How can I manage the hurt feelings

[Tabitha247]

Does anyone have a way of dealing with this one?

My w/BPD was clearly hurt by the fact that my sister gave out a pile of birthday cards at a recent family gathering for birthdays she had missed throughout the year and did not give one to my w/BPD.  I think this was probably because she does not like him.  Not many people do, as obviously he is difficult to deal with.  Until a year or so ago she had tolerated him. 

This is just one of the facts which has  ruminated in his mind since the incident (about 4 weeks ago)  and is currently coming out on a daily basis in the form of insulting remarks regarding my sister. My w/BPD is not mentioning the reason for the insulting remarks and my interpretation is a guess, it may not be accurate. 

I have reached a point where I want to set some boundaries and have decided that I do not want to tolerate insults to my family (I have actually lived with daily insults towards my family for about 30 years).

My current strategy was to clearly state that I did not wish to tolerate the insult to my sister, I finished eating my lunch and then  calmly  announced that I would be going into a different room as I was not able to remain in the room due to the insult.  I don't feel calm, I'm raging inside, and as I'm writing this I'm raging even more when I think of the way he has insulted my family on a more or less daily basis over the years.

However, I think that I must now take deep breaths and relax myself.  I think I can deal with this for myself as I will give myself time to calm down.

What I would really like to know is: are there any strategies I can employ to reduce the hurt he is clearly feeling, whilst still retaining the integrity in my mind of my sister.  I think that perhaps I need to try validating - but honestly find the idea of this really difficult. 

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[flowerpath]

Tabitha247, my heart goes out to you.   I have experienced this for 30 years as well.

It is fairly (Ha! Should be “unfairly”) routine that in a moment of anger toward me, when my husband runs out of words to insult me about an incident, he immediately finds someone in my family to insult.  Even the ones who are dead!   

I also need suggestions for better ways to respond.

[Cat21]

Hi Tabitha and Flowerpath. My uBPDh does the same thing to me, and it is enfuriating. One of my boundaries is refusing to be present for a flurry of insults, and thanks to some serious enforcing on my part, he's beginning to figure out (I think!) that I won't stand for it, so he's been able to come out of some dysregulations sooner. The very moment the argument turns accusatory and insulting for me or any of my family members, I leave. It doesn't matter what time of the day or night it is. Most of the time, I just out to my car and practice deep, cleansing yoga breaths. Sometimes (yesterday), I go to Target and do some shopping!

Flowerpath, it sounds like you are enforcing your boundary, but it still makes you feel very angry. I totally understand! I, too, feel angry when I take a time out; it usually takes me about 15 mins or so to truly calm down. Distraction is a big key for me. I encourage you to stick with enforcing your boundary. It might not curb the insults about your family completely, but your change in processing those insults will be noticed by your pwBPD. Therefore, the "episodes" might be over sooner.

I hope this helps! I know how awful and unfair it feels.

[Tabitha247]

Thanks for the comments Flowerpath and Cat21.

So the -conditioning  process of shutting off and creating a physical distance is my skill to practice.

I can see why you are sit in the car doing Yoga breathing as going out of the building prevents the BPD Following you around to whichever room you go into.

[Stalwart]

Hey Tabitha:

I can so associate with the situation you're in and the insults and run downs of family members. It seems that anyone that's important to us or could stand between my wife and I is in some way a threat to her. That's why so many of us become estranged from our previous friends and have the same difficulty staying true to our family members.

It's a catch 22 and not a pleasant one or simply to deal with, tolerate or manage. I so feel for you here but I also hear something that I'm not certain you've recognized and that's that your husband also feels insulted by your sister's actions. After so much water under the bridge it's not easy for family members to deal with a spouse that has BPD.

The best thing I can see that you can do in your situation is talk to your sister and your family about the situation. You need their help and support to maintain your relationship on both sides of the fence. It would have been so much more considerate of your sister to have included your husband with the missed birthday card than make of point of directly leaving him out - that is insulting – even if she does feel justified in herself for doing it. So if you're looking for a reason for validation it does exist in that one isolated case. Maybe in her eyes he doesn't deserve to be recognized but is your sister thinking about your best interests, your emotional connections and your needs by acting that way toward your husband?

It's been my experience that BPD certainly doesn't relate to 'simple-mindedness' so of course he realized immediately he’d been slighted (just like he feels he has been by every other person in his life.) As far as having feelings go; your husband’s feelings are so much more intense and observant than your sister’s if she doesn’t suffer from a personality disorder that it becomes evident who should be the ‘bigger man’ in the situation. Not for him necessarily, but for you and for your needed relationship with her and your need to bring peace into your own home.

