Hi there,

I'm so sorry for your loss.  And it's no surprise that your uBPDw seems to be acting out precisely when you need a little support and understanding from her.  There was a recent post on this phenomenon in the children section of this site--How can you manage getting angry with daughter.  Notwendy sums it up nicely.  PwBPD tend to act out to reclaim attention whenever our attention is diverted, such as when there's a death or sickness in the family, during holidays or vacations, a job change, a move, a celebration, a birthday or whenever the focus isn't exclusively on the pwBPD.  It's almost like they act out to test your devotion.  If you pull away because you're mourning, sick, on vacation or otherwise engaged with something else, that's almost a guarantee of escalation.  Whereas you are expected to be understanding 110% of the time, there is almost no reciprocation from the pwBPD.  Make sense?

Hi there,

If she is being violent, terrifying you and threatening to kill herself, I think you need to dial 911, because she is a threat to herself and others.  I know this is tough to hear, but the way you describe things, she is teetering on the edge.  In one scenario, she gets taken to the hospital and is discharged shortly thereafter, and she remains raging mad at you, but she starts to learn that if she's a threat to herself or others, you call 911.  A better outcome would be that she spends some time in the hospital and sees some specialists for diagnosis and treatment.  She'd likely still be mad at you for calling 911, but she's already mad and acting out.

May I ask, is your daughter using unprescribed substances?  My BPD stepdaughter self-medicated with marijuana, and in my observation, that made her behavior much worse, including bouts of paranoia, psychosis, extreme mood swings and threats of violence.  She improved significantly when doctors (not her parents) told her that marijuana was making her worse, not better, and she quit.  She also remained committed to therapy and took medications as prescribed.  That was the deal between her and her father, for her father to continue to support her.  She could choose not to do what the doctors said, but then she'd be on her own.  The doctors said something similar:  they had suggested all available treatments, but she didn't want to comply.  The only available alternative was involuntary commitment.  She was read the riot act, and fortunately she decided to commit to DBT therapy and recommended treatments.

Look, I know it's tough to call 911 on your own kid.  When my BPD stepdaughter was acting like yours, her parents didn't want to call for help at first.  You see, they were blinded by a FOG (fear, obligation and guilt).  Their daughter said she didn't want to go to the hospital.  But she needed to spend some time there, more than once, to get the help she desperately needed.  Of course, when 911 was called, she blamed her parents, and she flipped the script, accusing a parent of assaulting her, when the reverse was true.  If you could preserve evidence of suicide threats or violent gestures (e.g. texts, voice recordings or video), that could help, because I understand that false accusations of assault are a common retalitory tactic.

Moreover, you are not triggering your daughter's behavior--it's not your fault.  Your daughter is so dysregulated that she'd be triggered by anything.  She is in full blame mode.  In a way, by protecting her and allowing her in your home when she's terrifying, you are enabling her to continue to blame you.  If you allow her to stay even though she destroys your property or becomes violent, she will be emboldened and blame you even more.  You might have to kick her out.  But I think what you describe calls for a call to 911.

I would welcome any advice on how to approach a recent episode with our 42 year old daughter diagnosed with generalised anxiety and mixed personality disorder (although her behaviour is classic bpd )
This week our daughter has been getting increasingly anxious with multiple phone calls starting  at 5 in morning where she is very tearful agitated  child like and claiming to be frightened and alone.  She was moaning like a wounded animal and rocking backwards and forwards
Her behaviour was so distressing and disturbing that we agreed with her ex that she should not have the children this weekend and we would have her at our house to try and help her.
There was initially an improvement and she seemed calmer but last night triggered by not being able to speak to the children she turned on us accusing us of being in league with her ex to exclude her from seeing the children.
This was after telling us earlier that she  agreed she was not mentally well enough to see the children
This behaviour escalated into throwing her dinner at me and trying to hit my face I felt she was trying to scratch at  my eyes It was terrifying and her behaviour became verbally abusive swearing and raising all her standard accusations against her terrible childhood  her awful parents and brother.
 Her face was so full of spitting anger and hatred We spent 5 hours listening to these rants but because she was threatening to kill herself we did not dare to leave her alone . Finally she went to sleep.
Today we are  completely exhausted I have alerted her mental health team of her behaviour .
She is currently very quiet and said she was sorry although she is clearly feeling very sorry for herself.  I am not sure the apology was actually genuine but rather  she believes will enable her to remain at our home

