IMO, BPD sufferers are "worthy" of some extra work on the part of their family to try to understand the disorder and repair the relationship. Of course, this takes acknowledgment on the BPD person's side that their behavior is wrong and is the cause of the relationship problems and willingness to work on themselves and respect others' boundaries.

I always feel the need to point this out when people direct someone to /r/raisedbynarcissists, because my mom has BPD and that sub helped me realize that there was something really wrong with her and our relationship, but I figured out that she was not narcissistic and I would have never been able to work through my issues with her if I had kept up with the line of though that she was (although working through everything did involve about a year of very limited contact with her).

Understanding the Borderline Mother is a great book on the topic and there is a blog post that breaks down the basic ideas from that book that might help you get an idea of whether your MIL is N or B.

My mother is BPD too. Most BPD women struggle with abandonment as major fear/focus in their lives, so naturally they will cling to their children when it comes time for them to gain independence. When I first began to separate myself from the tangled web of bullshit (read: my parent's house) that my BPD mother had spun, I wasn't prepared for the kind of tactics that she'd use to try and keep me "in my place", which naturally meant by her side. I tolerated bullying and coercing and emotional warfare until she finally realized that this time it wouldn't work.

If you have any interest, this is a great book about BPD mothers and how their mental illness can affect their children. They talk a lot about the good child/bad child dichotomy that BPD mothers like to set up. It also gives some great guidance on how to deal with the BPD mother as an adult, and how to ensure she doesn't overstep her boundaries into your life.

If you ever want to talk to a fellow BP2-er with a BPD mom, send me a PM.