Hi Household1,
I'm glad that you decided to join us. I'd like to welcome you to bpdfamily. I can see how frustrating and hopeless it would feel when a pwBPD won't listen to us and will direct disproportionate anger towards you. I thought the same thing as you, we had a young family and I wanted to stay in the marriage so that I could be close to the kids and protect them. What I didn't know at the time is that I can do a better job, more peacefully outside of the marriage. Anyways thats enough about me.
You have a good list of things that you're doing for yourself, for self care and coping too, I do have advise for you and I hope that it helps. Firstly, don't JADE, I got caught in this trap too, so I know how it feels. Don't Justify, Argue , Defend, Explain, say things once or maybe twice.
There's another member that has quote that I like a lot, it goes something like this
Reality is open to debated, emotions and feelings are real I want to break this down and compare it with your story. Reality is open to debate. How we perceive something may be perceived differently by someone else. Let's say that you're a witness to an accident and there are several other witnesses. How one person filters that event is going to be different than another witness. That being said, if my exuBPDw thinks that the sky is red, I know now to not JADE Because she really thinks that the sky is red, that's fine, I know differently and I don't have to explain my reality to her.
Secondly, emotions and feelings are real. I'd like to continue with the car accident analogy, the common theme with the non disoredered witness would be that feelings would follow after the facts, not before. Now a pwBPD feelings equals facts, so how she feels in that moment is real to her. A pwBPD feel low self worth, low self esteem, self loathe and self hate, how we communicate can smooth out communication glitches. It helps to validate what a pwBPD feels first before we say anything else and package our truth at the end. Now, i'm not saying to validate everything, don't validate the invalide, validate the valid.
Lastly, a pwBPD cannot self sooth like a non disordered person would, BPD is an emotional dysregulation disorder and it takes a pwBPD a lot longer to return to baseline, again i've fallen for this trap with JADE'ing and making things worse with invalidating, but it's perfectly understandable considering a) we didn't know better b) we usually have a lot of resentful feelings because we're fixing things and foregoing our needs in the r/s at our expense, we can't keep holding that in and that resentment comes out. That being said, i'd put the boundary on you when she starts to rage, find some something to do that changes the tempo at home, leave and say that you're going to run some errands and if she needs something, don't subject yourself to her angry tirades or try to reason with her, you're not responsible for her feelings or sooth her.