BPDFamily.com

Hello there,

I see I tend to be invalidating sometimes in a very specific way and I was wondering if you guys had tips to help me have a better response. Here's the situation:

It's usually very easy to see if my uBPDbf is dysregulated/splitting etc. When he is fine, we call those phases him being in a "crisis" and he is very well aware of them. Sometimes, the transition between the 2 (is he just feeling out of sorts or is he about to become dysregulated?) is a bit blurry; if he is about to become dysregulated, he can sometimes be aware of it before it happens ("I'm not far from having a crisis here").
And sometimes he is so deeply in the crisis that he is not aware at all he is having one, nor that they exist at all. Because of his lack of awareness, he is absolutely convinced the vision of reality he has right now is the real one, for instance: I am secretely scheming to attack his sense of self, turn him against himself etc.

What I tend to do sometimes, even though I know it doesn't work but on the spot I just can't help it, is to try and bring him back to awareness of his current state by saying things like "You're in a crisis right now, you wouldn't think/do that if you weren't, that's not how you usually see it" etc. I understand how invalidating that is.

I'd rather not engage with him when he is like that. I know for certain that when he stops splitting, he will come back and aknowledge how what he did or said during his crisis was hurtful and unfair. So often I can say things like "l am ending the conversation now. Come back to me when you're not in a crisis anymore and we can talk". I have softened it lately and it sounds more like "let's talk when you're less upset/when you've calmed down" (to which sometimes he answers back "No, let's talk when you finally decide to be reasonable").

I guess refusing to engage when he is like that is my way of setting boundaries (sometimes I do accept to talk but it often gets out of control). My question is: how can I give him the information that I am expecting him to come back to me when he's not splitting anymore without sounding invalidating?

(I've seen the threads on validation skills already)

Thanks for any piece of advice!

I am very curious about this too.

What I have tended to do is give myself space, sometimes by force (stay away, block him) etc. At first this resulted in quick apologies but with time this became when the splitting went  into overdrive and started to last weeks and months instead of just that hour!

But it’s so difficult to engage when he is splitting, he can get so nasty and unhinged that I prefer not to. Our worst fights were when I chose to engage no matter how thoughtful or civil I was. I really am just here to second Melissinde. How do we do this?