I am hoping someone out there can give me some advice on how to deal with a huge relapse and what feels like will be a major episode of the "silent treatment". Can anyone offer any advice on how to cope with an extended silent treatment and circular reasoning from your partner?
My wife is uBPD, and has been very prone to shutting down and pretending I do not exist when things become too overwhelming, usually for a few days, but no longer than a week. Things have gotten a bit better (if you can call what happened better) since she made threats of suicide and of killing our pets two years ago - after she started staring at the pet cages while holding a kitchen knife I called in the police, which resulted in her being detained for a few hours for assessment, being prescribed a low dose of Zoloft, and having to go for some counseling with a social worker, which she had not done before. She was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and depression, although I informed the medical staff the night she was brought in by the police that I suspected BPD. At any rate, after about six sessions, the worker felt that she had a good handle on what caused the anxiety and told her that she only had to come back if she felt the need to talk, which she has not (in over a year) and has not made contact with her appointed psychologist through the university where she is a student to up her dosage of Zoloft, which she has said she may do when she is having a good day.
In spite of this, things have been better, although she has had some bad episodes where she has been very over tired or over stressed where she has shut down for a couple of days. This time around though she is showing some new behaviour - after extremely over stressing about a committee meeting at her university, she shut down completely and is not allowing me to do any housework in front of her, and is performing duties that I normally do like feeding the pets in the evening in front of me. When she shuts down, her reasons are always that she feels she is the maid, and does all of the work in the house and with the pets, and I just look after myself and my selfish needs and ignore what is causing her anxiety. I acknowledge that she does do a great deal of the housework, as I am out of the house more than I want due to work (commutes to my work areas are 1 to 2 hours one way), but I do willingly participate in everyday tasks and work with her for pet care (we do cleaning and feeding together in the mornings, I do supplements when I get home and handle bedtime feeding while she is in bed getting down time). Adding to this issue is her anxiety and moods surrounding if and when we do jobs - she never feels like meal planning for the week when I am home in the evenings, does not like how I do dishes, changes work plans at the last minute, etc., so she does them herself, sometimes with a sarcastic remark later about how I don't want to do things. She also assigns me jobs around the house where neither of us have any background in, like appliance repair, where I have no idea what I am doing, and gets upset when I don't have the time to dedicate to figuring out what is going on and how to fix what is wrong (I should note that we are both in PhD programs, with hers nearing completion and mine hopefully being transferred to a new university due to bad department management at my old one - no stress there for either of us!
). This does cause some stress, although at times she is understanding of my schedule, but this time around feels much worse than anything in a long time, and I am scared about where it can lead - how do you cope with long-term silence and being shut out from much of your life? Are there any suggestions on how to deal with the circle of self-fulfilling negative prophecies where the only possible outcome from a situation seems to be me failing all expectations and orders?
Sorry for being so long winded with this post, but I thought that some background history was needed to explain what has been happening! Thank you for making it through!
