Dear Lily-Mae:

“I’ve never shared my story, Anita – but I really wanted to share this with you“- I feel special, honored that you chose to share your story with me, that you trust me with your story. I will not betray your trust!

* By not betraying your trust I mean that I will express no judgment of you, I will not be aggressive/ abusive toward you in any way, shape or form (if you happen to perceive judgment or abuse of any kind in what I write to you, please let me know what it is, and I will tell you the truth about what I meant in writing this or that). I will be honest and truthful with you, and I will communicate with you for as long as you want to communicate with me: I will not abandon you in the context of this thread (one exception would be if you became abusive to me, not that I expect it). Every morning, as I turn on the computer, if I see a new post by you for me, I will answer it first. I am here for you.

Also: if something (anything) about what I write (or.. fail to write/ address) annoys you, makes you angry, or anxious, please let me know what it is, and tell me what you feel, so that we can talk about it. From my personal BPD- experience, I know how important it is to not keep annoyances and distresses inside (so they don’t build up and explode.. sooner than later).

All your feelings are okay with me, everything that you feel is welcome here.

And one more thing: I will repeat your story next  because this is how I process information. I can’t process by reading alone, I have to rewrite or retype and re-arrange what I read (my learning disabilities/ ADD). Also: English is not my first language.

(the boldfaced words are your words): You shared that your parents met in the workplace when they were both married to other people, each having 2 children, and had an affair. They eventually married and had you, the 5th child, living in a household with constant fights, fights every day, lots of conflict, alone most of the time, loathed by your half siblings. Your father: a strict and controlling workaholic with no emotion. (No mention of your mother).

In primary school and high school, you were bullied by boys telling you that you were ugly and fat and worthless, and  physically bullied in high-school. At 12 you tried to commit suicide for the first time. After high-school, you had a 6-year relationship that was physically, sexually and emotionally abusive. After the divorce from him, you became a promiscuous zombie (interesting wording). Years later,  you had another abusive guy and you started cutting yourself.

Since you were 12, you landed many times in hospital, tried many times to commit suicide, were misdiagnosed by psychiatrists, and finally, last year, a new psychiatrist diagnosed me with BPD.

You have an exceptional fear of abandonment, you push people away, your relationships are unstable, you have no identity and feel like an empty shell inside, you hate yourself, you have mood swings like crazy, you are extremely impulsive, and you cut yourself daily.

“I received my masters degree this year and I’m busy with my doctorate degree“- congratulations for your masters and for working on a doctorate degree!

“I get these extreme violent outbursts. Not even to talk about my paranoia, delusional thoughts. Sometimes it feels like my thoughts are killing me… At this stage, I cannot get over the fact that this guy left me for another woman… Dear Anita, please share how you handled your bpd. I would love to get to know you and talk to you as I have no one else to talk to. I’m alone.“-

– Like you, I too looked up the BPD diagnosis and saw that it fit me (I remember it like it was yesterday, I was in a library) years before I was officially diagnosed (about 25 years before!). All the symptoms you described were true to me. I was a zombie of all kinds (dissociated, depersonalized), drifting through life like a ship with no sail, no direction, no stability of any kind, not in the inside (emotional stability) and not on the outside: I lived in many, many (mostly bad) places, shifting jobs (I had only one full time job and that was for two years out of my entire life).. it was a nightmare, now that I think of it. As we continue to communicate, I will share more, I am sure.

I received the BPD diagnosis in 2011 and had my first experience of quality, professional psychotherapy by the therapist who diagnosed me. He tailored the therapy to the diagnosis and went about the therapy in a planned, methodical way (he took his job seriously, and was very dedicated to his clients).

The focus in BPD treatment, from the beginning and throughout is emotion regulation: the mood swings like crazy need to become less crazy,  the extremely impulsive and extreme violent outbursts need to become less extreme, and the exceptional fear of abandonment need to become.. less exceptional. The emotional storms need to quiet down: there can be no mental health otherwise. My therapist at the time had me listen every day to one of  a series of guided meditations by Mark Williams, an Oxford University expert on Mindfulness. Doing yoga (not hot yoga) and Tai-Chi (a slow-motion martial art form) were very helpful in the process of slowing down the emotional escalation and takeover that is typical of bpd.

