heartbreaking is the best description

Komodo,

I can totally relate.  What you describe parallels perfectly with the experience with my diagnosed stepdaughter:

"It seems that no matter what we say or do, or what changes we make, she reacts with extreme anger that turns into regret, then slides into depression and helplessness. Our world seems to revolve around keeping her “stable” - and she rarely is. She is sad, isolated, and quick to lash out at those who love her."

I've written various posts on this site describing the behaviors, triggers and feelings, the projections and victimhood status, the unstable sense of identity, the blame-shifting, the re-writing of history.  But I think there is reason for hope.  At least in the case of my stepdaughter, when she hit bottom, she finally realized things needed to change, and she's in a better place right now after therapies.  I wouldn't say she has had a full relapse of symptoms, but at least she's headed in the right direction.  She still tends to blame others, and she is still ruminating about the past, but her orientation has become much more forward-looking.  And she's escaped the confines of her bedroom.

I think a major turning point was, sadly, losing all her friends because of her outbursts.  Though she typically blamed her parents for all her problems, I think she had to realize that losing all her friends couldn't be her parents' fault entirely.  And sadly, losing all her friends meant isolation and depression.  Suicide attempts were both a cry for help and a wake-up call.  It's sad and frightening that suicide attempts marked her bottom, but they got her into treatment facilities with professionals, and she started taking therapy seriously.  Continuing on with the status quo became untenable.

I also think that making new friends helped pull her out of her funk, marking the first real sign of a path towards recovery (or remission).  She still hasn't repaired all her family relationships, but she resumed talking to her dad, her greatest ally, and she's texting with her sister now, too.  She can't handle family gatherings yet, but I'm grateful for baby steps.

Another turning point was with my husband.  Like many others, he was desperate, and despondent that nothing seemed to work to help his daughter, who seemed to get more dysfunctional as years passed.  Homelife became miserable.  At one point, I said to him, I think your job right now is to ensure that your daughter gets the treatment she needs, and that she sticks with it.  If you enable the status quo by financially supporting her but letting her skip recommended therapies, then you're only prolonging the situation, which clearly isn't working.  She hasn't been capable of making healthy choices, because she's ill and she needs treatment.  That seemed to flip a switch for him--the responsibility moved away from him coming up with solutions, and towards his daughter getting therapy with professionals.  The ultimatum with his daughter was that he'd continue to support her, but only if she got treatment and followed doctors' orders.  Otherwise, she'd be on her own.  In her case, the choice became easy.  And I think it was easier for her to accept help from "the professionals" (her words) than follow recommendations from her father, even if they were essentially the same.

I wish you the best.  This isn't easy at all, and it's heartbreaking.

I can touch on this part of your question a bit:


I was in a 12 week IOP as young adult, for an eating disorder. That was a few years after the initial hospitalization stint (at age 16), DTU, and 3x week appointments (medical, family T, individual T, group T... etc). So, the IOP wasn't my first plunge into treatment. I remember when I was starting the IOP how I really grabbed on to something I heard a staff member say, that "sometimes you can finish in 10 weeks if you're doing well". I was so completely convinced I was doing awesome, that I was sure I'd be one of the special ones done early. I resented having to quit my job to go to the IOP and felt like what we were doing in it was beneath me ("I quit my job to do crafts?!?").

I ended up having to do the full 12 weeks, and even then, looking back at that process from now, I'd say that I didn't really develop much true insight into what I was doing. I'm thinking that it was more to physically reset our "life focus" and habits -- forcing us to stop structuring our lives around ED thinking and obsessions, and make us structure a daily life around generally normal things, like social interaction and positive hobbies. We did do group check in, skill building, CBT, individual T, group T, etc, but 12 weeks compared to the year(s) that many of us spent with an ED-focused brain is not a ton of time. I think it did give a lot of us a good foundation -- kind of a "cold turkey" approach to stopping the ED focused life and building a new life -- but you really can't "make" someone improve that much in 12 weeks... to say nothing of 6.

Mental health issues are deep and significant. If an individual has had dysfunctional/disordered mental structures for years, it may be helpful to reset expectations about when improvement will be seen. This is not fast stuff.

Just because I didn't leave the IOP with profound insight into my behavior doesn't mean that it didn't help. It was worth it more as a way to fundamentally move the needle on the compass. When you're close to that needle pivot point, it doesn't look like a big change, but down the road, further away, you can see a more profound difference in direction. It takes patience.

...

So it does sound like you and her IOP T are in touch? I wonder if you can set up an appt for yourself and the T, or any of the team members there, and raise this exact question with them -- what can you expect to see after 6 weeks? Can you have them help you with levelsetting for expectations?

as always, Sanchos, your posts are like a warm blanket!  (I did not read the "letting go" one...that is helpful

Goodness, I hope I don't have to wait until BPD is 30!  however, that (this GROUP) gives me hope

One possibility is that you attract "crazy" but another is that you attract people and some of them are crazy because there's a mix in the general population. You may not be noticing the ones who are not crazy- because they don't cross boundaries.

Attraction is personality factors too. I have a friend who I would not describe as movie star attractive but he's likable and approachable. He didn't marry a disordered person but I wouldn't be surprised if he attracted both disordered and not disordered people because people like him in general.

As you said, it's a lot of non verbal communication. I think we can "sense" boundaries when interacting with others. I feel more comfortable interacting with some people than others even if I can't describe exactly why.

