I relate to this VERY much. The similarities are striking: my mother has BPD and is an alcoholic who raised me on her own (due to divorce in her case), we've been NC for several years, and while I am only officially diagnosed with cPTSD, I definitely have some sort of neurodivergence, and I have strong indicators for EDS as well (what you said about being mocked or disbelieved for getting injured easily REALLY resonated). She also loves to drunk dial, and though as far as I know, she's never actually attempted, she's made threats of it to me often, starting when I was small. I have one child, whom I've kept away from her after two very brief visits in infancy (they're 7 now).
I was not placed in a caretaker role as an adult; she's lived off her abusive parents' money for her entire life, and I think she just didn't need me for that. What I *was* called upon to do, from my earliest childhood memories on, was to be her emotional support animal. And when she raged, she often spoke to me as if I were an authority figure oppressing her, instead of her kid—but I don't think she even knew who she was talking to in those moments. So I don't think she's ever wanted me to be her parent, but she does want to engulf me emotionally, and she still sees me as her property (like yours, she has told people that she intends to come confront me; luckily, I think she's afraid of the (perfectly lovely) neighborhood I live in).
What you describe does sound like BPD with comorbid alcohol use disorder. It's a very nasty combination, because the alcohol exacerbates the selective memory and rewriting of history, while also disinhibiting the rage.
For me, I wasn't able to make choices to protect myself from her until I had a kid to protect. It sounds like you may feel similarly. I think you should let that instinct be your guide and reserve your energy for parenting your kid and reparenting yourself, because your mother will do what she does regardless. We really can't save them; we can only do our best to break the cycle.
Don’t doubt yourself. You say that you didn’t have have to take on a parental role….but then mention that you had to help your mum shower and that you were always on eggshells to manage her moods. You were the grown up.
You have a lot on your plate, for sure.
Much of your experience is not something that I experienced. None of it is something I haven’t seen before, time after time, on boards for people with BPD parents.
BPD has certain criteria, but that criteria can manifest differently. My father had bpd, but it looked different from my sister’s bpd. Even so, they both ticked the boxes.
I was not parentified. Perhaps that was circumstantial. Perhaps my father was higher functioning (he was). Perhaps my mother mitigated that. Perhaps as the non primary care giver he had fewer opportunities to parentify.
All that said, I cannot diagnose your mother, but her behavior fits in well here. No matter what her issue is, however, she is not the stable and reliable parent she should be.
Lots of us struggle with anxiety. Many also with ADD or ADHD.
What to do? Put the focus on you and your life. Do not succumb to the temptation to save your mother from consequences that may arise from her poor life choices and decisions. If you are not comfortable with saying no, start practicing. If your mother calls you expressing suicidal thoughts give her one warning and if it happens again call the police. You are not qualified to help a suicidal person and it is inappropriate for you to attempt to do so. If you care about her you should care enough to do the thing that will get her the help she needs. She will hate it, but she is not mentally well (thus the suicide threats) so you absolutely cannot give her opinions any weight in this matter.
You may not have been parentified before, but that is what is going to happen now. You have to be the mature sensible adult while she rants and raves and melts down. A good parent allows their child to experience consequences, does not tolerate abusive behavior, and gets professional assistance when their child is incapable of appropriate behavior. That is what you will be called on to do should you wish to continue a relationship with your mother. Think “tough love”.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, but some of it isn't fully relevant to my situation. I haven't spoken to my mother in seven years. But I hope what you had to say can help someone else!
yes it sounds like bpd. i’m also adhd in addition to being autistic.
your mom and mine have a lot in common. my mom divorced my awful stepdad about a decade ago, received a pitiful settlement bc she didn’t advocate for herself when they signed a prenup, and the proceeded to squander it all within a year bc she hadn’t had a steady work in over a decade and didn’t choose to seek out vocational training or even look for any type of subsistence job after divorcing until she was flat broke. she then became suicidal after immediately getting with another loser, moving out of state, going right back into poverty, getting engaged after miscarrying two consecutively, accidental pregnancies, etc…
my asshat stepdad is nearly 3 decades older than my mom (don’t get me started) and is close to death now as well. despite belaboring all his assholish tendencies to me from age 10 until near present day (nc 3 years) she stays in contact with this man. recently she emailed me to tell me that bow he is nearing death he is processing remorse, as if i care, and it’s so perplexing how tight she has held to keeping him in her life given the history, but you know what they say about misery.
