Confused about when to practice validation and when to walk away

[lake]

I feel quite confused about when it is best for me to listen calmly and practice validation and when I am re-inforcing abusive behavior. My son is 20 and has strong BPD traits.

He tends to dysregulate if I say no to something he wants. This has been true for the last 18 years, though the dysregulation has gotten much more extreme in recent years. I would say this makes up about 99% of his dysregulation in the home.

The pattern goes like this:
He asks for something.
If I believe it would be harmful to give it to him, I say no (and explain why if there is any need for an explanation).
(The other version is that he does something at home that is dangerous or illegal and I tell him this is not allowed.)
He then starts to get angry and hostile.
I have tried validation at this point, but it never seems to work. I stay calm, and avoid saying unkind things back, and I stick to my boundary or rule. These tend to be about things that don't have room for negotiation because they are so dangerous.

The validation does not seem to help because his goal is to get to a yes, not to have his feelings validated. He senses that the validation is intended as a way to de-escalate things and not give in to his demand so it infuriates him though obviously that is not my intent. If I stay present, listening to him calmly, he gets more and more dysregulated and becomes abusive. He will say the most hurtful and sometimes the most threatening things he can think of and shout obscenities. (He knows that being called a b****, c*** and wh*** bothers me more than him just shouting f*** this! so he goes for the words he knows deliver the greatest sting.) He will also go into physical insults of the most extreme sort. If I try to walk away, he starts shouting in an even more frantic and agitated way that I have been walking away from him his entire life, have never listened to him, and he will mix in a tirade of swear words, and sometimes include a vague suicide threat or a threat toward me.

When is the right point in this predictable and often repeated sequence to try to walk away? What better way can I handle this? I know I am contributing to this cycle of dysregulation but I can't seem to break out of it. There have been times when I have resolved to listen compassionately for as long as he wants to talk. He can keep up the accusations for as long as several hours and I have the sense that the more he repeats them, the more he believes them (things that never happened). (It's like the speech is solidifying the delusions into fact.)  I have also tried walking away at the first sign of his starting to get abusive. Neither version helped. In the first version, I feel shell-shocked by the end of it. In the second version, he feels abandoned and terrible.

I would love to get some feedback on this.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Gorges]

You have done a good job at describing an all too familiar scenario.  My daughter has made a lot of gains and more because she grew into adulthood and I basically let her go and set firm boundaries.  I have not found validation to be very helpful with my relationship with my daughter.  I seem to get it wrong and she gets even more angry.  I actually believe that the validation probably confused her.   You just described it perfectly in your post.
My daughter has been doing great, but at the end of the college semester when she screwed up a few things and her anxiety was high she became verbally abusive.  What we decided after the blow up this weekend is that I am not a good person for her to talk to when she is upset.  She agreed that she talks to me expecting me to "solve her problems" and we both agreed how ridiculous that is.  She joked later with my son, "mom is not a good person to go to when you want sympathy" and I agreed.  I said, "I will take care of my emotions and you take care of yours".  I will recommend that she call a hotline or something else because if I even attempt to be helpful as she is ranting, I am reinforcing a bad relationship habit.  Any other person would leave the relationship with her and she will continue to lose friends (as she has) if she keeps this up.

I feel that as soon as it gets abusive, you need to leave the conversation.  In fact, I would encourage your son not to ask for anything where "no" is a possibility because it seems to upset him so much.  You are not responsible for his abusive behavior.  He is.

[lake]

Thanks, Gorges, for your response and suggestions. It sounds like you have made great progress with your daughter and it is inspiring to hear about it.

The most serious area of conflict right now is my not letting him into the main part of the house. (As I think I said in an earlier post, I had a small studio made for him on the property so he would not be homeless.) He regards this arrangement as cruel, wrong, rejecting, a sign I have "given up on him", and he says he is lonely in the studio. I feel a lot of heartache about this. It has come to this arrangement because if he dysregulates inside the house, he will not necessarily allow someone to walk away from him and has used physical force and threats of violence and some actual violence. The recent "no's" involve his asking to be allowed to come and go in the main rooms of the house.

On the positive side, he has been clean and sober for about nine weeks, started a new job a couple of weeks ago, and has been working on not getting so angry. His most recent violent episode in the house was about six weeks ago (I have not let him back in since) and he went into an abusive rage at me on the street about two weeks ago. He feels his positive changes mean he should be allowed back in ... .but while I recognize that he is making heroic efforts (he has used drugs to control his moods for the last four years so his sobriety is a very huge thing), I feel no sense of certainty that he will not get abusive if he is let back in the house and something does not go the way he thinks it should.

[wendydarling]

Hi  lake 

It can be confusing can't it. Have you tried S.E.T? This workshop also talks about use of validation and there is a link to D.E.A.R.M.A.N too.Communication | S.E.T (Support Empathy and Truth)

Let us know what you think.

WDx

[incadove]

Hi Lake

The most serious area of conflict right now is my not letting him into the main part of the house. (As I think I said in an earlier post, I had a small studio made for him on the property so he would not be homeless.) He regards this arrangement as cruel, wrong, rejecting, a sign I have "given up on him", and he says he is lonely in the studio. I feel a lot of heartache about this. It has come to this arrangement because if he dysregulates inside the house, he will not necessarily allow someone to walk away from him and has used physical force and threats of violence and some actual violence. The recent "no's" involve his asking to be allowed to come and go in the main rooms of the house.

