What is "extinction burst"?

[Mutt]

What's an extinction burst like?

My uBPD ex was trying to kiss my a## in the last couple of weeks after several months of near silence from her.

I advised her that there is no need for her to reach out and be nice. My boundaries are to talk about the kids only.

This past week we had student-lead conference appointment (not together) with my son and my daughter.

I had spoken to my son's teacher (kindergarten) and he is having issues with certain concepts. He was in a special class last year at the same school for his speech. The teach showed me a color coded chart of his progress and areas that he was having issues with. I informed her that I suspect my son my have autism, but I'm going to have him checked and assessed by a pediatrician. She said that it was very wise and had I talked to my wife about this? I replied yes, several months ago, but she said his issues stemmed from video games and the computer. She said well take away the video games and is he still like this? I simply told the teacher, my wife and I are not on the same page and if this came from me, it won't be taken seriously. She asked if she could talk to my wife, and I said yes.

That night I receive an e-mail from my wife accusing me of slagging her to the teacher. She made an excuse that she could not take him to get assessed because of child services and now she can because the case is closed. The e-mail was littered with blame, accusations, anger, distortion, lying, a lot of anger and the usual nonsense but more intense.

Her words, patterns, actions convince me even more in this last episode that she is truly BPD and that I am doing the right thing by ejecting her from my personal life.

I'm posting this because there were a lot of communications from her like this in the last few months, but it has been sometime where she really blasted me in an email and projected/blamed to the nth degree. I don't want to go into details of the email as it would make this TLDR and it was an attack on a lot of things that I have been doing in the last few months (or lack thereof, which is contact)

I have been doing controlled contact with her. I sense that she has been pulling. She's criticized me for only talked to her by e-mail and refusing to pick up the kids at the door as well. Not calling her like a normal person, she can't understand why I won't come to the door.

The intensity was more than her usual self, an act of desperation almost. Is this an exctinction burst? Is an extinction burst like one volatile explosion or are there aftershocks?

[GreenMango]

It sounds like a combination.  Both the rejection and judgment sensitivity to the teachers appraisal of what's going on with your son and possibly her mothering role, and a good old fashioned extinction burst added in.

They can vary from small tantrums to large scale blow ups, like scathing emails. 

Mutt here's the beginning of the workshop on extinction bursts - there's more info in the ins and outs further in about spontaneous recovery (the retesting of boundaries) and how to handle them.

Your ex wife isn't used to the boundaries of your relationship.  It may take some time for her to see that now you are the father of her children and not necessarily her friend.  This may change with time for you too where you might be more flexible with talking on the phone or approaching any physical space with her, but as of. right now she seems pretty erratic and is looking for you to pretend that everything is fine between you and her when it sounds like its not something you are ready to do.  It's okay to not want to connect with her - you are focusing ok the kids.

Extinction Bursts - Important to Understand when your Loved One has BPD.

We all know that life is a journey and that it’s important to have focus and objectives. This can become difficult if the person "traveling" with us has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  Because of the associated impulsiveness, hypersensitivity, and dysfunctional coping, people with this disorder often "wander off the path". And we often feel compelled to chase after and cater to them, which, in turn, diverts our focus and often results in anxiety, abuse, and dysfunction for everyone.

According to bpdfamily.com, extinguishing this pattern isn’t easy, yet it is an essential first step in having a healthy relationship.  Taking care of ourselves may feel like a selfish focus - but as the emotionally healthier one, it’s important  that we not get bogged down in BPD induced dramas.  And it's important that we understand that our BPD loved ones aren’t mentally fit to be leading the relationship.

So what do we do?  When the person with Borderline Personality Disorder becomes dysregulated or depressed. bpdfamily.com recommends that you give them the space to self sooth - not try to do it for them.  Take a deep breath and politely and non-aggressively disengage. It’s not easy to block out the distraction and emotional pleas for our attention, yet it is only with a critical pause that we can really stay on a constructive and healthy pathway.

This act is called extinction. We essentially remove our reinforcement in an attempt to stop the  behavior. We simply stop rewarding the behavior.

When our partner doesn’t get the expected response (reinforcement by us) it may scare or anger them and they may try harder to  engage us using threats, violence, destruction, intimidation, name calling, belittling, promises of withholding necessary things, retaliation, or any other painful thing they can think of to get us to engage.   This escalation is know as an extinction burst.



Extinction Burst - The term extinction burst describes the phenomena of behavior temporarily getting worse, not better, when the reinforcement stops.

Spontaneous Recovery - Behavior affected by extinction is apt to recur in the future when the trigger is presented again. This is known as spontaneous recovery or the transient increase in behavior. Be aware of this eventuality. It is a part of the extinction process. Don't be discouraged.



This is OK, as long as we anticipate it, understand it, and are prepared for it.  The same is true for spontaneous recovery.

They won’t like this, but it is a necessary for them to experience and to learn to self sooth their own frustrations in life.  It is what will bring on the opportunity for change.   When we do it, we block this opportunity for change and we subvert our own emotional health.

We can not allow others to lead us astray on our journey. In time, if we stay committed to our path our partners will adjust.  And we won’t be subjecting ourselves to as much pain.  

Co-authors: United for Now, Skip

[Learning_curve74]

Hey Mutt, an extinction burst is a phenomenon where a person ramps up their behaviors in response to you changing your response. For example, researchers taught rats to push a button to get food. So the rats learned to push the button to get food. Then when they changed the button to where it didn't give them food, the rats would start to push the button more often and frantically hoping to get the food that they were used to getting. When they started mashing the button like crazy is the extinction burst. Then eventually they relearned their behavior and didn't push the button any more.

The same thing happens in people. Definitely check the workshop that GreenMango linked to (click on the "quote from" link) as there's more to it like spontaneous recovery and intermittent reinforcement.

[Mutt]

 

When our partner doesn’t get the expected response (reinforcement by us) it may scare or anger them and they may try harder to  engage us using threats, violence, destruction, intimidation, name calling, belittling, promises of withholding necessary things, retaliation, or any other painful thing they can think of to get us to engage.   This escalation is know as an extinction burst.

I agree that extinguishing this pattern is not easy.

Taking care of ourselves may feel like a selfish focus - but as the emotionally healthier one, it’s important  that we not get bogged down in BPD induced dramas.

This is so true. I admit that I'm struggling in separating that when she communicates, it's about her feelings and defense mechanisms that I'm dealing with. This last confrontation simply re-enforces that the best thing is to simply not engage and not get caught up in the drama, because it's really just that. I trigger her if I engage and she also triggers me.

looking for you to pretend that everything is fine between you and her when it sounds like its not something you are ready to do.

This is a common theme that plays over and over since she has left. It was there in the r/s too. She wants to be enabled. I can't simply look the other way anymore as if nothing has happened. There are too many times to count that I have looked the other way and it doesn't work.

I could been pulled into the gray area if she had slept with someone... .once. She lied about it, she doesn't feel remorse or compassion. She crossed a line with me and that's it.

I have it in me to change my patterns in how I react to her. I'm sensing that it will lead me to indifference and I think that I will get there but I'm not there yet. I need more time.

I have never had friends treat me the way that she has. In the last year she has destroyed what little trust that I had left for her. I can see myself being more flexible or more relaxed around her in the same space, but that's in the future. I can't tell now how long it will take to get there.

I can say this with certainty that whatever we had as friends is gone. To build my trust and friendship again, she would have to go to therapy. If I play along with whatever she wanted, I think it would damage my mental health.  I can't believe with what I allowed to happen for 8 years.

I think this is partially an extinction burst by tantrum. Boy I would not want to see a large scale blow-up. Fingers crossed.