I think the assumption here is that the OP has a legitimate mental illness, and is not a lazy slacker with an entitlement attitude.
Assumption where? Within the OP’s head?
is wife is “more comfortable” not working? Let’s see how comfortable she is when she’s hungry and out on the street!
Lots of people are diagnosed with lots of things. But the diagnosis alone says little as to the severity of the condition. A hell of a lot of people with diagnosed conditions support themselves. But, a lot of folk like to blame their problems on a pathology…
Agreed, but he also says he has quit every job he’s had, NOT that he was let go each time because of mental instability. This means he was in control of his employment situation. He needs to learn not to cut and run when people are depending on him.
Actually, he says it’s been a mix of both (emphasis mine):
@the OP: There is a quote from a man who attempted suicide in the 1980s by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. While in mid-air: “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped.”
He was among the tiny percentage of people who survive a fall from that bridge.
Have either of you tried signing up to work for Amazon Mturk? I make about 150 a week. I sit my ass in front of my computer for about 12 hours a day for that pittance but I am a lot like you and your wife. I try to work. It never works out, one reason or another. I have such bad social anxiety I’m practically nonverbal even with family. I do not give off a good first impression. I stutter and blush and mumble and fidget.
Anyway, I signed up thinking it was like Swagbucks, probably a scam, but I was making grocery money right from the start. I mean even 50 dollars a week would be helpful and I make that easy. It is VERY slow during the winter break but once school starts back I will make more doing college research surveys. I get paid through Amazon Pay, transferring my earnings every day from there to my bank account. If you don’t have a bank account you can get paid in Amazon gift cards. I’ve been doing it since August and I really enjoy it. It’s a lot of mindless clicking. Some dating site profile moderating, some catalog stuff, transcribing receipts. Mostly you work at your own pace. There are timers for some tasks but never too short and if you can’t do it, just return it and someone else can do it. It’s all really easy and some of it can even be done from a smart phone or tablet. I take breaks whenever I like, usually at a slow time. There are scripts that make the job a lot easier. Right now the site is in transition, I think getting them more smart phone friendly, but a few scripts are needing an update. Overall it’s still been fairly easy to make at least 100 a week. You won’t get rich, but maybe it’ll help out some? And if you did end up moving for whatever reason that won’t matter (as long as you stay in a country Amazon works with!). As long as you have internet access you’re good to go.
Fair enough. But he says it’s futile for him to get a job with his history of losing them, which is giving up before even trying.
… my therapist “believes” I “may have” …
Lots of people are disgusted with their jobs but do them anyway because responsibilities.
If you really are too weak to man-up buy the van first. If you live under a bridge you will never pull out of it.
How much is your gun worth? Trade it for a cheap car.
There are also many jobs that don’t require being around people. Delivery jobs spring to mind. An independent delivered some Amazon purchases to me the other day. She showed up in a clunker wearing shabby clothes. I asked and she claimed to make good enough money.
We don’t have kids. The two kids I mentioned are the kids she babysits. And before anyone asks, the gun is behind a locked door, in three pieces, in separate places in the room.
FWIW, having vented here in this thread has helped immensely. Just getting things off my chest has been a huge boon.
I’m glad that this thread has helped. I hope you find your way with all your struggles.
Off topic, but I have to ask. If the gun is behind locked doors, in pieces, in separate locations, how is it protection against crime? Unless it’s a hunting rifle, that is.
Yeah 1 through 10 are to get rid of the gun.
And another vote for him getting a job even if it disgusts him.
Let’s accept for the purpose of this discussion that the OP is indeed mentally ill with BPD. Between mentally ill homeless and on the streets with no support systems and mentally ill with a roof over his head, food on the table, some mental health services available, and the structure of getting up each day to go to work, which is the less poor choice? Even a job that disgusts is a distraction and is structure hat gives a reason to get up and out.
I offer no cure for Borderline Personality, am ignorant enough that I am not sure exactly what gets thrown under that umbrella, and am suspicious that it gets used as a catchall lots of times. But as hopeless as the OP feels, some people do learn to live lives that are satisfying to them with that label. It’s a challenge to be sure, a tautological one perhaps since BPD sort of means having inflexible negative patterns of thoughts and behaviors, but it does happen.
Likely someone with BPD recognizes that the thought to run away is part of the pattern of the BPD itself. The next step is working with the therapist on how to talk himself down from those self-destructive negative thoughts. Including in the next job how to recognize when it is the BPD that is making the disgust come up to the forefront and training the brain to talk those down and to find tractable problems to solve at work and to take satisfaction from.
Running away from … work, relationships, responsibility … that’s a large part of what gets one labelled as BPD and the issue to develop relative mastery over. Identifying that he wants to do that and realizing that it is poor choice, as he has done, is important. Developing alternative thought processes and behaviors is next. That can happen but only happen by hard work in therapy while building on the relationships he has and maintaining stability of work and place to live.
And yes even these MB relationships are part of having the connections that matter.
But it hasn’t addressed anything.
