Some questions from a newbie - would love your help

[House of Mirrors]

Hi all 

OK a few things here I'd love your help/insights on:

1. If your high-functioning  uBPD is in firm denial about being BPD or even understanding what it is... .  how as a first pass would giving them some books on inner Child work be? I am just thinking gentle awareness of the pain source maybe. Good idea or potentially bad idea? Has anyone ever started this way?

2. Does anyone have any experience of being a 'recovering' codependent in a relationship with a BPD and how the changing of your boundaries affects them? Also, any good insights on setting sucessful boundaries? I am no doormat but want to learn more about effective boundary setting.

3. Also I am wondering how this might work... .  I now understand a little more about BPD behaviours and have SOME insight. So next time he displays these how successful as a strategy is non-engagement with raging and also maybe calling or explaining some of the behaviours being exhibited like, "No what you are doing now is projecting onto me and I am not owning it." or "That is your version of reality and you are entitled to hold it but it is not my truth." Is it possible to deflect and not own their blame or projection? Will it just make them rage more?

I did manage to talk him down from a rage last night which is a new one for me. I took my power back. Seemed to work more than the usual escalation.

Would love to hear from you on any of these.

Thanks in advance,

HoM

[arabella]

Hi! 

1. You can't really create awareness in someone else. This site definitely advises against trying to tell your pwBPD that they have a mental illness. That being said, if you want to gently introduce the idea of sources of pain, I would start with yourself. What I mean by that is I've found some success in getting materials for myself and then leaving them around for my husband to find. Sometimes I discuss the material with him in the context of helping myself. He occasionally picks up bits and pieces or decides to investigate further for his own benefit. I don't push it - it really is for me and I've become very aware of making sure that I stick to fixing my own 'stuff'!

2. I am a recovering codep. My H is actually responding rather well to my changing boundaries. I'm sure it depends greatly on the pwBPD though. My boundary creation plus detaching (I don't actually tell him, I just am acting differently) is, I think, helping to alleviate his fear of engulfment.

3. Non-engagement is 100% the way to go! It's really the only thing that works once a pwBPD becomes dysregulated. Validate and then walk away. I personally wouldn't recommend trying to explain anything - that's very invalidating and likely to escalate the situation. You might be able to bring up some of those concepts when he is calm and the ideas are abstract. Even then I'd keep it really impersonal and not use him as an example. What you are asking is really just a round-about way of telling him he has distorted thinking (i.e. a mental disorder). It doesn't matter, in the moment, why he is doing something, only that he is and you can't win - nothing you say will change his thinking, it will just make it sound like you think he is wrong (which is fine to think, but not a good idea to actually say).

How did you talk him down last night? Sounds like you're already on the right track!

[House of Mirrors]

Thanks Arabella,

Some interesting things there. I think to be honest I have read so much this week and have had a really difficult and emotionally draining week! I spend some time in my head educating myself and other time in my herto ignored feelings which is quite intense and isolating.

I think I have already gone against a lot of your advice! Doh! I am a really honest and truthful person and a lot of what I am doing for my recovery is about reclaiming MY voice and naming and being clear about MY issues so I have been clear with him that I am dealing with my stuff and looking into my family relationships and all other relationships including ours etc. BUT I just couldn't hold back yesterday morning from telling him is is uBPD... .  Doh! Of course, he denied THAT BS 

Last night I tried to name some of his behaviours and get him to realise the amount of emotional damage he has caused with his raging and blaming. He started to trigger and then I somehow pulled him out of it by instead of giving in to his anger and what HE wanted to do I expressed MY wishes and said that if he respected my feelings then he would listen to me. I actually put my foot down and it worked! Then we changed physical environment / location and it helped to create some distance to the convo we had had over our dinner. I can assure you he was not enjoying THAT converstion 

I think a lot of my behaviour at the moment is driven by reclaiming and exploring my rebellious child rather than appeasing his. He now knows he has another child to deal with - he ain't used to that. Maybe that is what has changed. I am not parenting him. If I can't go adult/adult or parent/child then I have to go the child/child route. It is kinda fun for me - new and exciting 

I am still well and truly in a House of Mirrors. There is just confusing stuff EVERYWHERE! I am just reaching out and experimenting... .  

HoM

[arabella]

I think it's great that you're finding your voice and learning about yourself! It's never wrong to want to discuss our own issues or to stand up for our values. I think the key is to accept that our pwBPD may not be able to give us the support or feedback we'd like. That's okay though - our work on ourselves is for ourselves!

So you see how trying to get him to face his own demons didn't really work and how that can be triggering. Oh well. The seeds are planted now. I'd let it rest and just see how things go. Just be aware that when you try to talk about yourself now, it could trigger him as he may think you're trying to circle back around to him again. As long as you don't do that, and are consistent, he'll get over it. Be careful you don't set yourself back trying in trying to deal with him either!

