Identifying their emotions

[IsItHerOrIsItMe]

So we go to our cottage and rake the remaining leaves.  As we're raking my uBPDw asks didn't I used to just rake the leaves directly onto the tarp... .I tell her no, I've always raked into piles, move the piles onto the tarp, carry the leaves out on the tarp.

She asks a second time, I answer a second time.

She asks a third time, I answer a third time and then ask her why she's asking.  She says she's "just wondering" because she remembers it differently and thinks its more efficient to rake them directly onto the tarp. I respond that even if I did used to rake the leaves (at a different house, different circumstances) this is the way I'm raking today.

Yeah yeah yeah... .not exactly high drama or stuff they'll make into a movie.

But a little bit later she says "I'm just really angry with you".  I ask her why, we simply disagreed.  After a little back and forth she said angry wasn't the right work, she meant frustrated.

OK, I ask her why she was "really frustrated".  (Yes, I didn't really SET... ."it's frustrating when you remember things differently than someone else... .)

I pushed a little more than normal (hey, we got up at 4:00 to work at the church and then drive 3 hours because we had someone looking at the boiler)... .worse thing I said was "are you so unfamiliar with people disagreeing with you that it makes you "really frustrated". 

By this time she quit responding with any real information (is there a correlation between BPD and politicians... .cause she kept talking, just not providing any information?).

Weird thing is she then dropped her bad mood and the rest of the day was good.

So I went with it, but I'm a little stumped about her change of mood... .Did we touch on her real feelings and that did it?  Was it because we didn't degenerate into yelling (other examples of that without the corresponding change of mood... .)

I hope this is a small step forward, but I'm not sure.

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[Rapt Reader]

That does sound like a step forward, IsItHerOrIsItMe 

And part of that, I believe, is that although you didn't use S.E.T, and you did challenge her a bit with that question about her being "unfamiliar with people disagreeing" with her, you did other things right 

You detached from her dysregulation and didn't take it personally.

You didn't JADE (Justify yourself, Argue your point, Defend or Explain yourself), which would have escalated the dysregulation, possibly causing it to last longer.

You stayed calm and detached even as it progressed; again, you didn't take it personally.

You let it go once she quieted down, giving her the room to let it go also once she regulated herself.

Good job!

[TheRealJongoBong]

My take on the interaction, from the BPD viewpoint:

She asked the same question of you several times because your actions didn't match her worldview. This mismatch increased her anxiety. You didn't validate that she was feeling anxious about this mismatch, so you invalidated her feelings. She told you she was angry but really didn't know why, and the reason was you invalidated her feelings. You further invalidated her feelings by your comment about people disagreeing with her. The comment also indirectly told her you didn't think she was worthy.

She started falling into the whirlpool in her head because of this, and to avoid more invalidating feelings she started to pretend that everything was fine. What you thought was a calm interaction was actually the setting of a time bomb. At some point in the future something else will happen that will resonate with this incident and she will blow up. You will not have the slightest idea why.

[waverider]

... .Did we touch on her real feelings and that did it?  Was it because we didn't degenerate into yelling (other examples of that without the corresponding change of mood... .)

Yes to both, but as TheRealJongoBong points out there is a chance she will file it away as another example of you 'always having to be right and she is always wrong". Not getting too tied into the issue itself stopped it from fueling the trigger in the moment.

You cant worry too much about it though, stuff will get filed away no matter how hard you try.

[TheRealJongoBong]

I guess the main point I'm trying to address is that, unless I take my partner's emotional wordview into account when I am evaluating any particular situation, I am very likely to come up with the wrong idea as to what is actually going on with her. My experience has been that my partner's dysregulation is mostly driven by anxiety and fears of abandonment, and if I approach our relationship with this in mind things go more smoothly.

[waverider]

I guess the main point I'm trying to address is that, unless I take my partner's emotional wordview into account when I am evaluating any particular situation, I am very likely to come up with the wrong idea as to what is actually going on with her. My experience has been that my partner's dysregulation is mostly driven by anxiety and fears of abandonment, and if I approach our relationship with this in mind things go more smoothly.

Be ready to accept that a lot of the time you will never get to the bottom of it and too much digging can sometimes undermine your best intentions. This why acknowledging rather than "understanding" is the better approach.