There came a time when I had to sit with my older daughters who were confused about my wife’s past treatment of me and ask them to support me and my choices to stay with her and try to help her and work our marriage out. They stepped up to the challenge and started to pay a lot more attention and respect to my wife (she isn’t their mother.) It made the world of difference in what I have to live in now and how she treats them. It hasn’t ended every bit of negativity toward them but hey sometimes even children do have some aspects of their personalities that aren’t perfect either.  I’ve yet to find a person that’s perfect including myself. It takes the bigger people with the abilities to make the positive changes to step into the challenges and bring about better dynamics. My daughters were ‘the bigger people’.

I don’t know if this has helped and please understand completely is isn’t meant to criticize or attack. It’s just somewhere in the screwed-up and challenging dynamics you need the help of other people that care for you, love you and want for you to step up and help you with the difficulties. None of us are islands, nor can we do these challenges by ourselves, they’re just too difficult. Maybe, just maybe it’s time to talk to your family and ask for their help.

You can’t change him but you can certainly manage to change the responses and dynamics with the support of other people that love you enough to look past their distaste for him.

Best of luck with it and I hope you can find solutions that bring peace into your home Tabitha.

[Tabitha247]

Hi Stalwart

What you have said certainly sounds as if it would work,  i.e. let the other  people behave like bigger people and recognise the hurt they may have caused and also recognise that .their hurt is not as bad.   I should have said that my husband is uBPD.  I have not specifically said to any of my family what the problem is, clearly they know and have experienced there is a problem but  would not wish to discuss it with me.  No one wants to accept that there is a problem, even his mother when she was alive would not recognise a problem and any discussion always resulted in me being told to leave her house.   When my children were young my family  preferred not to accept invitations to visit  so as not to be subjected to the rage and pointing out that they felt by visiting me they were causing upset so felt it better to stay away. 

My sister does take medication for panic attacks (I don't think its a personality disorder) and this means that she never enters into controversy, just walks away from it.

What I'm saying is I'm not really sure how to handle it... .at the moment it's not out in the open or discussed, I only came to recognize and come up with my own diagnosis of the behaviour after being put in touch with the 'Walking on Eggshells' book by someone I met in a further education class. Over the years I have recognised that I have had to come to terms with the sense of loss of my siblings, probably still hoping to have some relationship with them, but very difficult and  but weddings and Christmas are always going to throw everything up in the air.

I'm not sure if I'm being very clear in my response but just trying to let go of some feelings and knowing that I need to find a way round it.  At the moment the best solution seems to be to go out and take some exercise.  I do have another dilema on a separate issue which I'm going to post later after the exercise.

[an0ught]

Hi Tabitha247,

What I would really like to know is: are there any strategies I can employ to reduce the hurt he is clearly feeling, whilst still retaining the integrity in my mind of my sister.  I think that perhaps I need to try validating - but honestly find the idea of this really difficult.  

this may be a good place to start with validation. For it to feel comfortable please study more workshops on it - you need to feel comfortable with what you do to come across credible. Because in the end validation is a lot about being truthful. A lot depends on shifting perspective and being more clear about facts and emotions being different things with different weights in different contexts. A lot also depends on you making a clear distinction between yourself and him. Validation is focusing on - him - his emotions/perceived reality - at the moment. Generally validation does not try to judge or shift but to simply reflect things as they are and put them in perspective (without much judgment).

Your sister possibly because she does not like him or possibly because she simply was afraid of him overreacting to wrong words on a card did not give him anything. He was publicly excluded and thus humiliated and of course he is upset. Those feelings can be easily validated. That he is feeling like he is also is totally understandable - others in similar situations feel the same. That also can be validated (context). The fact that he does not like her and the feeling seems to be mutual for whatever reason can also be validated. It is important for him to know you acknowledge this uncomfortable reality. It may be also ok to share once that you feel uncomfortable with the two not getting along with each other and the problem can't be solved by you and you got to live with the tension.

Of course his reaction is overblown - but that judgment won't help him to reign in emotions. Validation gives him an understanding where he is and a chance to reign in overflowing emotions eventually.

Keep in mind it their conflict and not yours and a risk is that it becomes yours. It may be worth taking a look at the Karpman drama triangle: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=108440.0