How to deal with borderline rage

[cosmical]

When my borderline SO rages on me for something seemingly small I don't know how to deal with it.

Her accusations are so cutting that to apologize for them feels like I'm accepting all of the charges which are way overblown. I'm not too proud to take responsibility when something is my fault, but here taking responsibility feels like I'm owning up to being a completely horrible human being rather than just someone who made a clumsy mistake.

If I do anything other than immediate blanket apologize then I will be chastized for not owning up to my fault, which happens to be one of her "triggers".

I have read about conflict resolving techniques (not JADEing etc), but it feels like if I don't apologize immediately then I'm screwed. It';s not always possible because I try so hard to be perfect in her eyes, that when I get nasty accusations thrown against me my first instict is to explain, because I don't want to apologize and accept to being a horrible failure. Going into apology mode after this doesn;t work as I guess it doesn;t sound sincere and she keeps eluding to my very initial responses.

I keep getting caught in this trap and don't know if there is anygood way to avoid it. Maybe the relationship isn;t worth it since we are a bit on - off.

[WitzEndWife]

A lot of BPDs have a volcanic amount of shame under the surface. With my BPDh, I find he frequently accuses me or shames me for things he does or has done in the past. It's a way of projecting the shame they feel onto someone else. I try to take a breath and recognize what's REALLY under the accusation. For example, if my H says, "You hate me," it usually means, "I hate me." You never have to apologize for things that aren't your fault or for your SO's feelings. If you think about it, they are stuck at the emotional age of a child. If a toddler was throwing a tantrum because you stopped them from putting something dangerous into their mouth, would you apologize for it? A lot of the time when we feel the need to apologize, it's because of OUR shame (and a lot of us who partner with BPDs have our own shame feelings to deal with, which is why we're easily manipulated). It's often triggering when a person accuses us of not caring or of being careless or lazy or thoughtless. Maybe we have deep-seated issues there with our own abuse or trauma. The first step is recognizing the situation for what it is. The situation we often THINK we're in, where the BPD person is logical and in control of us, is completely an illusion of our collective making. If we think of their rage as an emotional temper tantrum, such as a child or even a teenager would have, we can see clearly that they aren't in control - and that their assessment of the situation is not logical. The issue is that it is very real to them in the moment. So, as the logical beings in this situation, we have to learn to validate, but we don't have to bow and scrape and grovel, or even agree with them. Validating can be as simple as, "I hear that you're angry because you were left alone. That can be pretty scary." Sometimes they just want to be heard and acknowledged. And, when that doesn't work, remove yourself until they've calmed down. Go for a walk or drive or go into another room. You don't have to support the tantrum. More often than not, with mine, he sees through my attempts to validate and thinks I'm just patronizing him, so I remove myself until he can speak rationally about whatever it is. The other night, we got into a little tiff on the sofa and he squirted a water bottle in my face. I got up and left the room. He screamed at me while following me up the stairs. I shut the door to the bedroom and told him I'd talk to him later, once he'd cooled off. 15 minutes later, he was all happy go lucky again and THEN he was willing to have a rational conversation about it and apologize for the water.

[cosmical]

Thanks, that's very helpful. "Validating" is something I need to do more of, rather than getting embroiled in the argument. I have to be really on my toes for it though, because once I pick a position (i.e. apologizing or refuting), then she can't let go of it, and this can often happen before I even realise there is a problem. The real issue is then too far removed and then any attempt to validate will be met with "you don't understand". I think the key is noticing when she is about to have a tantrum but it's really not easy when we are long distance... the visual and audio clues are not always present.

[formflier]

  I get nasty accusations thrown against me my first instict is to explain, because I don't want to apologize and accept to being a horrible failure. Going into apology mode after this doesn;t work as I guess it doesn;t sound sincere and she keeps eluding to my very initial responses.

EXPLAIN...

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=311440.0

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=318864.0

I could post many more links to discussions about this topic. 

JADE is something to avoid. 

Now...there are times when an explanation is reasonable.  Think those times through, explain it once and be done with it.

Can you give us a he said she said example of an accusation and your explanation? 

Best,

FF

[cosmical]

We were playing a game together. I gave her some advice I thought would help her (it's like a challenge mode kinda thing, it's pretty hard and you get limited tries). She basically encountered a pretty niche situation and as a result the advice I gave her backfired and she failed her challenge. She gets really angry at me implying that I caused her to fail and should have explained everything to her beforehand. I have no problem apologizing for something I did wrong, but it felt so needlessly accusatory, like I had intentionally sabotaged her attempt. So I fired back something in my defence like I can't possibly have explained everything and she takes this to mean that A) I am dodging an apology, which she really hates, and B) I'm calling her an "idiot" for not knowing obvious things (I said nothing of the sort but she;'s putting words in my mouth).

The next thing I do was to apologise for not explaining everything and tell her I will make it up to her. She then seems to ignore this and goes into a rant about how I'm an asshole and this was a complete asshole move to not own up to my mistake.

She ends the conversation at this point and that's the last time we spoke.

[cosmical]

I'm honestly feeling quite down about the whole thing as she reached out to me after some time apart and after a few weeks things seemed to be going well, no arguments or anything. Then this happens and I felt completely unprepared for this outburst. It felt like all the progress we had made had been undone.

After some time I left her a message saying she's right that she'd be better off not speaking to me if she really things I'm that much of an asshole. I really don't want this to become the norm for the relationship if we're going to give things another shot.

[formflier]

. I gave her some advice I thought would help her

Did she ask for advice?

Did you ask her ahead of time if she wanted your advice?

Best,

FF

[cosmical]

Did she ask for advice?

Did you ask her ahead of time if she wanted your advice?

Best,

FF

She was asking for my advice yes.

Eh, the more I think about it, the more I feel like I'm not in a position to even begin having a discussion on how to deal with her rage. Thank you for the help but I think there are deeper issues at work here.

[alleyesonme]

One tip that a friend gave me has helped me at times. Basically, whenever my BP wife is raging at me, I try to remember that she's crazy/sick, and that this isn't going to last forever. Either she'll change drastically in the near future so we can stay together, or she won't change and I'll leave. Anything you can do to depersonalize your partner's rages is key. I know that's much easier said than done, and I struggle with this daily.