Like you, I grew up in a (it’s difficult for me to call it home) war zone (yes, that’s a way more accurate term). My mother (better term: my monster) exhibited bpd herself and EXPLODED at me like there’s no tomorrow (and in many respects, there wasn’t a tomorrow, as the life in me was squeezed out by her explosions). She went on and on and on.. and on and I don’t remember what she said (screamed, yelled, cried) except that she said that she’d kill herself, that I am the reason she wants to kill herself.. at times she said she’d kill me.. She said that I (anita) am a “one big zero” (I remember that well), and she used to go over all the ways (she believed) that I was intentionally trying to hurt her feelings. And also, she hit me with her legs (kicking me) or her arms and hands. I remember hitting me on the face, right cheek, left cheek and again, and at the end, looking at her hands, she said: look what you did to me, you made my hands hurt.

It was a nightmare. Again, as we communicate (for as long as you want to), I will share more. You are welcome to ask me questions about my experience as a child and onward. (There are things I will not feel comfortable to share, things I’ve never shared here or anywhere).

About identity: I couldn’t even make the simplest choices, couldn’t figure out what I like or prefer to do. I was almost a non-person, the life in me shut down.. a zombie is an appropriate word. A zombie with a very, very low self-esteem (well, how can there be esteem when there’s no self).

Back to your very current struggle: “At this stage, I cannot get over the fact that this guy left me for another woman“- I wonder if the other woman represents someone in your childhood that you envied, a sibling perhaps who seemed so much more fortunate than you..?

anita

Dear Clara:

Good 10 am morning to you!

“I am not thinking to pursue her back or continue the relationship when she hasn’t grown or changed“- good thing!

“I am more thinking how did I not see this“- the heart sees what the heart wants to see.

“how should I see it clearer next time“- add logic to the heart, There is an equation my therapist taught me back in the day: wise mind= rational mind (logic) + emotional mind (the heart).

“may be open my eyes wider, and my ears as well next time. instead of being swept away by the emotions of falling in love“- I wrote the above before I read these two sentences: we are on the same page!

“thanks, have a good night“- you are welcome and thank you!  Still light outside, no wind, no air movement outside the glass window. Wed 10:08 am where you are at, Tues 7:08 pm here.

anita

Dear Robi:

Good to read your positive update, you do sound grounded! I want to reply further when I feel more grounded (I am tired now), so I’ll be back to your thread Wed morning (late Tues afternoon in beautiful  Transylvania)!

anita

Dear Sammie:

You are welcome! “The amazing friends I speak of are the ones in my city. The horrible things happened in Manchester… I always felt like the outsider which is why I don’t think they believed me (or wanted to believe me). Fair weather friends, as they say“- fair weather friends: supporting you if it’s easy and convenient for them. I see.

“I too was waiting for the next criticism. It’s so difficult because we try our best and try and meet their expectations but the goal posts continuously move further away from us“- sometimes children (and adults) stop trying. It’s called learned helplessness, as in, I am not trying anymore because what would be the point..?

“I have been focusing on the positives in my life (because there are many) however I agree, I have not been processing the negatives“- unresolved negatives block our view of the positives, like dark clouds blocking the sun. Processing and resolving negatives clears the view, dispersing dark clouds, and we can better see the light blue shade of the sky.

“How can people like that go into someone’s life and cause emotional destruction and they be let off all the pain?“- abusive people abuse because of their unprocessed and unresolved negatives and pain. They spread their pain around, passing it on to other people.

“How you have explained his projection of his mother onto me has been very useful to read. Him focusing on the then and there instead of the here and now. This makes me realise that it was not me, there was nothing I could do differently“- I agree! Similarly, there was nothing I could have done differently, as a child, so to get a better treatment from my mother. She projected other people into me and reacted to them, not to me.

“There was never going to be anything I could do. The course was set from the start“- There was nothing you could have done to change the course of your relationship with him because it was set at a time before he ever met you. Similarly, the course of my relationship with my mother was set at a time before I was born to her.

Thank you for reading.“- you are welcome, and thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings here!

anita

Dear Shandrea:

“I think I was abused, The adults in my family watched our actions and abused us“- it’s a bad thing that you were abused, and a good thing that you recognize that you were abused, because recognizing it is the basis for healing.

“I was not allowed to say no they made us smile when we were sad“- remember I told you that in the photo you look serious? Wel, you are not smiling in the photo and it is fine with me! I used to hate smiling when I didn’t feel like smiling.  I no longer smile unless I feel like it. Back to your photo: your sincere, unsmiling face is beautiful!

“Also in friendships as well“- it’s important to exit any kind of abusive relationship whenever, wherever possible: be it a parent- child relationship, a romantic relationship, a friends-relationship, any kind.

“I am a product of my environment“- we are very much products of our environments, particularly of the family-environment. If I was born into a very different family, I would have been a very different person. The same is true to you and to everyone else.

