Does anyway know how to differentiate between BPD and PMDD?

[Think About It...]

I am trying to figure out if my wife is suffering from BPD or PMDD or both.  I really don't know why I feel the need to know, cause if it is PMDD it still presents itself very closely to BPD.  She still needs validation and SET and JADE seem to work very well when I apply them correctly.

I have noticed over the past year my wife will have severe mood swings on particular days.  I can honestly pinpoint the days on my calendar when she will rage and tell me she is done with our marriage.  Her episodes last anywhere from 2-4 hours.  Then it just suddenly stops and she seems back to normal.

She will rage on the fourteenth day after her cycle begins.  Then one week before her next cycle, then from four days out until her cycle begins she has severe mood swings almost from hour to hour.  After her cycle begins everything seems fine and normal until the fourth day after her cycle began.  That day is an absolute living hell for me.   The the entire cycle begins again on her fourteenth day.  Is this normal for a BPD woman?

My wife only directs her outbursts at me.  No one else.  I understand this is typical with BPD though, that they direct their rage toward the significant other.

I guess if it is not BPD but PMDD it really adds to my hope we will get through this.  If it is BPD I still hope we get through this.  I just think it will be a much longer road. 

[Boot]

I am trying to figure out if my wife is suffering from BPD or PMDD or both.  I really don't know why I feel the need to know, cause if it is PMDD it still presents itself very closely to BPD.  She still needs validation and SET and JADE seem to work very well when I apply them correctly.

I have noticed over the past year my wife will have severe mood swings on particular days.  I can honestly pinpoint the days on my calendar when she will rage and tell me she is done with our marriage.  Her episodes last anywhere from 2-4 hours.  Then it just suddenly stops and she seems back to normal.

She will rage on the fourteenth day after her cycle begins.  Then one week before her next cycle, then from four days out until her cycle begins she has severe mood swings almost from hour to hour.  After her cycle begins everything seems fine and normal until the fourth day after her cycle began.  That day is an absolute living hell for me.   The the entire cycle begins again on her fourteenth day.  Is this normal for a BPD woman?

My wife only directs her outbursts at me.  No one else.  I understand this is typical with BPD though, that they direct their rage toward the significant other.

I guess if it is not BPD but PMDD it really adds to my hope we will get through this.  If it is BPD I still hope we get through this.  I just think it will be a much longer road. 

[momtario]

If she's not acting out toward anybody else, it still sounds more like BPD.

How many of the DSM-4 criteria does your wife exhibit?

I would say that her hormones are probably contributing to dysregulation, which is something that gets brought up on the boards every now and then.

PMDD is generally something that is aimed at the nearest person, not only the partner.

[Steph]

PMDD is treated easily and successfully with medication.

BPD is treated with long term therapy.

If she is willing, make an appointment with her GYN and they can screen her for it AND treat it  easily!

Heres hoping for PMDD!

Steph

[Boot]

MTO,
She definitely meets 4 of the 9.  She is iffy on a 5th.  There is no doubt she displays BPD traits.  She has a huge abandonment issue.  She will at times get upset with me if I leave her in one grocery isle to go to another to grab an item we forgot.  But then the next day she will demand I drop her off at a store and wait for her in the car.  It really confuses me.  I have learned she does not like me being around other women so those are the stores she prefers to be alone in.  Other stores where women are not so prevalent she wants me by her side.

However, I do have a strong feeling she is a high functioning BPD also suffering from PMDD.  I was researching PMDD last night and learned PMDD is sometimes treated with water pills.  This week my wife took a few water pills for a different reason and I have noticed she has not been raging with me like she has consistently done in the last 12 months.  But when she dysregulates I am the only one who receives it.  However I cannot deny she meets several of the DSM-iv criteria.

Steph- She has an appointment with the doctor next month.  She is trying to get on birth control to start regulating her hormones.  She recognized last month that she PMS's badly and she should get on birth control to help with that.

[momtario]

That does sound hopeful, Boot   Hopefully most of her raging does come from PMDD.

[Steph]

 PMDD will also put her on a low dose of prozac...it changes everything and is very very helpful.

PMDD is good news if thats what it is. Very treatable!


Steph

[riptapart]

OH MY GOD THIS IS THE POST I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR. THis is so true of my common law wife. We seperated a few months ago, got back together for a couple weeks one month later. I moved home for a week. As soon as she ovulated, it went downhill and she asked me to move out again. I have been trying to figure it out to. She has made offers to start seeing me again and rejected telling her I will not "date" my wife. She also seems to have some psychotic break and was/is acting very strangely. I am now wondering if it is BPD that actually is the reaon she has PMDD symptoms. She is really 2 different people in her cycle. That is why she wants to end us. SHe can make all the excuses in the world.

