Hi everyone!

I found a good divorce mediator and have passed the contact along to my wife; I'm fairly certain I'm in a discard phase so this might be great. My own therapist and I are working through mental preparations for the charming or future anger that gets thrown my direction. This past week has been almost no contact and - frankly - it's been so restorative.

I've made a promise to myself to focus on mind and health for the remainder of this year. We don't need to be thinking about dating or anything, haha. But I'll say it was really nice; I've received a few

Step... by... step. I'm hoping the mediator e-mail doesn't create drama, but I was tasked with it... so, it shouldn't? Ah. Shouldn't. The illogical word.

Sounds like you're getting some clarity by virtue of distance from her.  If you do start to get an urge to reconnect, here's an idea: first go and read the DSM Definition of BPD (link: https://bpdfamily.com/content/borderline-personality-disorder, put yourself in the shoes of someone who was speaking to her for the first time, and ask yourself what sort of positive things you could expect to hear from a person like that. 

Hi Jackie,

I'm sorry your relative seems to be teetering on the brink, and yet refuses to do what it takes to turn her life around.  It sounds like she has substance use disorder as well.

Unfortunately, you can't force an addict or someone with BPD to get help.  With BPD, the situation is especially complicated, because her disordered thinking convinces her that everyone else is the problem, not her.  Even if you managed to get your relative some therapy, I think it's unlikely to work, because for therapy to work, she has to want to do the work.  Therapy is work, after all.  She has to want more than anything to change, and change is really hard, especially for someone with deeply ingrained habits and routines.  Alas, she probably has to hit bottom first, in order to realize that therapy (and sobriety) is the only available option to her.

I feel really sorry for her son.  On the bright side, he might be able to leave home soon.  But the reality is that after growing up with dysfunction, he probably doesn't understand what a healthy life looks like, let alone how to go about obtaining it.  One thing you might consider doing is spending some time with him, if you could arrange that.  That way, he might get a break from his disordered home, and he might have opportunity to glimpse what a "normal" life looks like.  That might give him some hope, too.  But in practice, it might be difficult to pull off, if his mom is reliant on him or super-controlling.  Maybe a way to frame things would be to offer to spend time with her son, to "give mom a needed break."

You summed up succinctly how the pwBPD in my life is.  She has both these reactions--angry outbursts combined with feeling judged, isolated and rejected.  The way I see it is as a trauma-based, fight-or-flight response.  With the pwBPD in my life, her reactions would tend to go in cycles.  Typically, angry outbursts would be followed by shutting down--cutting people out of her life and general avoidance.  When she self-isolated, her internal dialogue was extremely negative--feeling wronged, judged, traumatized, rejected, inferior, a failure, hopeless, really depressed.

All that probably just means that BPD behaviors are on a spectrum, both in terms of the type/manifestation, as well as the intensity, frequency and duration of disordered thoughts and behaviors.  The nuance is that everyone feels anger, rejection, depression, etc. from time to time.  But to qualify for BPD, basically these reactions are deemed to be disproportionate to the situation, as well as causing prolonged dysfunction in life and relationships.

Hope that perspective helps.

The most successful treatment approach for getting people who are unmotivated to make needed changes is motivational interviewing. It has been used for many years with addicts and is now mainstream in mental and physical health. It meets the client at his/her level of motivation including having no motivation whatsoever to do anything. It is easy to learn and there are many resources on the internet. Not sure if motivational interviewing is effective with BPD or other personality disorders.

Hello and welcome to the family. 

You've asked the hardest possible question that comes across this site almost daily- how do you convince someone to get help?  The short answer is that you can't.  Your relative will get help once it seems like the best possible option for thier life and not a day sooner. 

Why?  That's the crux of the illness...everything is everyone else's fault.  As long as there's someone else to blame, there's no reason to take personal accountability and deal with our issues.  BPD is especially challenging because they're emotional outbursts due to internal pain.  They don't think about hurting others.  Instead, they're hurting so much internally, they lash out to feel better in the moment.  And when it works, they think, huh, that other person is truly the problem in my life.  If only they weren't ruining things, I'd be happy.