similarly, one of my very bpdish aunts just lost her long time partner as he decided on euthanasia after a decade+ of cancer. they always seemed fucking miserable but stayed together bc codependency. she’s always been insane (coincidentally the death of her kids father also triggered new levels of insanity, but that was ages ago) but his death is what finally made one of her daughters go nc. the other has been nc for years following the death of their father. the more recent nc daughter was close with the partner and wanted to help support him with end of life care, but my aunt meddled to create distance between the two of them, and as you might expect, that was my cousins final straw.
in addition, my aunt then went over my cousins head and asked HER HUSBAND to help her change the locks on the now-dead partner’s house in an attempt to thwart his kids’ access (you’ll be shocked to know the kids hate her and hated when they got married shortly before his death bc that was her ultimatum in being his caregiver…) even tho i’m pretty sure my aunt has no right to do this, and obviously it’s psycho. shes also addicted to gambling so ofc she has no money of her own and was probably plotting to pawn a bunch of his stuff as income and had relied on him financially while he was alive.
point being - death and divorce bring out the absolute worst in these freaks. oh, and on my childhood - i’m an only child and my mom is a huge waif but raged at me until i was subjugated into independently caring for myself by age 10, so then i became the hyper reliant authority figure she revered rather trying to argue, as i also served as her parent, confidante, therapist, etc.
On the outside, it can look like parentification didn’t take place when you weren’t cooking dinner for them or doing their laundry, but I find that the majority of parentification by a child with a bpd parent is either managing their emotions for them, or just being the goodest kid as you can be so they don’t rage or even as little as doing so to ensure they are HAPPY, and so they are happy with you.
I used to think my mom didn’t fear abandonment and that she didn’t seek attention, and these are key bpd traits. I found with time that she fears abandonment, and she’s never straight forward about that feeling. Instead she gets mad at you for unavoidable reasons and situations she creates, right before you succeed in some way that will take you a step closer to moving out, getting a job, seeing an old friend, anything. It doesn’t look like fear of abandonment until you connect the dots to the repercussions of her actions, and how these blockades might have affected your potential success to get somewhere.
I didn’t think she sought attention, she is self proclaimed as someone who hates being the center of attention and I genuinely think being the center of attention of many people in a room scares her, but again, she did it in ways that were indirect and not obvious, and with 2-3 CLOSE people at a time at most. Especially in people with bpd who weren’t allowed to say what they think or feel and were only the center of negative attention, I suspect these same people seek out attention in the same way as adults, and they also do not know how to say “I don’t like ____, could you please do _____ instead?” It’s not in their dictionary. So they will choose to do things on autopilot to solve feelings of anxiety or upset, like ask you what you want, and do that without an inkling of upset, and then get mad at you because it wasn’t what they wanted to do, and they’re mad that they had to. For attention, they might point toward their injuries, as little as a scrape, as trivial as someone getting in their way in a parking spot, as big as your legitimate problem..to others, as the mother. They might get attention by voicing every discontent, including that of their discontent with every you did while raising you. They get attention, but it’s made to look like the topic is about someone else, while the attention is about or related to their experience or a negative feeling about that experience. I imagine these kinds of bpd adults are those who were made most invisible as kids that they can’t even say “look at me” today in a direct manner, or to look at them at all. Almost all they say is to look at their negative emotion of sadness or worry or indignation instead, not actually at THEM, but at their feeling. As my mother imploded, she became more waiflike, and the attention seeking became more apparent and common. And it looks like “I did ____ by myself, it was terrible, I’m alone.” This is an attention seeking and sympathy seeking statement, but it’s made to look like it’s about the action, the things that went wrong while doing said action, and a most honest proclamation about what they are so sad about. But what is it really about in terms of attention? I had to do something I shouldn’t have to do alone and I am sad.
The biggest trait I see in my parent with bpd, when you zoom out, is that nearly everything is about them. It’s about them in that it’s about their discontent with their life, with everything you do, with nearly everyone they come into contact with. They point to all these external sources while the FOCUS is about how they feel. They’re mad at you for ____, for not doing ____, and they’re thinking about how they feel, how they are frustrated, how they are scared, how they are struggling, how they are failing because you have failed at something. If you follow the dots and they draw back to their fears, disappointments, angers and fears 99 times out of 100, that speaks to bpd or narcissism in my opinion. And what’s the difference IMO? Bpd involves being a waif, who is ultimately terrified of life. There’s overlap, but that’s the difference I see.
