Do you address the fact that they're getting emotional, or on a downward spiral?

[Chosen]

I can almost always tell when uBPDh's getting triggered now.  I may not know the root cause, but you can him getting irritated, sighing heavily, slamming things instead of moving them... the same things that would trigger him if I did them (he would get mad at me for acting in those ways).

So I try to be "careful" when this happens, i.e. be more alert at my own responses, usually trying to sound as non-emotional as possible, the less I say the better (so as not to sound nagging or preachy), and also try to remind myself to be validating (I'm not very good that normally).  That will usually work if I'm aware of myself- "work" as in it will not make things worse.  He will usually still be in a bad mood until, say, he goes to bed.  So I'm not actually solving anything.  But at least I don't add fuel to the fire.  Then after some time (hopefully next morning or something) he will gradually be acting more calm.

But I don't know if I should address the elephant in the room when it happens.  I don't know if I should actively talk to him "you sound like you're stressed, can I help?"  or just let him deal with his emotions.  Because I feel like I've been there before.  I may invite him to talk, and then he'll say all these things that trigger me (e.g. put the blame on me) and end up making things worse.  And perhaps a lot of times he doesn't really know why he's upset (a lot of different reasons at the same time I suppose), and if I "force" him to address it, he can't process his feelings.  Would you directly address his actions/ expression of negative emotions in these situations?

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[Indigo15]

Hello! I can tell when he is triggered albeit not every time, I see it in his body language, the intensity of his tone etc... sometimes I feed into it and other times I ‘catch’ it and let him deal with it alone. It’s frustrating!
Has he been to therapy? After my husband went to therapy, I was able to broach the topic of BPD/splitting after he calms down - he acknowledges the split and we move on. I never really get what I need emotionally back from the split - I consider it a withdrawal from my emotional account and find a way to rebuild and come back to reality.
Anyway to answer your question, I do address the pink elephant but only after he went to therapy and acknowledged he actually has BPD .. before that it always ended badly with him saying his emotional / verbal abuse was warranted because of something that I did that caused his emotional distress.

[Chosen]

Thanks Indigo15.  He hasn't been diagnosed, will likely never be, doesn't have any type of therapy or counselling.  As you said, if I mention anything, he is likely to just say it's me causing it...