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I've noticed a few signs that prepare me to expect a dysregulation:

- Her energy is nearly entirely spent focusing on what other people are doing (especially doing wrong)

- She will go on and on about "clutter" in the house.  I can put the junk mail down on the table before I have a chance to go through it, and 5 minutes later she will be remarking about "what all this junk is doing there."

- complaints of headaches or boredom

- Her energy will be spent organizing and re-organizing.  This says she knows something is amiss, so her solution is to organize or plan for the future rather than take care of today.

- lots of sighs, grunts, cursing, and grumbles.

But---the past few days I have noticed all of the above, and yesterday she flat out admitted she was grumpy and irritable, yet the above behavior continued.  Obviously, it was beyond her control. So my question - since it was obvious that she recognized the bad mood yet had no control, does it mean the above behavior indicates the dysregulation had begun already, or is there still a chance to reverse course?

I don't know if this helps, but I see myself in some of her behavior. I don't have BPD but definitely have OCPD - obsessive need to organize and de-clutter. I have it under control most of the time, but when I get stressed it's my go-to "fix". Almost like if we can control the chaos around us, we can control the chaos within us. The holidays add stress.

You might ask if there's anything you can do to help. The offer alone could take some pressure off of her. If she says no or barks at you that you're just going to be in the way or screw it up, don't get upset, just let her be. Once she feels satisfied that everything is done, her emotions could settle down. Validate and show sympathy that she's feeling stressed and overwhelmed. That usually helps me when I go into over-organization mode!

I'm not one to get worked up worrying about when it is inevitable... .it probably will happen sooner or later, and how you deal with it at the time is more important.

First off, I'd say that her voicing out loud that she's in a grumpy mood is a hint of self-awareness, and represents a good sign and a small step forward.  |iiii

Second, I'd be aware of the situation... .try to validate more than usual. Try harder not to invalidate. Be ready to remove yourself from a full-blown dysregulation.

I'm having trouble lately figuring out what not dysregulating looks like.  Haven't seen it in a while, except for brief glimpses.  But my uBPDw goes through a lot of the same signs you describe, although I've never correlated them with an impending dysregulation.  (Until a few weeks ago I didn't know the term--"blowup" was my preferred terminology.) 

I'm going to try to be more observant in the future and see if I can find any connections that might help me see what might be coming.  I guess the first step is waiting for some re-regulating to occur.

I have a question about dysregulation.  Do we know, does it happen in response to triggers or is it cyclical?  Like, my ex wBPD has taken a couple really hard emotional knocks lately.  But he's fine.  I just spoke with him - he's gentle and generous, utterly content.  I keep waiting for a storm but it hasn't happened.  Then when I thought about it, I realized he doesn't tend to 'freak out' when things are bad, but maybe 4-6 wks. later (not sure that's exact, I'm estimating).  So his splitting and so on seem to come 'out of the blue' to me.  So is it a delayed response to painful situations, or is it just that he can only hold it together for so long? Just wondering... .

I believe its culminative. I think it builds up over time only for them to vent like a sort of pressure relief valve.

Well, not that I've been walking on egg shells but my BPDw seems to have been on the edge for over a month now. Things have been stressing her at work and I feel that she will have a dysregulation event most any time.

I will make the wild assumption that she is pretty much doing the same sort of thing at work which is only making the situation at work worse.  By that I mean that she isn't catching what I say. For example, I come home with several bags of groceries. She is in the kitchen talking with me as I put the groceries away. Just as I put the last few items away, she asks me when I am going to the store. I say "I just did on the way home." Then a half hour or so later when we are walking into the restaurant for dinner she asks me "What are you going to get at store?" I say I already got it. Then as l am paying the bill she asks which store am I going to.

I have to work at not getting mad at her. 1) I feel like she is not listening to me and I am just wasting my breath. And 2) I am resentful of the times she has chewed me out for my poor communacation skills.

Any thoughts on what to say that won't be inflammatory?

