Hi Surf,
I've also read Susan Forward and spiritual books like Thich Nat Hahn (sp?). They are an excellent foundation to work on ourselves for grounding and compassion. However, I never truly understood how to deal with my N mother (and other Ns and borderlines) until I studied psychology; specifically a theory called object relations. Here are some things that I will pass on to you.
1) Confronting a personality-disordered person with their behavior rarely leads to the hoped-for results. The PD person has serious cognitive (thought) processing problems fused with their emotional disorders. That means they aren't thinking logically, rationally, and don't draw the conclusions you'd like them to draw. A confrontation traumatizes, shames, and enrages them. So it doesn't work as a strategy to receive remorse or compassion from them. It causes them to regress instantly and viciously retaliate. They aren't able to make the links you want them to make (i.e., their abuse was wrong and had negative consequences, so they should repair the damage).
2) A personality-disordered person regresses at the drop of a hat. They won't announce that this is happening. You'll see it in their immature, irrational behavior. Your mother may turn very quickly into an angry 2 year old. This is why the confronting rarely works. They retreat into regressed states which are quite primitive. Not much can be done with a person in this state.
3) This is incredibly difficult to accept, because we want more than anything for the PD parent to recognize that their behavior was abusive; show remorse; make attempts to repair the damage. They usually are unable to do any of these things to the extent needed.
4) Telling her you love her every day is a far better strategy, but still won't lead to hoped-for results. It's good if you're okay with a teeny bit of improvement, but it won't lead to major improvement. The PD person's problems are simply too severe to be repaired this easily or simply. They also require intensive psychotherapy and medication (neither avenue is likely).
5) Understand that this is about her internal world of persecution, shame, trauma, self-hate, feeling like a helpless child, enraged, etc. etc. It's not about you, although you're the victim of all her nasty projections. We each have to decide how many projections we'll tolerate containing on behalf of an N parent. I'm still struggling with that one.
6) I can't remember if you're in therapy but it would really help for support and reality checks on her impairment.
bunny
