BPDFamily.com

Hi everyone,

Like a lot of people here, I was scapegoated by my family when I was a kid. Now I feel like I have a "guilt hangover" and I'm not sure how to deal with it. I'm not talking about feeling guilty towards my family or feeling manipulated by them through guilt - although that has happened plenty of times. I mean I feel guilty for little or no reason, sometimes over circumstances that have nothing to do with me, and I'm wondering if others have felt this way and how they coped with it.

When I was a kid, I remember being in class when other kids got into trouble, and being terrified that I was next, even though I knew I had nothing to do with the reason they were in trouble. When I meet new people, or sometimes even with people I know fairly well, I worry that I might say something wrong that will offend them and I tend to be very careful of what I say to people. If I think that I might not be living up to someone's standards, I feel like I have to give long-winded and completely planned out explanations of why I was unable to do everything I was supposed to do. I have this deep-seated fear of being blamed for things.

I guess its pretty easy to tell where this comes from. My mom and sister are both BPD. Growing up, my mom was extremely reactionary to anything that seemed like a criticism. Even a difference of opinion could bring on tears, screaming and threats. My sister seems to have learned all of my mom's habits and compounded them 10-fold. So I can see where my guilt and anxiety come from, but what to do about it now? I don't have a lot of contact with them. I'm tripped up by this automatic guilt trigger that comes up over practically nothing.

The other weird thing is that if I actually do something wrong - like if I'm having a bad day and snap at my kids or husband - we can talk about it and I apologize and then I don't really worry about it after that. Everybody seems to be able to let things go once they are dealt with. My kids seem pretty comfortable coming to me if they are upset with me.

Has anybody else dealt with this? What did you do?

Hi Lost and Found and  *welcome*


An early step to processing this understanding, that our family used us as a scapegoat for their own (disordered) emotional needs, is to recognize that there was a large degree of programming or "brain-washing" that occurred.  We learned that when as long as we acted the part (of the guilty party) that always seemed to produce the best result in terms of our disorder family member's behavior.  And as I understand it, whenever we validated our BPD loved one's distortion/delusions, they got their payoff.

The biggest detriment to ourselves by this distorted devaluation (and even idealization to some degree) is that we learned not to trust our own feelings and instinct.  Even though it felt wrong (or should feel wrong) to accept blame for something you didn't do, our compliance maintained the illusion of the happy family environment our BPD loved one always tried to sell and blame us for disrupting (even though the truth was that they were the source of most of the family's instabilities).

Higher functioning people with BPD (pwBPD) may tend to have higher degrees of denial and ability to rationalize and gaslight meaning greater ability to brainwash.


Feeling guilty (or even just appearing guilty) as a default reaction to our BPD loved one's unpredictable emotional upset could be a learned response.  I imagine that even just by appearing as if we are guilty, they would then get the emotional payoff they want: validation for their delusion/distortion; they *need* to believe we are guilty, so any "evidence" supporting that is a plus for them.  I guess if we could get away with not having to explicit admit our guilty, then that might be a small victory for us.  But we end up with this distorted conditioned behavior.

How to cope with it might be a more complicated question.  How to deal with brainwashing?  And how to deal with brainwashing perpetrated by a *parent*?  My hypothesis is that we need to ultimately *re-parent* ourselves.  All the things that our parents should have told us when we were children, we now need to tell ourselves and as patiently and as persistently as if we were still children, or children who are brainwashed.

I find that an equally problematic behavior to address are the "fleas".  Our BPD parents/loved ones were family members and we learned a lot of our own behaviors, and learn to emulate behaviors, from them.


These behaviors are developed from those years of conditioning that occurred in our family; our BPD loved ones' behaviors were so unpredictable that we literally did not know if we would be the next person to be blamed even though we rationally knew ourselves to be not at fault.  We learned how to interact with people in general through how we interacted with our family; so its not surprising that if we learned to be guarded and protective about revealing our true thoughts and feelings, that this would carry over to how we might interact with others.

These behaviors are well practiced.  The only way to change these behaviors is to practice another set of behaviors with which we want them replaced.  Sometimes we don't really get to dig deep into these behaviors until we are in a situation when we are dealing with new familiar relationships -- courtship, marriage, our own children... . then another level of these kinds of behaviors reveal themselves.


Over time, the present familial interactions/behaviors supplant the past.  People without this kind of brainwashing background, learn how to process their emotions in a more healthy, less round-about way that people who have grown up around a disordered family member.

Its good that the way you relate to your current family members is the way you'd like.  Trick is to find a way to bring those kinds of expectations and behaviors into the way you relate to other people.  The rest is just practice.


