Over the last half year I've been working to implement some of the tools I've learned: staying calm, not invalidating, self-care, holding boundaries, attempting to validate my husband. Overall, I've been feeling much better while our marriage relationship has worsened. (I recall a line from Marsha Linehan's recent memoir--she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy which has been shown to help with BPD--in which she tells a suicidal man something like, "Just because your marriage is awful doesn't mean the rest of your life has to be bad!"
One thing that has given me hope recently is a subtle but striking change in our children's response to their dad's dysregulation. Previously, my husband's dysregulation and ensuing arguments between us would essentially dysregulate the children, leading me to feel even more overwhelmed, treat the children harshly, and a continued downward spiral as my husband would then criticize my parenting instead of helping with the children, etc. On two recent occasions when my husband over-reacted, the children remained calm, acknowledged and showed mild interest/concern in their dad, but then soon returned to the better thing they'd been doing before his outburst. I do believe I've been modeling this myself and they've picked up on it (without me having to say a word).
