Seeing a therapist doesn't make you not normal. It just means that you have been struggling with something and now you are ready to take it on and you could use some help with that. Emotional stuff just keeps building up over time if you aren't taking care of it. Like with medical stuff. You can have a cold and you can deal with it and it's okay. If you keep having colds and it never goes away, you could go to the doctor and find out if it might be allergies or something else and if you can get some help. If you are in a car crash you go to the doctor and get checked out and get treatment if you need it. Does any of that make you not normal? Therapists help people to work through issues. Everybody has issues. Some people don't take care of it when they need to and it keeps on growing. Some people get help and take care of it.

You can say the same things that you said here. You can just say that you are having a hard time and you want to be the best mom/wife/daughter that you can be.

I have a history similar to yours. When I was 30 years old we didn't have money and I didn't have a car and my husband never helped with anything and if I wanted to go somewhere he made me take all the kids with me. I dreamed of having 5 minutes to myself with nobody making demands on me. I guess that I knew I wasn't okay, but I was holding it together, until I got to the breaking point and I couldn't anymore. You have to take care of yourself. If you don't, you will run dry and you will not be able to take care of anyone. Would you rather spend one hour once every week or two away from your daughter, or wait until it gets worse and maybe have to spend a week or so away from your daughter and spend thousands of dollars. It might not get to that point, but if you get help when it isn't nearly that bad, you can make sure that it doesn't get to that point.

If you go to a therapist, you still have to do your own work. Therapists can't change you or fix you (not that you are broken), but they can help you to do the work that you do more effectively, and can give you resources and teach you skills that you might not find on your own. If you are already able to do your own work and you have worked through things on your own, then you can still benefit from therapy but you will make progress a lot faster than someone who hasn't learned that they have to do their own work.

The times when things don't seem too bad are the best times for therapy, because you have the energy to put into it. If you are in the middle of a crisis, therapy can't do much because you are too busy putting out fires.

Going to therapy isn't a reason for not being able to adopt a child. Taking care of any issues you have is commendable and will make you a better parent.

At the least, you are a sensitive person who has experienced a lot of emotional invalidation. Therapy can help you to be able to accept yourself as you are, and know how to present that to the important people in your life. Emotional invalidation hurts. It is traumatic. You can't "feel wrong." You feel how you feel. You have choices about how you express that or what you do about that. BPD is a result of a person who is sensitive being invalidated and told that the way she feels can't be how she feels. She learns to suck it up and hold it in and not show how she feels. Until she can't anymore. Then she blows up. Then they tell her that there was no reason for her to blow up because she wasn't that upset before. The only way to get her needs met was to blow it out of proportion because when she tried without blowing it up they told her she was wrong. It is crazy-making. Therapy can help you sort it out and address things effectively and appropriately.