FORUMS

Connect with people who understand what you are going through, seek advice and surround yourself with support. We're free, anonymous, and professionally moderated 24/7.

  • 47,612Members
  • 1,358,869Posts
  • 1,400,000Visitors
Friends, families and carers

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.

2306 replies

1,321 - 1,330 of 2,306

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.

Not yet @Former-Member , still waiting on the proofs to choose prints.

That process usually takes a couple of weeks but the end result has been worth it previously so happy to wait.

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 was reviewing some photos on the TV that I took with our boys last night and came across photos from ~2 years ago of darling. It was a bit of a shock for me as I have fogotten how unwell she looked. She was so thin and pale. It made me a little anxious when she said she wanted to look like that again 😞 ... (she has gained significant weight since changing meds).

As a positive seeing her in that photo reminded me of how far we have come over the last 12 months.

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 know what you mean @Determined

mr shaz saw his photo 4 years ago and he was soo skiny and drwn in the face , but since on the new meds he has put on weight which he wants to lose ( his idea is to stop the meds which is making him gain weight

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 had the opposite @Determined, Mr Darcy looking a lot chubbier snoozing on the couch (he was sleeping a lot then).

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 keep getting caught out by old pics of our girl too. She's chubbier now, partially due to medication, but there's also something hard to define in her face that's changed, and not for the better.

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.

At that time Darling went from significantly overweight from inactivity and over eating to significantly underweight. She looked really unhealthy in that photo. She was refusing to eat at the time and living off high energy bars and protein shakes while cycling 200+ km / week. In fact I would go so far as to say in the photo there were similarities to her mums appearance when she was failing in her fight against cancer. Seeing the pic rattled me. Understand what you mean @Smc about that hard to define appearance.

Now while she looks much more healthy she is anxious about her weight but lacks the motivation to exercise and change diet. While she is mostly stable and there has not been any self harm or attempts in a little over 12 months current meds combined with inpatient treatment 2 years ago have robbed us of any emotional connection, but at least we still have her with 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.

@Determined, I really genuinely hope that eventually her treatment succeeds to the point where you can rebuild those connections. I remember my Dad once, when I was in upper primary school or so, checking up on me, and letting on at the same time that he found Mum's unreasonable volatility and inconsistency hard to take. There were a few points when he nearly walked out. It's a hard haul, well done you for not giving up, even though at times you've felt like it.

My Mum and Dad had very little help available. No medications apart from something to help Mum sleep, little in the way of counselling, and I'm not sure either of them talked about it with friends. So you've got a few hopeful positives in your court.
(Clumsy-ish post. It's hard stuff to put into words.)

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 it is my prayer for you too Bro

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.

Thanks @Former-Member @Smc

And likewise for you both. I know I am not alone in all of this. Just a flood of memories at the moment that I thought I had put aside but are never far from the surface.

The biggest positive out of it all is that it is clear we have come so far.

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 was sitting down with S2 tonight looking at some YouTube songs with him.

His favourite- Believer by Imagine Dragons

First couple of verses below. It does get better (sort of) but wow. Think I need to spend some time listening to more positive things with him. Darling showed him this and also likes this group. Wow.

First things first
I'ma say all the words inside my head
I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been, oh ooh
The way that things have been, oh ooh
Second thing second
Don't you tell me what you think that I can be
I'm the one at the sail, I'm the master of my sea, oh ooh
The master of my sea, oh ooh
I was broken from a young age
Taking my sulking to the masses
Write down my poems for the few
That looked at me, took to me, shook to me, feeling me
Singing from heartache from the pain
Taking my message from the veins
Speaking my lesson from the brain
Seeing the beauty through the
You made me a, you made me a believer, believer
(Pain, pain)
You break me down, you build me up, believer, believer
(Pain)
Oh let the bullets fly, oh let them rain
My life, my love, my drive, it came from
(Pain)
You made me a, you made me a believer, believer
1,321 - 1,330 of 2,306