Dear vibrant_me:

Three years ago, at 27,  you “got diagnosed with depression, bpd (Borderline Personality Disorder), anxiety”. You had closer information about these diagnoses because you worked in the medical field at the time. You now think that “subconsciously I acted out to the symptoms- because that’s what I told I had”. You responded then to the diagnoses, and to your depression at the time in these ways: “I quit my job, became isolated, no friends”. But you did have a relationship following your diagnoses that ended a few weeks ago, his choice, following many arguments that you believed strained him, and he quit.

I am very familiar with the BPD diagnosis as well as with anxiety and depression from my very personal experience. I view most mental diagnoses/ disorders as something like this: it starts with ongoing fear in childhood and those fears, like rocks going down a hill, gather more and more mud as they roll down the hill, eventually getting stuck along the way down, perhaps, with a particular arrangement of mud that fit this or that diagnosis.

The mud gathered along the way includes all the ways we tried to resolve our own ongoing fear and the damage caused by those ways. The mud includes our dysfunctional living as adults, the harm caused by those ways.

You mentioned learning after the breakup. I hope you continue to learn. Learning motivates me.

anita

Dear vibrant_me:

If you want to share more: did you have any contact with your father over the years? And about your mother’s death, what happened?

The hope you mentioned, depending where we put our hope, it can move us forward or keep us stuck. Hope really is not with this guy. Hope is in the learning you wrote about, not in this or that man. So many people are stuck hoping their parents will one day love them, waiting.

When we put our hope in a love-interest, your ex boyfriend, in your case, it leaves your well being up to him; it leaves the power with him, not with you while he does not really have that power. Power in a relationship is in the two parties working hard together, as a team, helping each other.

anita

Hey there.

Sending you hugs and healing energy! The one thing I would say is don’t feel pressure to ‘be positive’ about it all the time. Sure, we always want to be open to those lovely spiritual perspectives that make our pain easier to deal with, but at least in my experience, getting there is a journey that usually entails the purging of all the ‘stuff’ that makes it harder to embrace all that on a deeper level, where we truly feel that way.

There is just as much value in that pain and those ‘bad days’ as there is in your efforts to be positive and use the situation to make positive changes in your life and yourself. If you are able to be honest with yourself, you will be able to strike that balance between indulging these moments and letting them be therapeutic and wallowing too long and then making a more conscious effort to ‘snap out of it.’

Dear vibrant_me:

Have you been told by people that you are strong, to have gone through your mother’s sudden death, with little to no support, no father, no family, and when your grandmother flew over to take care of you, you tried to not worry her, taking care of her that way!?

anita

You are very welcome, vibrant_me. I appreciate your words to me. Post anytime and I will reply to you.

anita