Blaming you for suicidal thoughts?

[thisagain]

Does anyone else's pwBPD blame you for their suicidal thoughts? And if so, how do you cope with that?

Longer story in another thread but here is the short version of why she's blaming me: She has improved significantly, but often gets upset with me for things that I see as side effects of the years of abuse. Like saying something passive-aggressively because I'm afraid to say it directly, or getting nervous (literally triggered in the PTSD sense) when she has very intense emotions because I'm afraid she's dysregulating. I am actively working on those, but it's hard to be perfect right away.

So she'll tell me "it's not okay that I feel like I can't be angry around you," and I'll tell her that when you get angry I get scared because it reminds me of when you used to attack me for no reason (she agrees that she used to attack me for no reason). I sometimes use SET but it doesn't change her response. Rarely she listens and understands, but most of the time she paints herself black. And if she's already stressed or feeling bad about herself, it can lead to her becoming suicidal.

So today she comes home from therapy and threatens to break up with me. She says it's unacceptable that she can be feeling okay and then after talking with me she wants to kill herself (which we all agree on, but she made it clear she thought it was my problem and not hers). Am I right to feel that suicidal thoughts from guilt about treating me badly, or from her inability to handle my normal human emotional responses to her behavior, are 100% her problem?

It's not like I regularly remind her of it for no reason. I only mention it when I think it's important context for her to understand my challenges, and even then I try to avoid it. I am going to try harder to validate more and not mention my hurt when she's already starting to dysregulate or already feeling bad about herself. But it's hard to accept that I'm NEVER allowed to voice the hurt and fear. And it really disturbs me to be blamed for her suicidal thoughts ever. 

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[Wrongturn1]

Yes, you are right - her blaming you for her suicidal thoughts reflects disordered thinking on her part and is 0% your fault. 

Seems to me that it's black and white thinking that she is doing here.  When she realizes that her behavior has hurt you and she cannot deny it, she can't just say to you what a normal person would: "I realize my past behavior has hurt you, and I'm deeply sorry about that - I will be working hard to prove to you that things will be different in the future."  She ends up painting herself black and ultimately finds herself deserving of the death penalty. 

Hopefully her therapy will help with the black and white thinking. 

I get similar suicidal ideation from my uBPDw when I acknowledge that her accusations, dysregulations, etc. have hurt me.

[thisagain]

Thanks for the support! I think that's exactly what's going on.

Her therapy is somewhat addressing the black-and-white thinking, but she also has the therapist majorly duped about the severity of her illness. The therapist is not equipped to deal with BPD at all, and has some weird prejudices about pwBPD that keep her from seeing it in my partner. One time I described to the therapist some incidents that clearly showed dysregulation and black-and-white thinking, and the therapist says "well we know she has anxiety, what do you want her to do about it?" 

She was in the suicidal guilt place before she went to T yesterday, and came home angry at me and insistent that we had to break up unless I agree that her illness is very mild PTSD and half of our problems are my fault. (I agree in the sense that most fights are caused by her flipping out BPD-style and me reacting in a less-than-ideal way, but that's not how she meant it.)

It's happened a couple times that she comes out of a therapy session with this kind of false empowered attitude, where she's like acting out how a normal assertive person would behave, but in the situation that she's made up in her head. So she'll affect a very calm tone of voice (with the rage seething underneath) and say things like "I won't let you keep making me feel this way, it's not okay for me to feel fine before I talk to you and suicidal after, this has to stop, I'm starting school in the fall and I won't let you ruin that for me, if you start to ruin it for me we'll be over so fast." When it's obvious that what's making her feel this way and ruining everything for her is her mental illness.

[Wrongturn1]

... .insistent that we had to break up unless I agree that her illness is very mild PTSD and half of our problems are my fault.

A couple of thoughts here:

1) Why does it matter what you believe the problem is?  Whether PTSD or BPD, it's her behavior that matters, and your armchair diagnosis does not seem relevant to that.  I would avoid being pressured into accepting her version of reality.  If you believe it's more likely BPD, then stick to your beliefs and don't accept hers - don't let a disordered person dictate your reality.

2) Assigning percent fault to each individual is not helpful.  Each individual is 100% responsible for their 50% of the relationship.  Committing your best efforts to the success of the relationship makes sense, but assigning percentages of blame seems unproductive. 

[thisagain]

Thanks Wrongturn, I fully agree with both. For a while earlier this year she was really seeming open to my input, so I tried to get her into DBT and share some of what I'd learned about BPD... .it didn't go well. So I backed off and now just focus on pointing out the specific behaviors. She got really pissed at me for saying that I and my therapist saw BPD patterns in her, so now when she demands that I say she doesn't have it or has PTSD instead, I can say "it's not my job to diagnose you, remember? I'm just concerned about how you treat me sometimes and I don't care what you call it."

I know for myself that her thinking can be severely disordered, and the insight and lessons here resonate with my experience. I suspect that she's not going to be able to hold up a functional life until she gets treatment that's targeted to her disorder, but that's not my problem. I'm just focusing on having boundaries and staying off the roller-coaster.

As for the percentage of fault, I just told her that I know that a relationship has two people and it takes two people to have a fight. And apologized for getting complacent lately and not working hard enough to be a good partner for her (by which I mean that I'd been forgetting to use the lessons, but she doesn't need to know that).