Question: navigate BPD rage

[OliJon]

Hello,

I was wondering if there were any tools anyone here has used to successfully navigate BPD rage, specifically the really bizarre non-reality-based accusations, and ensuing unrelenting hostility. Nothing  I have tried seems to work add least not with any regularity.  And I am at my witts end with it.

[Harri]

Can you share some more details?  it is hard to say for sure what is best.  Sometimes getting away is best, sometimes just not invalidating is best.

We do have this article here that can be quite helpful:
Calming pwNPD fast with EAR

[pursuingJoy]

Hi OliJon!  I'm glad you reached out. I've also been subjected to some strange accusations and bizarre emotional outrages from my BPD MIL and my enmeshed husband. You posed a really good question, one I'm interested in learning more about too.

What would successfully navigating the rage look like for you?

I'd never read the article Harri shared, so I checked it out. I really connected to this part:

"Maintain an “arms-length” relationship. Manage Your Amygdala

Of course, this is the opposite of what we feel like doing. You may think to yourself: “No way I’m going to listen to this after how I’ve been verbally attacked!” But that’s just your amygdala talking, in an effort to protect you from danger.

High conflict people often were abused or entitled growing up, and didn’t have the secure, balanced connection necessary to learn these skills of emotional self-management. Therefore, you can help them by helping yourself not over-react to them – use your own prefrontal cortext to manage your amygdala."

What are you thinking? Let us know how we can help.

pj

[zachira]

You have asked a question that many of us with family members with BPD often ask. The raging of the person with BPD can be very overwhelming at times and it just feels terrible to be treated badly by anybody, especially a close family member. I am seeing your question as two questions and please correct me if I am misinterpreting what you are asking. I think first you would like to reduce the raging of the person with BPD in your life. I also think you are asking how to be less negatively affected by the rages. From my experience of growing up with several family  members with BPD, I would say that we can only learn how to have better emotional boundaries with the person(s) with BPD in our life so that we are less overwhelmed by the rages when they happen and become less of a target of the BPD rages. However, we cannot complete lessen the rages nor have control of when they will happen or their intensity, and often the best recourse is to spend less time around the person with BPD. If you are comfortable doing so, would you be willing to tell us more about the person with BPD in your life?

[TelHill]

Welcome!  

My mom has bpd and is elderly. She rages at me mostly since I’m her only daughter. She is also quite manipulative & creates drama out of thin air.  My mom is on the far end of the bpd spectrum - I always knew something was wrong with her from my first memories from age 3. It’s fairly serious bpd when a small child can see problem behavior.

I like the article posted (Thanks, Harri!) and the part which pursuing.joy reposted (Thanks, pj) resonated with me the most. I self-soothe and do self-care to ratchet down fear.  Mitigating or reducing her overreacting (overly aggressive words & body language; violent threats once in a while) have been short lived; not permanent changes within her.

Am betting my mom was born this way - DNA or lack of oxygen at birth. Abuse may have made it worse.

Speaking of the amygdala, there are lots of scientific studies on Pubmed.com regarding amygdala damage & bpd. Here’s one —

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3286221/

I hope some of this is useful and you’ll post when you need a sympathetic ear. We are there or have been there.  

[TelHill]

PS, Definitely not an MD or Neurologist here. In the article above, there’s damage found in the temporal and occipital lobes of the brain. These areas are responsible for interpreting 4 out of the 5 senses of the body take in. I had a relative with early onset dementia (not mom) recently & this is what I remember from seeing the MRI/reading doctor’s interpretation of it.