🎠What it means to have grown up with a parent who had an undiagnosed personality disorder
Growing up with a parent with an untreated personality disorder meant living in an emotional house of mirrors where reality was constantly shifting and your parent's mental health problems became the center of family life.
You may have become a "mood detective," constantly scanning for trouble and suppressing your own emotions to stay in control. At home, their mood swings and struggles would dictate how you felt, and you learned to absorb others' emotions easily—a skill honed from tracking your parent's unstable state. You developed an exhausting confusion about where your responsibilities end and others' begin.
You may have learned that love came with screaming matches, tearful apologies, slammed doors, and passionate makeups—making that emotional rollercoaster your original template for what love feels like. Now you feel overly responsible for others' emotions, as if their well-being depends on you. When someone's mood shifts, you instantly wonder, "What did I do to cause this?" You secretly believe that you must be the stronger one in any relationship because everyone else will fall apart.