I know the first thing people will tell me is that I’m not her therapist. She actually has a psychiatrist and a therapist she regularly speaks to. She was recently diagnosed with BPD, and Depression. I try my best to give her good, harmless advice but sometimes she just doesn’t listen and lashes out emotionally either at herself or others. It frustrates me because I feel like she’s not doing the best to move forward and improve and instead wants to stay at the point she’s at. I don’t know if I should even attempt to tell her what to do, or continue to give her advice and help her. We’re both 22, and sometimes I feel I ain’t much help. What can I do?
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Then…stop giving advice? Doesn’t sound like she’s asking for your input. Start seeing your own therapist. You sound too focused on trying to parent and manage her.
I’m gonna give you some HUGE life advice. Sometimes people just want to vent and don’t actually want your feedback.
If you aren’t sure you can start by asking them if they just want you to listen or if they want advice.
Gonna save you a million headaches. Just listen if that’s what they want. Learn the phrase “that sucks”. Don’t say “I understand” or any variation of the phrase. Just let them vent and say something along the lines of “wow that does sound shitty”.
Sometimes people want advice. Sometimes people want to just unload whatever is weighing them down.
**I feel like she’s not doing the best to move forward and improve and instead wants to stay at the point she’s at.**
Angel, most cities offer treatment programs (e.g., DBT, TFP, and CBT) that can teach a pwBPD (person with BPD) the emotional skills she never had an opportunity to learn in childhood. Such a program can teach her how to do self-soothing; how to regulate her own emotions; how to intellectually challenge intense feelings instead of accepting them as “facts”; and how to trust others.
It also can teach her how to be “mindful” (i.e., to remain in the room instead of escaping in daydreams to the past or future); how to perceive “object constancy” (i.e., to see that your personality and devotion to her are essentially unchanged day to day); and how to avoid black-white thinking by learning to tolerate strong mixed feelings, uncertainties, ambiguities, and the other gray areas of interpersonal relationships.
Sadly, only a small share of the high-functioning pwBPD have both the self-awareness and self-motivation required to remain in such a program long enough to make a real difference. Like learning to play a piano, it requires many years of hard practice for a pwBPD to acquire the missing emotional skills. One study (by John Gunderson & Frank Yeomans) estimates that 8 to 16 years are required.
Hence, a training program like DBT is effective only if the pwBPD is self-aware and strongly motivated to work hard for years in learning these skills. As to going to a couples’ counselor, my experience is that such counseling is useless until the pwBPD already has completed many years of individual therapy to address her underlying issues.
In my case, I spent a small fortune sending my exW to 6 different psychologists (and taking her to 3 MCs and a psychiatrist) for weekly sessions for 15 years. Sadly, it did not make a dent in her behavior. Not one dent.
If your exGF is an untreated pwBPD, Angel, you likely will see big improvements in her behavior — making dramatic improvements about every 6 to 10 weeks. That’s how unstable people behave.
I mention this because, if you decide to put your life on hold to see if she is serious about working on her issues, it is going to be difficult for you to know whether she is actually making any real, lasting improvement. Even a roller coaster will be seen making dramatic gains half the time. At least, this was my experience, Angel.