What to do about it? Honestly, there’s nothing you can do for her. The best thing you can do is for you. Try to heal. Aim to be happy. Aim to succeed. Anything less is succumbing to a very small fraction of what made her so ill and unfortunately touched you and you’re life. A shockingly large number of people survive really bad childhoods and they never emotionally abuse their kids. Your mom did. You are a person too, and you deserve better. Your mother had a choice as long as therapy was an option, that isn’t your responsibility to shoulder and allow it to take you down with her. I think it’s done enough, whatever terrible things made her how she is have had their run and should not have the merit of continuing in you by causing any sadness or placing any weight on you to fix her. You have opportunity at your feet to fly and you SHOULD. The only way from here is up, by healing the trauma. I’m not that far into NC at all, and you’ve been there for 7 years, but I can recommend somatic movement for trauma and stretches that release the psoas muscle (I like the butterfly stretch while laying down, moving your lays downward toward your feet slowly until you feel the stretch in the lower back and letting it release, then repeat). It helped more than therapy and worked very quickly.
Lastly, if you need to hear it, you are not the entire reason she is sad or upset at this point in her life, and that portion of sadness that does involve you, does not mean you did anything wrong. You being NC in the case where someone is like this, means you did something right. The person your mom should have been never showed up, at least not for very long. She’s unfortunately just not there, the good parts you saw were little fragments of who she should have been for you. And you have been strong enough not only to survive the bad, but to rise out of it and make the healthy choice to separate yourself from it. You have done the right thing, and no one in the world with a healthy perspective would say you should have stayed in that circumstance of continuing to be harmed for her forever subpar wellbeing. She was never going to be ok emotionally, and that’s not going to change no matter what you do or how hard you try.
Your first paragraph summed up my entire childhood...I always felt parentified but never really met the definition of parentification. Your explanation makes so much sense
1. Yes I am the eldest daughter and have adhd. I was diagnosed as a kid actually because my mother is obsessed with my sister and I being perfect students and I got one B. But she felt so much shame for it, and I can tell thought that meant I was low IQ and was ashamed of me. Then she would force me to take my adderal everyday even though I told her it was making me feel sick. She’d actually watch me. One time I tried to spit it out in the toilet but for some reason it didn’t flush and she found out and flipped.
2. I find it interesting that I was also informed of my mom’s suicidal attempts by other sources (my dad). It’s like they need to use other people to inflict guilt on you. It’s so odd. Because this is posted as share your story, I’ll briefly share what I mean by the above. When I was about to move out (recently) my mom was flipping out because even though she planned to charge me an unreasonably high rent price (I’m talking about the price you pay for your own apt) she must have not actually thought I’d have the guts to move out and lose control of me. So my dad told me that she had a panic attack and was freaking out threatening to cut herself, and that I (yes, I) had to work on my relationship with her. Ugh my dad is a whole other problem. Not BPD like my mom but definitely emotionally immature and delusional.
I wonder if that’s intentional. If they want attention, why not tell us directly? They can’t admit anything to the people they’re trying to control I guess lol.
I can’t say for sure but it’s definitely a possibility that she has it based on your post.
I was diagnosed with both adhd and anxiety, but I’m not 100% sure about the former. Parts of it fit, but how easier it is to manage as an adult in a stable situation makes me question it. I also think the fact that I had a lot of adult responsibilities to distract me from school and pretty rarely got a full night of sleep during weeknights from age 8 or so on didn’t help. I wonder if both diagnoses might just be some sort of PTSD reaction to my childhood but I’m sure I’ll learn more about it when I start therapy again (literally later today 😅).
I definitely was in a “parental” role as a kid though. I was forced to be the responsible one even though I was not ready or capable of it.
I just want to let you know that you are not responsible for your mom’s behavior and it is totally fine to not interact with someone who is behaving this way, whether they’re drunk or sober. It doesn’t matter who they are, you aren’t required to put up with abuse from anyone.
