BPDs and pain?

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Hi, Everyone,

Divorced over a year from BPDXW, three years separated. In my "post-mortem," recalling all the odd behaviors and red flags over the decade we were together, something that always struck me from the beginning is this:  my XW would absolutely freak out disproportionately to any sort of physical pain. It was literally the reaction of a small child: screaming in a baby voice, looking at me with terrified eyes, curling up in a fetal position and moaning, extreme panic and anxiety. This is a middle-aged woman with an advanced degree in healthcare, with an accomplished resume in the health field, both treating patients and in a managerial capacity. Not that it's necessarily particularly relevant, but if she accidentally poked her eye? You'd think she had been shot.

I am aware of the literature of BPDs involving psychosomatic illness, frequent headaches, digestive problems, and she certainly had all of these as well. (Chronic diarrhea accompanying her frequent anxiety attacks was common.)

I believe part of it was her attention-seeking behavior, and I fell into my usual role of Daddy and caregiver, and I had to treat her as I did our children--literally rocking her and assuring her, putting her to bed... .

In any case,  has anyone else observed this bizarrely disproportionate and child-like response to pain?

[milo1967]

Hi, Everyone,

Divorced over a year from BPDXW, three years separated. In my "post-mortem," recalling all the odd behaviors and red flags over the decade we were together, something that always struck me from the beginning is this:  my XW would absolutely freak out disproportionately to any sort of physical pain. It was literally the reaction of a small child: screaming in a baby voice, looking at me with terrified eyes, curling up in a fetal position and moaning, extreme panic and anxiety. This is a middle-aged woman with an advanced degree in healthcare, with an accomplished resume in the health field, both treating patients and in a managerial capacity. Not that it's necessarily particularly relevant, but if she accidentally poked her eye? You'd think she had been shot.

I am aware of the literature of BPDs involving psychosomatic illness, frequent headaches, digestive problems, and she certainly had all of these as well. (Chronic diarrhea accompanying her frequent anxiety attacks was common.)

I believe part of it was her attention-seeking behavior, and I fell into my usual role of Daddy and caregiver, and I had to treat her as I did our children--literally rocking her and assuring her, putting her to bed... .

In any case,  has anyone else observed this bizarrely disproportionate and child-like response to pain?

[Setter Rob]

My BP wife is hypersensitive in every way--noise, ugliness, personal slights, and pain. And she has so many aches and pains that a good part of our daily conversation is taken up with them--neck, shoulders, back, digestion, feet, urinary tract, headaches, food and environmental allergies. Not to mention epilepsy and insomnia. She demanded a general anesthetic for a root canal because of a previous traumatic dental experience; but the experience was mine, she felt more trauma second-hand than I did in the surgeons' chair. Then, she felt pain after the procedure so badly that she almost canceled a trip to Hawaii departing ten days later. She eats Tylenol for breakfast. And she's accident prone--cut herself on a styrofoam coffee cup, twice. Lots of luck!

[zipline]

my uBPDex had chronic neck/back/shoulder pain which always required me to massage when it flared up.  She didn't talk about it until a few weeks into our tornado of a relationship. There may have been correlations with stress, but I wasn't paying attention. I'm sure she found me stopping what I was doing to focus on her satisfying.

She also had Dyshidrosis (a kind of eczema) on her hands and feet which she said first appeared after her traumatic split with the previous love of her life. God. That breakup was such a mystery to me, as I'm sure ours will be to next one

[Pretty Woman]

Mine had neck, back and shoulder pain. When she dysregulates she usually has horrific migraines. Every break up she would have horrible migraines.

[Mel1968]

My ex is very sensitive to pain, and touch in general, experiencing both far more intensely than I would imagine most people do. I've never really felt that it was an attention seeking thing, but a genuine hypersensitivity.