 I feel  having her at our house is actually making matters worse as we  trigger her  behaviour. She demonstrates a real hatred towards us and I appreciate that in her mind we will always be at fault and are the cause of her problems .
 Any thoughts or advice ??

I am sorry for the loss of your brother.

If you consider these behaviors- as well as addiction behaviors- they are all dysfunctional ways of managing difficult emotions. It makes sense they will increase during times of stress.

If you consider that pwBPD have a victim perspective and so are more self focused, then these behaviors make sense.

So, when the person who is usually focused on their feelings, their needs, is not as focused, this can be seen as a "taking away" of focus on them. Yes, we expect other people to understand that dealing with a death is difficult. You are grieving. You aren't focused on them- that is less attention.

Your wife's behaviors work for her. She acts out, accuses you, and you act to correct the narrative, and so reinforce the behavior. So why wouldn't she ramp up on behaviors that work for her.

When my father was ill, and then passed away, my BPD mother's behavior escalated. I have empathy for her having lost her husband, but we kids lost a father too, and it was difficult. While this is odd coping behavior, it is who she was and how she managed. Thankfully,  friends and relatives were able to be of comfort at this time.

Again, I am sorry for your loss. Take care of yourself, and your kids. They just lost an uncle, and even if they didn't know him well, it is a loss. Seek out support from people who can be of comfort to you- other family, your pastor, friends.

Good morning friends,

I received some tragic news last week that my brother and his mid 50s was found deceased. He had struggled with increasing alcohol and drug addiction behaviors for the last 20 years. He had a brief period of sobriety about nine years ago. Ever since then it’s been worse and worse. He lives across the country from me so I don’t get to see him very often. In fact, I hadn’t seen him for about five years but it made a trip back there and was able to see him about a month ago so I’m grateful for that. His death was likely the cause of either an accidental alcohol and or drug overdose or possibly a suicide attempt, he also struggled with depression and was homeless off and on, usually staying at friends houses for brief periods.


I’m perplexed by my uBPDw’s overall response. I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be. She was very sad at first and had some tears with me, but her relationship with him was not the best. They had exchanged some negative comments on Facebook and the last interaction that they had was my wife basically split him and posted some negative untrue things onFacebook and would not take it down. That was a few years ago she hasn’t seen or spoken to him since.


In any case, the first day, she was somewhat sympathetic. But she was also very cold and standoffish. The day he passed me initially plans to go out that night which were canceled. She had also had a therapist appointment for the first time with a new therapist so I know she had dug up some stuff with the therapist. I think she was holding stuff in from her therapy appointment that she wanted to vent to me.


Nothing overly bad happened the first day except she did express that it was too bad that we’re having our marriage problems and things are so heavy and she was looking forward to a nice night out and a light weekend and now this happened. The next day is where things got bad and I’m still really confused and don’t understand this…

It started out at an early morning, sporting event for my son. She started talking about something that had come up in therapy and how she misses the past and how our relationship used to be. I guess I shut her down because I said I don’t have bandwidth for this and I really can’t discuss anything about our relationship or problems today. I said my brother literally just died yesterday so I can’t do this today. From that point, she was pretty much put off. We got home from the sporting event then she went out to exercise, then she met a friend after (a drinking friend). I’m guessing two or three cocktails. She had been tested that morning, so I was perfectly glad to have some time away from her to be honest. We had rescheduled some plans to try to go out and have a dinner and get my mind off of the tragedy.


