Hey SH;
Great questions. My brief take on your first one:
First is why the appearance of placing so much importance on people that are unknown? Or is this a expression of fear of being accepted?
So often with pwBPD, the issue isn't the content of whatever's being talked about, it's a feeling. One way of looking at the dynamic is that content (by that I mean specifics, like "the people at the dog park", or "when I was at the grocery store this thing happened", or "kells76 sent an email about the kids", etc) serves as a form into which the emotions (the TRUE issue for the pwBPD) can be poured.
Your W brings up "the people at the dog park looked at me funny", and for "normal" people, we would think that THAT is the issue, so we would try to have a discussion around the specific content: "what did they do, did they say anything, what were their expressions". But that may feel invalidating to a pwBPD, because they have this unskilled way of trying to express themselves -- they have a feeling inside and then find something going on outside to serve as a container for the feeling... and it's often unrelated.
So, my gut feeling is that yes, your W may be "spiraling up" to something... but if you can catch the feeling behind the weird content, that may help to deescalate. Can you find something valid to validate in the weird mix of content and feeling... leaning towards validating a feeling behind it?
Yesterday, she mentioned that she was "laughed" at by people because she happened to be carrying a taser while walking our dog at a public park.
Possible response (again, these aren't "boilerplate"/canned phrases, just ideas -- do what is natural for you):
"Ugghhh babe... people can be so inconsiderate"
"Why can't they respect that you're proactive about safety"
"That's so lame... I can't believe anyone would do that"
see how you're finding a feeling to "join in" with? Nobody likes to feel humiliated, ashamed, or laughed at. For whatever reason, she's feeling (likely) some shame, humiliation, or disrespect from inside herself, and perhaps is finding some concrete thing outside to attach the feeling to. When you can empathize with the feeling -- again, it is so true that nobody likes to be laughed at, and I think you'd agree -- then instead of doing the "escalating spiral", this may take things back down a bit.
These other people I assume are doing their thing just like we are doing our thing.
Yes, that's true. Again, the connection between internal feeling and external content may not be accurate, yet the issue (for her, and for your relationship) isn't to "get her to see that they didn't mean it" or whatever... it's to validate that she's feeling a certain way, and you see that she's feeling a certain way, and nobody likes feeling that way. Validate what's valid -- the feeling. Don't feel like you have to validate the invalid (that the dog park people "meant to" do it -- that's not valid).
