Smothering parent - impact on attachment style?

Hi there…I will just add that individual children can wind up with different attachments with the same parents. I am an anxious leaning FA, my middle brother is an avoidant leaning FA and my baby brother is an earned secure. I too have experienced enmeshment from my mom…..what has helped me is to realize that she is trying to regulate her nervous system and to not take it personally. I used to have walls or nothing with her and now I have more gradations of boundaries depending on the situation.

Very interesting! I had never heard about enmeshment but it definitely rings a bell. With my mother, I'm extremely avoidant. It's sort of like I have to be really avoidant/harsh and direct in my communication because if I'm not then I'm sort of allowing more of her anxious behaviors. This leads to our relationship being very much her chasing me all the time, similar to a partner being in constant pursuit and I "give in" and give her enough of what she needs from me from time to time but always holding back. Now as an adult, I for example don't allow her controlling/anxiousness and instead I avoid her, avoid telling her things or "fight back" when she demands to know something or act out, but I give her some warmth and friendly interactions here and there, usually when she's more cooled down and I feel like it's safe to approach her, until she pushes me away for some weeks again by her acting needy

I think in relationships it has varied a lot throughout the years. I think I was pretty secure in my longterm relationship (but possibly he made me secure?) but in my last one I was very avoidant but then suddenly anxious after it ended. He was a DA and I also avoided him a lot throughout the relationship and we never confronted each other about our avoidant days/weeks and just let each other zone out back and forth. After I had broken up with him, I realized I missed the closeness and wished for us to open up to each other more and started hoping he'd come back.

As a teenager or early 20s, I was probably on the anxious side throughout relationships (today I'm 30). So I think I'm maybe balancing the secure/FA depending on who my current partner is and if they're secure or not. And the anxious side being stronger in my youth and now more the avoidant one being stronger until recently when I was actually losing someone I didn't want to lose. It's hard to say because I was very dismissive in the recent relationship until the day I had broken up with him. I reached out to try to mend things but when he didn't want to I disappeared again but thinking about him in an anxious way. I thought I was very DA in that relationship until someone else here in the forum suggested FA since I went a bit back and forth around the breakup and still desire him from my distance

I don't share my mum's life anxiety or fears, I've more been throwing myself into dangers (moved away from home as soon as I could, went to a big city in another country/culture and the party scene, took a lot of risks in my early 20s and I often try to push myself into doing new things). I'd say I'm trusting and trying to see the best in people but also really really need my own independence and am scared to let someone in 100% apart from my longterm partner. But I assume he made me secure or he earned my trust through the years since he always stayed/always came back and was a rational person to reason with. Him and I e.g. had a mutual breakup and are still in close contact as friends whereas my recent (DA) ex has disappeared from the face of the earth which also triggers anxiety in me (although not enough anxiety for me to chase after him)

krolle
In what ways would your ex stalk you?

I think there's a chance you may be right. I maybe didn't see it since even my DA ex would hint at me being avoidant/distant and since that behavior stretches out for longer periods whereas the anxiety is more the disaster mode. I also think it's harder to see the anxious side since I practice a lot of self-control (reached out once but respected the decision without trying to convince or call out and left it at that) and I've stayed away from him for 3 months, stayed away from rebounds even if I know it would help short-term, missing him from a distance but not acting on it and just focusing on self-improvement. I never start fights or dramas or anything like that - except with my mother.

