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Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

This thread is a follow on (or starting over) from my previous thread Caring for a wife with borderline personality disorder – sequel to diary of wife's hospital stay, I wanted to start over and in order to leave all the trauma and negativity of last year behind me and start fresh.

Those of you who have been following our family journey will know that after a number of hospital admissions for my darling I was encouraged by my councillor to implement some boundaries (lovingly implemented guidelines, not rules to be enforced) as well as self-care for myself as what we were doing was clearly not working and my health was /still is being affected.

Well after a smoother than expected start the boundaries and self-care were forgotten with my darling having a complete melt down and further lengthy hospital admissions due to high risk of self harm and a genuine attempt to leave us. The last 6 months particularly have been quite difficult for us all. S2 particularly had a lot of issues at school during this time and is currently seeing a councillor.

The purpose of this new thread is to again document our journey of healing, working on implemented boundaries and commitment to self care. As with the previous thread this is so that I can have a visual plan for myself with some accountability to follow through with plans in place and in the hope that it may help others in similar situations to ours. And so that I can track our progress. This was especially helpful in the last thread leading up to Christmas when I was feeling down about our current position to review what I had written and see just how far we have come.

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In response to: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

That is what we were really hoping for @Smc but not on the list of approved activities or services. I specifically asked this question at this latest meeting and at the intake interview as these are the activities that would help him to enable the goals of independence. It seems that most activities will require my attendence

It is up to us as the end user to resarch what services meet the criteria. All we have is vague goals with no suggestions on how to achieve these goals.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Am guessing it wouldn't be appropriate for us to brainstorm on any of the vague goals?

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Given that it is non identifying and not around specific medical treatment we could try

@Former-Member please advise if this is to appropiate and apoligies.

Most of this is stuff we already work on and wound be ideal for a youth support worker or for group sporting activities but this aparently does not count. Even have a youth support worker assist with intergration with group sport activities and we would be happy to pay for the activity as this is not something we have the capacity to do 😞

I have added as a screen shot so a mod can review for suitability prior to release.

Hopfully pics wont take too long.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

That is the easiest part to read anyway.

The stupid part is we are not suposed to share this with a service provider? Not even to ask this is what we are funded for can / how can you help us meet these goals.

Going to have to try get some rest now as early start tomorrow.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Am wondering if it's the choice of wording that gets in the way of sporting activities being covered. Sports generally involve gross motor skills, not fine, and although a socially healthy sports team is great as a way of "building social inclusion... and making friends" it's not the main purpose/stated goal of the group. And socially unhealty sports teams exist too- how can the provider be sure your son's team is a good one?

If they use funds towards an activity that is deemed not to fulfil the support goals, they can end up being penalised.

So providers will be trying to cover their backs and make sure they cross the t's and dot the i's, not vice versa.
Maybe one way around that could be to ask for a support worker's oversight of your son's participation in community social groups, including but not limited to sporting groups?

Are there scouting or similar groups in your region? They might come closer to meeting the "social inclusion/making friends" criteria, as they've always had a function as a youth community service group.

Does your son have any interest in an art or craft activity? Or lego, meccano, ??? Those should meet the "fine motor skills development" criteria, and if it's done as a group, the "social inclusion etc" bit. The way it's worded sounds very much like it's geared towards individual occupational therapy, but you might get a window in if a therapist was willing to recommend participation in the local pottery/meccano/kids' art attack group as a way of honing his fine motor skills in a community setting...

The "decision making, daily planning and budgeting" bit sounds like it might be a standard clause included in most or all plans. If so, in practice, they'll need to adjust "delivery" to take account of his age and abilities. There's only so much budgeting you can teach when you're working with pocket money.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

@Determined

Dropping off a casserole for your clan.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Yum @Former-Member thanks for that

We actually just finished something lookimg similar to that except I layered the top with cornchips and cheese. No complainants except S2 picked out all the peas lol.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

yummmmmmmm @Former-Member

Hugs @Determined

Hello @Smc , @Janiee , @Faith-and-Hope

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

@Smc I agree with what you are saying.

We have tried the OT path previously but that was not particularly successful.

I will have to contact a couple of providers on the approved list to discuss our options and what they interpret is covered. I am also hoping the school can provide some guidance based on teaching staff interactions with him.

I am not interested in using funding just because it is there if I can't see any benefit as that is not sustainable.

What would be of most benefit would be the option for a case worker to assess and guide us even if that had to come from the funding allocated.

Early days yet, just have to see where it all leads us.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

I like the idea of seeing if an OT saw the benefit of a particular supported activity if that would be covered. I would be more than happy to pay for the activity. Having that external support would be benefits for S1 as well as us as parents as he often responds better to someone unrelated in following instructions. It can often be a sport for him to push our buttons or pretend something is too hard so we will take the slack... which does nothing to help him grow.

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