Introduction: My Story

[harnettr]

My Story

Synopsis: Wife is high functioning BPD. DBT therapy started 18 months ago. It has helped but still a long way to go. The problem is bad but we’ll probably stay to together and hopefully work it out or live with it.

My wife is un-diagnosed BPD. Her BPD specialist therapist says she has BPD traits but not BPD. I assume her therapist thinks she does have BPD but for the benefit of her treatment instead says she only has BPD traits. I would describe her as high functioning, no self harm, she hides her dysregulation from everyone but me and our children, she leads a normal life.

I noticed her BPD rage within the first year of us dating but on a very limited scale and I didn’t think much of it. As our relationship grew so did the BPD problem. I suspect that as her need of me grew to be her husband and then father to her children, her attachment to me grew and the BPD problem grew. There were probably 2 bad years before we sought professional help. I had never heard of BPD. The first therapist was worse than useless. She didn’t diagnose BPD but because Nancy (wife pseudonym) was visiting the therapist it gave her a bit more freedom to dysregulate. The therapy had no positive affect and after a year we found a new therapist, a hypno-therapist.  She also didn’t identify the BPD and also had zero positive affect. At my wits end and contemplating divorce I took to the internet and searched for raging wife and came across BPD.  I instantly diagnosed Nancy and I cried for both joy and sorrow as I came to understand what we were dealing with.  My first mistake was telling Nancy that I had discovered the root of her problems, BPD, but she could get help and it could be perfectly managed.  I didn’t read enough that first day to learn telling them like that is a bad idea.  Today, 18 months on from that diagnosis, we still don’t ever talk about BPD (we call it her emotional mind).

I read voraciously for that first month trying to learn everything I could about BPD and how to deal with it.  This website was a huge help and I read some of the books commonly mentioned here. We got her in to see a BPD specialist teaching DBT.  It was a rocky road but after about 4 months we had a breakthrough and stopped seeing the therapist. After the breakthrough we had about 4 months of calm and almost not a single episode of dysregulation. And then it started again, coming and going in severity to where we are today where things are quite bad again. I had thought that things were under control and getting better but I now realize they are getting worse. I’ve done all the reading, we’ve had success with the therapist, both she and I have learned tools and methods to deal with things better but still things are getting worse. In recognition of the negative trajectory Nancy is working on it by meditating, going back to her DBT exercises and going to the gym more. She also take 4 hours of alone time once a weekend to do one of 3 things only, meditate/contemplate, exercise or work on her DBT exercises, no reading or fun.  Fingers crossed this renewed vigour for dealing with BPD will pay off.

Nancy’s father is probably the root of her BPD. He had a mental breakdown in his late 40’s, probably bipolar disorder. His personality changed and he abandoned his wife, Nancy age 21 and son age 19. We speculate that this damaged Nancy’s brain development (which continues until about age 25) and left her with fears of abandonment and the cause of her BPD.

Nancy’s BPD triggers seem to be mostly based on fears of abandonment and fueled by poor self esteem. A common trigger for dysregulating is anything that will take me away from her including business trips, outings with friends and spending time with my family.

I expect we will remain together and we can manage this. We had the 4 month window of success so we know she is capable of regulating her emotions.

The worst part is when she is dysregulating in front of the children and says horrible things about me to them. “Daddy doesn’t want to spend Christmas with you. Daddy doesn’t make any money and can’t support you.”  When she is regulating she recognizes she shouldn’t say these things and agrees it is terrible.

The second worst part is how it disconnects me from Nancy, not just when she is dysregulating but always. She is my wife, I want to confide in her my hopes, joys, fears but I hide many things from her because it feeds her BPD. I can’t tell her I think she is BPD. I can’t tell her about all these things I’ve learned about dealing with BPD. I can’t talk about what triggers her dysregulation because it causes her to  dysregulate. (I don’t want to talk to my friends or family about it except for 2 close friends).  I hide things from her I’m ashamed about such as my laziness or poor performance at work. I can’t even talk freely with her about happy things like Christmas and summer holidays because those are triggers if I want to do something different than her. I once read “To know and understand your partner is the greatest thing you can do for them.”  BPD prevents Nancy from knowing me.

