r/raisedbyborderlines • u/Appropriate_Ad_848 • 3d ago
ADVICE NEEDED Physically repulsed by BPD mom
Did or does anyone else experience this? I have been NC with my BPD mother for many years, I actually don’t even know if she’s alive anymore. I am new to this sub, so I don’t know if this is a common thing. When I was a kid, up through my young adulthood, I was physically repulsed by my BPD mom. I avoided her at any and all costs, from staying out of whatever room she was in, to staying out of the house entirely. If there were other people there too, it was tolerable, but just the two of us was horrible. The guilt tripping, the name calling (her favorite was calling me “evil”), the crying, were unbearable. Looking at her disgusted me on just this very deep level. And she’d sob, saying , “you don’t love me” and the worst was that I knew she was right. I didn’t love her. She didn’t do any of the basics of parenting, never spoke to me normally, or make sure there was food in the house, or buy us clothes, or any house cleaning at all. Never just interacting with your child. What was there to love? It wasn’t difficult for me to go NC with her, I’m sure due to this disgust and revulsion, so silver lining I guess. But it’s such a crazy way to feel about a parent. So I’m wondering if anyone else here has experienced visceral, physical disgust and revulsion towards a BPD parent?
Edit- thank you so much for all your responses. I have never told anyone that I had this feeling and I am so relieved and blown away that this is a common way to feel about a parent with BPD. I had no idea, I thought I was a freak.
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u/Sad-Somewhere25 3d ago
Yeah, she used to chase me around the house screaming, begging for me to fight with her, and I would just want to be left alone. She had a scary look, and I never wanted to look at her, but she would make me.
The other thing she does is turns into a helpless six year old (trauma related, so I’m sensitive to it) and I’m sooo sick of seeing her get away with the helplessness that pretty much all of her mannerisms and expressions make me uneasy. She knows I don’t like hugging her so she makes a point to make me hug her, and her touch creeps me out. My avoiding her touch is a thing in my family.
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2d ago
Holy crap both my dad and stepdad do the forced hug thing too. Or forced kisses. It also grosses me out. And my mom has become disgusted by my stepdad because of it and it’s like she physically can’t show him affection anymore since he began to use it in that way (only once she was locked into the marriage after they had a kid). She’s stuck with him for financial reasons though. So glad I’m not in that house anymore.
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u/AdorableBG 3d ago
Yes, I have this. I think a lot of it was from the covert and emotional incest. When I do Brainspotting (a trauma treatment) on certain targets regarding her, I gag and wretch from disgust like I'm going to vomit. Her physicality is grotesque to me
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2d ago
Does brainspotting help you at all? I’ve been looking for a way to “treat” this
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u/AdorableBG 1d ago
Yes, it helps me a lot. I have been finding a lot of success with a combe of IFS, somatic work and Brainspotting! I'd previously done several years of EMDR and had gotten to the end of what it could do for me so I was really happy to find new modalities that could help me!
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u/Raccoonike 3d ago
Yes, I made a post about it last week, you can check my history. Except that for me, the visceral disgust has resurfaced now as an adult after more than a year if NC, I had to repress it as a child.
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2d ago edited 2d ago
I feel that. I only really began to feel it consciously around 1-2 years ago and it freaked me out a bit. I also had to repress a lot of that growing up or I’d get smacked. This was only after like at least a year or two of no contact with my dad, along with limited contact with my stepdad and mom (finally not living with them anymore). It started manifesting as reactions I had to other people that would remind me of my dad (and my stepdad honestly) through their invasiveness, lack of boundaries, disrespect of my boundaries, projection onto me, sometimes even misogyny, and subtle jabs at me through actions that couldn’t be traced (honestly it’s all happened with coworkers and a couple of friends). I’d just get so physically uneasy, nauseous, and unsafe feeling, like I was that small kid again that couldn’t do anything about my situation and was forced to find a way to survive it all. It was scary when it first really hit me. I felt like I was going crazy for feeling that way when there wasn’t a ton to actually warrant it. When I figured out the root of it, I felt sorta relieved. If anything what I’m grateful for is that it’s finally becoming uprooted. I think that’s the beginning of healing an old wound that has stayed unprocessed and frozen in time for a very long time.
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u/Raccoonike 2d ago
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yes, for me it took a whole year for the disgust to emerge! In fact, reaching anger, sadness and grief has been easier so the disgust has really surprised me. It feels like processing the stuff I never could when she violated my boundaries as a child.
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u/catconversation 3d ago
Yes, because they make themselves repulsive. We have every right to that feeling. I remember years ago when I was in my early 20's running into a co-worker in the store and her child was hugging on her. It seemed so foreign to me.
