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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

@Determined , thinking of you lots and your family

how are you

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

Hi @Shaz51

Thanks for checking in and sorry I have been a bit absent.

Things are a bit bumpy here at the moment.

FiL is on a gradual decline. Ambulance ride to the hospital last night. Thought that might be it but he has.bounced back tonight. Happily living in his own little world but has more strength and colour.

A lot of 'visits' from family members long passed in.recent days. It really is hard to watch the decline.

Was at the hospital ED until early hours of this morning. So little sleep last night.

And on Saturday night. I was up all night expecting the phone to ring.

Big concerns around how Darling is going to cope when Dad passes .have a psyc appointment upcoming to implement a safety plan. I need guidelines and boundaries for hospital admission (as a last resort) to be set up for my peace of mind.

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

one step at a time my @Determined

yes you have lots on you mind at the moment

my mum is declining also but slowly

yes hoping your darling will be ok too

how is today going

Hello @hanami , @FloatingFeather , @Dimity , @amber22 , @Former-Member

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

Hard day @Shaz51

Have started discussions about end of life care for FiL. Currently in hospital but contemplating returning to nursing home and making comfortable rather than continuing current treatment. Heart wrenching realisation to arrive at.

And it is me that is left to have these discussions with medical staff and family. Feeling drained. :nauseated_face:

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

ohh sending you lots of understanding hugs my friend @Determined

my Mother in law in hospital now having lots of tests done and it looks like pancreatic cancer

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

Tough times @Shaz51

Thinking of you and family 🙏

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

@Shaz51 @Determined, sounds like we're all on about the same page. xx

It's really hard feeling the weight of making the decisions about someone else's impending death. No two ways about it. Me, being closer to the bottom of said page than the top at the moment... even though the death and the "after" is hard, honestly, like a lot of things in life, I think the uncertainty of the "in between" time of waiting is the worst. If you're making the decisions with respect and love for the other person, you're going to get it right enough...


Lots of love and prayers for both of you. Hang in there.

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 think the uncertainty of the "in between" time of waiting is the worst"

That about sums it up @Smc .

Riding the waves is exhausting.

FIL is doing ok today and talking about the future with some enthusiasm. None of which I'd realistic but hey the enthusiasm is better than where we have been. Holding my breath for the next crash though and feeling guilty for doing so 😕

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, there's a world of difference between expecting the next crash and wishing for it, but our dense brains are not good at telling them apart. Somehow, despite everything, I tend to be an optimist and expect things to improve. It's hard to swallow the prospect that no... they won't. At least not in any sustained way. But the guilt is false... And yeah, however unrealistic his future plans are, if they're happy plans, they'll be doing him some good. xx




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

Agreed @Smc @Determined ❤️

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