Between Nancy and myself we are a lot better at dealing with dysregulation than we used to be. Before the BPD treatment and me learning some techniques there was lots of screaming, throwing things, I would try to leave the house and she would block my way. Where we are today is that she rarely screams, doesn’t throw things, episodes end sooner, in about half a day. I think this progress is probably equally attributed to both of us as to how we deal with dysregulation.

Learning to deal with her dysregulation is the trickiest part. I think I’m getting better at it but I still do a very poor job.  I’ve read and tried everything. Her therapist showed me how it should be done, to empathize with Nancy and to get Nancy to really believe that we do think her feelings are justified. “Really! Wow. He did what? I would have felt the same way if I was you.”  Unfortunately the therapist is in a much better position to create empathy with Nancy as she isn’t in the line of fire. If you are in the line of fire you have to deal with the accusations head on and are therefore limited as how you can empathize. For example “You came home late, you’re an ass… etc etc”

“I can see you’re upset, I would be upset too etc etc”. But at no point can I alter the fact that I came home when I did and I have to deal with that accusation where the therapist can just comment on it.

So the therapist did a great job of making Nancy feel justified in all her frustrations with me and from there she built up strategies for dealing with her frustrations and anger. I would also like to make Nancy feel justified for feeling her frustrations but it is a lot more difficult for me to do it without agreeing to change my behaviour in the future which would be crossing my line in the sand.

So after trying lots of different ways of dealing with her dysregulation I have settled on saying as little as possible and hoping that Nancy can bring herself around to regulated emotions by herself.  I have mostly failed at convincing her that I am empathetic to her frustrations. All of my comments like “I can see you're frustrated, or I would feel like that too if I were you” just get thrown back in my face with a demand that words are cheap, if you meant it you would agree to change your behaviour. I refuse to change my behaviour because it just fuels her demands.

When she is dysregulating my strategy is like a doctor’s, cause no further harm. She loves to have me as a punching bag (figuratively) so I give her that, I don’t refuse to talk to her. I sit attentively in front of her, often on the couch, open body position, making eye contact all the time. Virtually anything I say with any substance she will use as ammunition in her attack so I try to say nothing of any substance at all. Lot of things like “I don’t know, I can see that you are frustrated. I’m sorry that I’ve made you angry.” I take all her abuse without comment. I never argue her point. I never add anything new to conversation. If pressed to make a decision that I can’t put off with an “I don’t know” then I will say something like “ Yes I am going to see my friend” and then not back it up with anything, not justify it. Again, say as little as possible but do not give in to changing my behaviour.  This sort of silent treatment drives her up the wall; “say something, talk, this isn’t a conversation”.  Then I just wear her down. She can only say “you’re an ass” in so many different ways with me just nodding silently before she gets bored and too frustrated with my lack of involvement and gives up. It might take an hour. If it is a subject I genuinely want to discuss and resolve with her, I’ll wait until she is regulating normally to discuss it.  So after 40 minutes or so of taking all her verbal abuse she will end the conversation and then I just have to hope that she brings herself around. It is almost never that I am able to bring her out of it. She might have episodes lasting as little as 10 minutes or the longest was a month. Then when she comes out of it she is a different person, loving, affectionate. To bring herself out she just starts thinking straight, she loses her fear, she changes her mind and decides my actions aren’t as bad as she thought. On some occasions when she is dysregulating I can say to her, “you are in your emotional mind, please go to your room and meditate” and she will (if I’m lucky). While alone she thinks about what is going on and can pull herself out of it (or not).

Another technique that has had limited success in ending her dysregulation is what I call verbal diarrhea of positive things. I will try to hug her and talk non stop for 3 minutes about everything wonderful in our life, how she doesn’t need to fear me abandoning her, how much I love her, how lucky we are to have our house and daughters, how much fun we had doing this thing recently and just anything nice and positive in our lives. When it works it is like a magic spell, she breaks out of her episode and starts crying.

Validating her emotions doesn’t play a big part in my strategy. For the most part when ever I say anything that is my attempt to validate she just takes it as meaningless lip service from me and she attacks me for saying it. So my main strategy is to be attentive and mostly silent and wait her out.

