Am working with two T's weekly right now to manage my own irratic emotions. So hard to stay regulated for my girls when their emotions trigger mine and the volcano erupts twice as high. Girls are BPDDD27 and gd8. DD is living out of our home, though I see her about 2 times a week. This has improved over past month since she got out of jail. The monthly motel is holding her accountable for her actions there. She knows her alternatives are homelessness or day release from jail to her probation program. Gd lives with and we have had custody since she was baby.
What is coming up for me is scary. I have denied and avoided most of my life. When I dealt with guilt, fears, and childhood sexual abuse episode (friend's dad I think, age 4) in day treatment 20 years ago - led to lots of suicidal ideation and one attempt. DD was very young - age 5 during my most intense year of therapy. She struggles so with life - from birth actually. So she triggered me and then I was so very invalidating for her. So much guilt, shame about this. The fear - complicates it all.
Family/child T has been working with me for a couple months. She needs me to not allow DD into our house, and to limit exposure to gd outside out home. There has been much emotional trauma in her short life, especially in past year as DD sprialed down and I was over involved in rescue support.
What came up in our last session was a identifed by T as a deep belief that I must protect others that are in r/s with me from me. That I believe harm will come to others by being in r/s with me. In sharing about my attachment history this theme came up over and over in the narrative of my life.
I so want to restate these stories so they have less impact on my relationships.
I have been reading "Loving Someone with BPD", Shari Manning. I just got to chapter 11. 'Handling Your Own Difficult Emotions'. It has a new way of defining and working with this very topic. Justified guilt, unjustified guilt and how we respond from out patterns of life, and how to change these patterns. And how fear is woven into this.
This quote really hits home for me:
"Unjustified guilt makes your behavior with your loved one ineffecrive, but the guilt just stays areound, getting in the way of your decision making and torturing you."
She defines guilt as when a behavior violates one of my values. So I first need to know what my values are. She gives a website to help with this. www.universalbehaviorcode.com I haven't been there yet.
Ms Manning has found, and I agee strongly with this, that no matter what practice or faith you come to this with there are common values that involve my need to look at the negative consequences of behavior so as not to harm others.
When I read this it was a
. I coincided with what I was discoveing in my therapy. This gives me some direction for my diffculty in finding and staying with wisemind in difficult situations. I fear that my actions are causing harm to the other person when I am feeling my strong values are being assaulted.
An example of this is being so transparent that I reveal private information about someone else. I am not intending to gossip. I believe there is an obligation to be 100% honest to honor my desire to have integrity. So I shut-down and avoid responding at all when this is what brings the harm to the other person. By being invalidating in this r/s, and by setting the other person up for negative consequences that are not necessary. I believe I have done this in my attempts to be supportive of DD her whole life.
I am struggling greatly with this, and have for my whole life. Even as a very young child.
The good part - I trust both the T's I am working with. My personal T seems to understand these issues as well. I feel safe with both of them in doing this work as I never have in the past. I am hopeful I can keep myself safe as I explore all this with them. Safe for myself, and safe with my family, friends, neighbors, co-workers.
Does this resonant with anyone else here? What core beliefs do you have that get in the way of a healthy r/s with your loved ones, esp. those with emotional dysregulation. How do you struggle to keep yourself in wisemind - calm and focused? Balanced in emotion and mind in the midst of chaos.
qcr