Its great that your ds is respecting your rule of not coming and going, and not using substances, that shows a lot of self control and that he is capable of respecting boundaries.  Sounds like he is making real progress, and you want to support that and lessen his pain while not letting him be abusive towards you.

I agree with Georges to cut off the conversation when it becomes abusive beyond whatever line you draw.  I would suggest using some warnings in the conversation, for myself the line is name-calling.  So recognizing, 'you called me a name.  If you do that again, I am going to walk away for a half hour and come back and see if you have calmed down'.  And then if he does it again, walk away immediately, and when he calls after you reply "I will come back in a half hour and I will talk to you then if you can talk without calling me names".  For this to be successful it might be best to accept other kinds of negative talk for a while, and focus on just the clear issue of name-calling.  For him to realize that you will come back, might reduce the rejection.

On the not coming in the house, I definitely would validate the feeling of rejection there, because it is very normal to feel rejected if you can't come into your parents' home even if there are very good reasons for it!   Maybe respond positively by offering to go out somewhere, bringing over treats to his studio, asking him for an invitation to come over so he is in control of it (and accepting of course if he denies you access, which I think is likely as he may want to feel the same level of control).  Trying to do spontaneous positive things during the times when abuse is not occurring, can increase the attention during neutral or positive times, I think.  Even just recognizing, like 'you look down today' is a positive thing because its like being seen.

If he's holding down a job that sounds like something to celebrate and validate, in whatever way you can. 

Maybe if he damaged things in the house, would it be possible for him to 'earn' the right to re-enter by fixing things, with the understanding that he would lose the right if he uses any abusive language when in your home?  But I understand if you just need him to stay out entirely until you are comfortable. 

Best of luck, sounds like you have gotten control of the situation for yourself, are managing to support your son and stay calm in the face of his dysregulation, so kudos to you! 

[GaGrl]

Once they reach a point of dysregulation, validation isn't the tool to use... .validation is useful as a tool to prevent the dysregulation.

I agree... .look at at SET.

And good job at maintaining first-round boundaries. Don't feel guilty when you need to walk away from a conversation in which you've demonstrated your boundary, used several tools, and it is clear he is going the route of dysregulation!

[lake]

Wendydarling and Gagrl, Thanks for those suggestions. I have not tried SET and DEARMAN yet and will read them carefully and maybe practice on paper before trying them. I read Valerie Porr's book and Bon Dobbs' book about a year and a half ago and I think that was when I starting trying harder to validate under circumstances when that would not normally have occurred to me.

Incadove, I have seen really huge progress in my son in the recent weeks. He has tried so hard so many times to stop using drugs and felt a kind of resigned despair that he would find himself using again despite all his promises to himself. This time, with no rehab or program or meetings (all of which he says make him feel worse and make him crave drugs), he made a very clear decision to stop without anyone's help. This sounds harder, yet he has been clean since early October (prior to this he was using massive amounts of things in terrible combinations and I would wake up with a pounding heart in the middle of the night, never knowing if he was still alive). Before taking up drugs, he was a great student. As soon as he stopped using in October, he began intensely studying/learning again (online on Khan Academy and another learning site). He has now got a second job, and when I looked out the window yesterday he was outside sweeping the front steps and driveway.

He has made so much progress that I would let him in the main house if it were just me living here but I am concerned about his younger brothers. His rages have taken a very big toll on them and his last rage in the house was directed at the youngest and was violent (this has never happened before). Because he had been clean and sober for several weeks, I can't blame it on drugs and assume it won't happen again. Even when the rage is directed at me (as it almost always is), it upsets the younger brothers badly.  When he rages in the house, he will flatly refuse to leave and will remove my phone from me roughly if I say I am calling the police. Because of this, it is much harder for me to control how far things go. Dozens of times, my attempts to walk away when he had crossed way too far into abuse have been physically stopped by him.

I really like your suggestions about having a clear line, giving a warning, and making it clear I am taking a half hour pause in the conversation and not just abandoning it altogether. This will be much easier to do now that he is clean. (Agreeing to talk to someone who is high on coke in half an hour wouldn't work because he might be even angrier in half an hour depending on whether he used more or is coming down, etc.)

I have been doing my best to initiate friendly contact every day (even if by text). No matter how wild his dysregulations, his bond with me is very important to him (and me!) and I want him to feel the bond is still there, even if he does not have the freedom to come into the house right now. (And I agree about validating his pain over that for sure.) When I let him move back in (after a period of homeless and extreme drug abuse), I let his girlfriend move in too. I did this because they are very good to each other and are helping each other stay sober and she is a kind person. She too has two jobs now so he is sometimes home when she is out -- but a lot of the time when he is home, she is there too, being loving and fun company. I don't know how I could possibly have created this separation of space if he were in the little studio alone all the time. The studio does not have a proper kitchen so I take them delicious and healthy food for as many meals each day as they are home for. This provides frequent opportunities for friendly contact and my son will sometimes show me what he is working on if he is studying, or tell me what he is reading, etc.

Another very positive thing that has happened is the girlfriend's family have been really good to my son. Her dad has been teaching him healthy ways to deal with anger which my son has told me all about  ... .it is clear that this man is having a deep effect on my son.

[incadove]

Lake, that is so wonderful to hear the progress your son is making and the deep caring you have for him through all this!  I haven't been on the site for a few days but it is really touching to hear how much you have thought all this through and are there for him (with the boundaries you need!)

Best wishes for his continued sobriety and progress!  And that you and all your family have a happy and peaceful holiday!