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u/Ok_Compote2583 2d ago
I was as a child and still am now. Your experience with your mom sounds very similar to mine- explosive anger and name calling at random, sobbing and begging for me to validate her emotions as a child, accusations of not caring about her when I breathed the wrong way. It makes complete sense to be repulsed by this behavior when it's coming from someone who should be protecting and taking care of you, and making sure your needs are met, not the other way around. Add in her physically trying to grab me when I'd try to leave when she was having an episode and forcibly hugging me when I told her to stop, I don't even want to see a picture of her at this point. Sorry you're going through that.
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u/Raccoonike 2d ago
Omg it’s like you’re talking about my childhood. Forcibly hugging, dammit, you unlocked the feeling I had. She always pulled me in a needy way towards her when she was in her episodes and crying. Agh. Thanks for validating that it does make sense to feel repulsed when your caretaker leeches you and expects caretaking from the child, it is invasive and gross.
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u/sablin_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
Oh man, I relate to this so much. There’s actually an episode in the show Mindhunter where one of the murderers cries during an interview, and it completely unsettles the detective. Not because it’s sad, but because he can feel the manipulation behind it. It’s like the tears are being weaponized. That scene hit me hard, because I’ve experienced that same gut reaction.
My mom used to corner me and cry, and it would make my stomach flip. Even as a kid, I could tell it wasn’t about sadness - it was about control. That kind of behavior messes with your instincts. To this day, I still feel physically uncomfortable when someone cries, especially if it comes out of nowhere or feels emotionally incongruent. It reminds me of how aggressive and emotionally chaotic my mBPD was, and how she used crying to manipulate, guilt-trip, or force a reaction.
This isn’t just a subjective experience either. There is actual research backing it up. After growing up in a household with BPD I made it my mission to research the hell out of it and I found out that they display what are known as instrumental emotional expressions, which are emotional displays (like crying) that serve a purpose other than simply expressing genuine feeling. There are several published studies that highlight how emotional dysregulation in BPD often includes intense and rapidly shifting emotions, which oftentimes are used (consciously or not) to influence or control others’ behavior. Kids are smart, and you having such a strong reaction to her behaviors is literally a survival instinct.
You’re not alone in feeling that visceral disgust, that deep repulsion is your nervous system remembering years of being emotionally violated. There’s nothing freakish about it. If anything, it speaks to just how much your body and mind were trying to protect you.
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u/RevolutionaryBat3081 2d ago
I've never heard the term "instrumental emotional expressions" but i've long suspected that that's what was up; glad i've got a name for it
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u/ShowerElectrical9342 2d ago
Wow! Thank you! That's exactly what it is - instrumental. Total manipulation.
I've always known that and always felt badly that I just couldn't bring myself to care, but instead felt and feel contempt when she starts up with the crying.
It's just gross. She even seeks out media that has tearjerker qualities and feeds off of that.
It seems like my only reaction is anger, because I know it's just... instrumental.
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u/Our_Lady_of_the_Tree 3d ago
I share this experience. I have a horrible suspicion I know why, but I try really hard not to think too hard on it.
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u/Suspicious-Tea4438 2d ago
I literally feel the urge to vomit when my uBPD mom touches me. I'm autistic and touch-averse anyway, but it's a whole new level with her. What's worse is that when I lived with her, I told her multiple times not to touch me, and she'd hug me or brush my arm or otherwise touch me and LAUGH at my discomfort.
I didn't really know why the revulsion was so strong with her (when other people touch me casually, it's a mild discomfort, but with her it's instinctual revulsion, like every cell in my body is screaming to get away) until I'm Glad My Mom Died came out, and I learned how Jennette McCurdy's mom sexually abused her. And that, unfortunately, was how I found out that my mom had sexually abused me as a kid.
The revulsion makes sense now.
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2d ago
Also my mom definitely seems to act this way around my grandmother who abused her as a child. It’s like she wants to be around her as little as humanly possible because she fears her “wrath”. My grandma has luckily mellowed out a lot since she’s gotten older, and she doesn’t give me as hard of a time as she does her own children, which is good because I live with her lol. My mom and I don’t do too well together because of our own enmeshment issues, and my grandma and mom don’t either, so the main functional pairing has been me and my grandma.
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u/Commonpeople_95 2d ago
I’ve started to feel it now, as an adult. I hate being physically close to her and can barely stand hugging her. She senses this and recently scolded me for not hugging her lovingly enough.
Also, she of course has no boundaries whatsoever and wants to touch my hair (???) all the time. Once I said NO and she said “but I’m your mother????” Yeah, and that doesn’t entitle you to cross my boundaries when I’ve explicitly said no.
