Dealing with a ‘borderline’ mother-in-law

DEAR MARIANN: My husband’s fam­ily and I think that my mother-in-law has bor­der­line per­son­al­ity dis­or­der. She can be very dif­fi­cult to deal with and has cut her­self off from us since my hus­band and I mar­ried five years ago. Is there any good way to sug­gest that she get some men­tal health help?

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: My con­do­lences con­cern­ing the chal­lenges you are encoun­ter­ing with your mother-in-law. A “bor­der­line per­son­al­ity” is one of the most drain­ing and time-intensive clients a coun­selor can have on their case­load. Usu­ally one is the max­i­mum that can be bal­anced within a prac­tice, unless the clin­i­cian has lim­it­less patience to han­dle the com­plex­ity of coun­sel­ing “a bor­der­line.” Need­less to say, that does not make your sit­u­a­tion much eas­ier. Mar­riage is dif­fi­cult enough, let alone hav­ing the ongo­ing drama of a mother-in-law who, if she is a true bor­der­line, can cause chaos and seek atten­tion. Hope­fully she resides a few states or time zones away. How­ever, if she has exited from your lives, this is not typ­i­cal for a bor­der­line personality.

For those read­ers unfa­mil­iar with this trait, “a bor­der­line” is some­one with an intense range of emo­tions and a fran­tic fear of aban­don­ment. To coun­ter­act this dread of being alone, the bor­der­line per­son­al­ity seeks to be the cen­ter of atten­tion and extremely needy. Ado­les­cents who cut them­selves on the arms or legs, (aka “cut­ters”), or do other acts of self-mutilation, are often diag­nosed as bor­der­lines. These clients describe a sense of absolute empti­ness and the act of cut­ting allows them “to feel some­thing” beyond this self-described emo­tional void.

You do not men­tion your mother-in-law’s age, so my guess is she might be get­ting worse, ver­sus bet­ter, which is also oppo­site to the usual bor­der­line per­son­al­ity. As a bor­der­line pro­gresses into mid-life, reach­ing their 30s or 40s, the “drama” lessens, espe­cially if one is a “cut­ter” as described above.

Besides their “col­or­ful” per­son­al­i­ties, bor­der­lines can go through intense extremes involv­ing wreck­less spend­ing, promis­cu­ity, binge eat­ing, poor dri­ving skills, and a major poten­tial for sub­stance abuse. It is esti­mated that 65 per­cent or more of all bor­der­lines have a dual diag­no­sis with addic­tion. Another com­mon­al­ity is that many have endured a trauma or sex­ual abuse as a child, which leads back to the fear of aban­don­ment as an adult.

If there is the poten­tial of sub­stance abuse, often that is the key to treat­ment rather than spe­cific to the bor­der­line issues. Some­one with a bor­der­line diag­no­sis is often obliv­i­ous to their per­son­al­ity extremes, inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior, and lack self-awareness as to the strife they cause to friends and fam­ily. As men­tioned in pre­vi­ous columns, unless some­one is ded­i­cated to seek­ing help and mak­ing changes, espe­cially when an addic­tion is involved, no one can do it for them. So if your mother-in-law is also a sub­stance abuser, that might be the inroad to coun­sel­ing, with the bor­der­line issues tack­led next. Also, if you or any­one else in your fam­ily is in ther­apy, pos­si­bly hav­ing that men­tioned to your mother-in-law will seem less threat­en­ing than telling her she needs coun­sel­ing. Know­ing that oth­ers are going through their own strug­gles might open dia­logue as to address­ing her own issues.

My sug­ges­tions when inter­act­ing with a per­ceived bor­der­line per­son­al­ity include set­ting clear guide­lines, pos­si­bly both ver­bally and in writ­ing. Since she has seem­ingly “cut her­self off” from you and your hus­band, pos­si­bly she is upset that you have already done this. These guide­lines would include how many times daily you will accept tele­phone calls from the per­son or make trips to their home to help with a per­ceived cri­sis. If you set bound­aries with a bor­der­line and remain stead­fast, chances are they will stop try­ing to orches­trate your lives with con­stant demands and “life-or-death” emer­gen­cies. Since your mother in-law has seem­ingly gone the other direc­tion, this might be the lesser prob­lem for you of the pos­si­ble two extremes.

Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Sat­ur­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Sep 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.