You mentioned a few things that could lead to help in the USA.  If someone's suicidal, you dial 9-1-1 and there'd be a mandatory wellness check.  If they were suidical, then there'd be a mandatory hospital stay for a psych evaluation.  But that's in America and other countries have their own procedures.  In Europe, mental health is taken much more seriously.  In Aisa, it's taken less seriously.  So it really depends on where your relative is at and who there could try to get them help.

If the teenage child will be an adult soon, they'll have to make a choice whether to stay or leave.  There's very little you can say or do though that would make a meaningful difference for the parent/adult.  The place to start would be seeing what that country even offered in mental health services.

That is really helpful advice. I can imagine doing that.

 :help:I have an adult family member who is a single mom and caretaker of her teenage child. They live in a different country than the rest of the family. She has shown signs of BPD/complex trauma for many years, but recently her behaviour is getting worse and more troublesome. She is very verbally abusive to her child, slams doors, sometimes throws things and recently mentioned not wanting to live. She drinks every day. Her child has no other family member in the country currently, and reaches out for support from me when things get bad. At one point he moved out from the home but later moved back. He is a minor still, but not for much longer.

I am worried for her safety, and the safety of her child. We have repeatedly spoken to her about getting appropriate help, and most often she blows up and won't listen. Even if she does listen at certain points, she doesn't seem to be open to accepting help, or even acknowledge that her anger and aggression is an issue. She is very quick to get angry and abusive, and it's only getting worse.

My question is - how can you approach someone about getting appropriate therapy in a way that might actually work? Is it possible to gently speak to someone about their anger without them getting angry? Are there things that have worked for others?

it can be a little triggering listening to music. My ex and I went to quite a few festivals/music gigs so hearing some songs can bring back a memory. One needs to separate it somewhat from reality, because sometimes your version of reality while in that relationship can be skewed.

For example, I’ve read a lot about the bpd devaluation, and in the moment, while you are in that relationship, it can be easy to dismiss. The other day I was trying to use WhatsApp. My phone told me I had no available data left and needed to delete data from my phone. I went through my photos and videos to delete and make space. I came across a video recording I had made, dating back to august 2022, just over a year before my wife and I split up.

I listened to it and remembered the context. She had been accusing me of talking to her in an aggressive tone of voice, that I always sounded angry with her. The video I captured was of me asking her to repeat something she said because I had missed the first word of the sentence and didn’t want to get my answer wrong as not to trigger the usual word twisting, circular argument. My tone of voice was completely calm and relaxed. Hers was the complete opposite. She basically ranted, telling me I should always anticipate her saying something so I don’t miss anything she says so she doesn’t have to repeat it, along with some expletives, name calling, and what I know now to be devaluation.

I can remember in that moment feeling slightly disappointed that I didn’t catch her usual wrath and poisonous tongue on that video and thinking it wasn’t that bad. Listening back to it all these years later and completely out of the relationship I can see it clearly for what it was, and wonder how I ever put up with her behaviour.

I have a BPD ex-wife and a BPD daughter from that marriage.  However, I believe that both my ex-wife's brothers were BPD/NPD as well.

One brother was very aggressive and prone to anger.  If you crossed him, you'd better duck and run.  And if you said anything negative about him, he'd get extremely hurt and avoid you for months.  For example, one time he wanted to give my 16 year old daughter a car after she wrecked hers.  I said no though because the insurance would have been like $650 a month just for her.  And this devestated him- why wouldn't I accept his gift and let him do that for our kid?  Why did I hate him and my kid so much?  I didn't, LOL, but I literally couldn't afford an extra $7k a year in insurance for a $3k car.

The other brother was always second guessing himself and he cared so much about what others thought of him.  He'd open up to me but beg me not to tell anyone.  Then he'd say something that all of us deal with daily; there was no reason for it to be eating him up so badly and he should talk about it.  He just couldn't though.

My BPD daughter is EXACTLY like brother #1 with the anger management issues (traditional BPD).  My BPD ex wife is EXACTLY like brother #2 who always feels judged and isolated (quiet BPD).  All four are similar in traits, but the way they react to stress is completely different.  One group exploded while the other shut down in depression.

I hope that helped!