The hard thing about dysregulation is they reach back into their memory banks for 'evidence' that can be pulled out to describe how they feel now even if its not remotely related. As a result it is often difficult to tell the trigger from the ammunition. It is just total chaos and why we need to step back

When does dysregulation start? When actions and emotions almost seem involuntary, usually destructive. Side shows and desperate attempts to control something, anything is like grasping at straws to stop themselves going under, but they completely miss the real issue. This brings on the frustration that finally leads to full on dysregulation

My W blew her top a few hours ago. She has been brewing for two days. I decided to sleep in a different room for both nights so I could get some rest. She slept poorly both nights and I guess it was a pressure valve ready to blow.

It happened this afternoon.  The divorce threat came out.  One of my boundaries is that I simply won't talk about divorce so I disengaged. I went back in after 10 minutes offering to listen, and she spoke calmly.  We negotiated a solution to the problem,  and then she's been an absolute honey for the last 2 hours.

It's almost like the pressure has been released and she's much better for it.

I will recognise it coming next time. It's a feeling of unease and tension in the air.  And the key to success for me this time was sleeping separately. It helped me separate myself from her emotions.

I agree.  But I am starting to see a pattern that what you mention above is already going on in her brain hours to days before the "blowup".  The items I mentioned in the original post are what I see as evidence she has already lost most control, is already grasping at anything, and is missing the bigger issue.  Validation and the tools buy some time, but the inevitable is inevitable, and I think it is because by the time I start seeing the signs, the brakes are already failing on the downhill descent:  she's entered that alternate reality. 

If I standardized the cycle to a week's time, there would be a few hours to a day of mostly baseline, a day of being on the edge, 4 days of internal dysregulation, and one day of external dysregulation.  That means about 3/4 of the time is dysregulated in some fashion (crossed the point of no-return and it's a matter of when and not if it gets to external dysregulation) 

I can tell mine is dysregulating when he tries to pick fights by saying snippy things, or starts complaining about a small thing excessively. Sometimes I still react to these but most of the time I don't, I just acknowledge his ire and leave it at that. If I do that, he rarely goes all the way off. He might repeat himself a few times, but I just give the same affirmation.

Any sort of "trouble" will trigger it. Money issues, car issues... .ANYTHING at all that comes on as a surprise.

He often talks about how useless he is when he's dysregulating. He will say we are better without him, and he should get in the car and wrap himself around a tree, he's told me he's thought of hanging himself in the bedroom, how he should buy a life insurance policy so we will be better off when he's gone since all he does is weigh us down. This talk used to scare me in the beginning, but I see now it's his way of expressing how bad he feels about himself. I still worry someday I might come home from work and... .he has done it.

I can relate to this ratio of 3/4. Are the time periods variable for others?

Our cycle was roughly two weeks for 14 years. Then whilst in therapy, she didn't dysregulate for 11 months. I thought I was reborn. It was before I knew anything about BPD. But it was festering underneath, gathering momentum, then came the mother of all dysregulations. 6 months of pure, unadulterated rage like I have never seen before.

I'd say a cycle of two weeks is pretty typical of what I have experienced for the past two years.  Sometimes the period is longer, sometimes less.  But I usually get the extinction-burst kind of event every two weeks, and probably haven't gone much longer than a month without seeing one.  Typically, they happen on weekends, and I think that is because I am home from work and I have other things to do than cater to her needs, so she feels the abandonment. 

I consider to be "baseline" the rare times when I feel I can have a conversation about somewhat touchy subjects and she seems to listen and we have a constructive conversation.  The instant defensiveness isn't there.  That usually happens a few hours to a day after a major dysregulation, at which point I can tell she is self reflective, apologetic, and remorseful. 

I'm curious about what pattern emerges after our 10 month separation (I've been back at home for 6 weeks now). Today's rage stunned me initially, but it was over in 20 minutes. It's new territory because I would have previously been so revved up by her threats, and gotten caught up in the injustice of it all. I now actually prefer the short and sharp external dysregulation, then it's over. The longer, internal one brings in the FOG and mind games.

My W admitted twice to BP and NP traits. Those were fleeting moments of lucid reflection.

Remorse? I've not seen,

Apologies? I can count them on one hand.

