My bpd is ruining my marriage

I was diagnosed with BPD, general anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and combat PTSD about a year and a half ago. I knew something was amiss for years before. I knew I was different in the way I thought and acted.

Once I received the diagnosis, it all made sense.

I come here seeking support and ideas on how to tame my BPD and save my marriage.

The paranoid thoughts, constant fear of abondonment and rejection, constant struggle with identity , constant struggle with self image, are all taking its toll on my wife. She catches the hell for my mood changes and catches the rage when I have any fear or thought that she is going to leave or is having an affair....thoughts that enter my mind regularly.

I am just now starting treatment/counseling and I am prescribed abilify...but I'm not sure how well that works for my symptoms.

I have been doing some reading at BPD and medication combinations and just wondering what everyone's consensus is on what works and what doesn't?

Any tips on calming the irrational paranoid thoughts that sometimes consume my mind?

Hi Thehopelessrunner. Welcome to Psych Central. I am sorry you are facing challenges to your marriage from the symptoms that you face.

There are no easy answers. Have you considered contacting a specialist in Combat PTSD? That sounds like a serious situation and an expert in that area with good track record could make your path easier.

These might be of interest
Coping with Combat PTSD

Borderline Personality: 7 Powerful Ways Families Can Cope With Traits | Caregivers, Family & Friends

Difference between PTSD reactions and Borderline Personality Disorder | The Exhausted Woman

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Psych Central

Paranoid thoughts can be distressing. One way a friend has learned to cope with them is to accept that maybe they are true, maybe they are false. Suspending belief helps them if they can find something else to focus on. Like putting those thoughts on hold "Paranoid thought, hold on for a minute, I will get back to you." Then try to focus on your room and see if you are safe in your room. They connect with the senses, and feel their breath. They can feel their heart beating. They see if they can connect with that safe feeling even for a moment. I guess this might be called mindfulness. More on that here:

Where Jon Kabat Zinn uses the term "pain" it may be worth thinking of this as trauma. It is worth a try.
YouTube

https://youtu.be/ss1_s5gajyY

https://youtu.be/iOo4ys0tqE4

Hope you find the support you are looking for.

Hi there, TheHopelessRunner. My thoughts on meds - good luck on getting a consensus on that topic! It seems like psych meds are a whole different animal. What works for one, doesn't do anything for another, and causes more problems for yet another. I know there are meds that are supposed to be great for helping BPD folk...and I'm not on any of them. Hopefully others here can help you more about those, and what you are on.

I am on citalopram - and have been for years - long before I was diagnosed with PTSD and BPD. So, my feelings about meds - finding the right one, or combination of, is a wonderful thing, in that they help treat the symptoms of whatever you have. It can take a lot of trial and error, to find what is best for you - but keep working at it, because it really can be a game changer! Therapy helps treat the cause, and gives you tools to use as you move forward in life.

A question for you to ask yourself - I don't need an answer - but, in regards to your marriage suffering, because of your suffering - does your wife know about your diagnosis? Does she know you are starting therapy for it? I know it seems silly to ask, but isn't. I have a tendency to not talk about such things to my own spouse, and have had to work hard to include him in what is going on with me. I'm learning that the more I do that, the better our relationship is becoming, because he understands better what I'm going thru, and that when I lash out, it really is "all about me" and not really anything to do with him.

Also - when you do have those paranoid thoughts, and are lashing out at her - do you know, at the time, that you are having paranoid thoughts, and lashing out? Can you, as CanDC suggested, put those thoughts and feelings on pause? Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Sometimes, I'll stop myself in the middle of lashing out, having caught myself. Then, I apologize to my hubby...usually saying something like oops, sorry about that. That was me going off the rails. Didn't mean it. Just my emotions / thoughts / etc. overwhelming me.

It took me a long time, and a lot of hard work, to even get to that point. A proper diagnosis and therapy for the PTSD and BPD would no doubt have saved me time - so,...find a drop of hope that you have received your diagnosis, that fits and makes sense to you about what you are experiencing. Find another drop of hope in that you are getting therapy for it all. And I hope that what I've written will maybe give you another drop of hope, that your marriage can survive, and even thrive. How things are for you now, is JUST for now. It doesn't mean it will be like this forever. There is hope, HopelessRunner.

