How to help manage the “episode”

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hello
How do keep my cool and stay clam when my partner is in an episode and is constantly verbally abuse me and using me a a punching bag?

[Niko234]

Hello
How do keep my cool and stay clam when my partner is in an episode and is constantly verbally abuse me and using me a a punching bag?

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[HurtAndTired]

Hi Niko and welcome,

While I am really sorry to hear that you have been dealing with the agony of having a partner with BPD, I am really glad you found this forum. It has been a place of strength and healing for me and the folks on here truly care and give great advice. The first thing I would ask you is to give us more details. The more information we have, the more precise and helpful our advice can be. Has your fiance been diagnosed with BPD? How do you know that she has it if she has not been diagnosed? What behaviors (other than verbal abuse) has she been displaying that are problematic and borderline? What are the behaviors that are the most problematic and that you would like to get under control to better your relationship?

The next thing that I would direct you to do is to read the book "Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life" by Margalis Fjelstad. This book has been invaluable to me. It gives you practical, actionable advice on how to deal with problematic borderline behaviors. The long and short of it is that while you cannot do anything to change the person with BPD, you have control over how you react to their behaviors. Part of successfully navigating a relationship with a borderline partner is by having strong boundaries. It sounds like you are struggling with a boundary around verbal abuse.

I have recently started enforcing a verbal abuse boundary with my undiagnosed BPD wife (uBPDw). I would caution you to please do lots of studying the resources on this website and read the book I suggested before trying to implement boundaries of your own. However, this is what the boundary with my uBPDw looks like. I started by making an "I statement" where I am only talking about myself and am not using the word "you" at all (this keeps the pwBPD from feeling attacked and getting defensive). I said "I really hate arguing. In fact, having to argue and verbally fight makes me feel physically sick and emotionally drained afterward. I have decided that I am no longer going to participate in any arguments or tolerate any verbal abuse. If i am confronted by anyone who is name-calling, swearing, or going in circles with an argument, I am going to walk away for the sake of my own mental health. Nothing gets solved until two people can calmly and rationally speak. When emotions are out of control nothing will get fixed and so it is a waste of time, so I will wait to discuss the issue with the person who is upset with me until we have both calmed down."

This is a statement, not an invitation to discuss the issue. I have declared what I am going to do, and that's it. Going forward, I will have to do exactly what I have said I will do 100% of the time. When a person lays down and then enforces a boundary with a pwBPD they will not like the new boundary. They will test you and try to get you to back down. This means that the behavior will get worse before it gets better. This is called an extinction burst.

Imagine a rat who has been trained that when they push on a lever, they will receive a food pellet. If the researcher turns off the mechanism that delivers the food pellet, the rat will at first push the lever like crazy hoping that the increased activity will cause the pellet to appear. After a while the rat will give up and the behavior will stop. It may occasionally push the lever just to make sure that it is still not working (spontaneous recovery) but eventually even this behavior will lessen and stop. It is exactly the same with pwBPD.

This is very important! Do not lay down a boundary with a pwBPD unless you are prepared to enforce it 100% of the time! If the rat in the scenario above pushed the lever 100 times and received a food pellet on push 101 they have learned that if they push the lever long enough, eventually they will get what they want. This is called intermittent reinforcement and it is the most powerful form of reinforcement there is. It is what keeps people pulling the lever on slot machines in casinos. Extinction bursts are no fun to ride out, but you have to stay strong and hold your boundary 100% of the time. If you give in, even once, you have taught your pwBPD that if they just keep hacking away at you long enough, eventually you will give in and you will have made the situation even worse.

My verbal abuse/circular argument boundary is working with my wife. It is still a work in progress, but her behavior is slowly improving. When she starts an argument with me, the consequences are always the same. I will hear her out one time through, but if she starts to swear at me, name call, or repeat herself/bring up issues from the past (circular arguments) I "grey rock." This is when you go completely non-responsive and ignore the person (as if you were a grey rock). If she continues to yell at me/swear at me for 10 minutes after I have "grey rocked" I will take myself (and our two-year-old if applicable) to our guest bedroom and will lock the door. We will stay in there and watch TV and play or take a nap until my wife has gotten control of herself. While she still has episodes, they are not nearly as frequent as they used to be. This is because they no longer produce the desired results for her. Every behavior exists because it works on some level for the person who uses it. When the behavior stops getting them what they want, it will eventually cease.

Please let us know exactly how we can help, and again welcome.

HurtAndTired

[Niko234]

Thank for very much for the response

And yes my fiancé has been diagnosed with bpd.
In her manic episodes, there verbal abuse is most of it but she can get physical in throwing things and kicking and punch doors and walls
She only has hit me or kick when I try to stop her the action above because I don’t want her hurt herself.

When is don’t the episode any damage is also my fault cause I cause the episode

[HurtAndTired]

In my experience, BPD escalates over time. What starts out as throwing things and breaking objects will eventually turn into physical abuse. It did in my case where my wife has physically assaulted me many times. The worst was when she smashed a large glass framed picture over my head while I was sleeping. I could have been killed.

The first boundary I had to lay down with my uBPDw was that if she laid a finger on me in anger I would call 911..100% of the time. I only had to call the police one time for her to know that I meant business. She has not dared to get physical with me again since then. My current boundaries and the consequences for crossing them are as follows:

- Physical abuse (hitting, slapping, pushing, throwing things, etc.) = calling 911
- Verbal abuse (swearing, name-calling, insults, circular arguments) = grey rocking and locking myself in another room.
- Suicide threats = Calling the emergency mental crisis response team (my community has this in place of police for people having mental episodes)

It may well be that your fiance is more willing to work on herself than my wife is, however. The fact that she is diagnosed suggests that she is either very self-aware and realized that her behavior was not normal and sought help, or that she is low-functioning BPD and ended up getting the diagnosis due to hitting some type of rock bottom (involuntary mental commitment, police trouble, etc.). Part of my reasoning for no longer covering up my wife's dysfunctional behavior is that she won't or can't see that there is anything wrong with her and needs to suffer the natural negative consequences that result from making poor decisions when in a dysregulated state (i.e. hitting a rock bottom).

What lead to your fiance being diagnosed? Is she in treatment? Is she aware that her behavior towards you is abusive and unacceptable?

[Niko234]

She came to realization on her own this pass fall. And after talking to her psychiatrist they confirmed it and actually informed us that she was previously diagnosed with it back into 2017 after a stay in the hospital. But we were never aware of it.
I think, substance abuse it was kinda making it hidden. Now that she has been sober for couples years and she lost two family members in last couple years, and the health care system has been failing her. Has relighted the bpd.  And do the failure of the medical field she isn’t being medicated for anything besides anxiety. She faces other mental health disorders along side the bpd

Thank you greatly for you support and information on boundaries

[SaltyDawg]

Niko,



We are here to listen and support you emotionally.

I am sorry you have had to go through all of this.

A very good summary of the book "Stop Caretaking the Borderline..." that Hurt&Tired mentioned can be found at https://margalistherapy.com/articles/borderline-and-narcissism-issues/handbook-for-dealing-with-a-bp-np/

I've slightly modified this list for myself; however, it is what I use almost on a daily basis with my pwBPD.

If you set and enforce firm boundaries, it will eventually become manageable, and for me it took the better part of a year to get to this point in my life with my uBPD wife.

My boundaries are nearly identical to Hurt&Tired.  If it doesn't seem like you are making progress, keep at it, once the extinction bursts are over, it will get better; however, there will be setbacks from time to time.  I use a two-week period to measure progress as there will be sharp up and downs, and if the general trend is upwards, I consider this a success.

Also, with regards to setting boundaries on abuse, I pick the worst behaviors and start there, and introduce a new boundary based on the common theme of "All Abuse Must Stop" and pick no more than one bad behavior a week to focus on, and gradually introduce the pwBPD to each of them as they stop that particular behavior as I have identified about 80 different areas of abuse specific to my wife.  LMK if you need an article which has an extensive list of emotional and psychological abuses as some of the abuses my wife did, I was not even aware that they were abuses until I saw them in a fairly comprehensive article on abuse, yet others were quite obvious, and included the dreaded DARVO (Deny And Reverse the Victim and Offender roles), a very Insidious form of gaslighting where they deny what you have factually ascribed to them and then they project/transfer their own behaviors on to you and make you the offender to their own abuses of you - and they firmly believe this - a couple's therapist will likely take their side on a DARVO, which makes it that much more difficult to deal with.

Setting boundaries is of course only one of many things that needs to be done.

Keep coming back, and ask more questions, we are here to support and listen to you.

With all of this going on, it can be quite emotionally exhausting, please take time for yourself and do some self-care to recharge yourself, so you can keep on going. 

Take care (with self-care).

SD