BPDex miserable 24/7

[Robbz]

Can someone explain why people on here are always saying BPD's are miserable 24/7? My exBPD stayed so busy it was hard to tell what she felt deep down from one minute to the next. Why do they stay so busy? She said suppression one time but I wasn't sure what she meant. Also if they have heavy shame, guilt, and fear I can see how that plays out in the break-up portion, but in the idealization phase I just don't see those aspects. It's like they are so busy sucking up and painting you white and mirroring are you people saying they have shame, fear, and guilt then? I just don't see it. Mine seemed happy during that phase but was it hidden away? Did she experience those feelings even is she can supress/block out from being a survivor from childhood. I wonder can one w/ BPD block out / supress all pain and hide the illness from themselves? Can she escape her thoughts and pain? I almost believe she can. She broke sometimes but this girl was a survivor. Is she some sort of super powered BPD or is her pain still there she just hides it really well? I was with her for days on end and I was amazed what she could hide feelings wise. I now wonder if she was secretly taking medication and not just telling me. Can any of you help me out with processing or understanding wth was really actually going on inside if her. She kept busy from sun up to sun down 7 days a week.

[Robbz]

Add a few thoughts... .  She was so good at hiding pain it actually is the first flags I saw. I would bust her crying randomly, but other wise she was an award winning actor. This is so hard for me to process bc I am one who wears my emotions on my sleeve. So I know she has pain, but where was it? Did prescribed medication hide it? Can she hide it from me and her own self? I know I busted her crying in shower as that was a private place for her but I just am perplexed at how one could hide it for that long days on end. I learned of her pain and hardships long after we had been together for a year. I was like wth, I am perceptive and I missed this pain you were in. Can they fake it for that long? I read some people on here saying they were married 10 years and signs showed up not until after years into marriage. My ex was married 3 years and I'm amazed she hid it that long. I do know she did hide her BPD though. Nobody knows it except her and her parents maybe and me now.

[Robbz]

Bump. Can anyone help with answers?

[gina louise]

you probably called it correctly with your word "suppression".

She stayed so busy all the time that the feelings didn't get a chance to surface.

when they did-she'd cry in the shower. and release it.

My HUSBAND did that too. Run errands, watch TV, surf the web, shop online or in person, fiddle and fix things, redecorate, go to movies... .  pace, fret, fidget, drive, look at homes for sale even though he wasn't buying one... .  call and text people.

My HUSBAND would eventually release his feelings through venting them on me with blame, rage and verbal attacks.

then start over being busy.

GL

[Newton]

One of the keys to understanding BPD is their lack of a true sense of 'self'.  :)uring the idealization phase they are mirroring us... .  forming an unhealthy enmeshed attachment to our identity, so yes... .  we have become another distraction from their core feelings of shame.

As soon as we start to exert our desires in the relationship dynamic... .  or contradict the way they behave when their true hidden self begins to reveal itself, then their disordered feeling of abandonment/engulfment begin to surface... .  this manifests itself in the push/pull and raging/silence.

PwBPD have spent a lifetime surviving using mirroring, denial and projection... .  they are emotional chameleons... .  it is very hard to spot!

[Robbz]

Thanks for the replies. So you are saying they can suppress BPD (shame, fear, guilt) during idealization phase. I have trouble buying they are feeling anything other than euphoria and a manic high during this phase. I never saw her experience anything other than happy emotions during that phase. So to me if she is in idealization phase she can essentially supress all negative emotions for as long as that period lasts. I assume its like taking a antidepressant pill that will work in her system until the phase is over 1-6 months? It's like she can supress negative symptoms of BPD by doing this?

[Robbz]

So my question where is the shame, hurt, guilt during this phase? Does she ever actually process those feelings or are they kept at bay during that time. If she experienced any negative emotion I sure never saw it.  This girl was a master survivor. So I'm thinking it all gets pushed aside until the fallout phase. Could she have been taking medication to help and I just didn't know about it? That's the only thing I can see. It's like she has super human powers of ignoring all the trauma in her life at times for months on end. The pain was there somewhere but kept hidden?

[GreenMango]

From what I understand of the disorder, much of the way a person who's dealt with trauma and it's gone unresolved it engages a set of coping mechanisms.  Some of these mechanisms are healthier than others.  Like you said it's survivor skills.

