BPDFamily.com

Im curious how you guys handle this situation. Handling your own emotions in a storm. I need to NOT freak out and go into fight response. This is a scenario that happened today. Over a simple text message. I start freaking out and luckily calming myself down. In the past if I don't answer her text ASAP she flips out or ask 20 questions and just cant handle it. This causes great distress in myself. My therapist says I definitely have PTSD from some heavy emotional abuse. The problem is kicking this natural response and telling myself I am safe no matter what she does. In the past she would threaten our relationship, not come home that night or give me the silent treatment over something as simple as not answering a text fast enough even if I was at work. A huge amount of constant stress and emotional abuse has set me up for pretty heavy emotional pain and stress under certain triggers like a small text. Its nuts how this works.

I'm at work. On a phone call with a contractor. She texts me good morning. The contractor just talks and talks and talks. I want to ignore her text until I'm off the phone but my heart starts to race. I'm not understanding what the contractor is saying. I keep thinking she will be upset if I don't answer. I start to wonder how she will act. Will she start asking 20 questions about why it took so long to respond? 15 minutes later I'm off the phone and I text her back. I'm worried about what will happen. I don't know why. I started thinking about this. Why am I so scared? What's the worst that can happen? If she gets mad about that what can I do? Why should I let that bother me? Not my fault she got mad. Just me doing my job. So I am thinking i should do what I need to do and if it bothers her let her be bothered and do my own thing until she is ok again. It's so hard to do though. For some reason it's hard to just stay calm and ok when she is panicking and freaking out.

It calms me a bit to think this through in my head. I tell myself that I have done nothing wrong. Im at work. Doing my job. If she flips out ignore her. You have no reason to defend yourself for just doing your job. Give her some time and space to calm down. Later she may apologize and say she overreacted. If she doesn't and she decides to punish you for this then that's her fault. She is in the wrong. Do not apologize and do not try to make it better. Let her continue to mess things up if that's what she wants. If she continues to punish and be abusive after several days all because I am doing my job its time to decide if the relationship can continue. I need to be able to work, eat, pay for my house etc... .and its just not possible to not trigger her if that is the case. Having a plan helps calm me down. Is there anything else I can do? I would love to have no fight or flight response at all if I can help it.

Today her response was calm and fine. But less than a week ago we had an argument because she texted me while I was driving and didn't see it until 15 minutes after. I need help staying calm when she is flipping out.

Your boundary here is a reasonable one, more than reasonable.  Maybe you should mute the notification tone for texts from her while you are working.  When you see the text, then respond.  My ex did this to me in the beginning of our relationship.  I had to set a hard boundary and repeatedly had to enforce it before she finally stopped freaking out because I wasn't responding immediately.  

Her crisis (real or not) is not your crisis.  When you have the time to respond do so, sooth whatever fears she has, don't internalize her crisis.

This is what I keep telling myself. Its not that I take on her crisis that scared me. Its the fear of what she will do to PUNISH me for not doing what she wants. In the past there was a lot of serious abusive punishment for things like this and it pretty much traumatized me. She doesnt do that anymore but its still stuck in my mind and I expect it so I flip out at the slightest thing from her. All she has to do is ask... ."why didn't you answer my text" and it can cause me to absolutely flip out emotionally. Its a harmless question but the stress it causes me is way out of proportion. Ive decided that most likely the worst that can happen now is if she gets upset about that I should just let her get upset. If she punishes me with the silent treatment or not coming home Im going to live my life like normal for a little bit. Worst case scenario if she goes out, parties, doesnt come home, rages at me then its time to leave and end things. But at the same time Im giving her the chance to act good. If she doesn't freak out and just acts normal then it will teach me to calm down and not react so negatively. IDK that's my thought.

Unfortunately I know exactly how you are feeling.  The seed was planted, establishing control.  It doesn't really need to be planted again, just "watered" from time to time.  The fear ate me up and caused a lot of anxiety within me.  I tried to manage it by telling myself that she will do what she wants to and if she steps across the line then I would deal with it then.  Well ... .this didn't work and I was constantly in fear of how she might get "even" with me for something I did or didn't do and how she could twist reality to justify pretty much anything she did.

