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To my family, my counselor and friends. I always feel like it's not okay for me to feel the way I do, or struggle the way I do. I think how I was treated in the relationship has caused this mind frame. The BPD ex's treatment and devaluation of me has caused me to feel like something is wrong with me and my emotions. I often get anxiety when I feel strong emotions. Any perspective or advice would be nice, thanks!

do you feel like you are suppoced to be enjoying yourself and something is wrong with you if you are not? Like your thoughts should be patterned in a way that leads to happiness, enjoyment and personal fulfillment as if those are the end goals of existence and to experience otherwise is to have somehow have failed?  That the shame of that failure is the very thing one should not be experiencing in the first place which leads to more anxiety that needs to be justified to exist causing you to feel the need to explain your position?

hi BuildingFromScratch    one thing i can tell you is that you'll have company on this board. there are characteristics of pwBPD, and there seem also to be characteristics of people who date pwBPD! i too long felt that i needed to justify myself to others and to excuse my opinions or choices, and even had trouble in interactions because i anticipated needing to make such justifications - when nothing of the kind was being expected. dating pwBPD is often attractive because they are full of need, and this provides a wake in which we can follow. i found it liberating dating my exw at first. things changed as soon as we were married when what i had seen as her energy turned into demand and expectation, and changed again at and after the end, when she turned narcissistic and sadistic - the devaluation you speak of. there is nothing wrong with your emotions - you're reacting to being abused, and being abused is an abnormal experience. how long are two you broken up?

one thing i would ask you to consider. a counselor's job is to help you sort your emotions. it's necessary to be as honest as possible with a counselor, who, if experienced enough, has heard just about everything. there's nothing to make excuses for to him or her, they're being paid to hear you, it's your chance to unburden. do you feel comfortable with him/her?

That sounds pretty close to the truth Blim. I guess I feel like I'm supposed to be doing better, and shouldn't have the difficulties I have. I guess I am ashamed of the fear the seems to hit me often.

Max, well it's been 3-4 years since I broke up. But the depersonalization I was under made it so I didn't have access to most of my emotions, and especially emotional memories until recently. I just changed counselors, my last counselor was probably the most helpful that I've had.

Yeah, I don't know man... .You don't have to explain yourself to me... If we feel some way their is usually a good reason why although its true origin is not always obvious.  A message I have been trying to get through to my pops is it is ok to not feel ok. In that message is a veiled message of to stop looking down on me when I don't feel ok, the last thing I want mirrored back at me when I don't feel ok is contempt as if they have all the damn answers and there is something wrong with expressing emotions outside of their approved of mode of existence. Or that disciplinary action is the solution. I want to add to this because with my folks they even made things that would give me enjoyment a form of discipline.  Like they want from me to do xy and z and they think I should be grateful and enjoy doing xy and z and if for a period of time I did xy and z and didn't enjoy it.  I tried to explain why but they just told me it was because I was selfish and ungrateful which eventually led me to quit doing x y and z in the first place. So they then would maybe bribe me with small things I might enjoy to bring me back to doing xy and z and confirmed to them I was selfish and ungrateful, so much so that they must bribe me with things I enjoy to get me to do what they wanted me to do all along and that I must show them I enjoy and appreciate all the effort they put into coercing me into doing xy and z.

Hey Building-

To piggyback on what maxen asked, have you told your family, counselor and friends that you don't feel it's okay to feel or struggle the way you do?  It is probably apparent to them that you don't, and the source of those feelings isn't as important as having those conversations with them, they might say something that will help, you will probably grow closer as a result of risking the vulnerability, and that closeness in itself may make the anxiety and feelings lessen.  We don't have to do it alone, and cultivating closeness with people can make it all easier.

 oh yeah and probably the form of xyz that comes to mind the most is basketball... My parents wanted me to like playing basketball.  I didn't like playing basketball I liked drawing, myths, and playing make believe creating stories and acting them out and such.

I guess what I am getting at is we when we get so caught up in a loop of trying to enjoy the things that everyone says we are suppoced to it can be easy to loose track of what we even enjoyed in the first place and our experience of those things may even just be shame at this point.

Yeah, that's a good idea, I'm going to be more upfront with people, especially the counselor.

|iiii  Good for you!  Please give us updates... .