BPDFamily.com

So... .no new pictures to talk about... .but a couple incidents of walking away while muttering.

Tonight she heading out the door and said something about being late... .what I think she said was "but you already knew that... " as she walked away.

I said... ."excuse me... I couldn't hear you.  And she repeated that she was late and I already knew that...

One of my disabilities is hearing loss... .I wear hearing aids. 


I suspect if I was answering a post about this... .my advice would be to ignore it and try not to take it personally... .she obviously didn't put any care and effort into communicating to me... .

So I probably made an error with the excuse me comment... .

Any thoughts on what I did... .and what could I could have done better?

Anyone ever get a method that was effective for the muttering.

I sometimes ask what she was saying, partially being nosey and partially to try and find how she's feeling but other times I ignore it and just let her get on with it. 

Huh, my dBPDh accuses me of purposely speaking softly and the truth is I have a soft voice and the range of my voice is hard for him to hear.  So, is she purposely muttering or is it just hard for you to hear her?  Men lose the female range of voice, and for women it is the other way around.  My son's basketball coach has a hearing impairment and he struggles to hear the moms' voices. Anyway, just food for thought.  She could be doing it on purpose, as a manipulation but it might just be her voice is harder for you to hear.

My uBPDw does the exact same thing.  I have a mild HF hearing loss, not enough for hearing aids.  When I was diagnosed I told the doc, "So in other words, just enough to annoy people who talk to me?" and he laughed and said yes, that's about it.  

She knows this, we have discussed it, but she will purposely lower her voice to get me to ask her to repeat, and then get annoyed when she has to repeat something.  She does NOT have a quiet voice; she has one of those voices that enters the room before she does most of the time :)  Only when she wants to try to throw me off balance does it suddenly get very quiet.

She also does not normally talk to herself, unless she is dysregulating and I am in earshot, then she keeps a running under-the-breath commentary of everything she "has to do," etc.  

I am trying to set a boundary--"If I don't hear it, she didn't say it," for her and for myself, and stick to it.  It's an old habit on my part, so it's hard to break, but I'm working on it.

 

Yes... my hearing range loss is for women's voices.

She knows this.

So... .if she actually wants me to hear... .best to look at me and talk... .turning you back... .letting the door close... .and muttering as you walk away from me on the porch... .well... .what does that mean?

Most likely... .I should not have asked her... .she obviously was not intentional about wanting to communicate... .

Start pretending that their voice turns into the one that the teachers use in the old Peanuts TV specials at times like this!

Mine gets all embarrassed when I ask her to repeat the muttered comment, as it's always a pointed barb that she is now forced to admit that she said. Sometimes they are so bad that she won't repeat it and instead blows it off with an over-dramatic "It was nothing!"

Then it goes one of two ways: either the embarrassment actually helps her to regain some self-control over her emotional spike and she chills out... .or she triggers and goes into dysregulation. 50/50, roll the dice and take your chances.

This is typical of my uBPDw as well.  Previously, I would have inquired like you did, but now I simply respond accordingly to what I think she should have said!  For example, I would now simply say - 'oh, goodbye, have a nice time... .' and then go about my business.  It's my way of deflecting her comment, and responding as if she had said something normal... . It doesn't work all the time, but the deflecting certainly feels better!