One thing at a time. Get a job - any job. Focus on that first - don’t worry about anything else. Then focus on going to that job, each day. Once you have some income, you can worry. Until then, you have permission not to worry. Don’t try to fix anything else. Just get the income started.
You don’t need to worry about your other jobs. You don’t need to worry about the job you get, either.
“My Life” is too overwhelming. “The Next Ten Minutes” is manageable.
Regards,
Shodan
Bit of a long story, but the TLDR version is that it’s an heirloom, a gift from her grandmother. I’ve fired it probably three times, always at targets (beer bottles, to be specific). Hunting isn’t my thing (I’ve nothing against it, it’s just not for me), and in its current state it is, indeed, useless as protection against a crime.
Does she not get paid for doing this?
She does. $160 per week doesn’t cut it.
If you make next to nothing, and she only makes $160 a week, how do you “make too much money” for SNAP or Medicaid?
I make about $240 per week, give or take, bringing our income to $19,200, apparently too much for all of the forms of government assistance we’ve applied for in Missouri.
First, I’d like to point out that you are saying your wife will not work to bring in some much-needed income, then you seem to be excusing the fact that you will not work to bring in some much-needed income.
Just as a general point, every job anyone has ever had is just putting off the inevitable. We all lose our jobs eventually; we quit or are fired or we drop dead. Everything we ever do? Putting off the inevitable. That breath I just took? Yep, putting off the inevitable. So while I understand the frustration, if we allow “I’m just putting off the inevitable!” to be an excuse for anything, we are really just saying “I don’t wanna.”
I’m sorry you’re both in such rocky mental places. It’s hard stuff and I am absolutely not in any way meaning to minimize your struggles. I just hope you can see what the struggles really are, and what they are not. Try to give your wife the same forgiveness you offer yourself, or give yourself the same toughness you offer her. Try not to run away, not because there’s anything inherently wrong in it, but because it won’t work. Seek help where you can, be patient when you can, talk when you can.
I wish you the best.
That seems to be below the current maximum amount for a household of 2, even before subtracting rent and other things. When was the last time you applied?
This is really good advice.
I don’t know what all you’ve been discussing with your therapist that she thinks you have BPD, but my mother suffers from it and it is no joke. I talk a lot about all the miserable things she’d done to me and others, and how I had to end my relationship with her after years of trying unsuccessfully to help her get better. But that doesn’t mean I think every person with BPD is beyond hope or that every person with BPD is abusive or totally unemployable. It’s a very stigmatized disorder that is usually based on myth more than a true understanding of what it is. It is characterized by a pervasive pattern of unstable relationships, so if that doesn’t sound like you, I’d take it with a grain of salt. Yes, suicidal ideation and attempts are common with BPD but they are common in clinical depression, too. You have to really look at the symptoms as a whole to get an accurate diagnosis.
But if this does turn out to be a legit diagnosis (and you need to see a specialist and get some dialectical behavioral therapy, stat) it’s going to be a lot of work learning new ways to cope. You are in crisis/survival mode right now so you’ve gotta start there. Get a job, and start working immediately with a qualified professional to understand the root causes of the behavior that makes working a job so difficult to tolerate. That’s step one of your healing - learn the practical aspects of how to hold down a job. Again, I don’t know what you’ve been focusing on therapeutically, but it needs to get solutions-oriented, and fast. A lot of therapy I’ve found wholly unhelpful because it wasn’t focused on problem-solving so much as venting emotions ad nauseam and talking about my childhood rather than focusing on the ways that childhood was impacting me concretely in the present. What I really needed were concrete tools to help me deal with powerful emotions that sabotaged me in the present.
I speak from experience. I’ve quit a lot of jobs due to emotional overwhelm/disgust and there have been times my depression has rendered me unable to function for up to a year. The lack of compassion shown to people who suffer from mental illness does no favors. You can’t guilt someone into being psychologically healthy. Most people cannot fathom what it’s like to live with a serious mental health disorder, so it’s just easier to judge.
But I have this little motto with regard to my mental health: It’s not my fault, but it is my responsibility.
It’s totally fucking unfair, but these are the cards life dealt you and now the burden is on you to rise to the challenge. Hey Homie, you have the strength to rise. The world is full of terrible things happening to good people who find a way thrive in the most dire of circumstances. Consider the words of Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor and trauma psychologist, about his experience as an inmate at Auschwitz:
Your suffering is not without meaning. But it’s up to you to decide what that meaning is. This is not philosophically abstract. It is by your actions that you create meaning.
Remove the gun from your home.
The statistical likelihood of a successful suicide attempt is dramatically increased by your owning a gun. In fact, gun ownership is the number one predictive factor of whether you’ll make a successful suicide attempt. How it’s stored is irrelevant as long as you have access to it. I cannot stress this enough. Get that gun the fuck out of your house.
Finally, a website I found helpful, designed for people who have BPD as well as loved ones: BPDFamily
Feel free to PM me anytime. I don’t have Borderline Personality Disorder but I have struggled all of my life with emotion regulation, which is a major aspect of the disorder, and I’ve done several different kinds of evidence-based therapy and would be happy to share my experience.