@Jay-e
I think we often look for triggers and reasons for behaviours and we often scratch our heads thinking 'where did that come from?' I think I stopped looking for triggers, although I have noticed recently that pain is a problem for Mr D and am encouraging him to see what can be done about this.
There are a lot of emotions that manifest as anger and this is often where therapy comes in ... our partners do of course need to be willing to engage with this for it to be of help. I have found however, that sometimes it is helpful to acknowledge their anger after things have settled and perhaps ask what they were feeling as the depth of emotion was quite evident. I would ask Mr D if it was something he felt he could raise with his therapist.
I went to counseling myself as I was not coping so well and found it to be helpful. I found that feeling powerless was a thing for me. I would not have identified this before but is now quite obvious to me. I learned how to deal with this in healthy ways. Along the way I learned to focus on the things we can do to help us live well and make the most of our circumstances.
As you say, understanding how our partners symptoms manifest makes a difference. I think we often blame ourselves, certainly responding in healthy ways makes things easier as does not doing things we know that are hurtful. However, there are times when their behaviours do need to be called out; BPii is not an excuse for this.