Anyway, she came home and we tried to go out, but she started to bring up a relationship issues again and how she was feeling and how I’m not the husband I used to be and all this negative stuff. And I just told her I couldn’t do it and I said we’re not going out if this is how it’s gonna be let’s go home. She didn’t wanna go home because the kids were there and didn’t wanna bring it back to the house. We ended up going out for dinner, but it was literally three hours of her typical circular conversation, her drinking almost another bottle of wine when we were out for dinner. It was maybe one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced sitting there listening to how bad our relationship is and how she feels and how things are never gonna be fixed and I’m just not the person I used to be, etc., etc..

Is this typical of BPD behavior? I mean, it just was so clearly a lack of empathy and even now this morning, I am in absolute shock that she didn’t have the humanity to put her feelings aside for one day. She was in an episode and it didn’t matter that someone had died. I don’t know as a jealousy that the emotional attention wasn’t gonna be on her? I mean, I spent so much time emotionally overwhelmed by what she was doing that I didn’t even have time or mental space to grieve for my brother yesterday.

I’m really disgusted to be honest it’s like most things in our life and how she treats me. If someone in her family died, she would be a blubbering emotional mess and would expect me to have every ounce of attention focused on her and what she’s dealing with. Anyway, not much else to say just wondering what others have experienced in similar situations.
.

Hi Tete

Welcome!  This sounds exactly like my mother. You are in the right place...I find posting here to be very supportive.

Start by reading some of the resources on the site, which are helpful to let you know that you are not alone.

I'm not sure I'm following/understanding your line of reasoning. It doesn't matter who leaves -- what matters is if the healthy person, knowing the turmoil the person with BPD, etc., causes, chooses to nonetheless be in a relationship with them. Maturity has nothing to do with that choice. Codependency does.

If you know someone's behavior is toxic to you and you choose to be with them, that's not normal. That's not healthy. Normal and healthy behavior is to avoid someone like that. Codependency is to want to be in a relationship with them, regardless of whether they make the move toward reconciliation or you do.

You might want to talk to a therapist about this further. There's absolutely nothing wrong with feeling sympathy or compassion for someone afflicted with a profound mental or emotional illness like BPD. But to choose to be in a relationship with them knowing the nature of that illness? That sounds like codependency.

Am I reading correctly that you have two daughters -- any other children?
 |--->We have three adult children: 37yo Son, 36yo Daughter (divorce), 34yo Daughter (BPD) The two oldest have a completely different recollection of their childhood. There is not much contact between the older brother and BPD. It seems to be random and maybe once a month?

How does your non-BPD daughter usually interact with your BPDd?
 |--->They are not speaking now. Part of this started with a random email from BPD to sister that was very weird. NBPD responded and was very blunt and pushed back on BPD. Which then turned into a rant to sister and the rants to us. Completely unprovoked, but clearly triggered by her conversations with NBPD sister.

And what I'm most curious about is if you and your H are aligned on if/how each of you interacts with your BPDd? Do you think he has a little more emotional distance from her than you? And how does BPDd respond to him?
 |--->This has been part of the problem in the past. We are aligned mostly, because he has seen the hell I have been through with her. Sometimes he tries to downplay the texts though. He doesn't take them as personally as I do because I am always the target.

I wonder if here: he could take over the "reach out to remind her of support" texts, instead of you?
 |--->When he has responded to BPD, he gets a little soft in the heart and starts feeling sorry for her. Then he's the good guy and I'm the bad guy.
 |--->I did buy "I Hate You, Please Don't Leave Me" for HIM to read!

Ultimately, though, I'm thinking that the more you and your H are united on an approach, the "less bad" things might go for your family. Does that seem to fit, or is it off base?
 |--->Absolutely! I have really emphasized this time that we are not going to play the game. I just can't any more.

She does live out of town, so we don't have face-to-face conflict with her; it's just the onslaught of texts. However, we did not have a text for her yesterday...so we'll see how long this lasts.

