Newbie

[HarleyQ]

Hello
I was hoping this site would help me. I’m exhausted. My son has BPD and with constant suicide threats as the only way he thinks he can beat the beast in he’s head constantly telling him he’s bad and he should do it. We have been to A&E so many times now and there is never any follow up help during these times of crisis. We have another crisis coming I can see the pattern as he broke up with he’s fiancé -and isn’t coping. He lives with me and is 25 it’s only ever been the 2 of us. He is nasty or depressed or elevated on ways to win her back. I can’t communicate with him it’s like he can’t hear me and when he does I anger him, it’s been ten years of this getting worse. No one understands

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

[Bandiro]

I understand. I don’t have any solutions but I understand.
When my daughter had a crisis, I found it next to impossible to find help for her once she was discharged from the hospital. Everyone had weeks long waits for appointments, or weren’t accepting new patients. Since then, I have been able to find therapists, but she won’t commit to seeing them regularly.
Today, I knew she was going to lose it. It was building all day.   Everything I said or didn’t say made her mad, and as expected she started raging at me. It ended with her storming out of the house. So I understand the nastiness (my D elevated that to a whole new level today), and the depression, and the rages. The only thing I can suggest is therapy for yourself if possible. We can’t change them (but they can if they want to), but we can change how we handle the situation. In the past I would be freaking out worrying that she was going to hurt herself, or not come home, or get arrested, or who knows what after she stormed out in a rage. Now I have an eerie calmness knowing I can’t control any of that. I just texted her that I’m always here to support her if she makes the choice to get better and that I love her. And I’m going to actually sleep tonight, whether she comes home or not. And that’s huge progress for me.

[livednlearned]

Suicidal ideation is the toughest. I'm so sorry that's your son's go-to for trying to assert himself in the world.

How do you respond when he says he feels suicidal? Have you found any of the resources or books helpful? There is a chapter in Shari Manning's Loving Someone with BPD that focuses exclusively on SI and how to respond.

Also, I wonder if he actually can't hear you when he's emotionally in code red. When SD23 is in a full-blown emotional dysregulation, she can only focus on getting that one need met and nothing else. Then when she returns to baseline (sometimes much much later), it's like it never happened. She will simply focus on whatever current state is happening around her, not putting together that she was instrumental in creating it.