I honestly don't know how to deal with that fear jrharvey.  IMO the only way you can rid yourself of fear is to establish trust in your wife, primarily trust that she won't act vindictively.  :)o you think this is possible?

When she can STOP acting out I could teach myself to trust. Unfortunately Its yet to happen. Just 2 weeks ago when we were out to eat she accused me of staring at a girl with big boobs and I had no idea what she was talking about. We went back and forth where she talked about how disgusting it was and I just didn't even know what girl she was talking about so of course I didn't do anything wrong. She kept going on and on about it and it stressed me out so I walked away and called my counselor. She came and got me while I was on the phone demanding the keys so she could go home. She was going to leave me there. I told her to hold on but she started scratching me to grab the keys but I ran away from her. Then she went back to the restaurant to try and catch a ride home with some random man and woman. Who knows what she was thinking. I came back and got her before she left as the people there stared at me like some abusive man. We rode back to the house and she wouldn't stop talking about me staring at this girl so I flipped out. I absolutely lost it and broke the watch she gave me as a gift. Then she handed me the watch I gave her and I broke that. She told me to keep breaking things and said I was a monster. She kept egging me on until I snapped and told her this was it. I was done with this relationship and the emotional torture she gives. Of course she responded with how she was done being with a disgusting guy like me that stares at women with big boobs. Again I was infuriated by this and said ok well we don't need our pictures and videos from the vacation so I Grabbed the SD card from the camera and was about to rip it apart and she started crying and begging and saying how she was sorry and pleading not to abandon her. She started saying how her whole family abandoned her and begging me to stop. Its all so crazy.

My therapist thinks that she was emotionally deregulated and knew what she was doing was out of control. But she couldn't handle being in the wrong. She had to fix this by making me worse than her so she pushed, pushed and pushed until I snapped. She knew what buttons to push and since I snapped we can no longer go back and talk about what she did wrong because if I even bring it up she blames me back by saying I lost my temper and I was a monster and out of control. Even though she directly pushed me to that point and most likely on purpose.

The point to this story is I NEED to control myself. I know that I get to a point where I feel trapped, abused and beaten down emotionally and I cant seem to find a way out so I just blow up to stop it. I don't know what behavior to use to replace it with. Its the only thing that seems to stop her from continuing. If I leave the house she sees it as an excuse to leave too so Im absolutely trapped.

The only thing I know to do is just not care anymore. if I stop caring about her or the relationship she can act however she wants and I just don't feel hurt. At that point what is the point of even being in a relationship if I don't care. Right now I do care and it causes a lot of pain.

I think the key is to stop caring about her dysregulations, not the relationship or her.  I know it is hard when someone keeps coming at you, especially when they know where your buttons are.  She wants a reaction, don't give her the satisfaction of getting one.  That said, when you let her push your buttons you are handing her control of yourself.  If you stop caring about what she is saying, you are no longer internalizing it.  When this happens she can't push your buttons because you aren't taking anything she said personally.  Think of her like a child lashing out at you for no reasons at all.  Don't engage in a pointless back and forth with her no matter how hard she pushes you. 

For the restaurant incident, maybe if you counter the negative with something positive you can avoid the eventual melt down?  Maybe something like I've only got eyes for you babe or something similar.  Of course this will only work if you really weren't ogling some other woman.

I definitely wasn't ogling other women. When she told me about it I didn't even know what she was talking about. When she told me what girl and I saw her I had never noticed her before she said something.

Sweet words like that and telling her I only want her does not work. Ive said and done a whole lot more.

Just keep saying them, refusing to engage with her nonsense or attempts to push you over the edge.  What other choices do you have?

This is tough. I think this time I freaked out because I felt completely trapped in a terrible situation. Out to dinner and she starts this rant which I cant help her control. Then when I am super stressed and trying to call my counselor to calm down she flips demanding to go home while pulling on my shirt and screaming which only makes me more frustrated. I was trying to calm down talking to my counselor but actually got more angry with the demands. Then with the threat of leaving with strangers I started to worry about her well being and safety. Then after getting home taking constant insults was just too much. I felt completely trapped. Like a dog backed in a corner after being beaten I snapped and just started biting everything.

