My spouse self harmed after years of not and then did not tell me -Advise-

[Another_guy]

(After a quick re-read I feel like I need to add that I travel for work and can be away for weeks at a time. That is why these things can get so out of had as when I am away I am on call 24/7 and sometimes can only talk for 1-2 hours a day)
So I have been together with my wife for 15 years. At the beginning of our relationship self harm was very common and something we worked on very hard to stop. It took a couple of years into our relationship to get self harmed to not be at least a weekly occurrence. Fast forward to the past year she has been going through therapy where they are working on EMDR through this we have found out that she has BPD AuADHD CPTSD. We are actively seeking out a DBT therapist for her to try.

Last week her best friend had messaged her asking how she was doing. My wife told her that she wasn’t doing very good as she was having a really low mental health day and needed to clear her head. Not thinking anything about it further both my wife and I continued talking about some of the things that she was currently stressing over. Two days later we get a call from her friends partner informing us that the friend had to be checked into an emergency behavioral health center due to her being a danger to herself and others. After a little digging on my wife’s part we find that she was admitted the night that the friend had messaged my wife. Now my wife has been spiraling and her therapist canceled on her due to a last minute health issue. This sent my wife for even more of a spiral that lead to her messaging me two separate suicide notes on two separate days between then and her next therapy appointment. Now here we are 3 days after the last suicide note, with which I stayed up all night with her on the phone, I was able to get home. She was able to talk to her therapist and things started to turn around for her mentally. She is doing better.

But she then confides in me that she had ended up cutting before she spoke to me that night she sent the suicide note. She said she had planned on killing herself but found out she couldn’t do it so she sent me the note instead of leaving it on her phone. Now I was very hurt the night that she sent me the note instead, but I am more angry that she cut and then hid that from me. I am trying to find ways to talk about it with her but I end up getting so upset about it that I start giving her one word responses when we are talking and we had to have a long talk about how I feel and how it isn’t fair to her that I told her I could had the mental capacity to talk about these things and then don’t communicate when I am too emotional to not talk about it anymore. I feel like I am right to be upset but these things need to be talked about. I haven’t yet been able to get past my anger but I need to find a way to resolve this within myself so that we can get through it and allow more open communication.

I think I am writing this more to vent but if anyone can make sense of this rambling and point me towards some book or podcast or YouTube video that could help I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

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[kells76]

Hi there Another_guy, glad you reached out for some support.

There are some heavy things in your relationship and it’s been that way for a long time. It makes sense that you could feel any number of ways right now, including angry & frustrated. You want good for your wife, yourself, and your relationship, yet when situations come up like your W hiding her self harm from you, it’s too much.

Can I ask, was your W accepting of her diagnoses? From your post it does sound like she is open to real treatment.

And, importantly, especially for your question of how to navigate your anger in a nondestructive way — do you have a therapist for yourself?

In my situation, even though it’s my husband’s kids’ mom who has many BPD traits, I have needed a therapist for years, so I can have a support person who isn’t stressed out at the same time I am.

In the meantime, I wonder if our thread on how to be more empathetic to the pwBPD in our life could apply to your situation? Take a look and let us know;

kells76

[Pook075]

Hello and welcome.  I'm so sorry you're going through this- the "cutter" in my family was my BPD daughter, so I can relate to how you feel.  It's devastating.

It might help for me to share what my kid has told me in recent years after she's gone through years of intensive therapy and now lives a semi-normal life (although there are still very tough days every now and then).  She said that when she gets really down, it's like her body shuts down and she can't really feel anything.  No hope.  No energy.  No nothing...she feels like she'd be better off dead. 

So by cutting herself, it brings pain, and she has to focus on the pain since she's the one causing it.  And by focusing on the pain, all the other stuff that led to her feeling suicidal sort of fades away, at least for a little while.  Once the crisis passes, so does the need to cut.  But over time, it does sort of become an addiction to block out the rest of the world since it's impossible to focus on anything else at the time.

I shared that to say that when your wife is cutting, it's part compulsion and part treatment...even though it's hard for us to envision it that way.  She's doing this because she's in crisis and her mind can't process how to get past whatever she's dealing with.  It becomes so overwhelming that she needs something to focus on completely.  For you or me, that could be a great Netflix show or something like that.  But your wife needs more because of how her mind absolutely spirals.

By the way, that's also why drug and alcohol abuse are so prevalent in the BPD community.  It's just a different vice with possibly worse long-term effects.

Once I really understood why my kid cut, my thoughts went from anger/frustration to compassion.  She did it because she felt like she had to in order to avoid something much, much worse.  To me, it's heartbreaking that anyone could feel that way and not have enough strength to talk to someone and work through it.

I hope that helps!