[House of Mirrors]

I hear you Arabella.

Would love to stay in touch with you - not sure how to friend people here?

Sounds like we are on similar pathways.

Are there a lot of recovering CDs here?

Have a great weekend by the way,

HoM

[schwing]

Hi House of Mirrors and  

1. If your high-functioning uBPD is in firm denial about being BPD or even understanding what it is... .  how as a first pass would giving them some books on inner Child work be? I am just thinking gentle awareness of the pain source maybe. Good idea or potentially bad idea? Has anyone ever started this way?

You know, another approach you might consider taking is grabbing some kind of Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills workbook and approach it as something everyone might benefit from (which is actually sort of true).  Rather than just giving your high-functiong uBPD loved one a book which they may or may not read (leading to conclusions they may or may not accept).  :)emonstrate that there are skills they can develop which can help them with every-day issues they might wish to address, like regulating emotions.  And if they see that you are working on the same skills (and not just them), they might not have to deal with any self-devaluation.

The problem is, your uBPD loved one may choose to perceive you as the one having an issue, rather than consider if they might have issues.  If you give them a book about inner child work, maybe they might identify with some of the issues.  But the minute they see any of those issues as a problem, they might start to devalue themselves and will then be overwhelmed by their self-devaluation (this is the part I don't think us non-disordered really get).  This is certainly the case if you approach them with the possibility of a stigmatized diagnosis such as BPD.

As I understand it, the hope is that if they start developing new skills for coping with dysregulating emotions (such as those leading to self-devaluation).  At some point in time, maybe they can handle associating flaws to themselves without relying on projection or dissociation to avoid self-devaluation.  But somewhere, somehow they must find the motivation to develop and rely on these skills, skills those of us who are non-disordered, might take for granted.

If they can't accept even their most basic issues (such as raging, devaluation, emotional dysregulation in general), then you really don't stand much of a chance getting them to consider (for very long) that they might have larger issues.

Never underestimate the ability of a person with BPD (pwBPD) to fully accept something one day, and then completely dissociate from it the next.

2. Does anyone have any experience of being a 'recovering' codependent in a relationship with a BPD and how the changing of your boundaries affects them? Also, any good insights on setting sucessful boundaries? I am no doormat but want to learn more about effective boundary setting.  

I don't see how this can be done.  As a recovering co-dependent, one of my major issues is the tendency to defer focusing on my own issues whenever a loved one presents with "more significant" problems/issues.  And if my loved one is inclined to perceive any effort on my part to work on my own issues as a sign of imminent abandonment, then they will always give me a reason to focus on them more than I should focus on myself.

I don't know your issues.  Maybe you are not a "doormat" but how much of your thinking and analysis is focus on your BPD loved one versus on your own issues?  What happens whenever you try to shift that ratio?

In terms of actual actions, what percentage of your actions are self-nurturing versus taking care of some issues re: your BPD loved one?

3. Also I am wondering how this might work... .  I now understand a little more about BPD behaviours and have SOME insight. So next time he displays these how successful as a strategy is non-engagement with raging and also maybe calling or explaining some of the behaviours being exhibited like, "No what you are doing now is projecting onto me and I am not owning it." or "That is your version of reality and you are entitled to hold it but it is not my truth." Is it possible to deflect and not own their blame or projection? Will it just make them rage more?

It may make them rage more if their expectation is that you appear to accept their blame and projections (see "extinction bursts".  You might find that your BPD loved one is attached to the dysfunctional dynamics of your relationship, even if they don't understand *why* they are attached to them.  For pwBPD, blame-projection and dissociation are their coping mechanisms for disordered feelings they may or may not even understand in themselves.  Their "explanations" for why they do x, y, or z may in fact be rationalizations for emotions they do not accept of themselves.

You are in the right place.

Best wishes, Schwing

[arabella]

I hear you Arabella.

Would love to stay in touch with you - not sure how to friend people here?

Sounds like we are on similar pathways.

Are there a lot of recovering CDs here?

Have a great weekend by the way,

HoM

I don't think there is really a 'friending' function here. You can send PMs and you can click on a user's name and then click from their page to see their most recent posts. I think that's about it? Feel free to PM me anytime.

I think there are a lot of CDs here. Some of them are recovering, many are not. Some think they're recovering but, umm... .  let's just say they are a little stuck at the beginning stages? It's very much an individual thing. Once you get up in your post count, you'll be able to access the Personal Inventory board - that's a good place to find people who are working through CD issues. Often you will hear people on the boards talk about 'detaching' or 'detaching with love' - this is very much the same as breaking the codependency bond, even if it's not labelled exactly the same way. Boundaries are also a hallmark of codependency in that people who are CD either don't have any or they let people trample them regularly (i.e. weak or unenforced boundaries). So I think you'll find many of the tools here, and the advice, dovetail quite neatly with recovering from CD.

