Zakade things actually for the first time in 10 years are getting better, so I want you to know there is hope.
ROE,
I too have been working on myself for about 10 years. I only found out about BPD in the last 2 years but it seems to have made a big difference. I've listened to tons of different things looking for answers to my broken relationship. My favorite was Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey. I bought the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People on CD and have been using it every chance I get. Even though I've listened to this hundreds of times over, I still learn something from it. Not because I didn't hear it the last 99 times but I needed some level of understanding about something else for that sink in.
I have implemented family meetings in my house that I use to talk about the stuff that I'm learning in the book. My wife has been in these meetings in the past but not really checked in to what I'm saying. These meetings weren't really for her anyway but a way to teach the kids different ways to handle things even if our family didn't always do it that way. Over time my wife opened up to them a little more.
I think that the one thing that helped my wife the most introducing her to Brene Brown. Brene is a researcher on shame. The beauty of her books not only explains her research about shame but if you read them in the order she has written them, you see her journey through facing her own shame. Shame is in us all to some degree or another. She teaches you how to overcome it. First step is to talk about it. Shame loses a lot of power by talking about it. That's why this is such a great outlet for people. You don't have to worry about feeling ashamed because other people are struggling like everyone else here.
I think that shame is a very rampant problem among BPD. I'm wondering if we start addressing this for pwBPD if it would make their accepting help easier then trying to convince them that they have a "metal illness".