I will tell you a really strange story. After our one month split, she was buying into the PMDD as I explained it. She agreed to see me finally at the house on the first day of her period. I will try to summarize. We have a 5 year old son also.

Day 1 (Sunday) we reconnect for a little. Even sneak in sex on her period hadn't done that in years and it continued a couple times that week when I would visit.

Week 1: I would visit. She would want me to just visit but her emotions were very volatile and down at home and she was strange. Outside the home when I would stop to see her at work she actually acted like the girl I met 7 years ago, her mannerisms and everything as if 7 years were erased. She was really in love with me outside of the home. I demanded then that I come home by Sunday (week 2). She agreed, very guarded but acted like a little girl almost allowing me to control EVERYTHING. She seemed to be racing around to get our old life back too.

Week 2: Same thing. Outside the home very happy with me, but "little girlish". Very in love with me even noticed by others. In the home though still very "weird" and depressed. Good sex though. By about Friday of that week though it began. That night she made up an excuse so that I didn't come to see her at work when I got off. Okay though, her excuse made some sense. The next morning, Saturday Morning I went to see her at work on my way to my own job. I walked in the door and looked at her. It seemed weired.

Then she looked at me and said, "I am getting these racing thoughts".
I said, "That is because you just ovulated". At this point she is still believing in PMDD.
She grabbed my shirt and said, "Wow You are really watching me aren't you".
I replied, "Yeah i am your man, I care about you. It's my job"
She responded, "Yeah but that is so unfair to YOU"
I told her, "Don't worry about me, this is hard for you".

When I was leaving she stopped me and tried to call me "Blue Eyes", her new pet name for me. It was so weird, like she knew what was happening. The next 2 days and nights I could tell she was fighting, fighting to find those loving feelings for me but it wasn't working.

Here is where it gets very strange. On monday morning we had to go to the courthouse together to drop her custody complaint she filed in regard to my threat at the first split.. She signed the papers and we left. She seemed to be actually "dysphoric". 4 hours later she comes in the bedroom to me, and by now she has on her full blown "PMDD Face". She tells me i have to go. I am making her miserable and it isn't fair to everyone else. She saw it upset me. So she spun in a circle, held her temples real tight and excliamed, "Why do I keep hurting people". Then she ran out and i packed and left. She did explain later on the phone that she ''Didn't want me out of her life but needed time to focus on herself". That was BS. That was to keep me hanging. She knows what happens to her and she can't stop it. SO she is throwing her entire life with me away right now.

[Nosurrender]

Been NC for two years now, but perhaps my experiences will help...
We were together for nearly 11 years. In retrospect, the honeymoon phase lasted 5 of those. Knew her since she was a teenager--I'm 8 years older--and always knew her to have a volatile personality. When she cared about us, she blamed her volatility on what she characterized as very painful cycles and made a concerted effort to control her rages/outbursts. At one point she/I even kept a diary as to when the rages came and went. She tried various birth control pills with varying results---none were ever long term.
After 8 or so years together--only the last of which was co-habitative--her doctor discovered cysts and recommended a partial hysterectomy. She welcomed it for many reasons, but one was that she hoped it would help her PMS. It actually got worse. A few months after her recovery from surgery, the rages came again and they became worse and worse and without PMS to blame it on, I believe she first recognized that her mood swings etc. were attributable to much more. I'd opened the Pandora's Box of blurting out "BPD" at a couples session and I'm sure that she started seeing that my diagnosis was not off-base. Both of her daughters demonstrated NPD/BPD symptoms as well--even worse if that's possible.
Less than a year after I moved in with her, I was ready to move out. I had rented apartments on two different occasions, had the car packed and relented both times after we each pledged to work harder on the relationship. But it was an untenable situation. She asked me to leave (though I was obviously ready), closed the door and has refused to speak to me (for all intents and purposes) ever since.
So was it PMDD or BPD? I think in her case, the PMDD worsened the BPD symptoms. I'm not a psychologist (although I guess we all become amateur psychologists if we're involved long enough) but it certainly seemed that way to me.

