BPDFamily.com

My husband hasn't been officially diagnosed with BPD but he did start seeing a psychiatrist a few months ago that diagnosed him with a "mood disorder" that "isn't bipolar" and he's on depecoate (?). I've read up enough on it that BPD describes him incredibly well, he's also a recently recovering alcoholic which is huge. He's also seeing another therapist every few weeks. Works hard at his career, made vast improvements as a husband this past year in many ways and I'm so proud of all he's done. Yet... .his instant mood swings of anger and wild accusations every few weeks are having bigger and bigger effects on me. His insecurities, paranoia and self hate are always lurking. 

The medicine has helped drastically in our daily lives which has been an big relief. I'm seeing a therapist that is helping me learn to disengage during his episodes and it's helped me tremendously, but that doesn't seem to change the fact that the episodes not over until he's jumped off the cliff (tonight he tore down our mud room door king king style as I drove away after I told him he was being unkind and I didn't like it) and he has been quite suicidal after the fact about being so mean to me and "being broken." The next day he's back to normal.

But I'm at the point where we need even more help than this to get better. He needs more than a family counselor and I've asked him to read books, get a true diagnosis so we can dig into it, seek out a more clinical counselor but he's already overwhelmed with everything he's doing (which is a lot, I'll admit, most of th help he's gotten has been <6 mos). 

What are somethings I should ask my counselor to talk about at this point? Do i need to give him more credit/time and work harder to tune out his anger fits? Would me pushing for a diagnosis with his pyschiatrist be bad so we can move on with more treatment? I want this to be a hopeful situation and daily life is great but these episodes are the lowest of low it feels.

Hi Ninjakitty,

*welcome*

I'd like to welcome you to BPDFAMILY. I'm sorry to hear that. I can see how distressing and hopeless that would feel when our SO emotionally dysregulates every other week, it takes it's toll physically and emotionally. It's hard.

Is he interested in helping himslself? Does he do the homework that the counsellors give him?

I'm glad that you decided to join us it helps to talk to people that can relate with you and offer you guidance and support, you're not alone.

He does work on things the counselor tells him and I see improvements in his behaviors. But I don't think he is working towards the most important issues because it's just a family counselor helping him with basic anger skills and anxiety. I love him for the improvement but it's not quite enough you know?

I was reading last night on this site that not only is disengagement during his episodes important but also working on diffusing the anger which entails a little bit of agreement with things they say - have you seen/had experience with this? I feel like I'd be giving in if I did that.

Hi Ninjakitty,

I'm divorced and found this site after seperation maybe someone with more experience with r/s's has better advice than mine. That being said, I do have a lot of experience with conflict and I chose to communicate differently after the split so that it would help the kids.

I guess it would depend on the situation. For example there might be something that is going on in my ex's life that has nothing to do with me and she'll lash out or try to bait my me, keep in mind that you validate what is valid and don't validate the invalid.

She may send me an email where she's blaim shifting or it's catastrophic thinking but what I will do is admist all of that drama i'll look for what is valid, it may be a sentence or two or three words and respond back with that. She has social impairments and lacks the ability to self sooth, it doesn't mean that I 'm her soother. Sometimes I won't respond back to what is valid and give it 24 hours so that it gives her the chance to calm down and other times the best thing to do is to remove yourself from the situation if the tools fail, you tried that's all that you can do.

I can see how it feels like you're compromising yourself? I takes time to get used to the tools but if you have confidence and trust them eventually you'll become indifferent to the behaviors. Lastly, you can still have your feelings about it, you're allowed to feel the way that you do.