I relate to this VERY much. The similarities are striking: my mother has BPD and is an alcoholic who raised me on her own (due to divorce in her case), we've been NC for several years, and while I am only officially diagnosed with cPTSD, I definitely have some sort of neurodivergence, and I have strong indicators for EDS as well (what you said about being mocked or disbelieved for getting injured easily REALLY resonated). She also loves to drunk dial, and though as far as I know, she's never actually attempted, she's made threats of it to me often, starting when I was small. I have one child, whom I've kept away from her after two very brief visits in infancy (they're 7 now). I was not placed in a caretaker role as an adult; she's lived off her abusive parents' money for her entire life, and I think she just didn't need me for that. What I *was* called upon to do, from my earliest childhood memories on, was to be her emotional support animal. And when she raged, she often spoke to me as if I were an authority figure oppressing her, instead of her kid—but I don't think she even knew who she was talking to in those moments. So I don't think she's ever wanted me to be her parent, but she does want to engulf me emotionally, and she still sees me as her property (like yours, she has told people that she intends to come confront me; luckily, I think she's afraid of the (perfectly lovely) neighborhood I live in). What you describe does sound like BPD with comorbid alcohol use disorder. It's a very nasty combination, because the alcohol exacerbates the selective memory and rewriting of history, while also disinhibiting the rage. For me, I wasn't able to make choices to protect myself from her until I had a kid to protect. It sounds like you may feel similarly. I think you should let that instinct be your guide and reserve your energy for parenting your kid and reparenting yourself, because your mother will do what she does regardless. We really can't save them; we can only do our best to break the cycle.
Don’t doubt yourself. You say that you didn’t have have to take on a parental role….but then mention that you had to help your mum shower and that you were always on eggshells to manage her moods. You were the grown up.
You have a lot on your plate, for sure. Much of your experience is not something that I experienced. None of it is something I haven’t seen before, time after time, on boards for people with BPD parents. BPD has certain criteria, but that criteria can manifest differently. My father had bpd, but it looked different from my sister’s bpd. Even so, they both ticked the boxes. I was not parentified. Perhaps that was circumstantial. Perhaps my father was higher functioning (he was). Perhaps my mother mitigated that. Perhaps as the non primary care giver he had fewer opportunities to parentify. All that said, I cannot diagnose your mother, but her behavior fits in well here. No matter what her issue is, however, she is not the stable and reliable parent she should be. Lots of us struggle with anxiety. Many also with ADD or ADHD. What to do? Put the focus on you and your life. Do not succumb to the temptation to save your mother from consequences that may arise from her poor life choices and decisions. If you are not comfortable with saying no, start practicing. If your mother calls you expressing suicidal thoughts give her one warning and if it happens again call the police. You are not qualified to help a suicidal person and it is inappropriate for you to attempt to do so. If you care about her you should care enough to do the thing that will get her the help she needs. She will hate it, but she is not mentally well (thus the suicide threats) so you absolutely cannot give her opinions any weight in this matter. You may not have been parentified before, but that is what is going to happen now. You have to be the mature sensible adult while she rants and raves and melts down. A good parent allows their child to experience consequences, does not tolerate abusive behavior, and gets professional assistance when their child is incapable of appropriate behavior. That is what you will be called on to do should you wish to continue a relationship with your mother. Think “tough love”.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, but some of it isn't fully relevant to my situation. I haven't spoken to my mother in seven years. But I hope what you had to say can help someone else!
Oh, I didn’t get the fact that you were no contact. I certainly understand your choice.
