BPD Anger

[jmbl]

Hello all,

How do people deal with feelings of anger that their person wBPD express? Here's my example, including how I responded and my thought process behind it...

My partner has vivid nightmares that disrupt his sleeping and cause him to sweat throughout the night. This has happened 3 nights in a row now, resulting in inadequate sleep time. He wakes up in the night, we flip the blanket and I lay a new sheet down underneath him (it's something we've been dealing with for years. Nobody has a clue what causes them, although we suspect a previous head injury). This morning, the snowball effect resulted in him being extremely frustrated. He allowed this to impact his morning (3 hours in/out of sleep before work), was quite angry and became extremely heightened.

Never directed at me, only at his frustration, my half asleep self responded to each statement with either: remaining still to fall back asleep, being kind, providing minimal comfort measures. I also reminded him throughout that it is just one morning (he did not get angry the previous two mornings) and his frustrations are valid, but that he (we) have to work together to ensure the day only gets better - that this one instance is not reflective of what is to come today. Upon waking (I have the day off), he was rushed for time so I got coffee and breakfast together for him to take to work.

My thought process behind my quiet and kind response was that everybody is allowed to experience their emotions, however they need to be respectful and you cannot address somebody else in anger (especially when they are not at fault).

My conflict is that I feel I am toeing the line of enabler. I do not want to enable poor behaviour, and I (and he) want him to improve his reactions to undesirable occurrences. However, it's still important to me that he has space to express/experience what he is feeling without feeling invalidated.

Is this enabling? If so, what alternatives are they to BPD anger management (without professional intervention)?

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[once removed]

My thought process behind my quiet and kind response was that everybody is allowed to experience their emotions, however they need to be respectful and you cannot address somebody else in anger (especially when they are not at fault).

i think this is dead on.

there is a fine line that youre talking about. in general, our loved ones are needy people...needy for validation, needy for reassurance. do too much of either, and you creep into an unhealthy dynamic, but in the best case scenario, theres gonna be some imbalance.

it sounds, from your account, like you walk(ed) that line pretty well. grabbing coffee for a rushed partner having a bad day is sweet, and thoughtful.

i suppose that my advice would be dont try to do too much. saying things to calm and reassure him is great, its probably one of the reasons he loves you! just dont expect that you can talk him out of it, and consider the balance between supporting someone who has sleep troubles, and being able to get a good nights sleep yourself. its hard to support another person without that!

BPD anger management

in other words, dont manage his anger for him.

[EZEarache]

Thank you for the example. I think you handled this situation very well.