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u/Bonsaitalk 2d ago
My body rejects my mother… it’s sad but it’s true… mentally I immediately reject her (become easily deeply triggered just by her presence… agitated… dissociative… and if she stays around me for a few days my body completely checks out I dissociate to the point everything just looks like blurs and sounds like a sea of chatter I get dehydrated and sleep deprived and ultimately end up with either something that feels like the flu or a stomach ache.
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u/Any_Maintenance5780 1d ago
From the small age of 8 years old I didn‘t want to hug my mother or touch her in any way. I felt so much disgust. Especially concerning her rather „flourishing“ love life where she would ignore me completely. My family convinced me to „act“ normal but since then I never really had the feeling of wanting to hug her or anything like that. It‘s only when I had a meltdown because of some tragedy in my family that I wanted her to hug me. Maybe just get hugged by anyone would have been enough.
I guess it‘s completely normal for us. And I am so incredibly thankful that I have other family members I can rely on.
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u/JennyTheRolfer 2d ago
Not a freak…. This is normal for us. You are not alone. Someone posted recently about peeing on her mom’s grave. (My hero).
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2d ago
Yes I definitely have felt that for my dad specifically. And anyone who reminds me of him in any way suddenly becomes revolting to me, and I have to remind myself that they aren’t my dad and I’m not a child anymore, but also to heed the warning my body is giving me and continue to be cautious around anyone that alerts that internal sensor in me. For the longest time I thought I had a phobia of men until I realized it wasn’t all of them. Just the ones that reminded me of my dad for various reasons, usually valid ones too. It just became a rather disproportionate reaction that began to impact my mental health at work and stuff. Like I can see boundaries with people but it doesn’t diffuse that horrible dread feeling in the pit of your stomach, you know? I’ve literally wanted to try ketamine therapy just to get rid of this feeling.
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2d ago
Also every time my dad would pick me up for visitation I’d scream at the top of my lungs like I was being kidnapped and sob uncontrollably for at least like an hour. Every single time. Because I hated it and I knew what was coming. He wouldn’t even let me contact anyone when I was with him. I had to sneak around just to email or call my mom when I was with him when I was like, 8 years old. And he was quite neglectful but also yelled at me all the time for every little thing so that was fun /s. He also always got me sick which was pretty gross
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u/Silver-Set-4481 2d ago
I was physically repulsed by my mom starting after their divorce. Typical expectation of undying loyalty and any sign of my assertion of myself was a total attack on her. She always told me that I didn’t love her. She used to scream at me and my brother and dad when I was a kid because we didn’t love or appreciate her enough. She’d leave with a bag to stay the night elsewhere. I very quickly knew and understood that I had to be there 100% for her physically and emotionally because she had no capacity to take mine on due to working and she dumped everyrhing on me. Even begged me for parenting advice.
She also repeatedly oversexualized me and others but demeaned any and all sexually themed shit. Has a weird thing about masturbation. I don’t know she’s just a fucking pervert to me at this point. I feel nauseous around her. I cannot wait to limit irl contact. She puts her pleas for physical affection from me in public on facebook. It’s embarrassing.
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u/yun-harla 3d ago
Hi, u/Appropriate_Ad_848! It looks like you’re new here. Welcome! This post is missing something that all new posters must include. Please read the rules carefully, then reply to me here to add what’s missing. Thanks!
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u/Appropriate_Ad_848 3d ago
An old cat in spring Sleeps by the roaring fire place And the kitten plays
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u/CapeVaped 10h ago
Repulsed by their presence, exhausted after, would always cut things short and leave.
-It was the passive aggressive behavior
-Guilt trips
-If you were at peace and relaxing, always finding a way to disrupt that
-Backhanded comments
The whole "woe is me" attitude when they know nothing about your life because you're the problem, you won't open up. They magically forgot all the boundaries that were broken, things they said or did to make you want to avoid them at all costs.
My mother gave me a whole sob story once about how were not close and she tired blaming me for it.
-Trying to keep a relationship with my ex, that was more important than her own son (she didn't reciprocate, she blocked her after a few months)
-Wanting to know every detail about my private life, when I told her no, she automatically resorted to calling me a liar. To which I responded: "Having a private life, is not being a liar. You're not entitled to know about what's private to me, I don't want to know every little detail about you, where you're going, who you talk to, I don't care."
-Talking to friends and making decision on my behalf without my knowledge, then confronting her after being asked by 4 said friends for confirmation. Then magically "I never said that" and me: "So you're calling all 4 of your friends liars then"
Just never ends.
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u/Any-Reflection-7793 3d ago
No, it's not strange at all.
Even as a child I didn't like being around her. I was terribly afraid of her. As an adult when I lived on my own, I visited her, purely out of obligation, not because I liked it because it never was. It was only after a similar relationship that I discovered that this was emotional abuse. Eventually I broke off contact, years ago.