I haven't posted in a long time, and I was prompted to post today by a quote I saw on Instagram - I've been following a few therapy and psychology type accounts, and I sometimes find the posts quite thought provoking - the one I saw today was:
"The story we tell of someone else reveals far more about our emotional inheritance than it ever will about the other person"It got me thinking about how I've been viewing my ex and how my thoughts have meandered back and forth over the last year or so since we broke up.
When we first broke up I was in denial, I still saw him as the person I wanted him to be, the person he presented at the beginning of the relationship. As time progressed I went back and forth being angry at him for 'what he did to me' and I have really struggled with this.
Now, I live more in the space of not caring (I'm not permanently there, but I am occupying this space more and more).
I would say I am almost in the place where I have integrated my head and my heart. I recognise that my anger towards him is the anger of my childhood wound of rejection being triggered, and I recognise that my feelings towards him were to the person he presented - the mirroring effect of what he thought I needed him to be, which he fulfilled for a time.
This process has not been a straight forward one. I've had 3 moments where I've had 'breakthroughs' and I've learnt more about myself in the past year than I ever have, but I have also felt myself slide spectacularly backwards at times too.
This evening after I saw the instagram post I was trying to dig out a quote by the member
2010 but I can't find it - where he says these relationships are actually a gift, they hold a mirror up to you and teach you more about yourself than you could ever learn on your own (or something to that effect). I didn't agree with this at first, but now I definitely do. These posts are some of the most insightful on here.
He has a way of solidly putting the focus back on the non BPD partner when all you want to do is to hyper focus on them, and what *they did wrong.* I've found it super useful. I have had a tendency (as I'm sure others here have) to overly focus on the ex partner with BPD - first it was to understand, but I would say after a while, it was to avoid looking at my own self.
This is one of 2010's quotes on trauma bonds:
"To be traumatized is to be condemned to endless repetitions of unbearable experiences." In a trauma bond, one person often becomes "stuck," unable to move on from hurtful experience. They then re-live it over and over again often in the form of concentrating on the other's behaviors, (not their own) distancing from their own pain and dissociating, which creates toxic immobility- in essence being "frozen in time." This is 100% where I have been for periods of time. I read a lot about trauma bonds while processing (and being stuck processing) and I don't think I fully understood that that was what I was doing until I read this quote. I'm someone who does have a tendency to ruminate anyway so previously I just put it down to that.
Anyway, if I could give advice to anyone on this board from what I've learnt over the past year to help with anyone else's healing I would say - focus on yourself, seek answers from everywhere - your family of origin. Find a therapist, meditate to interrupt those traumatic thoughts, seek out quotes, read books, talk to friends (but not to rehash events over and over), hypnotherapy - there's some really good content online around this... and whatever you do *don't* look at your ex's social media and don't keep tabs on what they are doing even if you're just bringing up their name with friends of friends to hear about them. This was probably the most destructive thing I did, and kept me stuck for longer.
Make a clean cut, close that door - help yourself. It doesn't matter what they are doing now, what matters is you.
Here's a link to 2010's posts, get yourself a cup of tea and begin:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?action=profile;u=38193;sa=showPosts