For me mentally this has obviously been very difficult. The diagnosis was a huge relief and then I started climbing the mountain to learn how to deal with it. It is a very tall mountain.  My approach has been evolving to where I am today I have created this alter personality solution.  The root of her BPD is abandonment, so if I try to escape the house while she is dysregulating it makes things worse. So when she is verbally attacking me, and she knows all my weaknesses so her attacks can really hurt, my natural reaction is “I hate this person, get me away”. But instead I have to do the opposite, “I love this person, I want to help them and I will do it by letting them attack me”.  The leap from “I hate this person” to “I love this person” is a very big leap so I’ve created a little construct in my head to help me deal with it. I’ve given Nancy’s dysregulating self her own identity. I call her Emo, short for emotional mind.  So I am married to two people, Nancy who I love and Emo who I hate.  I don’t need to lose any sleep over verbal attacks from people I don’t respect so Emo can yell all day long and it doesn’t get me down.  I also feel sympathy for Emo because she has a mental disease, BPD.  This is the way I’ve managed to cope with all the natural negative feelings toward Nancy when she is dysregulating. It has worked quite well. I’m a very logical person so it can be a fight between my emotional mind (who wants to hate) and rational mind (who wants to help) but with this Emo trick the rational mind is winning.

Some comments from you the reader that I’m specifically looking for is how to discuss trigger events with her. For example for a holiday I want us to visit my family and she doesn’t. When I bring it up she starts to dysregulate and the conversations simply becomes her attacking me and the holiday decisions don’t happen.

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RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[formflier]

  and the holiday decisions don’t happen.

Welcome to BPD family.  I bet we will talk a lot.

This sounds exactly what I have been dealing with.  I've been able to use tools on here... .and things are much... much better.

Please look to the right of your screen... .read "the lessons"... .you will read those several times.

Also... respond and post some word by word of how the conversation went where you tried to make a decision... or get her to make one.

[Tim300]

Wow, thanks for sharing all of that.

I tried to ask my pwBPD what her triggers were and she wouldn't tell me.  I don't know why not.  Perhaps she didn't trust me and thought I would use this info as weapons against her. 

I think her greatest trigger was if I abruptly left our apartment.  I began to tell her exactly where I was going and when I would return, and this seemed to help.  For example, "I need to go for a walk and I will be back in about 1 hour."   

[felix22]

     Hello Harnettr. I am new to this as well. Alas, I'm not as logical a person as you are. I have less concrete methods for dealing with my uBPDso. Your writing was very clear. She's lucky to have someone like you in her life!

    As for discussing trigger sensitive topics, I can only attest to timing helping for me. And, like you say, keeping your line in the sand.

    I know I'm not much help on this. Just wanted to welcome you.

    From what I've observed, if you bring up a specific incident, or topic, people will love to chime in on it. Sometimes, people will try and get your goat, and challenge your logic, or lack thereof. Which brings up another useful facet; trying not to get upset at people on these boards. I encountered that for the first time recently. I was surprised how unvalidated it made me feel, to share on these boards and have my experience minimized and consolidated/reduced.

    Anyways, best of luck. Keep taking care of yourself too.

   

[harnettr]

Here is an example of a failed attempt to discuss trigger events. I receive an email from a male buddy inviting me on a boys weekend in the mountains. I know this is a trigger, it takes me away from my BPD wife. I say "I've been invited on a boys weekend by Bob.  We know that this is a trigger event for your emotional mind so please be careful". And them BAMO! She goes off. Lots of stuff about it's not fair, I'm going to find a very expensive get away to go on myself, to the children "your father doesn't want to spend time with you". Various attacking comments unrelated to the boys weekend like "can you at least get the children dressed, you never do anything to help."

Instead of facing the music like I often do I escaped and took the chilrdren out to play for an hour and left Nancy by herself. Upon my return she was regulating normally, she had thought about it and brought herself around. She

almost apologized and said I was welcome to go on the boys weekend. I gave her a hug and the situation is resolved. I'm welcome to go on the boys weekend.

[formflier]

I've been invited on a boys weekend by Bob.  We know that this is a trigger event for your emotional mind so please be careful". 

Probably would advise trying to drop the "we know this is a trigger... ." part.

Also... think about this next time.  Go ahead and get kids ready to go out and play...   Before you go out... .talk to your wife... do some validation... .and talking.  You are "checking the temperature"... .

Then... .try to validate... us SET as the formula to organize your thoughts... or possibly SE SET.

Here is the kicker... .the T is the "truth" that you have decided to go on a boys weekend.  Or if you want to ask it as a question.  Whatever is "normal" in your r/s... .asking or telling.

Then... .if she gets iffy... .validate... .more SET or SE SET.

