When you are in the moment with the bpd what is your self-talk?

[Guest guest]

In order to keep calm and respond instead of react? Things are very

stressful right now. My sister delivered her baby on Saturday and

she, the baby, has a birth syndrome that will require her to spend

weeks in the NICU. Everyone is tense, because she is at risk of

hypoxia all the time. It's a sad and frightening situation. Dad is

agitated, mom is for some reason veering into more narcissism right

now, which is the worst possible moment. The SIL who just had a

healthy, perfect infant, despite smoking through her entire

pregnancy, seems determined to say the exact wrong thing as often as

possible, when her very presence because of the above circumstance

would be hard to take if she was completely silent...she's showing

narcissism too; in particular she seems to be flaunting

her 'closeness' to my sister, at my expense (really my sister is not

fond of her but in her typical fashion she keeps her cards close to

her chest and the SIL has no idea how annoying my sister finds her).

It's so strange to me how these situations bring out *more*

narcissism in people than less; I guess it's the nature of the

beast. For people who have come through successful interactions with

bpd/npd-types, where you didn't allow your buttons to be pushed,

what do you tell yourself in those moments when you are being

triggered? I can see this going on for a while and I don't want to

add to the stress or make it worse. Right now I am saying 'imagine

you were a really dignified person' (.i.e., someone else) 'how would

you react to this?' when things come up, I just wish I handled it

better every time. I feel I create so much of the problem, or make

it worse, because I feel like I always have to respond. My mouth

works faster than my brain. Can anyone share any *positive* self-

talk that works for them?