It’s not often, but there are times I find myself falling into the trap of handling things in a normal, yet, possibly triggering manner.
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Maybe I’m a little skeptical or overly critical, but my impression of this comment was to gasp out loud, “who does that??? Who says happy birthday to someone and then thanks everyone who commented on the post when the target of the birthday wishes has no clue they said it???” My impression was that the original post turned into a bit of selfishness.
I've been working on something similar in therapy.
My H's kids' mom has many BPD traits, and her husband (the kids' stepdad) has many NPD traits. H and Mom divorced ~12 years ago. H and I have had ~11 years of experiencing rage, chaos, unpredictability, blame, whiplash, unspoken dynamics, etc. I operated on "emotional high alert" for most of those years.
What happened was I developed both a "radar" and a "filter" for Mom and Stepdad's behaviors.
The "radar" was helpful. What it was, was due to the years of experiences, I had heightened sensitivity to weirdness that would lead into conflict. Some words, phrases, body language, etc, would get detected by my "radar". There was really something there on that "radar screen" and my radar would help me plan ahead.
However, I also developed a "filter". Because of operating at a 10/10 emotional intensity level for so long,
everything started to feel like an impending crisis. I would start applying a "filter" over normal interactions, so that instead of relying on my accurate "BPD radar" for information, I added a "filter" onto normal events to make them show up on my radar. Normal things that shouldn't have been tipoffs or red flags, I started to treat that way. It matched how I felt -- that everything could be an incoming crisis. Labeling normal things with my "filter" made my feelings make sense.
What that meant was that as the crises and conflicts decreased, I would still label some events with my filter. For example, a few months ago, SD16 texted to ask me to drop some of her stuff off at her mom's house. I expected SD16 would answer the door when I went over, but instead, her mom opened the door.
Normal, right? My brain said No way! Mom is opening the door, not SD16! Something is up, what's the catch, why is she interacting with me... on and on.
To a normal person, the home's adult resident opening the door would be, um, normal. Everyone opens doors... even pwBPD... so just because a pwBPD is opening a door, doesn't mean "door opening is a BPD trait... does your pwBPD open doors... is it weird that the pwBPD in my life opened her front door..." etc.
To me, I instantly jumped to "let me add a filter to this interaction, so it shows up on my radar, so I can plan ahead for the inevitable crisis". I did that without slowing down and being mindful.
My task now is to notice those moments when I think something is BPD-weird, and try to determine if my radar is accurately detecting something that is there, or if I have applied a filter to a normal interaction because of my fear of being surprised by a conflict.
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As you reflect on the Facebook situation, I wonder if you, too, can dissect out: OK, how much of this was my radar, and how much of this was me adding a filter. I think it ties back in to this:
J became angry that I said something. And I imagine i could do better to avoid this- as there’s nothing good that will come of it.
It just was weird to me that someone would say “happy birthday” and then thank themselves or others for agreeing.
What do you think?
