Small victories

[Chosen]

In the past, I would try to win uBPDh's praise by doing stuff for him.  Sometimes I earned some praise, but more often than not, his expectations of me got higher and higher.  In the end, I paid a lot of effort and got nothing in return.  Then I learnt about radical exceptance, letting him deal with his own stuff and so on.  I accepted that he will praise me when he feels good, and when he doesn't he will not praise me no matter how much I do.  And I stopped doing things that are not my responsibility.

There is a whole load of stuff belonging to H which he just stuffed in bags and never bothered to pack them.  Last week while I was cleaning the flat, I specially tidied up an area to place his bags, and let him know (kindly) that it's all his stuff, if he doesn't feel like cleaning them up it's ok, I have cleared an area for the bags 

These few days he's actually taking part of the stuff out to place on shelves... . a first in a year!

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

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[zaqsert]

Chosen, I'm really happy for you!  Great job leaving his stuff to him!  It's good to see them picking up their own stuff (in your case, quite literally) when we leave it for them.

I finally learned this too with my uBPDw earlier this year.  I used to do lots of things for her, wanting to help, but often without her explicitly asking.  She would complain about something, and I would do something about it.  The painful irony finally hit me when she raged at me for not helping her at all.  When I mentioned the things I had done, she raged at me for having done them for all the wrong reasons.  That was right around the time I started to learn about BPD.

Reading either SWOE or Loving Someone with BPD, I realized that doing these things for her or solving problems that (in the moment) she felt were insurmountable may have felt very invalidating to her.  She feels strongly that something can't be done or that she can't deal with it, then I swoop in and effectively show her that she was completely wrong.

Now I usually wait until she explicitly asks for help.  Sometimes I will still offer help, but I will then do nothing until she asks for it.  Most of these things can wait, or if they don't get done then it will only really affect her, not me.

The other thought that comes to mind on this topic was something that one of the moderators posted.  I think it was Waverider (sorry if I'm attributing this one incorrectly).  By doing things for our pwBPD so often, we can contribute to their learned helplessness.  When instead we leave their things to them, at some point they will realize that they need to do it if they want it to get done.  Doing it, in turn, helps them see that they can actually do it.  It's a nice virtuous cycle.