BPDFamily.com

I’m curious if anyone has the experience of a person who is endlessly frustrated when things (physical objects, electronics, software, etc.) don’t work exactly as they expect.  They get incredibly angry, and then get mad at any suggestion of workarounds or fixes because they are not the way they wanted to do things.   

That summaries me sometimes, especially when it's due to bad development.  For example, I'm using a government site to make an appointment that my wife and her son has to attend at the same time.  If I try to schedule them one at a time, I get a different error message saying I have to schedule them together.  But when I do that, I get an error message saying to schedule them one at a time.

I don't get mad because there's an error, I get mad because someone really dumb made a lot of money designing a system that is literally impossible for people to use.

That's what you're describing, but I'm guessing the person you're talking about reacts differently than I do.  I'll eventually walk away and cool off, and I'll try my best not to get into a discussion for a minute or two because I know my attitude isn't correct at that moment.  I clearly know what I'm frustrated at (the software) and who I'm frustrated at (the guy who made the software), and I can usually check my temper before anyone else sees it. 

But I'm not perfect and if my wife comes at me sideways over something at that exact moment, I'll likely say something that I instantly regret.  Then I'll apologize and talk out how some software developer I've never met is the one truly at fault!  =)

I've dealt with this often insofar as phones and apps and single-user-logins go. I haven't learned a healthy way to prevent the anger outside of controlling variables to prevent the problems, but - as I've learned - controlling too many variables removed my wife's autonomy and created new sets of problems.

I'm newer to the tool side, but in the past year I started delicately not caring when things like the sound bar pushed her into a rage. "That sucks, let me know if you need help" and then letting silence take me to another room. I used to just try and help.

There was a moment where an almost conspiracy like backlash happened with her phone, and that was difficult. She doesn't treat others with intense emotion - particularly strangers - so I found that encouraging her to call the cell provider or go to a store worked well. I don't think it cooled the anger, but it gave her the opportunity to weigh my method of troubleshooting tech versus sitting at an AT&T store for an hour to have someone google a solution.

I'm realizing that "validate and move on" might be the best solution in my home. How do you work through those moments? Particularly without absorbing the emotional impact?

Hi there,

I think that everyone gets frustrated from time to time when under stress, or when expectations aren't met.  It's just that with BPD, I've noticed that generally, their frustration tolerance is very low.  In addition, when feeling frustrated, they tend to have a super-sized response.  Whereas a "normal" person might take a deep breath or mutter something, the pwBPD might become irate, over a seemingly minor, ordinary inconvenience.  Further, when someone is trying to help, the pwBPD typically lashes out at them.  There might be a bit of shame and overwhelming feelings of incompetence, too, which will make the pwBPD even meaner.  Another typical response (at least with the pwBPD in my life) will be to give up completely, regardless of the consequences.  The reason for giving up will typically be someone else's fault.

I'd add that confounding factor is sometimes the pwBPD's unrealistic expectations.  An example might be calculating journey times in unfamiliar situations.  My pwBPD seems to assume she has Star Trek-like teleportation abilities when travelling to an interview, new job or airport.  She has a track record of misunderstanding how travel is impacted by rush hour, public transportation snarls, wrong turns or trouble finding parking.  Yet when she's late, it's someone else's fault, not her poor planning.  The same sort of thing happens when attempting more complex, adult-level tasks, such as searching for a job.  It's as if she can't conceive of planning out the different stages of the process--completing a resume, searching for job listings, filling out applications, preparing for interviews, attending interviews and following up.  I think she thought that if she used the "Open to Work" option on her LinkedIn page, that recruiters would reach out to her with jobs.  Thus she misunderstands the process from the outset, but when she learns of the complexity, she's compeletly overwhelmed before she even gets started.  She takes any "rejection," not as part of the natural process of a job search, but as an indictment of her character and feels like a total failure.  Maybe she mistakenly thought that someone would GET her a job, but when that didn't happen, she was upset and felt rejected?

Yes, uBPDx used to get incredibly frustrated at tools, computers and bureaucratic processes. He was adamant that these were harder for him to navigate than other people, not because of his actions or skills, but because of some special property of the tools, computers or universe at large that was persecuting him, specifically. The corollary to that was that he had an expectation I should be perpetually available to assist him, and that i was being 'horrible' if it ever occurred that i did not.

Oh, this one hit home particularly.

Yup.  This isn’t working.  This never works for me.  I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do and it still doesn’t work.  I did it correctly and it doesn’t work. 

If I don’t help, I’m evil.   And when I do help, my help is second guessed.  And on those many occasions when I am patient and simply do what they thought they WERE doing, and it works, it’s never a fault of their losing patience or doing something too quickly. 

And God forbid you ask them to write down or keep track of what you did to avoid it in the future.   

My ex once had a verbal altercation with an empty cardboard box. I heard her arguing with someone in the other room and she was arguing with a box. She was upset it was there, and she's the one that put it there. I didn't bring it up or tell her I was behind her and witnessed it. She probably would have spun it somehow and told her friends and family it was me, per usual lol

Yes, anger w. objects seem to be a common BPD trait. Malfunctoning items cause fits of rage. The demands that you try and figure it out. If you too have trouble then the anger can switch to you, a more satisfing target. How many times has anger w. an object turned into "Typical! You're of no help!" and insulting tiraeds directed at you. The problem w. the object quickly forgotten in turn for all of my falts.100s of times perhaps in my life.


This.

That easily could have been a viral TikTok video.  If you only knew...

haha I hate social media. And she was the one who loved to film me; anything weird, our arguments only when I'd respond to her nonsense, me vomiting one time. I've never had a gf pull out a phone so much.

Parasocial won word of the year, last year! Social media + mental illness does not equal a good time for everyone. It's such a gateway drug. I'd love to get back to posting fun, artsy things (like back in the day) but it just feels dominated by algorithms and outright depressing, now.