BPDFamily.com

Hello, all. I'm not quite sure where to start, but I'm looking forward to learning from this forum.   

My partner and I are really struggling. He has not been diagnosed with BPD, but he feels strongly that he has it. From what I've read, I'd agree that it's definitely possible. No matter what, since he's dealing with those types of symptoms and feelings, I think he could use some help regardless of the label. However, he says he doesn't think any kind of treatment would help. I also don't think he sees just how much it really effects him, and is genuinely sort of running our lives these days.

We both struggle with anxiety, and we've had some good, productive talks about that over the past few years. I'm really proud of him for how he's started to identify the sorts of triggers and things involved in that. So for a while, I just hoped that he'd slowly get better at taking on stressful things enough to maybe just have one phone conversation with a therapist, who might be able to help him feel that taking some action to deal with his BPD might be doable. But, when he lashes out during an episode it can be very scary, as it increasingly prompts me to have either a big uptick in migraine pain, a panic attack, or both. If I leave the room, he'll shout after me or come after me and keep on yelling, sometimes for an hour or more. I get really dizzy and light-sensitive during a migraine, so I can't exactly just go out elsewhere.

I was never a super confident person to begin with, and over the last decade my migraines have gone from episodic to chronic, which impacts everything anyway. I was very hesitant to date anyone when we met because of my health, and I let him know up front that sometimes, a migraine is so nasty I genuinely can barely get to the bathroom, have to phone a friend to walk the dog or stop by the store, etc. but he seemed to look straight past it (which should have been a red flag, I guess). However, I had two part-time jobs that I loved, I was still able to do a little running and plenty of yoga, etc. We had lots of mutual friends at the time, so we both had a lot of emotional support individually and as a couple, at first.

A few months after we moved in together he got really jealous and didn't want to talk to or hang out with any of our friends, or socialize with my friends. He tends to really lean into whatever he's doing - staying up really late, not eating all day because he's gaming, going onto amazon to buy a couple items and spending a few hundred bucks instead. No friends around and no support from him on the really rough days means even worse migraines. He persuaded me to drop one job, then cut back on the other, to try to feel better (even though the issue was with sleep, and not having someone scream at me when I had a migraine, not being able to rest in bed because he won't feed himself if I don't bring it actually to the computer for him, or walk the dog, turn on the AC, etc.) That quickly led to money problems. I gave up my phone and stopped using/insuring my car, since he was so resentful of my not making as much money.

I'm now really isolated. I used to watch gaming streams on Twitch and at least chat a bit there, but he gets jealous of streamers, even though I rarely, if ever, actually interact with them at all. I work from home as much as I can, but my migraines are so much worse, I'm almost always really tired, and my mental health is too much of a mess for me to be a rock when he's exploding, or to be very patient at all.

He also adopted this really barky dog, whom I love dearly (it's a DOG  ) but he's really, really high energy and loud, and my partner flat-out refuses to do anything with him, besides maybe take him out 1-2 times per week, and maybe play with him once. He feels that if I'm not able to work as much as he'd like, it's then my job to do ALL of the housework, cooking, bills and taxes, pet care, lawn care, etc. I get as creative as I can to wear the younger dog out on my own, but he's a lot to deal with. Most of my energy on a bad migraine day goes to staggering around in pain trying to take care of this crazy (but adorable) little dog, instead of cooking a decent meal, or bathing, or gently stretching. It's exhausting.

Overall, it just feels like a situation without an answer, unless he decides that he'd like things to be different. I'm genuinely not sure what to do, because I'm struggling to care for myself well enough to care for the pets and also care for him, all of which adds up to me putting myself last and slowly digging myself into a pit of fatigue. I'd really like to talk to a therapist myself, but when I ask about it, he explodes, and when I signed up for a free online trial with a therapist, he exploded. Is there anything I can look for, in terms of any sign that he either will or won't ever be willing to get some treatment for this, so we can get out of this loop?

Hi Katydid_

Oof, migraines. Ouch.  

I can understand why that is so hard.

Being BPD, he probably experiences your withdrawals into self-care as a form of abandonment. A lot of people here have BPD spouses who do not respond well to any signs of illness.

The slide toward isolation is also familiar. If you could name any one thing that is essential to your well-being, that you would like to reclaim for yourself, what would it be?

There are specific relationship skills (often counter-intuitive) needed in a BPD relationship. Maybe we can help pinpoint ways along that middle path to getting your strength back so you can in turn provide the type of support that goes with loving a BPD sufferer.

Glad you found the site and posted.  :)

LnL

Welcome, Katydid! 

Glad you found us, but sorry you are going thru this. I relate to your situation IMMENSELY. I too have a chronic illness (and one of the symptoms is migraines) where I have good days and bad. I also struggle with anxiety. The stress of living with a BPD SO of course makes the symptoms worse. When my BPDh rages, he does the same - he will follow me into another room, yelling for hours sometimes. Bc of my illness, I often can't just up and leave our home to take a break. Actually I was just about to start a post about this very thing & then I saw your post & thought I'd reply.