I remember dealing with these issues pretty early, like in middle school, when I was beginning to interact with non-family members almost as much as I was interacting with family members.  I learned early on that the behavior which I found familiar (from home) was not the norm for my peers (or at least some of them).  In some ways, I gravitated towards those who behave in a more familiar way.  But also I learned that there were other ways to interact between people that I thought made more sense and felt better.  My error was that I spent a great many years trying to bring that knowledge into my immediate family.  Ha!

I learned to accept that the logic and rational inside my family of origin is one way... . that I personally chose not to carry over (as much as possible) outside of my family of origin.  And I also learned that it is best it identify and deal with behavioral "fleas" as soon as possible.  And I imagine I'll be dealing with these to some degree for the rest of my life.  I'm pretty happy with where I am at present, but I'm expecting things (i.e., past memories) will stir up as my kids continue to grow up.

My advice is to clearly identify what behaviors you want to change, and then practice changing them.  So it might mean inviting situations in which you find yourself feeling the way you describe and then working with yourself (such as by "re-parenting" towards changing these behaviors.

Hope this is helpful.

Best wishes, Schwing

I used to feel the same way as you.  Still do sometimes, but it's not as bad.  I've follow the same technique that is in the thread TOOLS: Radical Acceptance for family members https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=89910.0

Although the thread is based on dealing with your disordered family member, I think some of the tools work well in everyday life such as:  

"When faced with a painful situation, you really have only 4 options:

* Solve the problem.

* Change how you feel about the problem.

* Accept it.

* Stay miserable; continue to be a victim."

In situations like yours, where you realize that you're feeling guilty for little or no reason, the second might be most useful: change how you feel.  I often overreact to things, and I found it's really helpful to think through what I'm feeling.  For example, I recently got turned down for a job I really wanted.  I felt upset and that I didn't do enough.  So I think to myself: It's okay to be upset, it was an awesome job, but did I really not do enough?  I spent days on my resume and researching the job.  I don't think I could have realistically done more.  The job would have been a career change and I didn't have the exact experience they were looking at.  I can't compete if they had the perfect candidate, and that's okay, because I'm good at a lot of other things.  So by thinking through my feelings, accepting them, I was able to realize that it wasn't worth stressing over.  That's what helps me.

You're right, the guilt probably comes from your mom.  I'd encourage you to check out SELF-AWARE: What it means to be in the "FOG" https://bpdfamily.com/content/emotional-blackmail-fear-obligation-and-guilt-fog

I agree Schwing on this.  I was conditioned to be the guilty one by an abusive father.  It was daily if not hourly, the mental abuse that I was not living up to what he expected and failed.  That is just the tip of the iceberg.

I have felt guilty almost all of my life and it has been one of the toughest traits and habits to break.  If your children are coming to you and talking about their feelings, than you are taking a very positive step.  I had to learn to accept my imperfections and not to feel guilty.  Since I quit trying to fix everything, the guilt has lessened.  It really does boil down to changing the way you relate to people.  Even more important was to change the perception of and then the reactions I had for myself.  Setting boundaries at first made me guilty, now I am proud that I am stronger.

  The other key was that I started to take responsibility for my own actions and no one else's actions.  If someone I loves does something that upsets me, I now know that I have the right to feel these feelings.  I just have to be mature in how I handle it.  That has taken a lot of my "guilt" away.  How can I be blamed for something I did not due.

   Secondly, I learned to accept my imperfections.  I don't have to worry about feeling guilty about something I did or did not do.  I appreciate  and try to build on the good of myself. 


  You do know how to take responsibility for your own actions and to resolve it in a healthy way.  That is what you need to build upon and remind yourself every time you feel unwarranted guilt. Sometimes I just have to do something physical, so that I don't keep thinking.  Later on I can have a better perspective on how to handle the feelings.

   
Nice advice from Sitara.

                                                                                Tightrope walker

Thank you for your replies, I found a lot here that can help.

Schwing, I like thinking about it as "brainwashing". It feels like that - convincing somebody over time that what isn't real is real and vice versa. The re-parenting myself part will be a bit harder, but that also puts things into a better perspective for me. When I became a parent and as my kids grew, I would recognize more and more how off-base my childhood had been and how I would never consider doing or saying some of the things my parents did. So that intuition is in there, I just have to practice applying it to myself more. Again, not an easy thing to do, but making it more conscious and thinking of it as practice helps.

Sitara, it gives me hope that this has improved for you. Sometimes I use a writing technique of thinking things through, identifying what is off base and putting things more realistically. It can be helpful in lessening the intensity.

Tightrope walker, I like what you said about taking responsibility for your own actions and nobody else. When I think about it, a lot of the time that I felt guilty I was taking responsibility for what someone else was doing. Put that way, I suddenly thought "Well of course that doesn't work!"

Thanks for your help. I'm feeling optimistic.