Maybe emotionally I felt trapped but there is always a way out. I could have left the house. I thought about it but at the same time she hates when I leave the house. In the past she has either went out drinking or threatened suicide if I leave the house. So again I feel trapped. The scariest feeling is not being able to see a way out of the fight. Im screwed if I stay and screwed if I leave.

The only thing I can think of is to stay in separate rooms lock the door and watch tv or sleep until she stops. Right now that is the only solution I can think of and what I will most likely do next time.

The moment you engage her when she is like this you are enabling the behavior.  It is like dumping gas on the fire.  The key here is to not internalize her dysfunction.  When you internalize you are participating in it, making it your own.  Let all that stuff fall on deaf ears, let it pass over you not through you.  Easier said than done, but it can be done.  Once you learn how to do this you will find the fire she creates will just burn out on it's own because you are not adding any fuel to it.  Again, treat her like a child when she is like this, because in essence that is what she is.

In the past when I have let things go and refused to talk about things that are not true or refuse to JADE when being accused of things I didn't do it went very well. Your right. The fire just burns out on its own. Honestly I don't know why some things affect me more than others. I think its my own fear. The more upset she is and the more she believes that I have done something terrible I get pretty scared she is going to do something crazy. Something very very bad and it causes me to panic and try to fix it before she decides that my imaginary actions require punishment. I imagine her going out and getting drunk, breaking up, talking to other guys or even worse wanting to stay at another guys house for the night. All these she has done in the past when she has gotten upset. The more upset she gets the more it triggers my own fear of something like this happening again and I guess I don't trust her enough to do the right thing. She hasn't done anything like this in over 6 months but the memory and trauma of those things are just permanently in there. Honestly if I trusted her more I wouldn't have a need to JADE. I could just let it go and refuse to argue about imaginary stuff. But in the moment I cant stop thinking that her imaginary thoughts may cause her to do something terrible that she will deeply regret later. Even trying to get a ride home with random strangers is scary enough for me. Its putting her own life in danger just because she is upset about something that isn't even true. I just don't trust enough. That's a problem.

My thought is that I need to let her do what she needs to do. I need to let her make her own decisions. If she calms down on her own and doesn't do anything crazy I can trust her more. If she is so upset and does something really bad I guess it is what it is and I need to remove myself from the relationship.

The texting situation you started with is a bit easier to deal with.

There are several parts to your response/reaction here.

You do freak out/panic. Your heart is racing, and your concentration suffered (you weren't understanding the conversation with the contractor). There isn't much you can do about that at the time besides wait it out. Someday this will stop when you have healed more, but that's going to take a while.

You also have a choice in how you respond to a text message (or an angry text storm from her if you take too long). You mention being afraid. I've been there. And at one point I asked myself "What am I really afraid of?" And I answered myself: "The exact stuff she's likely to do next." And then I realized that A: She's done it a bunch of times before, and I survived it every time to date, and B: Nothing I do right now will stop her from launching into this same old thing again.

That made getting over the fear a lot quicker and easier!

You already know what to actually DO--respond when you can, without JADEing. You can do it with your heart pounding. Someday it will be easier when that's not happening.


Yes, this is something to be scared of. It will be heartbreaking if she does.


I don't want to be too snarky when I say this, but what on earth gives you the idea that you have the power to stop her from making her own decisions?

This is a good point. I talked to my therapist about this one. Because of past events I have been kinda traumatized and have triggers. In my subconscious I put (her being upset = her acting out in a bad way). I unconsciously believe that if she is upset she will always act out without thinking or do something hurtful. To save myself I from that I guess I desperately try to change her feeling by JADE'ing. I have been much better about not doing that now that I have learned. But for some reason if I truly feel like the relationship is in danger and have reason to think she may retaliate with a negative action I try to save her from herself by changing her mind and fall into JADE. This just makes things even worse because when I am not able to change her mind I see all these negative things as inevitable and out of my control. I feel helpless and like something terrible is about to happen and I freak out. I lose control of myself because I feel like what I fear most is about to happen. Its the conditioning from the past trauma.