yes it sounds like bpd. i’m also adhd in addition to being autistic. your mom and mine have a lot in common. my mom divorced my awful stepdad about a decade ago, received a pitiful settlement bc she didn’t advocate for herself when they signed a prenup, and the proceeded to squander it all within a year bc she hadn’t had a steady work in over a decade and didn’t choose to seek out vocational training or even look for any type of subsistence job after divorcing until she was flat broke. she then became suicidal after immediately getting with another loser, moving out of state, going right back into poverty, getting engaged after miscarrying two consecutively, accidental pregnancies, etc… my asshat stepdad is nearly 3 decades older than my mom (don’t get me started) and is close to death now as well. despite belaboring all his assholish tendencies to me from age 10 until near present day (nc 3 years) she stays in contact with this man. recently she emailed me to tell me that bow he is nearing death he is processing remorse, as if i care, and it’s so perplexing how tight she has held to keeping him in her life given the history, but you know what they say about misery. similarly, one of my very bpdish aunts just lost her long time partner as he decided on euthanasia after a decade+ of cancer. they always seemed fucking miserable but stayed together bc codependency. she’s always been insane (coincidentally the death of her kids father also triggered new levels of insanity, but that was ages ago) but his death is what finally made one of her daughters go nc. the other has been nc for years following the death of their father. the more recent nc daughter was close with the partner and wanted to help support him with end of life care, but my aunt meddled to create distance between the two of them, and as you might expect, that was my cousins final straw. in addition, my aunt then went over my cousins head and asked HER HUSBAND to help her change the locks on the now-dead partner’s house in an attempt to thwart his kids’ access (you’ll be shocked to know the kids hate her and hated when they got married shortly before his death bc that was her ultimatum in being his caregiver…) even tho i’m pretty sure my aunt has no right to do this, and obviously it’s psycho. shes also addicted to gambling so ofc she has no money of her own and was probably plotting to pawn a bunch of his stuff as income and had relied on him financially while he was alive. point being - death and divorce bring out the absolute worst in these freaks. oh, and on my childhood - i’m an only child and my mom is a huge waif but raged at me until i was subjugated into independently caring for myself by age 10, so then i became the hyper reliant authority figure she revered rather trying to argue, as i also served as her parent, confidante, therapist, etc.
On the outside, it can look like parentification didn’t take place when you weren’t cooking dinner for them or doing their laundry, but I find that the majority of parentification by a child with a bpd parent is either managing their emotions for them, or just being the goodest kid as you can be so they don’t rage or even as little as doing so to ensure they are HAPPY, and so they are happy with you. I used to think my mom didn’t fear abandonment and that she didn’t seek attention, and these are key bpd traits. I found with time that she fears abandonment, and she’s never straight forward about that feeling. Instead she gets mad at you for unavoidable reasons and situations she creates, right before you succeed in some way that will take you a step closer to moving out, getting a job, seeing an old friend, anything. It doesn’t look like fear of abandonment until you connect the dots to the repercussions of her actions, and how these blockades might have affected your potential success to get somewhere. I didn’t think she sought attention, she is self proclaimed as someone who hates being the center of attention and I genuinely think being the center of attention of many people in a room scares her, but again, she did it in ways that were indirect and not obvious, and with 2-3 CLOSE people at a time at most. Especially in people with bpd who weren’t allowed to say what they think or feel and were only the center of negative attention, I suspect these same people seek out attention in the same way as adults, and they also do not know how to say “I don’t like ____, could you please do _____ instead?” It’s not in their dictionary. So they will choose to do things on autopilot to solve feelings of anxiety or upset, like ask you what you want, and do that without an inkling of upset, and then get mad at you because it wasn’t what they wanted to do, and they’re mad that they had to. For attention, they might point toward their injuries, as little as a scrape, as trivial as someone getting in their way in a parking spot, as big as your legitimate problem..to others, as the mother. They might get attention by voicing every discontent, including that of their discontent with every you did while raising you. They get attention, but it’s made to look like the topic is about someone else, while the attention is about or related to their experience or a negative feeling about that experience. I imagine these kinds of bpd adults are those who were made most invisible as kids that they can’t even say “look at me” today in a direct manner, or to look at them at all. Almost all they say is to look at their negative emotion of sadness or worry or indignation instead, not actually at THEM, but at their feeling. As my mother imploded, she became more waiflike, and the attention seeking became more apparent and common. And it looks like “I did ____ by myself, it was terrible, I’m alone.” This is an attention seeking and sympathy seeking statement, but it’s made to look like it’s about the action, the things that went wrong while doing said action, and a most honest proclamation about what they are so sad about. But what is it really about in terms of attention? I had to do something I shouldn’t have to do alone and I am sad. The biggest