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Can I get some feedback for my man going through the post-outburst self-loathing? It is rough to know how bad he is hurting inside, from the original hurt, and from the response. Hugs, reassurance, forgiveness, are shrugged away. And before the outburst, I have a hard time finding the underlying feelings to validate, when I am the target - some real hurts, and some unintentional, and some that did not occur. I am trying to separate my ego and just listen, but it seems to ramp up if I do not respond and ramp up if I do.

Hi rayndance;


Is that his self-loathing that ramps up? or the initial outburst/escalation?


I'm curious if you (figuratively) "watched videos" of a bunch of his pre-outburst through outburst episodes, if you could pinpoint the moment where he "goes beyond reaching". Kind of like -- as long as the airplane is just taxiing on the runway, it can turn around, but once it revs the engines and accelerates down the runway, there's no stopping it.

My sense is that as long as your pwBPD is "taxiing around the runway", he may be reachable with some structured communication (SET, no JADE-ing, BIFF, validating the feelings). But once he "revs the engines and accelerates", it's not like the communication tools and skills are magic wands to bring him back.

Maybe if you can pinpoint those moments where beforehand he's reachable and afterwards he's not, you can find your moment to disengage and realize that he needs to have his emotional storm and then self-soothe -- your involvement once he's past that point may be too much emotionally and relationally for him. Sometimes it can be more loving to step away and let him have the outburst and then process the self-loathing on his own, even though it may be uncomfortable for you to know he is coping with those feelings.

It might also be interesting to journal and track his process, maybe even draw a graph (could look like a bell curve) and pinpoint on the graph "here is where he can still regulate with me around, here is the inflection point past which my involvement isn't helping and is making things worse, here is the downslope where he's self-loathing, here's the point in the self-loathing where it's too soon for me to get involved, here's the point where he's mostly done with self-loathing where it is helpful for me to rejoin him".

Any thoughts on those ideas?

That last paragraph about the bell curve is really helpful. It helps me know that it is a normal flow, because there is a point where my existing makes it worse, and he wants me to "fix it," and at some point, he will come back to me. I worry that there is something in between the two points that I should be doing, even though I don't think so.