Focusing your efforts on re-building your self worth is key to this process

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hope everyone is doing well.

I want to start out by saying that what I'm claiming in the topic title is strictly my opinion. One of the things that took me the longest amount of time to learn during this detachment process is that you truly need to build your own narrative & figure out what works best for you. I spent countless hours during the first few months of this ordeal reading advice from others, watching youtube videos on how to think differently etc. I wouldn't say that these things are a waste of time but the mistake that I was making was trying to directly apply these methods of thinking to my own brain without much vetting of the ideology that I was adopting. You really can learn a lot from these "self-improvement" type videos/articles but in the end, the only thing that will work for you is going to be some unique combination of thought patterns / attitudes / behaviors that will be specific to you and unable to be replicated by anyone else.

That being said, one of the most helpful resources for me continues to be the experiences of others whom have gone through borderline hell and lived to talk about it. When you learn from someone's practical experience and merely have the facts of the situation laid out for you, this gives you a great piece of knowledge that you can store away in your mind and mix in with other things that prove helpful in moving you towards recovery. I wanted to share my thoughts here because I feel as though I gained so much from this community during the early stages of this process and it would make me feel quite fulfilled to be able to help even one other person in a similar way.

Now to the actual purpose of this topic: your self-worth. Self-worth may be a concept that you don't think about often, it's something that I always knew existed but never put much thought into until the last few months. For me personally, I've spent almost the entirety of my adult life seeking approval and validation via romantic partners. This was always something that I was able to achieve so I lived under the guise of believing that I had a high sense of self-worth solely because I was receiving validation from an external source. My relationship with my BPD ex was akin to the coziest metaphorical security blanket that you could imagine, I was essentially an absolutely perfect candidate to fall for the incredible euphoria produced by being idealized & love-bombed. When these things first happened in the earlier stages of that relationship, I had no idea what was actually going on and just knew that I felt good because this beautiful woman was basically worshiping me on a daily basis. Clearly, I actually had very low self worth and was in constant search of making my self worth someone else's responsibility, and my BPD ex was also the perfect candidate to take on this responsibility.

Now imagine that you have always derived the majority of your self worth via validation and approval from other people. You now have a highly dysfunctional BPD partner who makes you feel like the king of the world in every way imaginable until one day, they're gone forever. Your security blanket is ripped away and thrown into a furnace and you are now left behind with absolutely no sense of self worth. Now it's definitely easy to feel like a victim here and to be honest, I believe many of us were victims of some truly heinous treatment by our BPD partners whether it was during or after the relationship. However; as I continue to learn about who I am and take accountability for my choices, I now realize that despite the horrible things that my ex put me through, it was unfair of me in the first place to be making my own self worth the responsibility of someone else. I don't think I was doing this consciously but I can now look back and realize that I was practicing my own form of idealization and setting unfair expectations for my ex which was only made worse by how eager & capable she seemed to fulfill all of them.

Regardless of how much you are hurting after your breakup with your BPD ex just remember this: you DO have value. Now I couldn't even begin to explain the process of how to discover this value and how to convince yourself of it but just knowing that it's there is a good starting point in my opinion. The tricky thing with this is that just hearing someone tell you that you have value doesn't suddenly make you believe it, this was a big mistake that I made and trying to convince myself of something that I didn't really believe only made things more difficult. So many times I've gone out into social/professional situations during this recovery and tried to force myself to think a certain way, to always remind myself of something that I read / watched online about self worth and that only led to frustration when I perceived that I still felt worthless and had failed to "implement" this mindset. The thing that I've learned with self worth is that you won't know that you have it until you truly see it manifested in your day to day life. It's impossible to say how your self worth will emanate through your thoughts & actions but at some point, it will happen. The good thing (in my experience) is that once you start to understand your own value, there's no going back to where you started from and you will only continue to grow stronger & respect yourself more than you ever have before.

I am guilty of allowing one person on this earth to completely shatter my self confidence / self worth and I could never judge anyone else for having the same thing happen to them. Think about this though, you feel worthless and unwanted due to the thoughts/words/actions of ONE person, right? As devastating as these feelings are, if you are allowing one person to have this much control over your own self efficacy, why not make the one person who controls this be yourself? Of course, this is easier said than done but in my opinion this is valuable perspective to have as you try to rebuild your self worth after the experience with your BPD ex.

For me personally, as soon as I started to understand the value that I have and how it manifests itself in the real world, I finally felt as though I was on the right path to healing from this experience and that is a leap of progress that I could have never anticipated a few months ago. I still have a long way to go but this shift in mindset has truly helped to alleviate so much of the pain from the experience with my ex and also gives me hope for the future in a way that seemed implausible in the not too distant past.

