Hi HopelessRunner,

I, too, am on the verge of losing my marriage as a result of my BPD. What baffles my husband is that I can be so "normal" i.e. a good mom, competent professional in my work, and then turn around and hurt myself and take huge risks to my safety and put my family in jeopardy. One thing that is helping both of us is Shari Manning's book "Loving someone with BPD" its not new, and you can get for pretty cheap. I highly recommend you buy it for her and read it yourself.

I have been to therapy a lot and each time manage to convince my therapist that I have recovered and they release me. Then I go about a year and i get into trouble again. I don't have any paranoia, so can't really say how to regulate that, but I do know that my anger is freaking out of control sometimes and when i take Prozac, I feel more even keeled. I hope the abilify works for you, but please keep trying if it doesn't- I don't believe that meds DON'T help us, I just think each of us needs a different type of medication to treat different aspects of our BPD that we display.

I think the more you learn about the BPD and what to look for in yourself- the more you can recognize when its happening and then hit the pause button. I have been taking a DBT course on my own, because I feel like the therapists available to me are jokes, probably because of my BPD (ha ha). It has worksheets and such and I do them and show them to my husband and we go over things. it really helps me with training my thoughts: for instance when I think, "I am a worthless nothing" I stop and talk to myself like i am talking to someone i love: "you are not nothing, think of all the great things you can do:" then I list everything I can think of even silly things like I know how to jump rope, and I can cook really good scrambled eggs- things like that. its not easy to have lived for 30+ years thinking you are nothing and then thinking of nice things to say to yourself- but it seriously starts working and sinking in. I have been doing this for about 3 months now.
One other thing I learned with my husband is one minute I treat him like a king that can do no wrong and next I am thinking or telling him he is a total scumbag. It helps to remember that he is neither, he is human and he has faults, and he also loves me. "Normal" people see themselves in other people-- we must strive to do the same and try to find "grays" in our black and white worlds.
My kids are 9 and 11 and they have seen our fights periodically throughout their lives - more than I care to admit. They still love both of us and we make sure we have ensured them once we are calm again that the fighting has nothing to do with them and we both love them and are very proud of them. We do try our best to not fight in front of them- but try to forgive yourself for the past and not to sound like an AA meeting but take one day at a time. Each day you get through without an incident is a GREAT DAY. I mark these on a calendar. they are starting to add up!