And... best part... .if you need to leave... kids are ready.

[Notwendy]

One idea is to just let her rage it out since she can't manage her emotions. Once the emotions are over, she's more rational.

We wanted to do something as a family without mom. This would naturally hurt her feelings. I could see where she would want to be included, but it wouldn't work for this. Also, I am an adult and can make choices that don't include her. Now consider this to be similar to the boy's trip. It is not appropriate that she is included. That doesn't mean not being included doesn't hurt her feelings in some way, after all you are going to have fun without her.

Mom went ballistic when we told her and by the end of the call, we were the worst kids in the world with the most horrible grandchildren and she was done with us.

The holidays came around and she called and asked what presents the kids wanted. I asked " I thought you were not interested in sending presents to the kids". It was then that she was able to explain that her feelings were hurt and she overeacted. As much as these rages have caused me pain, and how inapropriate they are, it is their dysfunction.

[Notwendy]

I like your idea of "Emo". I would not tell your kids to do this. It would be very degrading and invalidating to your wife, but also they may come up with this on their own.

We, kids, have all sorts of names for mom when she is in this state. Not all of them nice words, as we were teenagers at the time, and if she heard them, it would be awful, but we still refer to some of them.

The intent was never to hurt her, but a sort of a warning system to each other to stay out of her way, and as a protective way to separate from the raging.

Humor is one way to survive. If you could hear us making jokes about some things, you would think we were the most horrible insensitive kids, but it was one way we came up with to cope. Humor is sometimes good medicine. But this is not something parents can do with kids as it is damaging and triangulating, but your own kids may come up with some ideas on their own.

[harnettr]

An update on my attempts to discuss dysregulating triggers with her.

Somewhat amazingly we had a great talk today about her triggers and she didn't dysregulate and we got everything out in the open.

The longer story is that she has been dysregulating on and off for about a month as I've been trying to discuss her triggers with her and every time I brought it up she would dysregulate. Yesterday I'd had enough and told her that because she was incapable of discussing her trigger she would have to go back to her DBT therapy.  For some reason that I'm not quite sure of she is very opposed to going back to therapy so she said that she would allow the trigger conversation and she wouldn't dysregulate to prove to me that she doesn't have to return the therapy. I was skeptical but true to her word we had a good conversation without dysregulation. If it holds it is a break through.

Her answer to dysregulating triggers is all the standard stuff that she has previously agreed to that fit into two categories, prevention and then while dysregulating to minimize the episode. Prevention includes, more exercise, more meditating and mindfulness practice, more working on her DBT workbook exercises. And then dysregulation minimization includes a better effort to be mindful and things like removing herself from the situation to go for a walk or meditate to calm down. She agreed with my list of all the actual triggers like stressful events, sickness etc.

It is my hope that now we have identified these triggers she can be more mindful of when they arise and be more prepared and on the look out for dysregulating.

I do find it very strange this whole two minds thing, the regulating mind and the dysregulating mind. They talk a little bit to each other but not very much. And it is certainly very tricky to figure out how to get her regulating mind to talk to dysregulating mind.

[garthaz]

Before I discovered nine was BPD, I thought she had a split personality. I confronted mine (A long time ago) with the second name "Emo," and of course she denied it as she was throwing her crock pot on the floor.  I said that I will not talk to Emo, only Nancy. Kind of like they do on TV shows. Tried to get "Nancy" back, and it didn't work. The previous poster was correct in keeping that name to yourself.

[Theo41]

Harnettr, One of the things I have learned is that none of us deserve to be abused and it is harmful to us and the children.  I try to be supportive and validate as appropriate but what frequently happens is that the harangue goes on and on and on.

What I do is remove myself from the situation. I get quiet and don't engage, I go to the bedroom for a nap, I take the dog for a walk, I take the rest of the day off, and on two occasions I have packed a bag and rented a hotel room.

Since she fears abandonment, when I start to leave she becomes alarmed. I say:" if you can bury the hatchet and knock it off, we can start over and have a nice rest of the day but if u insist an continuing the abuse/punishment/anger/ yelling, I'm not up for that anymore and I'm leaving.

Most of the time she gets a grip and becomes the person I enjoy being around. The rest of the time I leave or take a nap and when I get back she's better. Note: when I leave it helps to tell her when I'll be back and then come back at that time not later. All best. Theo