I hope that I haven't rambled too much here and that what I've written makes sense. It's tough for me to draw the line between "giving advice" while at the same time advocating that you don't rely too heavily on the advice of others but I hope that these thoughts can be beneficial to someone out there.

[pjstock42]

Hope everyone is doing well.

I want to start out by saying that what I'm claiming in the topic title is strictly my opinion. One of the things that took me the longest amount of time to learn during this detachment process is that you truly need to build your own narrative & figure out what works best for you. I spent countless hours during the first few months of this ordeal reading advice from others, watching youtube videos on how to think differently etc. I wouldn't say that these things are a waste of time but the mistake that I was making was trying to directly apply these methods of thinking to my own brain without much vetting of the ideology that I was adopting. You really can learn a lot from these "self-improvement" type videos/articles but in the end, the only thing that will work for you is going to be some unique combination of thought patterns / attitudes / behaviors that will be specific to you and unable to be replicated by anyone else.

That being said, one of the most helpful resources for me continues to be the experiences of others whom have gone through borderline hell and lived to talk about it. When you learn from someone's practical experience and merely have the facts of the situation laid out for you, this gives you a great piece of knowledge that you can store away in your mind and mix in with other things that prove helpful in moving you towards recovery. I wanted to share my thoughts here because I feel as though I gained so much from this community during the early stages of this process and it would make me feel quite fulfilled to be able to help even one other person in a similar way.

Now to the actual purpose of this topic: your self-worth. Self-worth may be a concept that you don't think about often, it's something that I always knew existed but never put much thought into until the last few months. For me personally, I've spent almost the entirety of my adult life seeking approval and validation via romantic partners. This was always something that I was able to achieve so I lived under the guise of believing that I had a high sense of self-worth solely because I was receiving validation from an external source. My relationship with my BPD ex was akin to the coziest metaphorical security blanket that you could imagine, I was essentially an absolutely perfect candidate to fall for the incredible euphoria produced by being idealized & love-bombed. When these things first happened in the earlier stages of that relationship, I had no idea what was actually going on and just knew that I felt good because this beautiful woman was basically worshiping me on a daily basis. Clearly, I actually had very low self worth and was in constant search of making my self worth someone else's responsibility, and my BPD ex was also the perfect candidate to take on this responsibility.

Now imagine that you have always derived the majority of your self worth via validation and approval from other people. You now have a highly dysfunctional BPD partner who makes you feel like the king of the world in every way imaginable until one day, they're gone forever. Your security blanket is ripped away and thrown into a furnace and you are now left behind with absolutely no sense of self worth. Now it's definitely easy to feel like a victim here and to be honest, I believe many of us were victims of some truly heinous treatment by our BPD partners whether it was during or after the relationship. However; as I continue to learn about who I am and take accountability for my choices, I now realize that despite the horrible things that my ex put me through, it was unfair of me in the first place to be making my own self worth the responsibility of someone else. I don't think I was doing this consciously but I can now look back and realize that I was practicing my own form of idealization and setting unfair expectations for my ex which was only made worse by how eager & capable she seemed to fulfill all of them.

Regardless of how much you are hurting after your breakup with your BPD ex just remember this: you DO have value. Now I couldn't even begin to explain the process of how to discover this value and how to convince yourself of it but just knowing that it's there is a good starting point in my opinion. The tricky thing with this is that just hearing someone tell you that you have value doesn't suddenly make you believe it, this was a big mistake that I made and trying to convince myself of something that I didn't really believe only made things more difficult. So many times I've gone out into social/professional situations during this recovery and tried to force myself to think a certain way, to always remind myself of something that I read / watched online about self worth and that only led to frustration when I perceived that I still felt worthless and had failed to "implement" this mindset. The thing that I've learned with self worth is that you won't know that you have it until you truly see it manifested in your day to day life. It's impossible to say how your self worth will emanate through your thoughts & actions but at some point, it will happen. The good thing (in my experience) is that once you start to understand your own value, there's no going back to where you started from and you will only continue to grow stronger & respect yourself more than you ever have before.

I am guilty of allowing one person on this earth to completely shatter my self confidence / self worth and I could never judge anyone else for having the same thing happen to them. Think about this though, you feel worthless and unwanted due to the thoughts/words/actions of ONE person, right? As devastating as these feelings are, if you are allowing one person to have this much control over your own self efficacy, why not make the one person who controls this be yourself? Of course, this is easier said than done but in my opinion this is valuable perspective to have as you try to rebuild your self worth after the experience with your BPD ex.