Interesting that your mum would tell you not to commit to people basically. I can totally see how that would trigger the fears. My mother wants me to commit and find someone to settle down with. Probably since grandkids would give her someone else to be close to in life + a stable partner that is good for me may keep me out of trouble vs dating in general (just that previous people weren't good enough as they didn't meet her agenda - lived too far away from her, had backgrounds of living a bit on the wild side in their younger years which meant risk of going wild again and putting me in danger somehow etc), but she is always scared I'll die, get sick or similar (ironically her own physical health she neglects to a dangerous level). Our latest fight was her nagging over and over about trying to come down to stay with me for a few days to "look after me" after I had a small fall and scraped my legs. I know it wasn't possibly that she thought I was at any risk, but she uses excuses to try to come see me as she finds it unbearable when I'm in my more distant periods. Or she pretends like she didn't ask 4 times before and presents it as a whole new, great idea. She then gave me 6 missed calls on a Saturday night when I was out with friends and sent multiple messages asking where I am and what I'm doing (she'll go on until I reply). I told her calmly like I always do "it's enough to call once". My father then called the day after (she sends him to run her agenda when she can't get ahold of me but she also gets extremely jealous when I respond to him and not her) so she's now ignoring me for the week. Probably until in a few days she'll call me and blow up my phone again. I have contemplated multiple times to cut contact since it impacts my whole life to feel chased throughout the weeks, but I don't think her psyche could handle it. If I address the problems or say that I can't handle the relationship like this anymore and it makes me feel terrible, there needs to be boundaries like calling one time and leaving it etc, she will either break down or ignore it and find a fake reason why she has to see me asap for "mother daughter time". Her well-being is based on how often she can hear from me or see me and she goes into panic mode if her needs aren't met to her minimum. She sees it as her RIGHT to hear from me, e.g. if she decides she needs me on a Saturday night. It has happened that she's showed up at my door 5 hours away and acting like I had just forgotten we had plans and that she was just dying to see me. She often tells me she loves her own mother but absolutely can't stand being around her, but fails to acknowledge that she's been pushing me to that edge herself. I can get panic attacks from the thought of seeing my mother and if I meet her my skin will break out and I'll be in stress because it'll be overbearing, over the top closeness like wanting to sit right right next to me, touch me and hug me even if I say I don't like that/move away. And nothing I say or do will make it be on my level or for her to see my reality. 

Yes, I have always suspected my mother is borderline but have never gotten it confirmed. She functions well in her professional life and with acquaintances and even her own sister would say she's normal. And she is apart from with me and her mother

My last 2 exes both have officially diagnosed borderline, so there are a few ways they have stalked or otherwise bulldozed my boundaries.

Showing up randomly at my house uninvited and demanding to come in. And when I said that its not acceptable to show up at 1am without an invite proceeding to threaten to commit suicidide and then cause hundreds of dollars of damage to the property.

Showing up at my work uninvited and accusing me of sleeping with several of my clients.

Somehow finding my new adress even though I never gave it to them.

Threatening to hurt both me and any potential new partner I might have should I decide to date again.

Adding my female friends on social media with the sole intention to threaten them to stay away from me etc.

Mich like Alexandra before your last paragraph I was actually going to suggest your mother might have borderline, or at least borderline traits based on your description. But I'm not a doctor to give any kind of real diagnosis. Im just very experienced with the behaviour. It could also just be extremely anxious attachment.

Regarding her acting "normal" around other people and at work then this does not discount BPD in my non professional experience. Both my exes have very functional aspects of their lives, especially in the public eye, where they want to minimize attention on their extreme behaviours. These behaviours usually manifest mostly toward a "favorite person". And often in private.
Think about it this way, if they acted that way to everyone and in every environment people would notice very quickly and their lives would break down, and sometimes they do. Nobody would want to connect with them, employ them or befriend them. In other words the attachment strategy (albeit an extreme one) wouldn't work even in the short term and would likely become extinct one way or another.

I have theorized they see you as a resource to some extent. Not too dissimilar to the way somebody with NPD uses people for their self esteem. But the borderline sees you as a resource to satiate their intense anxiety, especially relating to abandonment. And If there is a risk you will abandon them thats when the behaviours become more extreme. They simply cannot risk losing you, at least until they have firmly replaced you with a new resource. But I don't think you would experience that considering your relationship is familial and not romantic.

They're not "bad" people, and I have a lot of compassion for them these days, maybe too much. It's just an extreme variety of attachment style that manifests as very destructive and hard to be around.

I thought of this too, but with the extreme neglect of self health and fronts presented to others, I think something else is going on. As you said, it may not be BPD specifically, but involves borderline traits. Comorbid with anxious attachment probably, but I believe it goes beyond just attachment style.

Whatever it is, it will have an outsized impact on OP, for sure.

I'm sorry you had to go through that! I have no experience with it since I never dated anyone anxious at all (probably since I deal with my mother any strong anxiety would be a turn-off). I had a former close friend though that I always suspected was borderline and she'd go to her ex's house an ask to be let in to talk, or with her last ex she'd fake a miscarriage, threaten to kill herself, she sent hateful e-mails to the principal of the school he worked at to slash his character, tried to break some of his things etc. She showed some tendencies before but it was when she got her heart broken it turned to madness and she stayed in a very destructive cycle for quite some time with things piling up in all areas of her life.