So this could be lengthy but I want to give plenty of backstory to get the most help. Also, I’m still learning how to use the flairs here so... TRIGGER WARNING, mentions of alcohol and abuse.

I was officially diagnosed (with BPD and PTSD) only 3 weeks ago and have currently only had 2 sessions with my therapist on this. I’m not currently in any special kind of therapy for it or taking medication, my therapist wants to wait until my baby is born in July before we start anything like that. 

Anyway, I am very open about my mental health and have been since before I was diagnosed, when I thought it was just some kind of extreme anxiety. My family is super toxic and has always acted like they are supportive but make snide under handed comments about my mental health in a gaslighty way. My therapist said that he believes my toxic and abusive childhood is what led to me developing BPD. My father was an alcoholic and very abusive both mentally and physically. I am 28 now and he still denies that any of it ever happened even though both of my sisters remember it the exact same way I do. He always makes it about how everyone under-minded his parenting and that I was a problem child when in reality, he would just get so drunk that he didn’t remember giving me permission to do things and then would become violent. 

At my last session, my therapist said that he felt my dad is a narcissist but said that he obviously can’t diagnose him. He also mentioned that it wouldn’t hurt for me to work on cutting people out who don’t respect my boundaries. Which is usually pretty easy for me to do, but I still have that childlike fear of my dad, that makes it hard for me to keep him cut off when I try. I obviously love him and wish we could have a good relationship but like I said, I’m almost 29 now and after years of trying to have a stable and healthy relationship with him, it always results in me being the bad guy for putting up boundaries. So much so, that he will drag my aunts into it and they instantly believe him, so then I have not just him on my case but also two of my aunts chewing me out for treating him badly. To them, it doesn’t matter what happens, I should let him see my kids whenever he wants, I should do what he says at all times, I’m not supposed to speak up when he or his wife disrespect me or my husband. Just to give an idea of what talking about, he’s gotten drunk and called me in the middle of the night, bitching because I told his wife that she can’t keep threatening to spank my kids for crying if they get hurt. Another time, he called me a 6am, because I told his wife that I didn’t appreciate her boxing up my stuff and putting it all on the front porch while I was gone to my boyfriends (now husband) for the weekend, when I lived with them still. I kid you not, that legit happened, she boxed up all of mine and my kids things because I went to spend the weekend in Gulf Shores with him and called me to tell me I needed to come get it all because it was about to rain. I told her didn’t appreciate that, had a friend go get it all, and the following Monday, my dad called me furious because I was rude to her. He didn’t we anything wrong with her putting our stuff outside like that because as he put it, if I can spend a weekend out of town with him, with my kids, then I could just live with him. I was 23 at the time, my kids were 2 and 3 and their biological father wasn’t (and still isn’t) in the picture at all. Most recently, they got mad at me because I didn’t drive in the ice to their house to stay with them when we lost power. This was during the ice storm that hit the southern US in February. They live roughly 35 miles from, a 40 minute drive when on a good day, my family went next door to stay with my in-laws since they had gas heaters. Obviously, what we did makes much more sense than to drive that far with ice on the roads when none of us are used to driving on ice and most of the roads were closed by the department of transportation anyway. At Christmas, his wife posted on Facebook that my sister and I were refusing to come see him for Christmas because we were mad at him, when we literally just said that we didn’t feel comfortable having a gathering because of Covid. 

Anyway, I’m rambling, I want to cut him off and just move on with my life so I can work on my mental health without constantly being triggered by the way they treat me. But I don’t know how to deal with the guilt of doing that. I don’t know if this is something I should email my therapist about or if it’s something that I should wait until my next session to discuss with him. I’m at a point where I’m starting to obsess over it and think about it all the time and I know it’s not healthy for me. I have to do something. But I don’t know what to do. Like I said, setting boundaries never works with them. They will blatantly disrespect my boundaries and then shame me for setting them to begin with. They drag other family members into everything and make me feel like shit for trying to put myself first. I just want to be able to work on me, for my husband and for my kids. But I can’t do that when I have them constantly on my case about how it’s my fault for having BPD in the first place. I just want advice. Or kindness. Or even just general understanding. Something. Because I can’t keep feeling this way. 

Thank you all in advance!