BPDFamily.com

Hi lovely people!
My husband and I have been together for 23 years, living together for 22.5 years, and married for 20.
Looking back I can say that as a high functioning BPD, as long as my husband got his own way, he was fine. Any time I tried putting in boundaries, or challenging things he got nasty. All those things like 'damned if I do, damned if I don't', feeling like I'm going crazy, thinking it's all my fault, rages, tantrums...you know how it is.
Then a few months ago, my Husband got an amazing business coach through his work, and she started to uncover behaviours, which he then shared with me as he discovered them - controlling, manipulative, ruthless, and he used the term narcissistic. The great thing is, he wants help!
I looked up narcissism, and saw lots of those traits in him, and saw that setting boundaries and emotionally withdrawing a bit to protect yourself were a good idea, so I started doing that. And things started getting worse every day. He kept raging at me and all the horrible behaviours, which hurt me, so I withdrew more (and had high anxiety & panic attacks), which made him hurt me more. I got to the place where I said to him that we couldn't be together any more, we were destroying each other.
He was due to have his first psychotherapist appointment four days later, so we asked could he see both of us because things were going really badly, and he agreed.
So that day (two days ago) the Psychotherapist told us he's pretty sure my husband has BPD (and learning what it is, I totally agree!), and will do a formal assessment in a couple of weeks. He also helped us put a few things in place (like lessening boundaries) to help me not to trigger my husband and to help him to feel safer. He will see us both again next week, and then both of us separately going forward after that.
This all sounds amazing, and it is! But still I'm desperately struggling. You see when it was time to go to the appointment, I had decided that I really needed to separate from my husband, and while that thought scared me, I also felt a huge sense of relief. At that time I believed I was in a situation of emotional abuse, and that if he was a narcissist, leaving was the right thing to do. So now that the important thing to do is to stabilize my husband, I'm feeling really trapped! I do love him, but I also love the feeling of freedom. I moved into the guest room because he was shouting at me in the night, and I got into a state where I was too anxious / scared to sleep, but now he needs me to sleep back with him again. Now I feel the neediness as frightening rather than quirky.
Has anyone else felt this way? Am I just in shock because this is all so new? Will I feel better towards my husband with time? Less trapped as we work through this journey? Thanks for any feedback, I feel scared and alone, exhausted and completely drained right now.