So when the traumas are touched on again the person has a series of 'go to' types of ways to cope.  :)ealing with shame, guilt, etc can be a hard proposition for an emotionally mature person.  It requires pretty steady self-respect and self-worth.  If a person doesn't have the emotional skills for it, it can end up being dealt with in what other people would think as destructive but for this person it is a way to survive these overwhelming feelings.

There's a good little workshop on the workshops board about toxic shame.  It explains it better than I could.

[GustheDog]

This is my view here:

Have you ever become so engaged in an activity - movie marathon, video game, project, etc., that everything else is walled off for a period time?  I know I have.  I'll work through the night to finish a brief or something for work and I'll forget everything - that I need sleep, that I haven't had a glass of water in 5 hours, that I really have to pee, etc.  Basically, this is hyperfocus.

I'd wager the idealization phase to a pwBPD is something like this.  It takes them out of it for a while, for the most part.  And then, after the honeymoon, when the fantasy can no longer be kept up, when the Non invariably negotiates reality - basically, when it becomes a "real" relationship instead of a state of infatuation - they start to feel miserable again.  The reason is because it's all unresolved and repressed, but there's *so* much there that they can't face it.  As a result, their bad feelings about themselves get projected onto us and they punish us and/or abandon us for allegedly hurting them.  Really all that's happened is that they came down from their "love" high and reentered reality, which, to them, is hell.  They live in fantasy.  Reality is too difficult.  If you interfere with their fantasy, you are bad and you will be punished and/or shunned.

Additionally, BPD is a persecution complex.  In order to achieve this fantasy-like attachment that is the idealization phase, they borrow *our* selves and cling to the exclusion of everything else in their life.  It's true, they break down our boundaries and isolate us from friends, family, hobbies, etc.  But (1) we allow it, and (2) they also do it to themselves.  When the borderline's fantasy is disrupted by reality, they look around and feel they've lost themselves in the process (not understanding that they had no real "self" in the first place).  This is one reason we get blamed for being controlling or manipulative - for persecuting them.

My opinion is that this - the behavioral/developmental approach - is the best way to understand the source of their pain and explain the repetitious compulsions of destructive behaviors that make up their lives.  Clearly, I'm not formally trained in medicine or psychopathology, and there are subscribers to a biological or brain-chemistry dominated model of BPD.  I just happen to see the developmental model as the superior explanation.

BPDs are developmentally arrested at a stage before the ability to think and behave as an independent, autonomous "self" is acquired in childhood.  Their attachment to us is a subconscious replication of the parental (specifically, the mother-child) bond.  

They *must* attach to people, and they *must* flee from people.  It's a vicious cycle in which every participant loses.  The only way they know how to experience a sense of "self" is through borrowing someone else's.  In doing so, BPDs guarantee that they will have no real independence or autonomy.  When the fantasy crashes and they feel empty and miserable again - i.e., without a "self" of their own, and disenchanted with yours, which was borrowed - you/we are the most convenient blame repositories for having *caused* their bad feelings (about themselves, which also *come* from themselves).

You and I are bad now - we represent another failure.  Something about each of us was wrong, and so the BPD is off to try again with someone new.  Rinse.  Repeat.  Forever.

Without their own "self," borderlines have no choice but to see themselves in others.  In turn, their feelings of eventually being controlled by their partners are unavoidable.

Yes, of course they're miserable.  But they cannot accept or acknowledge that it comes from themselves.  When they idealize us, they feel okay for a while.  Moreover, the respite from their misery that they achieve during idealization makes it easy and convenient to blame their past partners as causing/contributing to the misery they previously experienced (and will soon experience again).

[charred]

I think it is much simpler than you guys are making it. My exBPDgf simply seemed to have her emotions turned up to max... so if she was happy, she was bouncing around... if she liked you... .  you were fantastic... and then when she was mad at you, you were not just bad, you were so bad that she was justified in doing ANYTHING because you were so bad. If she did anything then she would feel shame... whatever it was she felt it was always overblown, like the volume knob was way way too high. The effect of it ends up being all the BPD symptoms if you think about it. We all don't want to be alone, but it happens... .  to her, the not wanting to be alone was overblown... she had to not be alone!

I dont think she was miserable 24/7, far from it... but when she was miserable it was blown way out of proportion. Hard headed as all get out as well, she made her mind up and no facts seemed to make any difference.