Like you, I am also very isolated bc of my health condition.

Since our situations are so similar, I can tell you what has worked for me: Self-care. I understand what you said about finding time for that, but IMO, if you can't practice regular self-care, all else fails. Once I made that a priority in my life (very recently), things got a little better for me. He didn't change, but I did. Two of the most important aspects of my self-care are 1) this board & 2) therapy. Both things also help to minimize isolation. Since you said your SO raged when you brought up the idea of therapy for yourself, & he expects you to do so much in the household, maybe you can explain to him that if you attended therapy, you might feel a bit better & in turn, could be more able to care for him.

Finding this website & being active on the boards is a great start.
Know that you are not alone in your struggles. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my very long mess of a post! And thanks for the insight, livednlearned. I can see how he may feel that I'm abandoning him if I need to take care of myself, and it explains why the worse I feel, the worse he acts towards me.


SLEEP. I'm only getting about 4 hours, sometimes with a nap later. He doesn't want to go to bed, and he doesn't want me to go to bed before him. If I try, if it doesn't send him into a rage, he'll either talk to me so I can't, or play games and shout at the screen for half the night, or he'll come to bed after me and wake me up for about 10 minutes (long enough to vent his stress at me and get sleepy, and long enough for me to feel completely awake).

Unfortunately, I need to go to bed around the same time, wake up around the same time, and not move around too much or deal with too much noise or light for the first hour or so when I wake up. It just feels impossible. He feels that because I work from home, I can just catch a little nap whenever, and that uninterrupted sleep is not important, so I can therefore be awake whenever he is to take care of the pets and anything he might need. He also doesn't understand that I'm choosing to try to adhere to a regular sleep schedule because that's just genuinely what I need to do to manage my migraines. Sharing migraine literature and materials and etc. with him just seems to make him resentful.

I'm gathering that if I try to go to bed before him, he feels concerned about being abandoned so he lashes out? Why not just come to bed with me, then? Any tips for how to de-escalate when I try to go to bed, or is it something where I'm better off bringing it up when he's in an okay state? If I just try to be reassuring, is that the best strategy?


Yeah, that all sounds too familiar, bananas2! It's great to hear from you, and it definitely makes me feel less alone to know I'm not the only one juggling these things, although I'm sorry you're struggling, too. You're right about self-care. I definitely need to reinstate it as a priority, if at all possible, even if he's shouting at me about how I don't deserve it, or shouting too much for me to want to go into the room, or if it causes short-term pain. It will be worth it to feel better. Thanks for the nudge towards sensibility. 

Do you have any other favorite resources for chronically ill folks? One of my faves is the ChronicBabe YouTube channel and Jenni Prokopy's related materials. Your mentioning self-care made me remember one of her cornerstones of her own self-care: listing and sticking to sacred practices. Basically, just the non-negotiable self-care stuff you need to accomplish in a day to be well (meds, hygiene, food, meditation, etc. that are sacred to you and your own health). She recommends keeping them posted somewhere easily visible for yourself. My own list is tucked away. Time to get it back out, I think!

Here's a link to Jenni's sacred practices video, in case anyone's curious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30zNUm5t55M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30zNUm5t55M)

Being chronically tired is the worst.

I wonder what would happened if you validated him throughout the day, sort of soothing him so that he is less needy when you need sleep.

Have you tried validation with him? If so, how does he respond? Does he have tender cycles during the day?

With my BPD loved one, I have to deposit a lot in the bank, so to speak, sort of to keep things humming to help through the times when there are a lot of withdrawals (feelings of abandonment).

It makes sense, too, what you said about how he gets resentful when you give him migraine literature. To him, the problem is you and your annoying migraines. So he gets mad that you think he's supposed to do something about your problem.

The key is to make him part of the solution in ways that you can control.

We'll walk with you and see if there are some things you can experiment with.  :)

LnL

I have, but I'm no good at predicting when he's going to explode, and he goes from 0 to 60 so fast that by the time I'm trying to validate his feelings, I'm just shouting "I understand! That makes sense!" over his yelling, I don't think he even registers what I'm saying, it just escalates, and I end up leaving the room. Lately, because I can't predict what's going to set him off, I'm so anxious around him in general that just having me in the room sets him off. Frankly, at this point, we spend most of the time when he's home at opposite ends of the house avoiding each other, unless it's meal time or there's something that needs to be done, or he's been set off by something. He's off for the next 4 days. Hopefully we'll be able to deal with each other for at least part of that time so I can learn a little more, I guess. However, it does mean I'll be cut off from everything until Friday. If all else fails, there's always next weekend to do more reading and hanging out here. I'll be on the lookout for any sort of cycle or pattern that might allow for some room to interact with him at all without causing an explosion.

I hope you and your loved ones have some nice, peaceful moments this coming week. Thanks for the support.