[riptapart]

Oh my god that story relates so much to mine. She left you go and NEVER wanted you back? Did she find a replacement ? Mine hasn't yet, couple months? She sometimes says she wants to get back together "slowly". We have a son together and she still knows she has me so she is in no hurry to get me back like when we were dating.. Now I am getting scared she doesn't or won't ever really want to fix us. She sabotaged our relationship and I am positive it was abanonment/engulfment issues. It hurts so badly. She is not the woman I fell in love with and have lived with the past 7 years. It is like she knows something is wrong with her and she gave up on life.

[Nosurrender]

Hi ript...
She apparently went a year without a bf--when she ended it she said she couldn't deal with her own "sht" let alone mine (whatever that means). I suspect though that she had been working on a plan B for a while. Hear she's been with him since last fall. I'm fairly certain that they'll wind up married. Yeah it still hurts all this time later. All that's gone to he'll in her life since I left is too lengthy to post here but I'm certain that her life has not improved in the least--still in a dead-end job, her daughters have moved out and she's pretty much isolated herself. Nothing I can do about it anymore--as if I ever could?

[riptapart]

So strange. And I am afraid that is what happened to me. They say the BPD softens with age, but PMDD gets far WORSE. I think what happened to both you and I is the PMDD took over their lives. A partial hysterectomy won't stop it. They need to take the ovaries. I know my wife loves me and wishes we could have it all. She KNOWS I am a great guy for her. But she also knows her PMDD will always hurt ME. Little does she understand, the break up of our family hurts WORSE. In the beginning her "dysphoria" would only last a couple days and she would come crawling back. Now it consumes her I believe. And I proves to her what happens and now she feels like a "broken" woman. That is why she isn't after any other men and also why she hates all men when she gets hormonal.

I said she has asked me to do things with her and get back into our relationship "slowly", but I can't take that again. I need more commitment after all this time. She is very close to her period. Maybe even today. That could bring about some change in her and a desire to fix our lives but I doubt it. She feels broken. She now knows what happens to her. The racing thoughts. Her complete loss of love for me right around ovulation. Before we split she was able to hide it for years. But now the damn broke and i realize so much more. She knows I know it. And because of it our future is ruined. It hurt so bad. She really is a good person. She just hates herself and quit on our dream because she feels she will always screw it up.

She has denied it and actually used that as one of the reasons why we can never be again, because I will always use PMDD as a reason for her bad feelings.. Actually it IS the only reason she ever had bad feelings. Outside of PMDD she is a very tender, sweet person. Very emotionally weak and immature, but very caring. it is so hard knowing we could have such a great future together if she would fully accept PMDD as her problem, but she just won't and is willing to let others suffer just so she doesn't have to face those deamons. Just wait, your ex will blow it with the new guy too once she starts really caring, or he does.

[Nosurrender]

Hey Ript---

Another one of those "BPD Family Parallel Lives" things that you see on here so often, eh?
Lots and lots and lots of similarities between our two tales, my friend. You may be right about the PMDD having taken over her life---not sure. Thing is, however, that BPD (undiagnosed in most cases) is so prevalent in her family that I don't have a clue as to which 'illness' played a bigger role.
I guess that the primary difference in our situations though is that you guys are married. I wanted that, she wanted that, but I now thank heaven that it never happened. My life would truly have turned into a turd!
So even after two years, I still think about her and I and what I thought we had and shared. I know through these boards and therapy that so much was mirroring and BPD 'nutsology.' BUT I also know this as a man: I tried harder in my relationship with her and her kids than I have ever tried at anything in my life. I lost a little bit of me in the process, but I'm gaining that back.
In terms of her blowing it with the new guy? Well, you're probably right, but it's certainly too late for the two of us. She has caused far too much pain and heartache--like nothing I've ever experienced before--to ever go back to that hell again.

[riptapart]

it is as amazing as heck. I can set my watch by it. Tonight when I picked up my son, I felt her wanting to talk. it ended up hugging, kissing. and serious talk about putting our family back together. AND SHE IS SINCERE. I am not saying she doesn't have BPD, but it really seems to revolve all around her hormones. She is starting to see it too. She is still downplaying it. And she also says she "feels hate for EVERYONE", "but it is just for a couple days" Bullpucky. Yes she might not like people and might be a little shorter with them when she is "dysregulated", but she hates MEN mostly, and me the most. It is the hormones that bring out her BPD traits. I have to wonder if PMDD and BPD aren't more closely related than people think. Maybe PMDD really is it's own separate disorder and she has one or the other. Or maybe it is BPD that makes her have PMDD like symptoms. But it is like clockwork. She has her period.