Healing from childhood abuse makes it possible for us to become healthier people with much improved inner-experience (how we feel) and outer experience (how we interact with other people).

“When I was a kid nobody cared but my mom but she really didn’t care either“- this means.. nobody cared. I am so sorry. No wonder you didn’t feel like smiling.

“I don’t like being judged. I will take positive criticism“- being judged (criticized unempathetically, aggressively) by others and by ourselves keep us sick. Suggestions on how to function better in life should be offered empathetically, gently and kindly.

“I am so thankful to have found this website, and thankful to have met Anita.. Thank you for giving me a safe space, to let out all the things my childhood tried to make me hide“- you are very welcome. I am glad to have done my part in offering you a safe space to reveal, to no longer hide.

“I signed myself up for therapy… because I always thought I was different and if I am I want to know.“- good thing, Shandrea.

Getting to know who you are underneath the abuse, who you are beyond being a product of the environment is an amazing discovery process, one that will make you feel accomplished (title of your thread: I want to feel accomplished) every day, as long as you are engaged in the process!

Reading your recent posts this Tues morning has made my day a better day, thank you!

anita

Dear Clara:

Good morning here, good night to you! Good to read from you: clearer and another step ahead toward moving on!

“she thinks too shallow (may be too compartmentalized/ emotionally unaware, if we use more psychological terms), while they all know how much of a deep thinker I am“- I agree.

“But the funny thing is, I think I knew this, and my mind says ‘if you are committed to someone, then you should not give up on that person because of her ‘flaw’“-  you should give up on her because she told you (I am sad to be repeating her words) that she does not like you anymore, and that she has no feelings for you. And because you can’t trust what she says in regard to her feelings: she told you something to the affect of it being difficult for her to separate from you, from a person she has no feeling for: this is not believable because when person A has no feelings for (not even liking) person B, it’s not difficult for A to separate from B, it’s difficult to stay with B.

“In my mind, I think I should work with her to see how we can improve, rather than, just walk away. The fine line between being perseverant and being stubborn, is hard to manage in a relationship for me. When should a relationship really stops?“- when one or two of the people in the relationship says they don’t like the other.

The line between being perseverant and being stubborn in this context, as I see it, is that in being stubborn, you don’t really hear what she said, or you don’t process it, or you explain it away (as in, maybe you think that she likes you and has feelings for you but is currently unaware of these feelings). Perseverance has logic behind it; stubbornness, sometimes has no logic behind it, and when that’s the case, it leads to suffering.

“I think sometime objectively, she should be more emotional mature (given she is 40, but honestly there are a lot 40’s who are still not knowing what they are doing in their lives… ), on the other hand, I think she really doesn’t have the skills or capability yet so I should be more empathetic“- if she was a 4-year-old child and you were her 40-year-old teacher, you could empathetically teach her skills and capabilities and she would be eager to learn, I imagine. But like most older adults (30s and onward), she is done learning certain things. I don’t think that she looks up to you (as a child would look up to a teacher) to teach her things in matters of emotional skills and capabilities.

“I think being with this person has given me a lot of lessons to learn, given that we are quite different. I think we must have cared for each a lot at some points, that allowed us to sustain 5.5 years of relationship“- yes, she cared for you as much as she is capable of. There were good things in the relationship, good times to honor and to move on from, at the same time. Do I make sense?

anita

Dear Laven:

I know the glancing up at the mirror moments, I know the experience.

I wanted to tell you (I thought about it earlier today, before your most recent post): I’ve been posing in your threads since March of this year, over five months of posting. And never did you address me, never did you mention my name, or say thank-you, (neither to me, nor to your other responders).

And I told you recently: it’s okay, you don’t need to respond to me, no need to address me, just keep expressing yourself, for as long as you need to do that.. for as long as it helps. And I still say: please do: start more threads, type away your thoughts and feelings for as long as you need to.

And.. I have my needs: I need to be acknowledged for my efforts to attend to you, to make you feel seen and heard. I need to honor- not only your needs- but my own needs.

And so, as I said before, you are welcome to start as many threads as you wish, you are welcome to submit posts of any length. It’s just that if you do not address me by name (anita), and you do not talk to me, I will not post in your threads again.

Other responders may reply to you, and that is fine with me. Please keep posting. It’s just that I need to read my name, typed out by you, for the first time in five months, for me to reply to you again.

Assuming you will not address me by name (because it hurts, because you can’t, as you expressed), I say: goodbye, Laven, my best wishes for you. Post again and again, others will respond, I think.

anita