[House of Mirrors]

Hi again 

Thank you both so much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it.

Scwhing – I really like your first suggestion. I ordered quite a few books fro Amazon yesterday and as I am in the first stages of confronting my codependency and his uBPD, I feel I have quite some learning to do! I finally feel like I have seen behind the curtain to the WHY of the behaviours (his and mine) and am now in a crazy experiment to gain some control of things. I will add some DBT books to the list once I have worked through the new books (and I ordered inner child books for me too as I think my recovery here is most important due to prioritising him for 12 years!)

It is a good job I have a keen interest in all things psychological or I would hate all this reading. As for him, I can’t see him reading really so maybe your suggestion is a VERY good one. I have warned him that he may see some changes in me. The first I noticed today when a very tiny thing pissed him off is that when he left the room I laughed to myself as I now understand WHY so it is much easier to not take it personally. It is like I have been told a secret and now I get it – all his behavior is de-mystified and my reactions and reasons for suffering in silence for years too.

I think one of the hard things about a relationship with a person with uBPD is that they are not ALL bad – it is just ongoing secrets and any rages that seem to injure the most. A lot of the time the relationship is good, we are friends as well as anything else and he can be very sweet. I see why people are sucked in for so many years – especially with a high-functioning uBPD. I finally feel like I ‘get’ him.

As to your point on recovering from CD. Well, I see it like this; my unconscious patterns have made me and kept me a CD and now that I see how and why those patterns were formed and am CONSCIOUS of them and most importantly I don’t want to STAY a CD – it is time for me to change. So when I catch myself focusing on his ‘stuff’ I make sure that I hand back as much as I can to him. I have done a lot of this recently from big things to small things (and I ask him to help me a lot more rather than do everything for me and him). He seems to be responding well to that and I try to remind him that he needs to take responsibility for himself rather than rely on me.

As for the BPD thing I can’t exactly hand that back to him so I think it’s helpful to understand what I can, look at my behaviours and how I can change them within the relationship to improve things and make sure I spend time working on my issues and reading books that will help me – as well as my ongoing counseling. I am committed to myself now whereas I was not before. I am strengthening my own identity and expressing my wants and needs more. I am still undecided as to how I will manage the relationship in the future and whether I will decide it is not healthy for me to stay – before I would cling like a classic CD no matter what so that is an improvement. I don’t feel scared of the unknown – I feel more committed to my path and recognise it is a journey and I don’t have all the answers or understanding right now.

In terms of percentages – I would say that until recently I did not look into my wants or needs emotionally and focused my energies on helping him with issues in his life so it was probably 5% me Vs. 95% him. I now see it as probably 60-70% me and the rest a focus on him so things HAVE changed. Early days I know. Also, he doesn’t seem to express or react to the abandonment thing as readily as other BPDs might. He doesn’t like being on his own but then he rarely is.

I have no intention anymore of taking his projections or blame. I will most likely tell him that he is entitled to his feelings and opinions but that we will have to agree to disagree and that I will not stand and listen to disrespect, angry outbursts or rages. We will see how that goes. If I can’t adult/child my way out of it I will try the rebellious child/rebellious child route. That tends to also work when kids are having tantrums – used to work a treat with my little bro ;0

Arabella – thanks again. I will try and stay in touch. Thanks for the tip about the posting quota too – I wondered why I couldn’t access that board.

Have a good weekend and thanks again,

HoM

[almost789]

Recommending books to them initially IS a good way. That's how I did it at first. I hate you don't leave me is a good one if he doesn't know he has BPD yet. There's tons of DBT stuff in books and online. I also recommended "we" me and my person with BPD wokr on the DBT skills. Though DBT was invented for BPD, it's been found to be helpful for alot of people with anxiety related issues. Jeffery Youngs book, reinventing your life is a workbook that deals with inner child stuff. This book does not contain the word borderline personality anywhere on the book. Very clever of him.

[arabella]

Another book you might eventually consider is 'The High Conflict Couple'. It's been recommended often here. The skills it teaches are DBT based and it is not aimed at people with BPD. It does mention BPD in the forward/intro, but only in the context that the person writing that section is a BPD specialist and came up with the techniques to treat that disorder. The book itself is BPD-free. Also, because it's aimed at couples - it might be a good way to get him involved!

[schwing]

As to your point on recovering from CD. Well, I see it like this; my unconscious patterns have made me and kept me a CD and now that I see how and why those patterns were formed and am CONSCIOUS of them and most importantly I don’t want to STAY a CD – it is time for me to change. So when I catch myself focusing on his ‘stuff’ I make sure that I hand back as much as I can to him. I have done a lot of this recently from big things to small things (and I ask him to help me a lot more rather than do everything for me and him). He seems to be responding well to that and I try to remind him that he needs to take responsibility for himself rather than rely on me.

