If I could just get to bed 30 minutes before she comes upstairs. That was my thinking because I wanted desperately to get settled and get into a deep sleep as soon as possible before it began. But eventually, the lights coming on, the loud banging noises in the closet, the gentle nudging…..are you awake? Why, oh why, must these conversations occur in the middle of the night? Don’t you know I have to get up in a few hours and try to work? I’m exhausted! And yet, there seems to be no remorse in waking you night after night to discuss the topic, in all likelihood, you discussed the night before…and the night before that…and the night before that…well, you get the picture.
Your mind doesn’t work like a BPD mind. For you, it can wait. You can have a discussion at a pre-arranged time or when it’s convenient. But when a BPD mind starts to churn (and it seems to churn a lot late in the evenings), the the conversation needs to happen….right now! Wait? There’s no time to wait! And so the BPD person thinks nothing of disrupting your sleep and baiting you into a discussion whenever the urge strikes. This can also occur at other times. Have you experienced this? The phone rings but you can’t answer it right now because you’re in a meeting. So you silence the phone. Only 30 seconds later, it rings again. Then it rings again and again and again. At some point after about 20 rings you finally step out of the meeting to call and make sure there’s not an emergency. You know there’s not but out of caution you check just the same because you’re a responsible person. What you find is someone on the line who wants to discuss an urgent matter with you..right now! Of course it’s not urgent and it could certainly wait…but not in the world of BPD. It’s because the intensity of the emotion is so strong…right now! To postpone and catch up later might mean the intensity has passed and that just isn’t the same as having a discussion at the very height of the emotional cycle.
So here’s a bit of advice. Make sure the difficult conversations are made at a time of you’re choosing. First, you can assure that you are well rested and prepared. Second, you’re likely to have the emotional cycle abate just a bit and make the conversation much more productive than when emotions are at their peak.