Thanks again for your insight and wisdom. Y'all are such a big help!

That reminds me that when you have third parties in the equation, it complicates things, and makes it harder to avoid JADEing and defusing conflicts as they start; other people = more variables and more uncertainty.

For example, if my mom was coming over for a visit, I experienced it all during some of these times: her screaming at my mom, her screaming at me, her demanding my mom leave the house, then the next day her getting angry at me because my mom wasn't there to play with our daughter (yes this happened!), slamming doors, going from unhinged-wide-eyed anger to locking herself in the room and sobbing hysterically, etc.  And my mom lived on the other side of the country!  It wasn't like she visited frequently, or could just come and go easily if things blew up.

So... yeah.  It's hard enough not to JADE when it's just you and the pwBPD.  It's even harder when other people are there.

I think in those situations, there are two things you can do:
1) to the extent you know you're going to be in a situation that's triggered the pwBPD you have to proactively discuss with the pwBPD that you know they may be unhappy or upset, but you love them, they come first, and if anything happens to remain calm and you'll discuss it when you're alone, etc. That may help. 

Of course, that requires a lot of patience to do each time, especially if it's around the holidays, or something like that when you know there are going to be a lot of sensitive moments that trigger pwBPD, but if you're not ready to end the relationship, or can't end it, then this ounce of prevention is better than enduring repeated meltdowns.

2) if these situations involve people you trust, I would confide in them ahead of time that your partner has issues, or is "sensitive" or however you want to put it, and ask them to be patient as well, and say up front that you appreciate them and no matter what happens, understand that they aren't the problem, but you're between a rock and hard place managing expectations.  Assuming they've seen the pwBPD "in action" they'll understand and will likely be grateful to know you're not blaming them for it.

But be cautious: you would not want these people to go and spread rumors about your BPD partner, or tell your BPD partner what you've told them in confidence; these need to be people you really trust. 

I eventually had to do that with my mom and a couple other family members that BPDxw had lashed out at on occasion.  They all thanked me and said they appreciated knowing that I understood.  it helped them move on because after each time, they were left wondering what they did to cause the problem, what they could have done differently, and whether I was also angry at them.  While this didn't end the issues we all had with BPDxw, at least it helped them understand it better, so it didn't leave lasting wounds each time. 

I'll add that in the example I gave, this was really hard for me to do because BPDxw was so obviously cruel and spiteful to my mom, and also me, whenever in her mind I demonstrated any sort of concern for my mom whatsoever. 

It was almost scary; like this wasn't just like a sitcom plot where "she doesn't like my mom"... it was more like "she actually wishes my mom was dead, doesn't want her to ever see our daughter, doesn't want me to have a relationship with my own mom, and will do and say anything to ruin this whole thing."

Looking back, I see her issue was jealousy and her own paranoid & unhinged fears that anyone else in my life - even my own mother - was a threat to our relationship.  I went along with some of her demands, and saw & spoke to my mom less, and she saw our daughter less, during these years, and in hindsight, I wish I hadn't, because it wasn't ultimately about my mom. I know if I cut my mom out of my life completely, as BPDxw was demanding, she would just move on to another demand, because the issue was entirely in BPDxw's head.

As you said above, some relationships just aren't liveable, and that was how this went.  In order to keep BPDxw "happy," i.e. not in shrieking fight mode, or making-a-scene-in-public mode, or not actively-insulting-and-attacking-my-family-members mode, I would have to give up too much of my own life and relationships with my family.  What was I getting in return?  An unhappy, insecure, ignorant, and abusive wife, and a lifetime of knuckling under to her demands, even at the cost of my own and our own daughter's future?  No thanks. 


I agree with this, and the experience has benefitted me in other situations, like at work, when I recognize people who thrive on conflict and how to handle them, particularly how to be assertive without getting upset or escalating things when someone is pushing your buttons.  I had a hard time with that; I was either worried and afraid of opposing someone, or being pushed past my limit and exploding in anger.