Surviving a Borderline Parent Quotes

“Owing to a poorly defined sense of self, people with BPD rely on others for their feelings of worth and emotional caretaking. So fearful are they of feeling alone that they may act in desperate ways that quite frequently bring about the very abandonment and rejection they're trying to avoid.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“Certainly, it's important to acknowledge and identify the effects of BPD on your life. It's equally important to realize that it neither dictates who you are nor fixes your destiny.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“It's not about blame or wallowing...you are all molded by so much more than a dysfunctional past, and you must ultimately take responsibility for creating the life you want.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“[Adult children of a BPD parent] may seem old before their time or like an old soul (and probably were that way as children too.) They may easily assume the role of fixer and nurturer. They're the ones friends lean on, the ones to whom people tell their problems. Helping others gives them a sense of purpose and worth.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“Anger is a legitimate feeling, one often designed for self-protection.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“Parentified children learn to take responsibility for themselves and others early on. They tend to fade into the woodwork and let others take center stage. This extends into adulthood - adult children may put others' needs before their own. They may have difficulty accepting care and attention.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“Parents with BPD may not accept responsibility for their behavior, nor he willing to listen to how they might have caused emotional or physical harm. If you try to point out their behavior, they may lash out with an abusive tirade or stone-cold silence, attempting to place blame on you instead ("If”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“Often people don't even realize they can question their family relationships or the role they played within the familial structure. Bradshaw explains how, as a social system, all families need the structure that roles provide. In functional families, roles are flexible; they shift in understandable and somewhat predictable ways according to circumstances, external demands, and family members' needs. In dysfunctional families, roles tend to be rigid and unpredictable. Still, they often go unchallenged or unexamined.
Six”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“your parent may actually have consciously or unconsciously reinforced you as the caretaker to meet his or her needs, to be the nurturer and provider of emotional support,”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“Emotional Shades of Meaning
There are hundreds of emotions, ranging in degree and sometimes with only subtle differences between them. For instance, anger can range from mild irritation or annoyance to rage and fury; sadness can range from feeling a little blue to utter despair and hopelessness. It's important to understand the distinctions among emotions as well as to be able to assess how you feel. Because you feel annoyed with someone doesn't mean
you should fly into a rage and swear never to speak to them again. Because you feel sad about something that happened today doesn't mean the world will end and you should give up all hope of ever feeling better. Emotion dysregulation is a hallmark of BPD, and children raised by a parent with it may not have had the best emotional role model to learn from.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“Borderline parents with an insecure sense of self may use jewelry, clothes, and other trappings as proof of their attainment of the idealized happy family, regardless of their means. Rather than unconditional love, nurturance, and open communication, the emphasis may have been on how things appeared to outsiders. Thus the need for expensive cars, respectable jobs, obedient children, well-groomed pets, a carefully landscaped yard.
The”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“As a child, did you feel like you fell short, disappointing a parent, stepparent, or caretaker because you weren’t good enough, didn’t do enough, or just weren’t able to please, no matter how hard you tried? Did you feel responsible for your parent’s happiness and guilty if you felt happy yourself? Did you feel damned if you did and damned if you didn’t, that whatever you did or said was the wrong thing (and boy would you pay for it)? Were you accused of things you hadn’t done? Did you feel manipulated at times? Feel appreciated one minute and attacked the next? Thought you must be “crazy” because a parent’s actions or reactions didn’t make any sense? Question your own intuition, judgment, or memory, believing you must have missed or misinterpreted something? Did you feel on guard all the time, that life with your parent was never predictable?

You weren’t crazy. Not then, and not now.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“They may easily assume the role of fixer and nurturer. They’re the ones friends lean on, the ones to whom people tell their problems. Helping others gives them a sense of purpose and worth.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

“I wonder what it would be like to feel ‘normal.”
― Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem