Split Reversal and Some Surprising Changes

[HurtAndTired]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I have updated you all on my situation. As a teacher, I was on spring break for the past week and gave myself some much-needed time to relax and refill my cup at home with my S2. My dBPDw worked 7 days in a row, so I got a lot of one-on-one time with my son over the past week without any worries about where she was with her moods. The previous black split that I had gone through has been over for about 2 weeks now. I am back to sleeping in the master bedroom and my wife acts as if nothing ever happened. However, from my perspective, massive changes have occurred.

My wife sought out psychiatric treatment online for her "depression, anxiety, and anger", but her insurance denied coverage for medication obtained through this popular phone app (that goes by the name of a feminine pronoun.) She did not say anything to me about wanting help, and I only found out that she was seeking help because she was griping about her insurance refusing to pay for the antidepressants that she had been prescribed. I was gobsmacked that she had recognized that she needed pharmaceuticals and had gone through the process of speaking with a doctor long enough to get a prescription. I did not know that she was capable of this level of self-awareness.

I have taken the opportunity to help her get an appointment scheduled with a local psychiatric nurse-practitioner (no psychiatrists in our city - our state has a terrible mental healthcare system) who would be able to give her the full MMPI and would hopefully work with her to find the best medication that would most effectively treat the issues that bother her the most. This, coupled with her unforced admission to the couples therapist that she has physically abused me is the most movement that I have seen her take on her mental health in the 12 years that we have been together. I am hoping against all hope that she will finally get into some form of treatment. Policing my side of the street can only produce limited results, but if we are both authentically working on our respective sides who knows what is possible?

I know that boundaries are about protecting myself and not changing her, but I find myself wondering if she would have come to these self-realizations had I continued to behave as her caretaker. Did changing my side of the equation put her into an uncomfortable space where she had to deal with her emotions because I refused to do it for her anymore? I have been working on validation, but am not very advanced because being in "survival mode" during the prolonged extinction burst (going on 9 months of off and on acting out above and beyond the usual push/pull) has kept me concentrating on maintaining my boundaries for my safety and that of our S2.

Does anyone have experience with this happening? Once you have stopped caretaking, has your pwBPD been forced to confront their demons because you won't do it for them anymore? She has gone through some other weird changes since I laid down my boundaries and it has become clear to her that things will never be going back to how they were before, but I will wait to hear from you all before elaborating.

Thanks for your replies,

HurtAndTired

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[Pook075]

Did changing my side of the equation put her into an uncomfortable space where she had to deal with her emotions because I refused to do it for her anymore?

In a nutshell, yes.  When you change the dynamic, everything changes one way or the other.  At first she rebelled against the change (split you black for 9 months) but eventually, a revelation came that she had to make some changes.  That's a good thing, a starting place.

I have been working on validation, but am not very advanced because being in "survival mode" during the prolonged extinction burst (going on 9 months of off and on acting out above and beyond the usual push/pull) has kept me concentrating on maintaining my boundaries for my safety and that of our S2.

Nothing about this is intuitive, so give yourself some grace.  Give her a little as well since she's trying to change and making actual efforts.

With my BPD kid, it was over a decade of strife and everything changed with a single conversation.  It was around that time when she got in therapy and took change seriously, and it was honestly around 30% me/70% her.  There have been some bumps in the road but nothing even close to what we used to experience.  No arguments at all and she's let the past go.  So have I.

With my BPD ex, she eventually realized that she had a part to play in everything and she hurt me deeply.  She expressed regret, I forgave her, and our conversations have been different ever since.  However, my wife has not considered therapy so things couldn't be repaired 100%...she's still hanging onto way too much blame and hurt.  We are civil though at least and there's almost a friendship there.

The biggest thing I learned about BPD is that time is on your side.  Be patient and meet her wherever she is, and in time you will continue to see some change.  Hopefully she gets with a good therapist.

[HurtAndTired]

Thank you for letting me know about your experience with your daughter Pook!

I'm so glad that you guys were able to improve your relationship so much! It gives me a lot of hope for the future...given that my wife continues to want this change (fingers crossed.)

We did not reach this juncture easily. She has fought tooth and nail to get me to "act normal" (aka: like a caretaker) for the past 9 months. I expected that she would either learn to self-soothe or would leave me. The self-realization that she was a part of the problem was unexpected but feels super validating. It's also a little weird as it is so out of character.

She has been doing some other things that are out of character as well. The other day she demanded that I clean the house over the weekend. I told her that I would be happy to, but that she had to ask me politely and use the word please to model how adults treat each other for S2. She flew into a rage so S2 and I went shopping at Sam's Club. She called me on my way back home and apologized. That was the first sincere apology that I have ever gotten out of her. Before I had to tell her that I felt I needed an apology, apologize first myself, ask for an apology, etc. This was the first unprompted, sincere one that I can remember!

The other strange thing has been a chameleon-like shift in her personality. I had heard that pwBPD can personality shift due to their unstable sense of self, but have never witnessed my wife shift before. Sure, she has been able to be awful to me and then shift into being super nice and pleasant when others are around, but that is a fairly normal shift that most people do socially. What I am talking about frightened me a little. She turned into her mom this past Sunday.

Her mother is uBPD and also neglected and abused her when she was little. My MiL is a devout Catholic on the surface but forgot to listen to the whole part about "judge not lest ye be judged", "forgive or you will not be forgiven", "let him without sin cast the first stone", and "before you worry about the mote in your neighbor's eye, remove the plank from your own." MiL thinks that by going to mass every day she has gotten a pass on being an abusive parent who was also complicit in her second husband abusing his stepdaughters. She has never apologized to her children but acts morally superior to those she judges to be "sinners."

My wife is a lapsed Catholic, largely due to being turned off on religion by my MiL putting on the "Devout Catholic" pantomime, but started going to mass for the first time in more than 2 decades 2 weeks ago. Last Sunday S2 and I went with her. I watched her change her clothes, hair, shoes, makeup, how she walked, how she carried her purse, how she held her head, how she talked, and what she talked about. She turned into my MiL right in front of me and it scared the hell out of me!

Do you think that because I am no longer serving as her caretaker her sense of self is in flux? I want her to go back to church, but I do NOT want her to turn into her mother in the process. It feels like she doesn't know who to be when she is not primarily being the "S2's mom self" or her "work self." Her FP, me, has not been letting her "wife self" run wild and consequence-free for the past 9 months. Could this be her trying to find a new "self" to wear?

HurtAndTired

[kells76]

Hi HaT, good to hear about some more positive changes.

Before I forget, this stood out to me:

My wife sought out psychiatric treatment online for her "depression, anxiety, and anger", but her insurance denied coverage for medication obtained through this popular phone app (that goes by the name of a feminine pronoun.) She did not say anything to me about wanting help, and I only found out that she was seeking help because she was griping about her insurance refusing to pay for the antidepressants that she had been prescribed. I was gobsmacked that she had recognized that she needed pharmaceuticals and had gone through the process of speaking with a doctor long enough to get a prescription. I did not know that she was capable of this level of self-awareness.

I have taken the opportunity to help her get an appointment scheduled with a local psychiatric nurse-practitioner (no psychiatrists in our city - our state has a terrible mental healthcare system) who would be able to give her the full MMPI and would hopefully work with her to find the best medication that would most effectively treat the issues that bother her the most. This, coupled with her unforced admission to the couples therapist that she has physically abused me is the most movement that I have seen her take on her mental health in the 12 years that we have been together. I am hoping against all hope that she will finally get into some form of treatment. Policing my side of the street can only produce limited results, but if we are both authentically working on our respective sides who knows what is possible?

Have you had a chance yet to read the book "I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help" by Dr. Xavier Amador? The biggest takeaway for me was that people get help for things that bother them, not things that bother me.

Sounds like she is having a problem that is bothering her -- it is great that it's the kind of problem where the help for the problem is psychiatric help.

How did she respond when you helped schedule the PMHNP appointment?

One phrase that comes up in the Family Connections program (that we've quoted here at BPDfamily.com) is:

Appreciation is normal. Tone it down. Disagreement is normal. Tone it down, too.

It's normal to be excited and hopeful about a partner getting meaningful treatment. This will be a marathon, not a sprint -- allow yourself to have "normally managed" excitement about her getting help, and if it doesn't go the way you want, allow yourself to have "normally managed" disappointment.

The other strange thing has been a chameleon-like shift in her personality. I had heard that pwBPD can personality shift due to their unstable sense of self, but have never witnessed my wife shift before. Sure, she has been able to be awful to me and then shift into being super nice and pleasant when others are around, but that is a fairly normal shift that most people do socially. What I am talking about frightened me a little. She turned into her mom this past Sunday.

Her mother is uBPD and also neglected and abused her when she was little. My MiL is a devout Catholic on the surface but forgot to listen to the whole part about "judge not lest ye be judged", "forgive or you will not be forgiven", "let him without sin cast the first stone", and "before you worry about the mote in your neighbor's eye, remove the plank from your own." MiL thinks that by going to mass every day she has gotten a pass on being an abusive parent who was also complicit in her second husband abusing his stepdaughters. She has never apologized to her children but acts morally superior to those she judges to be "sinners."

My wife is a lapsed Catholic, largely due to being turned off on religion by my MiL putting on the "Devout Catholic" pantomime, but started going to mass for the first time in more than 2 decades 2 weeks ago. Last Sunday S2 and I went with her. I watched her change her clothes, hair, shoes, makeup, how she walked, how she carried her purse, how she held her head, how she talked, and what she talked about. She turned into my MiL right in front of me and it scared the hell out of me!

Do you think that because I am no longer serving as her caretaker her sense of self is in flux? I want her to go back to church, but I do NOT want her to turn into her mother in the process. It feels like she doesn't know who to be when she is not primarily being the "S2's mom self" or her "work self." Her FP, me, has not been letting her "wife self" run wild and consequence-free for the past 9 months. Could this be her trying to find a new "self" to wear?

IDK if it's quite that connected -- if she has BPD, then regardless of what anyone else is doing or saying, she will have a poor sense of self. The converse of your hypothesis would be that when you did serve as her caretaker, she had a stable sense of self, and I don't know that it works that way.

I'm not certain that what we do (which is external to them) is what strengthens or weakens their sense of self, though it is true that when we change what we say and do, that provides a new pathway for the pwBPD to choose to follow (or not).

I guess my gut feeling is that it's not like "oh, now that HaT is being healthy, it's causing Mrs. HaT to change her sense of self and personality, and if he goes back to what he was doing before, then she will stop changing into her mom".

Maybe we're saying similar things in different ways. My thought is that all people have emotions about things that happen. That's being a human being. Some people can generally regulate and manage their emotions mostly healthily. Other people, who struggle with MH issues such as BPD, generally do not regulate and manage their emotions healthily.

We would also have emotions about our spouses doing things differently. However, our emotions about our spouses doing things differently would be emotions that might be intense, but we could manage. We would still be us, feeling feelings, and not defined by our feelings, but being subjects having feelings.

A pwBPD also may have emotions about spouses doing things differently, but due to the disorder impacting the ability to manage emotions, and due to perhaps defining oneself through what one feels (due to the lack of a sense of self), her non-managed intense emotional response to your changes ends up looking like "she's a totally different person".

IDK -- I guess I'm processing your thoughts, too, and haven't landed on anything definitive.

Maybe it's a dialectic -- of course she's responding emotionally to changes you make, we all do, and it doesn't necessarily follow that you had control over the stability of her sense of self.

[HurtAndTired]

Hi Kells,

Thank you for the observations and insights. You are right that I had (and continue to have) absolutely no control over her sense of self. My hypothesis is that her relatively "predictable unpredictability" over the past 12 years came from being able to use my caretaking as a "pressure valve" to release uncomfortable feelings through projection and blame shifting. Now that this strategy is no longer working, she has become unmoored in various ways and the resulting changes in her behavior are now becoming increasingly "unpredictably unpredictable."

The shift in personality that I am referring to is not general but seems to be situation-specific in regard to religion. I have mentioned before that I am a practicing Orthodox Christian and that we were married by, and our son was baptized into, the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy and Catholicism have a lot of overlap and I feel very comfortable at Catholic Mass. I know the local Catholic priest well and always come forward to receive a blessing from him in lieu of taking Holy Communion when attending services. All of this is to say that my wife and I have had extensive conversations about religion over the years and have a mutual respect for each other's faith traditions. She has previously been quite vocal about her mother's hypocrisy in putting on pious airs while remaining unrepentant to her children who suffered from her abuse, neglect, and looking the other way while their stepfather sexually abused them.

Since I placed hard boundaries nine months ago, she has been increasingly leaning on her mother (who lives across the country in another state) via phone calls and video chats for support. While I still believe that I occupy the FP position for her, I no longer serve as the "pressure valve" that I did before and she has had to "try on" various coping mechanisms to deal with her uncomfortable feelings. Although she infrequently attended the Orthodox Divine Liturgy with me and S2, she has not gone to Catholic Mass for more than 20 years, despite my encouraging her to do so and even going so far as to talk to the Catholic priest on her behalf to be able to reassure her that she would be able to receive Holy Communion (she is divorced from SS25's dad and hasn't gotten an annulment from the Church.)

It was only two weeks ago that she decided, seemingly out of the blue, that she would start attending church again. I was, of course, supportive of this, but didn't in any way see the abrupt personality change that I would observe this past Sunday when I attended mass with her. The personality change was not just superficial in the way she dressed, carried herself, and mannerisms, but it was also a dramatic shift in religious opinion and theology from what she had previously expressed.

For example, she said things disparaging the Orthodox Church and its tradition of priests being allowed to marry (as the Roman Catholic Church also permitted until it abruptly changed around 700 years ago) and how this showed that our priests were not as committed to the faith. This is something I have heard her mother say on several occasions, but she vocally disagreed with it. She also questioned our agreement to raise our S2 as Orthodox which had never been an issue until the past Sunday (she brought it up once, but it has not come up since after she transitioned back from her mother's clone.) I have clashed with my MiL about religion on multiple occasions and it was super creepy to see my wife shift so dramatically from her previously stated and stable religious beliefs to morphing into her mother. It is all the more disconcerting because of the deep nature of the love/hate relationship she has with her mother and the frequently expressed desire to never become like her mother.

All of this is to say that I feel like we have entered into uncharted territory, and it has me feeling more hypervigilant and on edge than usual...and that is saying something. While I do appreciate the progress that we have made so far, I know that there will be a lot of turmoil and setbacks as we move forward. I am going to choose to look at the "unpredictable unpredictability" as a net positive because it means that we have finally broken out of the circular drama and turmoil of the "dance of intimate hostility." Any motion in a different direction carries with it the possibility of improvement whereas repetition of the same behaviors will only ever produce the same outcomes.

Thanks again,

HurtAndTired

[kells76]

she has become unmoored in various ways and the resulting changes in her behavior are now becoming increasingly "unpredictably unpredictable."

I wonder if the framework of the "extinction burst" might also be helpful for understanding what she's doing? Again, back to the dialectic of -- we really have no control over another's sense of self, and when we make changes, we impact the relational dynamic (providing new opportunities if our partner chooses to take the new opportunities).

Maybe she is temporarily responding in a heightened fashion to the changes to the relational dynamic? You know her best, so if you take a look at the extinction burst workshop, let us know if you think it could be a factor.

It was only two weeks ago that she decided, seemingly out of the blue, that she would start attending church again. I was, of course, supportive of this, but didn't in any way see the abrupt personality change that I would observe this past Sunday when I attended mass with her. The personality change was not just superficial in the way she dressed, carried herself, and mannerisms, but it was also a dramatic shift in religious opinion and theology from what she had previously expressed.

It would be so disturbing and unsettling to see your spouse change at that profound level -- not "just" externals but seemingly core beliefs too. Really challenging and really destabilizing. It makes sense that you'd want to understand the shocking transformation that happened in front of you -- I would want to, also, if my H suddenly seemed like not the man I knew at a core level.

For example, she said things disparaging the Orthodox Church and its tradition of priests being allowed to marry (as the Roman Catholic Church also permitted until it abruptly changed around 700 years ago) and how this showed that our priests were not as committed to the faith. This is something I have heard her mother say on several occasions, but she vocally disagreed with it. She also questioned our agreement to raise our S2 as Orthodox which had never been an issue until the past Sunday (she brought it up once, but it has not come up since after she transitioned back from her mother's clone.) I have clashed with my MiL about religion on multiple occasions and it was super creepy to see my wife shift so dramatically from her previously stated and stable religious beliefs to morphing into her mother. It is all the more disconcerting because of the deep nature of the love/hate relationship she has with her mother and the frequently expressed desire to never become like her mother.

As wildly changing as she is right now, do you feel like you have the resources to "ride this one out", given that she may at some point drop it all?

My thought is that if she has wildly varying emotions that are poorly regulated, plus a weak/absent sense of self, then just because right now she is embodying this persona/belief system, doesn't mean "this is now who she will be and what she will think forevermore". It comes back to you and what you're OK with and what you have the resources to field -- do you think you can wait this one out?

I get that it's hitting at a core belief and it's bringing your S2 into it. I would suspect that many marriages have ended over core faith beliefs -- it is a tragedy and it happens. If this is your line in the sand it would make sense.

I think from my POV it comes back to -- I really doubt that "she has finally found who she really is" and this is how she's going to be permanently from now on, so it's really about you and what you are OK with having in your life. You might be able to find some peace with knowing that she will likely find another way to "show up" in the future, and it might be effective to "tamp down" your emotional level of response to her hitting at your core beliefs (i.e., you may want to respond at a 8/10 "this is core stuff and she needs to know" but it may be more effective to respond at a 5/10 "I guess we see it differently right now") and take the long view. Only you can decide what you are OK with in your marriage.

All of this is to say that I feel like we have entered into uncharted territory, and it has me feeling more hypervigilant and on edge than usual...and that is saying something. While I do appreciate the progress that we have made so far, I know that there will be a lot of turmoil and setbacks as we move forward. I am going to choose to look at the "unpredictable unpredictability" as a net positive because it means that we have finally broken out of the circular drama and turmoil of the "dance of intimate hostility." Any motion in a different direction carries with it the possibility of improvement whereas repetition of the same behaviors will only ever produce the same outcomes.

That may be the "least bad" choice in perspective right now. Again, if she has BPD, then she has a serious mental illness that impacts her ability to have normal-range emotional responses and to have stable relationships. Expecting instability and working on your own perspective about that would be under your control.

Really hard stuff. Nobody wants to see the spouse they love change like that.

[HurtAndTired]

Thanks again for the additional feedback Kells,

I completely agree that it is all a part of an extended extinction burst. I fully expected that there would be one, but not that it would be this profound or last this long. To be fair, it has not been continuous but rather has been a series of smaller extinction bursts as she tries to navigate her new reality, gets frustrated, and tries new tactics to find replacement behaviors that will work.

I also agree that she has not permanently changed into her mother and that this is just a persona that she is "trying on" and is transient. Her deep disgust with her mother and the part she played in my wife's "core wounds" makes the idea of this change being permanent very unlikely. For now, I am able to ride this out. Part of the benefit of riding my "rowboat through the hurricane" of her extinction burst is that it has toughened me up quite a bit. I am hoping that her getting into therapy will help her find an anchor, but I know that this (like most other things with BPD) is completely out of my control. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't.

In the long term, the only thing I can be sure of is that I am not going to back down from my boundaries and that she will either adapt or leave me. At this point, I will accept either choice. I cannot control which option she chooses. I have decided what I am willing to live with and what I am not. I will support her in her positive choices and encourage her when I have the opportunity, but ultimately she has to make the decision to change on her own. I am also committed to improving my validation skills but with the dramatic and difficult changes that this prolonged extinction burst has brought, I haven't had a lot of breathing room to concentrate on much more than safety for myself and S2. I will, taking my cue from Pook, give myself some grace on that front, but know that in the long run boundaries alone will not win the day.

HurtAndTired

[HurtAndTired]

Hi Kells,

So it's been nearly a week since I have last posted and some significant things have happened. My dBPDw finally filled out the new patient intake form for the PNHPN provider, or more accurately, she had me fill it out for her while she answered the intake questions. To answer your question about how she took it, in short, not well. The questionnaire was fairly detailed and she was in a word "grumpy" when I would ask her the questions to get her responses.

Several of the questions were about what symptoms she was experiencing that she wanted help with and the ones that were relevant were anxiety, depression, PTSD/trauma, and anger management. These are all things that she has mentioned, repeatedly, that bother her. As I was going through the list and filling out the checkmarks I didn't get much pushback from asking "Should I check anxiety and depression?" But there was pushback on the PTSD/trauma and anger management. She asked, "What do you mean PTSD?" To which I responded, "You have told me about how traumatic the things were that you went through when you were a kid and you told the therapist that you think that this is the reason why you get so angry." Which she grudgingly agreed with. Ditto with anger management. She reluctantly agreed that she has mentioned to several therapists, and to me (many times) that she struggles with anger. I told her that the more accurately we can get the intake form filled out, the better they can help her.

Then came the part of the questionnaire that asked if she had been diagnosed with a mental issue before, what the diagnosis was, and who made it. I told her, "Remember how the last therapist we saw diagnosed you with emotional dysregulation? I think we should put that down." To which she replied, "What's emotional dysregulation?" and I replied, "It means that you have trouble controlling your emotions." Once again, she reluctantly agreed. She never gave much thought to the diagnosis, and to be fair, I dismissed it at the time because I did not realize that it was an alternative label for BPD (which is why I switched from referring to her as uBPDw to dBPDw.) The long and short of it was that we got her intake form filled out, but with the parting, snarky remark "Why don't you just put down that I'm crazy?"

In a perfect world, I wouldn't have had to fill out the intake form for my wife, but she was nearly 100% certain not to fill it out herself, despite saying that she wanted an appointment. This is common behavior for her. She struggles to follow through with things, especially when it comes to anything dealing with writing or computers. English is her second language and she frequently makes spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors when writing. I am an ESL teacher and know that this is not indicative that she is not at a native level of fluency in English, but simply first language interference and not frequently writing in English. In any case, she feels very uncomfortable doing anything where she is expected to write and nearly always asks for my help. I really hope that needing my assistance doesn't become an impediment to following through with the appointment. We will have to just wait and see.

The other significant thing is that I related the dramatic personality change that my wife underwent when S2 and I accompanied her to Mass to my therapist in this week's session. My therapist has an extensive background on my wife's symptoms and specializes in treating cluster B personality disorders. Knowing the history of abuse that my wife suffered from her mother (both directly and through failure to intervene) my therapist was shocked and horrified that my wife would take on the persona of her abuser. She said that she doesn't think it is a good idea for her to continue to go to Mass and suggested that she find another church or faith tradition to explore for her spiritual needs. I told the T that this was impossible as my wife is Catholic through and through (even though she has been lapsed for more than two decades.) I agreed that S2 and I would not be accompanying her to Mass anymore, and I said that I thought it would be a transient thing for my wife, as going to church and taking on this persona was a very new thing and just the latest in a line of "trying on" different coping mechanisms to deal with the extended (or more accurately, series of) extinction burst(s).

The other idea that my therapist had was that I could, when she is fully regulated, talk to my wife about the transformation that I witnessed and ask her about it. I shot that idea down immediately, as I feared it would lead to a confrontation and possibly another split. However, I don't know if I can trust my judgment. I have been in caretaking/walking on eggshells mode for so long, is it possible that this is just more avoidant behavior from me? My gut is telling me that it would make her angry to point out how similar she seemed to her mother (whom she alternatively loves and hates...but hates with deep disgust) but I don't know if this is just more of me trying to control her moods/eggshell walking. What do you all think?

HurtAndTired

[Pook075]

My dBPDw finally filled out the new patient intake form for the PNHPN provider, or more accurately, she had me fill it out for her while she answered the intake questions.

I had the same experience with my BPD wife and BPD daughter.  My kid's been admitted at least a dozen times and never once filled out her intake form.  And honestly, it's probably for the better since a spouse/parent would give much more accurate information.

My therapist has an extensive background on my wife's symptoms and specializes in treating cluster B personality disorders. Knowing the history of abuse that my wife suffered from her mother (both directly and through failure to intervene) my therapist was shocked and horrified that my wife would take on the persona of her abuser. She said that she doesn't think it is a good idea for her to continue to go to Mass and suggested that she find another church or faith tradition to explore for her spiritual needs.

This worries me for a couple of reasons.

#1, it's well documented that the abused are prone to become abusers.  This is likely where the BPD came from in the first place.

#2, a therapist has no right to tell anyone to change religions or where they worship.  While your wife's whole mass visit is perplexing, it makes me think that maybe your wife was seeking a way to repent.  I could be way off on her intentions.

[kells76]

The other significant thing is that I related the dramatic personality change that my wife underwent when S2 and I accompanied her to Mass to my therapist in this week's session. My therapist has an extensive background on my wife's symptoms and specializes in treating cluster B personality disorders. Knowing the history of abuse that my wife suffered from her mother (both directly and through failure to intervene) my therapist was shocked and horrified that my wife would take on the persona of her abuser. She said that she doesn't think it is a good idea for her to continue to go to Mass and suggested that she find another church or faith tradition to explore for her spiritual needs. I told the T that this was impossible as my wife is Catholic through and through (even though she has been lapsed for more than two decades.) I agreed that S2 and I would not be accompanying her to Mass anymore, and I said that I thought it would be a transient thing for my wife, as going to church and taking on this persona was a very new thing and just the latest in a line of "trying on" different coping mechanisms to deal with the extended (or more accurately, series of) extinction burst(s).

That caught my eye as well. This is your individual T saying this (not the MC you and your W have worked with)?

It's important to keep in mind that your individual T has your individual wellness and growth in mind. Your individual T may not focus as much on the marriage/relationship entity or on your W as an individual.

Your T may be working with you on how you feel and what would be good for you, the individual, in this context, given that the Mass situation was important enough to you for you to bring up in T. Maybe at an individual level it could hypothetically be better for you if your W did something different -- it's possible that that's where your T is coming from. At BPDfamily our goal is to be an adjunct to therapy vs an adversary of therapy. So, it may be helpful for you to go back and get some clarity with your T. There could be more to the "your W should..." statement than I'm picking up on here.

Does your individual T talk to the MC?

The other idea that my therapist had was that I could, when she is fully regulated, talk to my wife about the transformation that I witnessed and ask her about it. I shot that idea down immediately, as I feared it would lead to a confrontation and possibly another split. However, I don't know if I can trust my judgment. I have been in caretaking/walking on eggshells mode for so long, is it possible that this is just more avoidant behavior from me? My gut is telling me that it would make her angry to point out how similar she seemed to her mother (whom she alternatively loves and hates...but hates with deep disgust) but I don't know if this is just more of me trying to control her moods/eggshell walking. What do you all think?

I think I can see where your T might be coming from (again, seek clarification from your T -- I may have gotten this wrong).

The Mass situation was important enough to you to bring up to your T.

You would like to try to improve your marriage (or at least, stop it from getting worse). Safe and healthy communication is part of that.

It is possible that your T is encouraging you to "set the tone" of healthy listening by bringing up what you noticed and asking to hear what your W thinks about it.

That wouldn't be a "confrontation", a problem-solving conversation, a "just pointing out to her" conversation, a "you need to listen to how I [HaT] feel" conversation, or an interaction with an agenda. It would be coming from a place of genuine curiosity (part of empathetic listening): you think you have noticed something really... noticeable. You're curious about your W's experience: did she notice it too? That's all, there wouldn't be some "OK, now that you acknowledge you did something weird, we have to ___________". No agenda -- just learning and then saying "thanks for sharing that with me" (or something).

Anyway, that's my hypothesis about where your T may have been coming from -- using content that is important to you as a springboard for practicing skills to improve the relationship. Could be worth asking your T about.

[HurtAndTired]

Thank you for the replies Pook and Kells,

First of all, thank you for letting me know about filling out the paperwork for your wife and daughter. This makes me feel a ton better. I have been worried that I have been either pushing too hard or not enough. I want to strike a balance between being supportive and pushy. Hearing that difficulty with follow-through is normal eases my mind. I will keep my fingers crossed that I struck the right balance.

Also, to clarify, this is my personal therapist and not our MC. My therapist and the MC are not in contact. I went over the Mass incident with her because it involved my wife openly questioning my core values and second-guessing the religious upbringing of our son, which rocked me to my core. My T told me, more specifically, that I should not go to Mass with my wife anymore because of the conflict that arose from her "becoming her mother" and questioning my core beliefs. She also said that it might be a good idea to help my wife "shop for another church" where she could express her Christian faith but that would not bring out her abuser's persona. This I immediately rejected as being completely unthinkable. Most Protestants (including my T) don't fully understand that Catholicism and Orthodoxy are not just denominations, but each believes itself to be the one, true, and universal (catholic) Church that has the seven Sacraments, true Priesthood, and Apostolic Succession. There are no alternatives other than going from Catholicism to Orthodoxy or vice-versa. It's not like a Presbyterian trying out a Methodist Church.

Long story short: going to Mass can and should be good, but this entirely new behavior of turning into her mother is not healthy for anyone.

A healthy way that I have been supporting her expression of religion is by listening to daily gospel readings and meditations with her on her "Hallow" app. We meditate and pray together for 15 minutes before bed. This is completely free of any "creepy mom" energy and is positive. This I can handle and encourage. Having a "MiL pod person" replacing my wife and harping at me while criticizing my faith and our agreement on how to raise our son is intolerable and a hard line in the sand for me.

Kells, I can see what you are saying about the T suggesting a conversation based on genuine curiosity. I can, in theory, see how such a conversation could be really useful. However, I feel that we are in such a delicate place right now that I don't want to do anything to upset the apple cart. With her intake forms filled out but her not having actually started treatment, I feel like I won't be able to exhale until she actually walks out of the office with a prescription...or perhaps actually starts taking the medication. Did I mention she is back to drinking nearly daily as a coping mechanism? She clearly feels an urgent need to self-medicate and I would like to see her get that help sooner rather than later. In my experience, nothing good ever comes from her hitting the booze.

I think I will just stop occasionally attending Mass with her (if she even keeps going) and will instead return to going to Divine Liturgy at the Orthodox Church each week with S2 as per usual. If she does continue going to Mass, I will put a pin in this topic and will revisit it in a month or two once she has started treatment and I feel like we are farther away from the cliff's edge. As I have said, I have a deep respect for the Catholic Church and my wife's faith. Still, the way that her mother expresses her faith does a disservice to Christianity. I can and will not support that type of hypocrisy (self-righteous, self-justifying, proud, judgemental, piety on display for the world to see, sure of her own superiority, and completely unrepentant to the children that she so grievously harmed.)

If my wife wants to return to her faith, I will support her doing so in a genuine way that is not just for show, the way her mother does. My MiL goes to Mass nearly every day and is a truly terrible person. Going through the motions of Christianity doesn't make one a Christian. The daily heartfelt prayer and meditation on scriptures feels like a good place to start and hopefully, we can grow spiritually together from there.

Thanks again for the replies,

HurtAndTired

[kells76]

Did you let your individual T know that your W is looking into treatment?

I can see how it'd make sense get your priorities in order (everything can't be the #1 priority at once), and how from your POV, your W's buy-in to treatment is pretty high priority right now.

How do you think it'd go to share with your T that while the "let's talk about you (wife) at Mass" conversation is important, what's more important to you right now is doing your best not to make getting treatment more difficult for your W (not that you have absolute control over that, but as far as you can tell, having that convo now might create a hurdle)?

Maybe you and your T can come up with a plan where you practice having those difficult listening conversations, but it doesn't have to be right now per se. I would also understand if your T were working with you to unhitch the connection between "is my W doing OK, is she stable, does it seem like an OK time for my W" with "that means I can raise an issue". So maybe you and T can find some middle ground: you recognize you need to decouple what you need from being totally contingent on your W's mood, and you propose trying that approach after your W has been in treatment for X weeks. Or, you propose having some listening conversations sooner, but about lower-intensity topics.

Again -- I can see where your T is coming from, and I see where you are coming from. Working that out relationally with your therapist could be really good practice for you saying what you need, what you want, and what you will and won't do, in a safe setting.

[HurtAndTired]

Hi Kells,

I did talk to my individual T about my wife getting into treatment. My wife initially wanted to see the same Nurse Practitioner that I have been seeing for years to treat my anxiety. I told my wife that I would ask her (although I was sure it was going to be a conflict of interest.) I did ask my NP and sure enough, it was a conflict of interest. I didn't tell my wife that as the next question from her would have been, I'm very sure, something along the lines of, "What have you been telling her about me that she doesn't want to help me?" Instead, I just told her that my NP was not taking new patients right now. Both my NP and my individual T suggested several local alternatives and it was one of those that we chose.

It took a week from the time we settled on a provider, and a lot of gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) prodding from me, to get her to the point where I could sit down with her and the computer and fill out the online intake form. What my wife really wanted was for me to make a phone call to my NP and take care of everything for her. Any type of her making appointments, not just for mental health but even regular doctor's appointments, usually requires me to either do it for her or to prod her to do it. She is very reluctant to get help for any type of ailment. Short of a gunshot wound or broken limb, she would rather try to shrug it off, treat it with a home remedy, or just complain about it while suffering.

My individual T is aware that getting my wife into treatment while she is still amenable to it is my current #1 priority. My wife and I have couples counseling tomorrow and I see my individual T again on Thursday. My wife has not told me if she has heard back from the mental health provider yet and I have not asked. We filled out the intake on Friday morning, so I imagine that it might take them a couple of days to get back to her. I will gently inquire tonight if she has heard back from them. There are a lot of moving pieces this week that will greatly impact how things are going forward.

My wife has been very unhappy at her job for quite a long time. She has been there for 22 years, but the past year or two have been especially bad. I offered to help her look for a new job and this weekend we did some online job hunting. I wrote a resume for her and helped her through the process. With my help, she applied for two jobs and has an interview with one of them on Friday morning. This is a huge step for her as it would be the first job interview that she has been to in 22 years. It is a potential for a pay raise and for her to get away from people that really are pushing her buttons at work.

As I see it, we have three major variables at play. The first is whether or not she hears back from the mental health clinic and agrees to schedule an appointment. The second is how couples counseling goes tomorrow night, and the third is how her job interview goes on Friday. These are all three potential game-changers and will largely dictate what I talk about with my individual T on Thursday. I can't know how the interview will turn out, but just the fact that she has one scheduled will either have her excited or pessimistic as the date approaches.

No matter how the variables affect her going through this week, I do plan to talk to my T about how to best approach my wife with conversations that are potential land mines and do some practice with her. I know that these types of conversations are necessary for us to move forward and make progress in our relationship, but I also need to practice and prepare for the eventuality that they will go south fast. As a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) who has a healthy dose of Complex-PTSD after years of ongoing abuse from my wife (mental, verbal, physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual), I get easily emotionally flooded and it is very hard for me to respond in ways that are calm and productive due to the adrenaline dump /fight or flight reaction that my nervous system has in response to her becoming dysregulated.

I will keep you all updated as this very consequential week plays out. Hopefully with some good news on several fronts.

HurtAndTired