I see this as the hard part of your endeavor: as a recovering CD, it is difficult enough to put yourself (ie. your emotional health) in the top priority of your concerns (well it is for me at least).  You must be wary that your uBPD loved one may sabotage that effort.  And they may do so partly because they may interpret your changing behavior and changing priorities as a sign of possible abandonment.

I recall in my BPD relationship, there was a stage when I was determined to focus my attention back upon myself.  But my uBPDgf was always able to bring my attention back squarely upon her.  And I always ended up deferring my self-attention, to attention to her.  Either she would be going through some kind of overt dilemma (perhaps of her choosing) which I felt compelled to support her through.  Or else the relationship itself felt unstable and I would have to again divert my attention to stabilizing our relationship. 

Your experience may be different from mine.  But just in case, be wary.  If it seems that fate is not giving you sufficient opportunity to take care of yourself, then you might need to consider it is not fate guiding the circumstances of your life.

As for the BPD thing I can’t exactly hand that back to him so I think it’s helpful to understand what I can, look at my behaviours and how I can change them within the relationship to improve things and make sure I spend time working on my issues and reading books that will help me – as well as my ongoing counseling. I am committed to myself now whereas I was not before. I am strengthening my own identity and expressing my wants and needs more. I am still undecided as to how I will manage the relationship in the future and whether I will decide it is not healthy for me to stay – before I would cling like a classic CD no matter what so that is an improvement. I don’t feel scared of the unknown – I feel more committed to my path and recognise it is a journey and I don’t have all the answers or understanding right now.

You sound like you are in a good position.

[Bulgakov]

"It is a good job I have a keen interest in all things psychological or I would hate all this reading."

I actually study psychology. This site has sucked me in a bit. I take what I learn from this site and try to connect it with what I am learning at university. Sometimes this site even distracts from homework, haha. It is great to listen to everyone's stories and to have a sounding board too. By great, I mean that it feels good to relate to others. It has been a lonely few years.

[SadWifeofBPD]

1. You can't really create awareness in someone else. This site definitely advises against trying to tell your pwBPD that they have a mental illness. That being said, if you want to gently introduce the idea of sources of pain, I would start with yourself. What I mean by that is I've found some success in getting materials for myself and then leaving them around for my husband to find. Sometimes I discuss the material with him in the context of helping myself. He occasionally picks up bits and pieces or decides to investigate further for his own benefit. I don't push it - it really is for me and I've become very aware of making sure that I stick to fixing my own 'stuff'!

I agree. 

The pwBPD in your life likely believes that you are the source of his/her problems, so telling that person that s/he may have NPD is too much for them to possibly accept. Likely, they're going to turn-around and say that YOU have BPD.

In hindsight, I wish I had known to do what is suggested above. 

[miglet]

I am new to this site, 24 hours ago I didn't even know it existed! Was up till past 2am reading on here last night, can't do that every night, but am so glad to have found people who actually know how I feel!

Today I told my husband that I wasn't responsible for his pain, and that I was no longer  going to take total responsibility for his happiness, because then there would be no room for my own. He raged for a while, but I told him that I was going to go out and would talk to him again when I returned, but only if he was ready to do so in a reasonable way.  He sees any disagreement with his wishes as a sign that I am about to abandon him. I have to find a way out, but right now I don't know what that is.

I think you are taking the right paths, I hope they are successful for you.

[SadWifeofBPD]

Today I told my husband that I wasn't responsible for his pain, and that I was no longer  going to take total responsibility for his happiness, because then there would be no room for my own. He raged for a while, but I told him that I was going to go out and would talk to him again when I returned, but only if he was ready to do so in a reasonable way.

I hope others read the above.  How I wish I had learned to say that I wasn't responsible for my H's pain and that he was responsible for his happiness.  I never thought to say that.  I guess as "wife and mom" I felt that my role was my ensuring family happiness.  How wrong I was. I also ddn't know/understand BPD was (didn't even know H had BPD until over 25 years into our marriage.) 

So many of us have been bewildered (and annoyed) when our pwBPD have said things like, "my pain is greater than yours," after they have been especially verbally cruel to us.  We've been "injured" by their deep-cutting words, but all they can say/think is that their "pain is greater" from a seemingly minor issue.  If I had known that the "pain" that H was talking about was a life-long pain rather than a "pain" from anything that had recently happened, I would have understood.

  He sees any disagreement with his wishes as a sign that I am about to abandon him. I have to find a way out, but right now I don't know what that is.

This is the confusing part that we face.  The things that that pwBPD view as "abandoning" are often just simple acts of trying to stop the escalating argument or whatever.  My H would say that I'm "frustrating" him when I would get in the car to get away from one of his raging rants where he would just keep repeating the same words over and over again.