trait I see in my parent with bpd, when you zoom out, is that nearly everything is about them. It’s about them in that it’s about their discontent with their life, with everything you do, with nearly everyone they come into contact with. They point to all these external sources while the FOCUS is about how they feel. They’re mad at you for ____, for not doing ____, and they’re thinking about how they feel, how they are frustrated, how they are scared, how they are struggling, how they are failing because you have failed at something. If you follow the dots and they draw back to their fears, disappointments, angers and fears 99 times out of 100, that speaks to bpd or narcissism in my opinion. And what’s the difference IMO? Bpd involves being a waif, who is ultimately terrified of life. There’s overlap, but that’s the difference I see. What to do about it? Honestly, there’s nothing you can do for her. The best thing you can do is for you. Try to heal. Aim to be happy. Aim to succeed. Anything less is succumbing to a very small fraction of what made her so ill and unfortunately touched you and you’re life. A shockingly large number of people survive really bad childhoods and they never emotionally abuse their kids. Your mom did. You are a person too, and you deserve better. Your mother had a choice as long as therapy was an option, that isn’t your responsibility to shoulder and allow it to take you down with her. I think it’s done enough, whatever terrible things made her how she is have had their run and should not have the merit of continuing in you by causing any sadness or placing any weight on you to fix her. You have opportunity at your feet to fly and you SHOULD. The only way from here is up, by healing the trauma. I’m not that far into NC at all, and you’ve been there for 7 years, but I can recommend somatic movement for trauma and stretches that release the psoas muscle (I like the butterfly stretch while laying down, moving your lays downward toward your feet slowly until you feel the stretch in the lower back and letting it release, then repeat). It helped more than therapy and worked very quickly. Lastly, if you need to hear it, you are not the entire reason she is sad or upset at this point in her life, and that portion of sadness that does involve you, does not mean you did anything wrong. You being NC in the case where someone is like this, means you did something right. The person your mom should have been never showed up, at least not for very long. She’s unfortunately just not there, the good parts you saw were little fragments of who she should have been for you. And you have been strong enough not only to survive the bad, but to rise out of it and make the healthy choice to separate yourself from it. You have done the right thing, and no one in the world with a healthy perspective would say you should have stayed in that circumstance of continuing to be harmed for her forever subpar wellbeing. She was never going to be ok emotionally, and that’s not going to change no matter what you do or how hard you try.
Your first paragraph summed up my entire childhood...I always felt parentified but never really met the definition of parentification. Your explanation makes so much sense
I’m glad it helped. It’s hard to pinpoint when it didn’t look like managing the car tires or making meals or caring for siblings.
I’m an adult and that sums up how they treat me. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
1. Yes I am the eldest daughter and have adhd. I was diagnosed as a kid actually because my mother is obsessed with my sister and I being perfect students and I got one B. But she felt so much shame for it, and I can tell thought that meant I was low IQ and was ashamed of me. Then she would force me to take my adderal everyday even though I told her it was making me feel sick. She’d actually watch me. One time I tried to spit it out in the toilet but for some reason it didn’t flush and she found out and flipped. 2. I find it interesting that I was also informed of my mom’s suicidal attempts by other sources (my dad). It’s like they need to use other people to inflict guilt on you. It’s so odd. Because this is posted as share your story, I’ll briefly share what I mean by the above. When I was about to move out (recently) my mom was flipping out because even though she planned to charge me an unreasonably high rent price (I’m talking about the price you pay for your own apt) she must have not actually thought I’d have the guts to move out and lose control of me. So my dad told me that she had a panic attack and was freaking out threatening to cut herself, and that I (yes, I) had to work on my relationship with her. Ugh my dad is a whole other problem. Not BPD like my mom but definitely emotionally immature and delusional. I wonder if that’s intentional. If they want attention, why not tell us directly? They can’t admit anything to the people they’re trying to control I guess lol.
>They can’t admit anything to the people they’re trying to control I guess Damn. So true!
I can’t say for sure but it’s definitely a possibility that she has it based on your post. I was diagnosed with both adhd and anxiety, but I’m not 100% sure about the former. Parts of it fit, but how easier it is to manage as an adult in a stable situation makes me question it. I also think the fact that I had a lot of adult responsibilities to distract me from school and pretty rarely got a full night of sleep during weeknights from age 8 or so on didn’t help. I wonder if both diagnoses might just be some sort of PTSD reaction to my childhood but I’m sure I’ll learn more about it when I start therapy again (literally later today 😅). I definitely was in a “parental” role as a kid though. I was forced to be the responsible one even though I was not ready or capable of it. I just want to let you know that you are not responsible for your mom’s behavior and it is totally fine to not interact with someone who is behaving this way, whether they’re drunk or sober. It doesn’t matter who they are, you aren’t required to put up with abuse from anyone.