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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.

Hello @Determined

I understand your feeling so flat and overwhelmed possibly...

The boat is important to you....

is not as important as you are though is it...

are you able to apply the same thoughts to yourself when you say that the mower and the boat need servicing?

left unattended objects can become mouldy and not operate as they should...

we humans are the same...not that I am implying that you are mouldy...

As a carer you are entitled to the use of respite care I imagine...

Just a thought...I wonder how your darling would feel if she realised that there is a potential for her to go into respite care whilst you have some time not thinking about her at all...having some time all to yourself...

The shift to respite care as opposed to a family member or friend staying with her might alert her mind to the realisation that the world does not revolve around her...illness or not....sorry to sound so blunt and certainly no intent to minimise her illness or disrespect her or yourself and family..

sometimes shifting the scenery...the parameters ...brings a new awareness to the fore...

if I am way off track or out of line here...please let me know...you might even have this in place...apologies in advance if you have...

I only wish to offer suggestions as others have said...you are very important to us here in Forumland...

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.

I've tried the wd40 in the past @Smc but it is pretty well sealed. Kind of a big hammer job without hitting too hard s ok as to bend the cable. I knew the steering was delicate when I bought the boat. Guy was going to get it fixed but took off $1000 if I fixed it myself. I just have to remember to move in it and oil the shaft regularly. Last time it seized it took me hours to free up.

Vinegar is a great idea. I had forgotten about that. I actually have some too so that makes it easy.

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.

Thank you for your thoughts @Sophia1

Not at all out of line.

Respite care for us usually involves a hospital visit. At this time she is flatly refusing. That and she is incensed at the thought that she needs to be looked after. (No insight).

Darling did want to go and stay with a friend out of town but I'm not sure that would be a healthy relationship decision at the moment.

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 managed to get an hour of mowing in this afternoon before dark. That's the footpath and front yard. Back yard is going to be a big job. Lots of sticks and branches to pick up amongst grass that is over my head. May hire a dingo digger 🤔 that can condense a week's work into 1 day.

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.

Just had grades released for semester just finished. Only got 17/40 on my final exam for 1 subject 😥 69% oa. Not happy Jan...

Other 2 were over 80 oa so happy with that I guess. Was hoping for over 85 on all 3 at beginning of semester. How things change.

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.

You passed at least. We can hope the next semester goes better.

Have been there done that. After being one of those "annoying" students who cruised through school getting top marks without studying, I totally crashed out and failed 3/5 subjects in Year 12. After a lot of struggling (and praying) I repeated the year and got reasonable but not brilliant marks. In retrospect... that was partially due to me never having learned study skills, and partially due to the psychological stress I was under both at home and school. It was hard to swallow ending up with marks that came nowhere close to reflecting my ability, even second time around, but I can see now that I did the best that I could do under very hard circumstances.

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 @Smc

Everyone keeps telling me 69% is a great result.

First exam I have failed though is the biggest blow.

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. How are you going?

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.

Feeling a little flat at the moment @Former-Member

Darling is particularly low at the moment which is not helping. If she is still not improved in the next couple of days I will be encouraging a visit to the pdoc. Or just make one and tell her she does not have a choice. That approach can go good or poorly though.

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.

Having a real estate assessment of our house on Monday. That may result in a couple of weeks of intensive decluttering and clean up if it is a positive report. It really is a bad time to be considering such things (emotionally but we have a potentially great opportunity so worth investigating.

Not only will this put us closer to mum and dad in old age but they will be closer to us so able to support Darling more and allow me potentially get back into work much sooner.

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