BPDFamily.com

I have started going to a therapist who works with BPD clients as well as others. My stated goal was to work on my anxiety plus also I think my husband has BPD traits. My anxiety progress is very good. When I talk about my husband, therapist says we can only work on me, he isn't here. True enough, but can a therapist also advise on my handling of the marriage issues? Or is it help to me even within the marriage to become more mindful, to stop trying to predict his behavior, to stop trying to figure out how uBPDh is feeling unless he makes it clear? I feel like it's useful to be alert to my husband's moods and reactions and try to see how his behavior fits into patterns. I wasn't seeing the patterns for years so I treated each crisis as a separate thing, but now I have a framework for predicting and understanding his behavior.

Hopefully the therapist will teach you how to live a life where you are aware of what is going on with your husband but not to the point where you are always on pins and needles or walking on egg shells. I know when my H is ramping up, but my therapist taught me how to deal with my own feelings that come with that, such as being aware of your own feelings and processing through them when you see your H beginning to dysregulate. The focus of therapy should be on you, not on your H.

Most therapists will help you work through specific problems in the marriage, but the focus will be on teaching you how to handle those specific things, not on how to change him.

My H and I were going to marriage counseling together and it didn't go well. I asked for a referral to someone for myself. The counselor never came out and said my H had BPD, but he also said he didn't want to put a label on it, but he talked to me about attachment and how my H was dealing with issues in relation to that. The counselor he reffered me to never met my H nor did she agree with me that he had BPD. Her words often would confirm it withotu confirming it, such as saying his behavior seemed narcissistic, out of proportion, etc. but she also taught me how to look at things the way he sees them, such as fear of rejection, etc. She showed me how my behavior would trigger rejection in him and taught me ways to phrase things that would validate him without validating the invalid.