Somehow I need to condition myself out of this behavior. Now that she is in therapy and trying in the relationship and has proven over and over that she really wants things to be healthy I need to change my reaction. Its tough to change this unconscious conditioning. I do trust her much more now but in the back of my head I am worried she will revert back to old ways and that keeps me from completely trusting her again. Im trying to condition myself to give her a chance. I may not completely trust her but I can give her a chance and observe her behavior. If I know I have done everything I can and she does revert back to the way things use to be I will know that I just cant trust her and its time to let go. If I give her a chance and she does nothing bad or crazy then I may gain more trust.

Its easy to say. Hard to do in the moment. Honestly its hard to type all this out. It shows that I am in fact a bit insecure. I get so tough on her for her being insecure but in reality I am quite insecure about this.

Amazing how drastically and completely trust disappears in a BPD relationship. I know the feelings you're talking about here, and I really think that pwBPD actually use this fear/lack of trust to further manipulate and control their partners.

If this is true and what happens then its impossible to have a healthy relationship with this type of person. Im hoping her recovery will help her choose healthy reactions but if she does choose to manipulate using my fear I don't think I could handle that anymore. I don't think I could ever trust again.

As part of my own painful eye opening process to all of this in my own relationship with my w, I realized that my trust in her was blind because I so wanted to believe the things she told me were true. Just like I wanted to believe every idealization and hypersexual phase was real, too. But in reality it was all just part and parcel of very typical BPD behavior, my blind trust was typical of a codependent non, and there was no reason to continue to give my blind trust over to her.

I know for myself, I could never truly trust my w again. And I also came to realize how insanely unhealthy it was to be married to someone who caused this kind of fear and mistrust, and would actually use it as a control/manipulation tool in a relationship. It's all part of the painful experience of being in an intimate relationship with a pwBPD.

Yes, it is hard change this kind of thing. And the feeling that your partner is about to do something incredibly hurtful is really tough. And the worst part is that you really don't have any control over the outcome--that is totally terrifying. One way of avoiding that fear is to pretend that you do have control over your partner, and do things like JADE all over the place.

One thing that might help you... .at this time and in many other situations with her is to work on your own mindfulness.

Try to notice when you get that terrified/freaked out/heart racing/etc. Perhaps you will be able to notice when the fear and panic is starting to rise, before it gets overwhelming. I suspect you will notice earlier with practice.

But don't feel like you have to DO anything about those feelings. The only thing to DO is to get yourself away from your partner and not engage with her at that time... .not until your feelings return to baseline. Perhaps tell your partner that you need space for a little bit, or even that you are about to have a panic attack, or whatever. Keep it brief, and keep it about yourself. And get yourself away from her.

You already know what your natural tendencies are when these feelings grab you. And you already know that these natural tendencies are about as far from the tools and lessons you are learning here as you can get. You already know that JADEing all over the place just makes everything worse.

So just DON'T do it, and put yourself in a position where you aren't at risk of it.

Kinda like if your best friend was about to drunk-text his BPDex trying to recycle. You'd tackle the dude and take his phone away from him. And in the morning he would be so grateful.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is just not make things any worse than they already are. And that's not just OK, it is a victory.

I don't feel it is possible to have a healthy relationship with a borderline, at least not in any conventional sense.  That said, I do feel you can have a functional relationship but only if you are aware of the sacrifices you will have to make in order to achieve that functionality.  It can happen but you need to be able to deal with the dysfunction yourself in as healthy a way as possible for your own mental health.  The first step towards that goal is to not escalate conflict.

Very much agree with this. The relationship can never be truly healthy, but is theoretically sustainable if you monitor and control every single reaction and interaction with your partner.

You basically give up your rights to be, act, and react like a human being with your own needs, feelings, and emotions. You constantly have to validate everything your partner is saying or doing, even if the things being said are completely untrue and the things they are doing are radical and hurtful. And if you have children, they will never get the true unconditional love that they crave from that parent. That leads to children who grow up to be pwPD themselves, or codependents seeking the love and approval they never got from that parent through their adult relationships.

Fun stuff.