For me personally, as soon as I started to understand the value that I have and how it manifests itself in the real world, I finally felt as though I was on the right path to healing from this experience and that is a leap of progress that I could have never anticipated a few months ago. I still have a long way to go but this shift in mindset has truly helped to alleviate so much of the pain from the experience with my ex and also gives me hope for the future in a way that seemed implausible in the not too distant past.

I hope that I haven't rambled too much here and that what I've written makes sense. It's tough for me to draw the line between "giving advice" while at the same time advocating that you don't rely too heavily on the advice of others but I hope that these thoughts can be beneficial to someone out there.

[heartandwhole]

Hi pj,

I think your thoughts have a lot of value, and thank you for sharing them. 

I agree that it's hard to suddenly know your worth, after not believing it for so long. What do you think was the turning point for you? Were you questioning your thoughts?

It sounds like you've found a wonderful path to recovery. I wish you more  along the way, and please do share them as you feel moved to.

heartandwhole

[ynwa]

Hello PJ, Your post is definitely worthy to read.  To me it sounds like all those videos and articles as well as your own ideas and thoughts are combining to give you the path forward?

Detachment is in some way learning to be selfish in a healthy way.  To regain control of your own responsible actions and thoughts.  We either let or had them taken away by our loved ones.  We all give love and responsibility to them, and they simply do not give back. Perhaps in small ways, but our selves need that returning love.

What you said is as honest for you as it should be to anyone.  You find a path, fill up your pack and head out.  To find ourselves again.

[vanx]

Yes! I really enjoyed reading your post, and I couldn't agree more. These tough experiences can become a gift when we learn that the biggest lesson is loving and respecting our own selves more. The great thing is it is never too late to learn this, and once you start, you just keep going! Thanks for sharing--inspiring to read! And finding your own answers is part of solidifying your identity and worth. Your path is your own.
I think this made a lot of sense. I know for me, every time I start feeling bad, I try to remind myself I am worthy of love, and it's time to keep going forward. I'm so glad you have come to this place for yourself and are taking control of what you can. Thank you!

[FSTL]

I can very much identify with the "security blanket" theme and also not blaming the BPDx for everything.

Mine was desperate and clingy, always telling me how much she wanted to be with me. And then she cheated on me and she wasn't. It all went down hill from there as I gave her the power (and my self worth). Even now, I can see her trying to make contact (we're LC as we work together) just to see if I am still available to her... .then she breaks off and I won't hear from her again until she needs something.

I have learnt this is nothing to do with me, it's all about her mental illness.

I met another girl recently and felt REALLY uncomfortable with her idealisation-like behaviour. I don't think she was BPD, but her unrealistic view of me (and her previous volatile relationships) were enough for me to step away. Another girl I met freaked out early on and told me I was "way out of her league", a sign she had very low self esteem and was already worried about me leaving her (ie an unrealistically good view of me and low view of herself). So, amongst other things, the gift from my BPDx included the ability to be more aware of some real red flags in relationships.

[lovenature]

Great self awareness pj!

If we don't truly value ourselves and seek validation and self esteem internally, there isn't anyone or anything that can give it to us; no one can ever change how we TRULY feel about ourselves.

[woundedPhoenix]

PJ, you certainly have made a great analysis, and i think many of us can recognize ourselves in that.

The lack of self-worth, and seeking it in romantic relationships, that it can only be found externally, where does that come from?

For me it is an illusion i held over from my childhood. My mother was a depressed alcoholic and emotionally unavailable, she died when i was 11.
My stephfather raised me after that, but again, he was depressed and an alcoholic too.

I went through most of my life thinking i had 'survived' it pretty well. On the surface i felt i had a strong and relentless stance in life, nothing could really break me.
Yet in a way - deep inside - i spend my adult life running away from the loneliness, feelings of worthlessness and the emotional void i grew up in.

The pwBPD that came into my life totally filled those empty spaces i didn't know i realised i had. From day one. Until things started to break down and i slowly realised i actually had been compensating for and avoiding those empty spaces from long before i met her.

Ofcourse she caused me great pain in the end, but if i am totally honest with myself, i realise that pain was already inside of me decades before.

The illusion i created in my childhood is that my parents behaviour and care reflected my worth accurately. Since they didn't look that interested in me as a child, and they didn't care for me emotionally, something must have been very wrong with me, i must have felt undeserving of all my needs.

Breaking away from that illusion is hard. You have to accept that no one really can reflect your selfworth accurately, and that the best chance for a stable sense of self-worth lies within yourself.