Hi JMB1970,
Welcome aboard.
It sounds like you have had a difficult 7 months. I can imagine how stressful it must be coping with your mother's illness, financial problems, and ambivalent behavior from your partner.
The inability to regulate emotions is at the center of BPD. People with BPD (pwBPD) have a difficult time controlling their emotions, due to an inherent high negative affectivity (experience of negative emotions such as anger, depression, frustration, etc.), high emotional sensitivity, and inherited impulse control. Situational contexts and emotional stimuli have a significant effect on pwBPD. Due to a propensity for high emotional sensitivity a pwBPD, when faced with something that triggers intense emotion-linked responses will react to emotional situations (highly stressful situations), through shutting down/dissociating, the inability to control their mood dependent behavior, have distorted thinking processes, avoiding emotional cues that trigger them, and a lack of control of impulsive behaviors related to both positive and negative emotions. Coping with the intense emotions is difficult for a pwBPD and they will engage in a variety of maladaptive coping mechanisms.
Self-esteem and self-worth are interrelated to emotional dysregulation. PwBPD have low self-esteem and a lack of self-worth. The inner self-loathing many times is projected on to their partner. They will show extreme anger, bitterness, sarcasm, or verbal outbursts when a partner is seen as 'neglectful, uncaring, rejecting, or abandoning.' The perception of abandonment/rejection many times prompts a pwBPD to reject their partner before their partner rejects them. It is a primitive defense mechanism with the rationale, that once the partner of the pwBPD realizes they are a 'bad' or 'evil' person, they will eventually reject/abandon them. In sense, a pwBPD becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when they push a partner away.
Learning about BPD really does help with making sense out of baffling behaviors. Also when you learn about the behaviors, you will find that the origin of the behaviors truly has nothing to do with you. Take a look at this article, that has helped me understand BPD.
BPD: What is it? How can I tell?What specific things are you having the hardest time coping with?
maladaptive coping mechanisms, such as impulsive behavior, projection, avoidance,