Yesterday was the last straw with my husband.

Once again, he talked about our beautiful home, ad nauseam, as if it’s a dark, dreary cave. Then, he started playing a video, while driving, while I was in the car, and he refused to stop. He  told me to take the subway next time.  He said he sometimes wants to sleep in the car, in a park, at night, because our apartment is so bad for him.  We live in a lovely, upscale co-op in a coveted neighborhood.  Our apartment is beautiful.  I think the problem is that I BOUGHT IT, years ago,  and he moved in  (from his tiny apartment in a bad neighborhood), twenty years ago, when we got married.  So he puts it down, constantly. But yesterday was the worst.

My biggest fear was living in poverty without his income.  Because I don’t think I’d ever be able to get alimony out of him.  He’s very sick. Very volatile. So I’m thinking I might throw him out. — he can find a room somewhere.  Hey — he claims he hates the apartment anyway. I can handle the bills he was covering for maybe 2 years. Then,  I’ll need to sell, and split the proceeds with him — his name is on the deed now too.  I’ll need to live low, but I won’t be bankrupt. 

I don’t know if my plan will work, but just coming up with SOMETHING, makes me feel better. 

Now, I’m NO LONGER AFRAID to get a hotel room for two nights, when he becomes unbearable.  I don’t care how mad he gets when I return, as long as he’s not violent.  I deserve some alone time.  He doesn't want me to have it and has protested whenever I’ve mentioned it.  He’s afraid to let go of me for even two nights. Well, he doesn’t own me. I’m 75 years old.  I can book a hotel room without him.  I finally have the courage to do it. 

This is the NEW ME. 

I feel better.  I’m less fearful. 

I know it needs some tweaking, butI hope my plan makes sense. 

I just wanted to update:

I have been trying really hard to follow through on strategies, and this morning I was devastated when my husband saw me coming out of the bathroom, and then started slamming things again at the sight of me. I spent the day in waves of overwhelming sadness.

But then, he messaged me to say that it wasn't my fault, that he is struggling with anxiety and stressed at work. I messaged back to say that I love and support him whatever, and if he is ready for help then I will help him get it.
He hasn't responded to that, and I know I need to still give him a lot of space to work this through as it won't help to send him spiralling again.

But, this is a huge, huge first in our marriage. He has never openly admitted to any mental health struggles before. It is not a quick solution, and just one step on a long road, but I cried tears of relief at just the possibility of improvement or acknowledgement. I know I need to tread lightly and lovingly.

But, thank you, being able to read and discuss here has helped me implement better strategies than previously, and I hope more to keep me going, as there will be plenty more hurdles.

Hi Komodo and thank you for posting
It is certainly a lonely journey with a loved bpd child. Sometimes I feel I am living in a strange, nightmare world - it is so unfathomable that someone in such pain would turn against the very person who has been/is there for them and just wanting to help in any way they can.

It sounds as though you have done everything possible at this point in time. Keep in mind that it is accepted that for many with bpd there is symptom relief in the fourth decade ie when they are in their 30s. My dd is there now and although she has managed to stop self medicating, the bpd symptoms are very obvious and hard to deal with.

Coming here is such a help to me. I remember when I first came I had been trying to get dd to try anything that would help and to be honest I came searching for suggestions. I read others' posts and suddenly realised that I had done all I could and I began to step back a bit in that realisation.

I learnt some skills here - not JADE - ing (Judge, Argue, Discuss, Explain) - and 'letting go' ( To let go means to love more, fear less).

I also learnt - and this was a hard one for me - that I needed boundaries to survive myself in the chaos that is BPD.

It is a long, exhausting and painful journey. I hope you find comfort coming here, knowing there are others out there going through the same thing as you are. I also hope that you can find blocks of time - however small - where you can focus on your own needs, and hopefully feel some energy once again. It has been a long haul.

Time out for you is the main thing I can suggest. Make that a priority, then hopefully some of the skills etc will keep you from going under.

Sending thoughts . .

These are all good guesses as to what is happening.  For me, it is a lot more than just words, it is non-verbals, such as body language - I usually can differentiate the difference.  Subconsciously, I am walking on eggshells, as it would upset my wife and has in the past, so that can be a component of me being triggered - there was something definitely off about her mentally in addition to her almost cartoonish physical attributes.


There was one other customer in the store, and she was not friendly with him - looked like a local person who had walked to the store (no other vehicles in the lot) - this was perhaps why I felt this way, as I was definitely being treated differently in a markedly much more friendly way.


As I was definitely treated differently than the other customer, it was her, as I usually don't feel uncomfortable with friendly women, except when I am singled out - and in this instance I was.

With respect to my wife's reaction, whenever a woman treats me nice, she does become protective, but makes sure she treats me nicer that the  woman that she perceives as a threat to her.



Agreed, after having been exposed to a lot in the past few years, my 'gut' feeling more often than not is quite accurate.  I have since learned how to use 'wise mind' to discern more accurately what I am encountering.

Tangled Mangled,

Thank you for sharing.


I think you are definitely on to something here as I had effectively isolated myself socially because of these false accusations - it is something I am working on with my own individual therapist on my own issues.



Thank you for your insight, I agree with it now that I can see it from a different perspective - this is much appreciated.



My wife has been triggered when this happens in a similar manner that you have described.  Thanks for sharing your observations that have been extremely valuable to me.

Take care.

SD