BPDFamily.com

Married 14 years ago very young. Had a son very young. Things were dramatic and emotional since dating. Discovered BPD by accident in a bookstore. Some very poor psychiatric care and therapy and a frustrated and unpredictable wife led to very spotty medical treatment.

Recently we decided to move to a house with property, still selling the old one. Lots of stress on top of lots of life epiphanies, for example, she's probably officially done with her traditional religion and beliefs, which came with a lot of appreciation for life, nature, and her chance here on earth but also nervousness about what it all means and what happens after death. Also epiphanies about the ideal life for her and I, homesteading, making enough money on some of our more lucrative hobbies that someday soon I can leave my professional job to stay home all day and be and work together.

Very recently, very possibly exacerbated by all the recent stress, she has been very unstable. Multiple attempts to go to a psych hospital, turned away b/c of no active plans. Frustration with the system and her doctors. A pickup by ambulance to go to the hospital for nervous breakdown type symptoms. She has been diagnosed with BPD (10 years ago?) but now by accident found a pretty close match to the symptoms of schizophrenia.

So last few weeks have been very argument-filled. She is increasingly symptomatic by both diagnoses. This is what I see. She vacillates between extreme anger with doctors and failures by family to adequately support and treat her and saying that she is NOT ill--the extreme emotions are not WRONG, so it's the world's fault for not seeing the person where they are.

After a few legitimate failures and letdowns by her psych clinic...

 (1.) the attempted checkins and turnaways, 2.) a visit to their urgent care where met with the same treatment, 5 hours of waiting spaced with some condescension by a nurse practitioner telling SO what she "must do..." PLEASE READ (https://bpdfamily.com/safe-site.htm) you! She practically needs in-home care and you're telling her to be more disciplined? 3.) A next day follow up visit with her doctor, we were 10 minutes late and they turned her away and then no calls to check up.)

...she's been continuing daily breakdowns and crying and anger. She wants to sue the clinic, they represent all of her PLEASE READ (https://bpdfamily.com/safe-site.htm)ty care, but she seems to want them to pay for EVERYthing associated with her condition. She wants me to write a legal-threatening letter, something to make them all feel bad, they deserve some pain. My response was she's right, they're PLEASE READ (https://bpdfamily.com/safe-site.htm)ty and she may even have part of a case if they've missed schizophrenia so long (2 years with them), but that's a whole lot of new triggers, potential disappointment, and people trying to prove she's wrong and worse. So she asked what I really wanted to do, I said we should focus on the care she needs now and the future, and so she seemed okay with that and laid off.

Last night, after a couple more days back on this anger/revenge train, after several days of similar arguments and realizations I'm not meeting her emotional needs and only she can tell what they are and if she's still sick it's because I'm not meeting them because I'm literally all that she has that she actually relies on and asks anything of...she says that she cannot BELIEVE I wouldn't do something simple like write this letter. Just days ago, remember, she agreed with the lay off strategy. She says I can't imagine how someone could sit there and watch me SUFFER for 4 days. Here's where the recent schiz symptoms rears it's head... She comes to a realization, an enlightment, clear-faced and slight-grinning like she's instantly ready for divorce, "You WANT me to suffer."

In the morning she seems calmer, writes a rant about the failure of the system, her treatment as sub-human after BPD diagnosis, and how psych pros actually trigger their patients, then send them home to be further triggered by me, her invalidating spouse (also lately talking about PTSD triggerings from some abandonment in her childhood that she's trying to but haven't yet pinpointed, but it was when she was about 4...).

Now she's confused and in disbelief that I will not apologize. I read her letter this morning, started with, "I do want to be here for you, I want to help meet your emotional needs..." She cut me off, she apparently wants me to apologize for EV-ER-Y-THING. I already have this problem with her where when I just sort of do a quiet validation, maybe even just nod and show an expression on my face like "that sucks," she thinks I'm just acting. You know what, the hard thing is that even though I'm almost never acting, even that minor emotion on my face is sometimes an exaggeration because I've heard it all 1 billion times before.

I get this feeling she can't move on, and more things will explode, if I don't apologize, yet I feel I'm being asked to apologize for her whole condition. I'd like to say, "I'm sorry for when I have triggered you and made things worse," "I'm sorry for when you felt abandoned." But she doesn't want these "fake" I'm-sorry-you-feel-that-way apologies. She wants repentance.

The question is...what do I do? Do I avoid apologizing if I honestly don't feel I need to? It seems risky to apologize and ALLOW her to rest the blame on me. I mean that could give her months of fuel to avoid actually getting the help (and new meds!) and doing the self-work she needs. Thanks ya'll. If you read all this, you're a champ. ;)

You probably know this, but I'll say it anyway -- you definitely should not validate the invalid.  It's tough when she's gotten "wise" to the "fake" apologies where you use partial validation to validate her emotions.  You've got a lot of experience here, but it's been a while, so it might be worth re-visiting this excellent page on how to validate and avoid being invalidating (https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating).

You simply can't buy into it being all your fault.  It's not good for you, and it's not good for her.  Even if she's upset about it.

Is there anything you can do to reduce the overall stress in your lives?  As you may know, BPD symptoms worsen with stress.

Is there anything you can do to move the focus from how much caregivers have screwed up to getting her the care that she needs?

RC