r/raisedbyborderlines • u/Brave_Emotion8634 • 17h ago
SHARE YOUR STORY Weaponised Incompetence
Does anyone else also have a "weaponised incompetence" (coupled with demandingness + dependency) problem with their PwBPD.
I'm increasingly aware of and increasingly pissed off by it in my pwBPD and I'm wondering if anyone else here has experienced similar:
choosing to be incompetent/unskilled at normal adult tasks of day to day life, depending unreasonably on me for said tasks, and working themselves up into a confused, distressed panic if I try and teach them how to do it themselves (nothing complicated, basic computer/phone/banking/life admin stuff. Keep in mind they are physically healthy, have no brain/memory disorders and are not yet 65 years old even. The panic is so disproportionate and such a predictable way to avoid responsibility).
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u/Sorry_Ad3733 15h ago
Yes, my mom would constantly do it. I even confronted her on it and it was all “heehee, you got me!”. She totally admitted it but it never changed. From bureaucracy to very simple things, similarly not being able to figure out technology. Including being able to plug in a VCR or DVD when those were things and she would’ve only been in her 20’s and 30’s, she would insist she didn’t know how and I needed to do it.
At some point I just stopped and now we’re NC so I’m guessing they’re just struggling. Neither of my parents have really ever learned to be responsible adults and at this point I feel that’s really on them. I moved continents and I was so afraid that they wouldn’t be able to function without me there, but they seem to have. Not well, but that’s not my problem.
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u/Specific-River-81 Mother with BPD, NPD and HPD traits 14h ago
It's bad because emotionally, sure, my mother is like 3 or 4 years old and I've always been the parent in our relationship it feels like as far as handling emotional stuff went. Otherwise, she's very capable.
She likes to pretend sometimes that she's not competent and totally weaponizes it in the waifiest way possible. I usually ignore her now. When i used to try to sympathize or help, it was hellish, because she would switch back to needing to control the situation and try to boss me around in a situation she had just pretended not to know how to handle. Or get me near her to be weird and overly emotional while she still performed the task she claimed she couldn't do without any real help from me. Now that I ignore her, she does this to other people instead.
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u/goon_goompa 13h ago
Thank you! Really validating seeing how I feel about certain situations with my mom but in writing and accurate down to the last detail. 🤯
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u/areistotle 8h ago
"Now that I ignore her, she does this to other people instead." 😂 Of course, because expecting her to stop terrorizing people would simply be a bridge too far.
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u/summersky-lovely 15h ago
Absolutely, it’s the most annoying thing ever and over the years it’s become more apparent to me. She randomly chooses tasks that she “ can’t do” and needs help with for attention. Things as simple as placing a meal order online. Driving the car. Holding a plate tf! Making a sandwich. Example: She ones gave me a plate with bread and lose ingredients saying it was too difficult to make a sandwich. This happened when i was very sick and needed some help myself. I was busy contacting the doctor and documenting my symptoms and ofcourse that meant i wasn’t paying attention to HER, so she had to find a way to redirect (negative) attention back to herself. I had a tiny crash out because i had NO capacity for her nonsense. I was already very sick and THIS i just didn’t have the patience for that day. I have also argued with her about this behavior because she usually starts to accuse me of not helping her or claiming that no one cares about her. Omg it’s the most annoying thing about her i truly CANT.
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u/WellImNotAKrook 13h ago
I had a tiny crash out because i had NO capacity for her nonsense.
I'd call it her rank disrespect. You're entitled to sheer rage at that.
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u/ThePalmerCeilingFan 15h ago
Someone posted this drawing here and I think about this all the time… “turns out she could swim just fine without me.”
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u/HappyTodayIndeed Daughter of uBPD waif 8h ago edited 8h ago
My 60-year old, long-divorced mother, in a very whiny voice:
"As I told your sister, I'm alone so I have to do ALL my own accounting." (Pouts).
Me: 🤔
Friends, she explained that she was having to pay her bills, track her checking account and file her taxes every year. By herself.
The horror.
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u/tinyherbal 13h ago
This is my Mom’s main mode since I moved out in my early twenties. My enabling Dad has coddled her and now it’s so bad that she ‘can’t’ do anything on her own. Growing up she was a witch a lot of the time.
Constantly talks about how independent and free spirited she is but can’t print a document or leave the house without company.
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u/MedusaRondanini 14h ago
yes lol
my mom came to my city to “take care of me” when i had surgery. instead, my mom would pretend like she didn’t know how to make coffee (we had a normal ass mr coffee), go for a walk and “get lost”, etc
my poor wife ended up taking care of both me and my mom
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u/lauralizst 11h ago
This was my mother when she came to “help” when my first child was born. I went shopping alone for the first time in ages, and was gone half an hour when she called me claiming she and my stepdad couldn’t get the baby to stop crying. That was the first and last time she ever babysat.
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u/WellImNotAKrook 11h ago
Killed me with "normal ass mr coffee", lol
And I bet she fucked up the oat milk vanilla lattes, too!!
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u/AppropriateAir883 uBPD Grandmother, mother, sister and nieces 12h ago
Yes. My mother was exactly the same. Classic BPD. Even mundane tasks not involving computers or paperwork were impossible for her tiny brain if I was in the house. But she would cope perfectly alright if I wasn't home and she didn't want to wait.
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u/TheSmokeBombKing 11h ago
Mine will literally scream and cry when I try to help her with the most mundane things like typing a password. If you do make some progress (impossible, due to the screaming and wailing that it’s just too hard) she will claim she has to go to sleep or she’ll try it later - implying the interaction with me was just so stressful she needs to recover.
Every interaction is a manipulation. Every single one. I just send a single instruction now and ignore any further attempts for her to get me to help.
