The hard part for me is that my PWBPD wants me to give them advice and answer questions when they’re disregulated
I just wish I knew how to set a boundary calmly that said “I cannot always handle dealing with this whenever you go down these paths of gloom and doom”. I sometimes need space and time and a safe word when I don’t see our discussions going down a wrong path.
I also don’t know how to respond to gloom and doom with validation that doesn’t sound like I’m not sincere or that will actually soothe the Immediate problem.
I just wish I knew how to set a boundary calmly that said “I cannot always handle dealing with this whenever you go down these paths of gloom and doom”. I sometimes need space and time and a safe word when I don’t see our discussions going down a wrong path.
I also don’t know how to respond to gloom and doom with validation that doesn’t sound like I’m not sincere or that will actually soothe the Immediate problem.
I want to share some observations from my own experience that may give you some insight into this behavior. It may be that there isn't a solution for it, due to the emotions that drive it- it is a repetitive behavior that may be driven by emotional needs.
While you can and should have boundaries with this, because it is emotionally taxing to do it all the time, understanding why it happens might help you to decide on them.
You are each coming from different perspectives on what is going on and your SO may not even be fully aware of why they are doing this. You, being logical, see this from a problem solving perspective. Your SO brings up a concern or issue- your approach- suggest a solution. That would help if the actual reason for bringing this up was to seek a solution and maybe that is part of the reason but there's another reason and the solution doesn't address that, so the solution is rejected or criticized and they get upset, because it doesn't. However, they may not be aware of why this isn't the solution they seek. Since you are thinking logically, this doesn't make sense to you and it's frustrating.
There could also be an emotional need on your part to help solve her dilemma. You want to be helpful, nice, and a good person, most people do if they help someone, so when this is rejected and turned around, it's demoralizing.
My BPD mother had a large emotional need for emotional caretaking and while this was an aspect of her closest relationships, it was an aspect of all of them in some way. Her needs were so paramount for her, it was how she related to people, from her victim perspective- and she'd enlist them somehow as helping her in some way. Most people, being nice and decent people, would agree and that became a basis for friendships and other connections, until they would reach their limit, or say something like "this is your issue", (and they'd be immediately painted black for that), or they'd just drop the relationship. As family- we couldn't really do that. It wasn't just with advice, it was getting people to do things for her. The requests might be ordinary and reasonable or not, but people were more likely to agree to do ordinary and reasonable ones- and this still met an emotional need.
BPD mother would frequently ask me for advice and then reject it. One boundary I had was that if it wasn't in my area of expertise, I'd say "I don't know but your doctor/nurse/accountant/banker etc does know", directing the question to them. She seemed to be frustrated sometimes with this but it also was a boundary on being asked for advice on things when someone knows better than I do. If it's emotional advice- I'd say "you know Mom, I'm not a therapist and I think one can have a better explanation for that than I can" rather than "you need therapy". FWIW- she had therapy but didn't have the insight to her own behavior that would be needed for that kind of transformation. BPD is on a spectrum so some people might respond in this way better than others.
Here's a situation where this was more obvious. We were visting and she wanted one of my kids- at this point a teen, to take her trash can out to the curb for pick up. So she asked me where the teen was- and that child was busy, so I said "I can take it out for you". Her reply was "No, I want that child to take it out". That's when I could see that the actual want was not just the trash, even though it's a completely normal request to ask a teen ager to do it.
I then took out the trash can out and she flew into a rage, running after me, yelling at me that I didn't put it exactly on the curb where she wants it, making me move it to where she did want it and being angry at me in general.
She didn't just want the trash out. She wanted my child to do it as an act of emotional caretaking for her. That's not a teen ager's role to do so, and this is why I intervened. In ordinary circumstances, I'd expect my teen to take the trash out for a grandmother, but this was something else.
One clue to why this happens is that it happens when your SO is dysregulated. Dysregulations don't respond to logic or solutions. They want emotional caretaking to help them regulate. How much you choose to do this and when not to do this might be where to look for your boundary.