The one area where I see a willingness, is around the children. D5, D10, D13. She knows the damage that's been done, and I can see she wants a different life for them. She did apologise once to D13 for any damage she's done to her self esteem.

I remember going away on business trips, and coming home to the rage. Now I understand the abandonment fears, which took three days or so to clear before we resumed the 2 week cycle.

If we stop playing our role in the cycle, surely it must come to a stop somewhere? Or is that wishful thinking

Sorry hun, I believe that's wishful thinking. The tools we use will reduce the amount, and stop us from triggering it as well as accepting the bad behaviors... .but they won't stop. This is who they are and how their brains work.

Yup, saying it "must" stop somewhere is wishful thinking.

You could say that it might stop somewhere. Nothing you can count on, but yes, you can hope for it.

The converse is much more certain: If we don't change our role in the cycle, it will NOT stop.

That's a sobering and timely reminder to the co-dependent in me. It's easy to get back into the wishful thinking mode instead of getting on with my life.

It's a challenge to try and become more functional, and I appreciate the improvements, but I'm not sure I can do this for the rest of my life.

It's enough that I can do this one day at a time. It takes some adjusting to realise that I'm married to someone with a serious mental illness.  And it's very lonely. It feels like I'm the only one that knows and she's made it look like I'm the one with the mental illness

Repeating the words of some of the wise people who were here before me: Good mental health is HARD!


 The lonely feeling is very real.

The other part is most likely less true than you think. Yes, she tries to make it look like you are the problem. Of course she does--she believes it herself as her way of coping. Someday when you confide in a friend or family member, you will be surprised to hear that they either already knew, or had some sort of an inkling about it. That facade she puts up doesn't work as well as either you or she thinks it does.

Once you have started to rebuild yourself, you can get past this isolation. It starts when you:

~Stop worrying about what others believe.

~Stop being embarrassed for your partners behavior.

~Stop being afraid others may think you have the problem.

~Stop wishing you could convince others your partner has issues, and trying to get them "onside"

In other words stop competing to be right and recognized for it

waverider captures the essence of disengagement and for me what took the longest time to stop was trying to convince others of just how bad things were. I still fall into this now especially with health professionals. I still have moments of jaw dropping exasperation when I know they think I'm the crazy one! Of course at times I have acted like a crazy person  This is really hard to let go of.

How do you respond when disengagement is misinterpreted by the pBPD? My partner tells me I'm uncaring and robotic when I'm disengaged. That is so hard for me to hear and i think i must be doing something wrong. Is this another place where i need to figure out how to self approval for my behavior elsewhere?

BINGO!

I don't disengage from my partner because I want her approval. I do it because I know that she or I (or both!) will spiral out of control and make things worse if I stay engaged.

Perhaps you need a bit more physical distance when you disengage?

It took me a long time to get this right, I thought detachment was walls and it is not.  Detachment with LOVE is what is needed.  I think it takes a lot of time to get that balance right.  When moving from enmeshment to detachment, we are bound to take it too far.  How are some ways that you could detach and still be loving?  Meaning having boundaries for yourself and taking care of your needs without cutting yourself off completely.

I see detaching as an emotional/mental process of figuring out where you end and where your partner starts. In this kind of r/s, it is very easy to get confused, both thinking that we are involved/responsible for our partner's actions/choices, and thinking that our partner has involvement/control over our own actions/choices.

This is a process, and it is hard to balance--you want to care about your partner, and still know where you stop and they start. The two aren't actually opposite of each other, even though it can feel that way.

I see disengaging as an immediate tactical action--Cutting off an encounter where either our partner will hurt us, or we will hurt our partner. You have to do this based on your own judgement, and don't let your partner influence you much about it. It is a change, and will feel strange and uncomfortable at first for both of you.

Detachment is about not getting drawn in rather than blocking.

You don't... .

Yes... it's really that simple.

You are responsible for interpreting things for yourself.

Your partner is responsible for interpreting things for themselves.

If you do it wrong... .is it anyone else's fault?  Should anyone else take action to "save" you for your misinterpretation?

Turn that around for your partner... .and let them deal with their issues.

"Saving" pwBPD from themselves... is actually counterproductive... .