BPDFamily.com

I have not posted on this site for a while. Things were going pretty well -- thanks partly to some helpful suggestions I got on here -- but the last couple of weeks have been awful.

I am feeling exhausted, utterly ground down and have lost the capacity to validate. My wife continues to be frequently triggered by the stresses of raising a baby. I feel like I am stuck in a hellish version of groundhog day where similar scenarios play themselves out over and over again and I am powerless to change anything: Something happens with the baby that stresses her out. She gets angry at me because I am not doing anything to help -- or whatever I am doing is in her eyes not helpful. I get annoyed that she is taking her stresses out on me despite the fact I am trying to help. She starts raging and calling me useless, incompetent, a bad father and so on. Recently she takes things a step further by frequently taunting me and calling me pathetic and cowardly for not leaving her.

The reality is that if it weren't for my son I would have already done so. I am still committed to staying for now, but I am really at a loss as to how to come back from the brink here. I am also questioning what it means to stay in such an abusive environment -- and whether there is a realistic chance of turning things around. I'm not really sure what my question is here. But I guess I would be interested in hearing any thoughts on how to break out of what feels like a vicious death spiral?


 

Hi globalnomad,

The stresses of having a baby are one thing, and mama being BPD is a whole other. You're doing your best under the circumstances and even then it feels like it's not enough.

Are you getting any sleep? Even in "normal" homes where there isn't BPD, a newborn baby can put everyone into a sleep deprivation zone that makes it hard to believe any of us survive the early infant years.

Are you able to carve out any time where it's just you, globalnomad, doing something to recharge your batteries?

The advice we hear as new parents can sound like blah blah blah when you're tapped out. I remember people telling me to sleep when the baby sleeps, which is all but impossible when the dad is BPD and needs attention around the clock.

You feel you've lost the capacity to validate, and that is legit. Validation is a combination of empathy and the art of listening. Not to mention authentic validation often involves tone of voice, body language, facial expression. Hard to do when you're dealing with the demands of a baby.

You know when she's raging at you, calling you useless, incompetent, etc. that those are her fears about herself, right?

How does opposite action work with her? This is from DBT, where you do things contrary to what you feel in the moment. It might mean looking at your wife with compassion when she her face is scrunched up in anger, when you feel fed up right back at her.

Understandably, doing something new (and difficult!) like feeling compassion when your'e overextended is pretty tough. I find I can only feel compassion if I take care of myself in a way that is highly disciplined and what (in a former life) I would consider very selfish.