Yes my wife knows about my diagnosis. She has done some reading online about it. It scares her. Because a lot of these websites basically portray people with bpd as these manipulating horrible people that will ruin your life.

She has been very supportive and been there for me but it drains and exhausts her. She also is basically a stay at home mom to our 2 kids, ages 4 and 2, so that in itself is draining as well.

She has displayed a ton of understanding and patience but she has basically put the ball in my court. She said if I want this marriage to work out, that I need to work on myself through counseling and medication. Which I agree with her. I do need to work on myself.

A big thing she is afraid of is the arguing and yelling sometimes is done in front of the kids. She doesn't want our kids to be tramuatized from the fights and have them grow up feeling some type of way.

I have not tried the pause technique. In some instances I can see it working. In others, I'm not sure. When I get upset, the rage overtakes my body and mind and soul. It's hard to back off of the rage sometimes.

Oh I so totally get ya on the rage thing. Sounds like you've got a good, supportive wife, who is willing and able to challenge you to push forward. What a gem! My thought is, with the children, that it is a blessing you are working on yourself while they are still so very young. If you can get a handle on things...there's lots of time to help build good memories for them, and show them how a stable, in control person can grow, and take charge, and change things. I can totally understand your wife's concerns, tho. Sometimes, I scare myself! And a lot of the info about BPD - yeah, terrifying. But the cool thing is, there is hope. There's specific therapy to target BPD. It's much better understood now, than it used to be. Something I'm trying to do myself, is to stop focusing on what BPD is, and how it makes me act, and focus on how to fix it. Haven't gone there with my counselor yet, but I've heard it's sometimes a good thing to involve our spouses into our process. Helps them understand what we're going to be doing, in therapy. Helps them learn how to deal with us (and not get away with the bad behavior.) Perhaps your wife will become more comfortable with your diagnosis, if she's included more in the process? Something to think about. I like your thread title, by the way - because it shows there's hope. BPD is ruining your marriage? Better than ruinED. There's hope it can get better, and it sounds like you've got the kind of wife who can make this journey with you. I'm similarly blessed. I wish you both well!

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!

Thank you for the responses. My username is actually something I do very well. Seems silly but running is a passion of mine. It's something I do well as I have entered races in the past and won them or came in the top 5. So I get what you mean listing things even how silly they seem.

I must admit that in the past I had a massive drug problem. I shouldn't say drug problem but I figured out drugs are a solution, not a very good one, but they are very effective at helping escape reality. I was addicted to shooting speedballs and smoking crack cocaine for about half a decade. I got clean for about 5.5 years and recently relapsed on crystal meth back in June. I was going through so much at the time that the creeping thought of escaping entered my mind even after being clean for so long. It's funny how the mind works. Well needless to say, I gave in. And after a couple days of using crystal meth, I felt normal. Had energy. Felt detached enough to exhibit barely any BPD symptoms. Then one morning I did too much and blacked out. I was so high during my black out, that I contacted someone for help. They suggested I get some heroin to help come down from the super stimulating meth high I was experiencing. Well in my black out, I bought some heroin. Which is not like me at all. But I ended up doing a good amount and overdosed. The heroin I bought was cut with fentanyl and I fell out while driving. Someone drove past my car and saw me slumped over and called 911. They saved my life in essence. It took the hospital 3 hours to revive me. They had to hook me up to a narcan drip to keep me from continually overdosing.

So not only have we been dealing with the BPD symptoms, we've been dealing with the relapse as well.

Thehopelessrunner - good choice on user name, then. A reminder of one thing you do well, and can enjoy! Drug and alcohol abuse are not uncommon for folks like us. I consider it self-medicating, for both my PTSD and BPD. I've also learned it's a really bad thing for myself, to do. Still, like you, it sometimes calls to me. However, my black outs terrify me - whether it's from drugs, booze, or rage. I'm so afraid of what I might do to innocent people, including (especially) those I love, that it helps keep me motivated to resist that call. I'm so sorry to hear you relapsed - that must be very hard on you, and scary for your wife! I'm glad you survived it,....and hope that you both will be able to mark it as an unfortunate occurrence that won't necessarily be repeated. You've climbed out of that pit before. It's a setback, but it's not the end.