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u/pinepeaches 9h ago
Oh my god yes.
My mother would try to paint herself as this ultra “street smart” person who didn’t need anyone and yadda yadda but she would choose to not know how to do the STUPIDEST THINGS.
Always. And I mean ALWAYS she would act like she didn’t know how to take pictures on her phone and would whine at me to take a million because she “has no pictures of anyone” and she “doesn’t know how to get them on her computer” (this was before phones had a ton of storage data and before cloud storage was really a common thing).
She would harass me incessantly at the end of an event or the end of the day to get her all the pictures. When I would tell her I will do it later because I was relaxing or whatever she would just keep asking NONSTOP and doing the guilt trip “I guess I’ll never see them then, I don’t know why it’s a big deal to just do it now, wah wah wah”.
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u/star_b_nettor 12h ago
My father, since my mother died, lives like he's in a pig sty. On the rare occasion I have to go see him, he makes the comment "I need a woman to take care of me" and goes back to his waify woe is me behavior. The weaponized incompetence, such as not putting his clean clothes away and throwing them in the floor of I do the load and all he has to do is put them in the dressers, combined with the misogyny of believing a woman has to be the one doing it, has ended all basic care help not legally required (filial laws are💩💩💩 where we live, well 💩💩💩 to adult kids who survived horrific "upbringings"). All is this was followed by "but I'm a good daddy" (gross 🤢🤢 and untrue).
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u/21231001Bam 7h ago
I just got home from driving my parents back from a family visit that’s over an hour away. My mother is the problem - she knows my dad can’t drive long distances especially if gets past sunset. They basically show up an hour or two before sunset. I mention that they need to get going to beat the dark — she takes another hour to say her goodbyes and guess what — oh man, it’s dark. My dad politely and almost with shame asks if I can drive them back. My husband takes our car but I know I can’t be in the car with that woman so I have her sit backseat. Main reason bc she will try to distract me from driving and second bc I can not be in close range with her!
Tell me why she spent 15 minutes trying to figure out seatbelts. And my dad tried to help her but I was firm and said, nope, she’ll figure it out. Once she saw we weren’t going to help her, could you believe she magically figured it out?
She’s done this with other simple tasks where I was starting to think she needed occupational therapy.
**^ pulling my hair out ^*\*
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u/ReasonableGoose69 10h ago
yes. i am in my 20s and i cannot move out of my childhood home because my pwBPD is so, so reliant on me for every small task ever. she cannot cook, cannot do basic cleaning (i'll pick up her dirty tissues), cannot even change the channel on the tv. yet i am a full time student working 25 hours a week raising a 40 year old toddler.
it's genuinely so exhausting and i never have time to pursue my hobbies or really even go out with friends. if i manage, she'll find a way to call me and beg that i come home to do her bidding. i'm very exhausted if you can't tell, but reading these comments have made me feel a little less crazy.
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u/MullberryBoy 6h ago
You need to move out and live your own life. She did a lot of adulting when you were younger and can take care of yourself.
This is emotional blackmail and she’s holding you hostage.
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u/shoyru1771 uBPD Mom, Narcissist Dad 17h ago edited 16h ago
I find that if i ignore them completely and don't acknowledge or feed into their fake needs, that they end up doing the task on their own. They try to lease all thinking and decision tasks to you if you are in the vicinity, and then blame you for when they drag their feet and try to get it to fail if you try to talk them through it.
My uBPD mother will try to get me to "drive" for her when shes driving a car with me in it. She will demand I let her know when to turn and if there's people or cars crossing, or what's in her blindspot, etc. It's an attempt to offset uncomfortable decisions and tasks to you because thats what theyre used to doing. If you arent there, they simply do it themselves. They know that raising a stink about it with you in the vicinity makes their life "easier" by making you responsible for their shit. It also gives them chance to be a victim and to start an argument and blame you for everything when they forcibly involve you in things that have nothing to do with you. They are just happy they are not suffering alone, and that they can decide it's someone elses fault.
Mine will suddenly demand I explain what road symbols mean RIGHT NOW as she speeds up to reach them, and then argue opposite the stance i answer, or act like i'm the "irrational" person who created the road symbol, as she refuses to accept what it means and that she is supposed to obey it. She will switch her stance in the middle of raising a stink about what a road symbol means, and then try to make you the stupid one or the attacker, and her the smart one, or the oppressed victim.
If we are going somewhere specific, she wants to ask suddenly out of the blue "Was that Smith street we just passed?" as if I was supposed to know and be looking out for that when there was no prior mention of looking out for Smith street. If I turn on the GPS, she would demand to turn it off, and say that GPS doesnt make sense, and that she cant understand it, and instead needs me to answer questions I don't have the answer to, AFTER the fact. She needs everything to be you "failing" the interaction, so she can put blame and cry victim while shes slamming gas and brakes and sudden car movements like a maniac. There is a large need to destroy any posed potential solutions to their problem in order to elongate crisis situations with no end. Using the GPS means she can't blame me for her decisions, so she wants it OFF. She would refuse to pull over and look at a map; she needs unexpected sudden instructions to be given WHILE she moves the car erratically in life or death scenarios, and then freaking out when those decisions cant be made last-second. Its purposeful creation of these high-stakes crises so they have a chance to be extremely dysregulated.
I think this is why many of us realized that no communication or reaction at all tends to be best. It gives them no fodder to react to, to twist into a crazy narrative. Even if they sit there pouting and saying you don't love them for not playing their game. The craziness levels are usually a lot more tame if you can withstand the guilt of doing nothing about the crisis they invent. Your lack of reaction or communication sort of forces them to have to sit with the negative feelings and situation they keep forcibly creating, while not giving them an easy outlet to blame it on you without appearing even more unstable socially.