Is "splitting" what keeps us stuck?

[Numbers]

This was mentioned in another thread, but it struck me as an "a-ha" moment, so why not make a thread out of it.

Thinking back, as part of my relationship with pwBPD, I accepted way more then ever before and way more then it is normal/appropriate/acceptable. So, why did I stay and why is it still so hard to detach?

Love? For sure. Hope? Maybe. But always before, both hope and love had to pass reality checks of my reason. Up-and-down cycle of feelings I had during the relationship (oscillating between clinging and repulsion) and especially now after breakup (oscillating between cosmic forgiveness and molten rage) could also be result of my mind splitting her in two persons. Especially because we try to rationalize - it is impossible an ordinary person can be so double-sided, so we unconsciously create and relate to two personalities.

And this creates a huge internal paradox that manifests through cognitive dissonance.

Now, this understanding will not influence my healing in any way, but it is a really interesting insight into a soul I spent a part of my life together with. If she is doomed to split every person to ever enter her life, wow - that must be hell.

[Pretty Woman]

Oh I totally think we start to mirror them as they do us. My therapist says I now have BPD markers. We become conditioned to the cycles.

I don't know if being "stuck" though is the same as their splitting. I thing we get stuck because we are 1) co-dependent 2) not healthy ourselves (or we wouldn't be in a relationship like this 3) The BPD is unpredictably predictable.

What does that mean? Well they do follow a pattern but if you have never dated a BPD before you have no idea what this is and you doubt yourself. If they always leave and come back you get used to that. If they have a replacement and all of a sudden they don't come back, you get stuck. I really think it is more conditioning than splitting, just IMO.

[Nicco]

Very interesting question indeed.

And for my experience i reply that yes,for me is a kind of splitting process.Like i was writing somewhere else,the natural human instinct should be to run away,put a distance,have a burst of repulsion against what is dangerous/toxic/hurting for our person... .that's the self-preservation instinct that every form of life have.

So what about when this instinct seems to disappear when we are involved in a BD relationship?Ok,we rationalize and we understand that we are gonna lose ourselves inside that mess so we decide to "destroy every bridge" between us and the other... .but we have to force us strongly to do that... .we have to "decide",is not instinctive is thoughtful.

So in some ways our mind is cleary "splitting" what is wrong from what is good,talking about that person... .on the contrary we should not be in need to force ourselves (with great pain too) to put a distance and move far away from the source of all our pain... .it would happen naturally... .instinctive,indeed.

And probaly yes... .this process is just a section of the painful world of a pwBPD life.

[Learning_curve74]

Yes, I agree that we as the "nons" also practice splitting and that helps us stay stuck.

Splitting is the inability to recognize the good and bad as both being part of the whole. Many people here say that their pwBPD is a good person afflicted by BPD, when in actuality our pwBPD is both the good and the bad all in one. This is a form of denial as defense mechanism because we would otherwise have problems staying with somebody who is good and bad to us. We would feel ashamed to let somebody treat us as badly as some of us have been treated.

[Discovery]

now after breakup (oscillating between cosmic forgiveness and molten rage) could also be result of my mind splitting her in two persons. Especially because we try to rationalize - it is impossible an ordinary person can be so double-sided, so we unconsciously create and relate to two personalities.

And this creates a huge internal paradox that manifests through cognitive dissonance.

481... .

The cognitive dissonance is the hardest of all for me... .the HOW could this be the SAME person? You say it so well... ."oscillating between cosmic forgiveness and molten rage".

The incoherence of two sides which are so contradictory. Definitely a place which keeps me stuck. Very hard to accept the man I loved IS ALSO this other man which I just can't comprehend is him too.

[Perfidy]

From what I have been able to observe in myself and in others... .Splitting,mirroring,idealization,and just about everything else that is associated with BPD are all fairly normal human thoughts,feelings,and behaviours. Seems as though the behaviour part is what really separates the disordered from the non disordered. The nons seem to be about as mentally and emotionally damaged as the disordered at times. Coping with the disorder apparently manifests itself destructively in the disordered persons behaviour damaging themselves and everyone around them. Just from what I've seen. My opinion only.

[charred]

We took it and didn't question it, because it wasn't normal... it went back to our FOO. The pwBPD gives what seems like unconditional love... .and most of us didn't have that enough or we wouldn't be drawn to pwBPD... .we would respond to healthier people. The idealizing and apparent unconditional love gets us to accept the pwBPD at a deep level as a primary relationship... the kind we should have with good parents. That puts a weird twist on the sex aspects of the r/s... which most of us dismiss... .but it bites us in the backside. The pwBPD when they flip and turn hater... .we are blindsided, but we act like a kid trying to please their parent... we assume everything wrong is our fault, and we jump through hoops and take abuse. We are put off by the abuse... yet are desperate for the unconditional love.

So why do I think all this... dated a pwBPD... got dumped and devastated over 25 yrs ago... 5 yrs ago she came back in to my life... hearing her voice had me 100% back ... .and that is not normal. Got a divorce... was put through hell on earth and finally ended it and had to figure out why it hurt so bad, why I put up with the abuse and why I needed her in my life at all, given I knew she was a toxic liar.  Kept digging obsessively till I was sure I had it figured out... .and the answer points back to me having early attachment issues.

Its my explanation... .not a form of splitting, much worse... a drama triangle with an emotionally stunted disordered person we see as a mommy/daddy substitute.  Really was hard to accept... .Freud was right.

[bluebell7]

Yes, i think so too.  Relationships with the other BPDs in my life causes me to be stuck... .is it anxiety some sort of PTSD... .? 

I learned about splitting when I was in counseling - working out issues from an abusive childhood and marriage.  I have 2 children with mental illness (BiPolar disorder and BPD)  So splitting had a different meaning in my life, it was not directed at others, instead it was a defense mechanism - it was internal... .I didn't lash out at others, but filled my self with shame... .that really made me stuck... .

So I also think it is possible that the splitting in family members can be different than the splitting in our BPD family members.

[Clearmind]

Very interesting question.

Splitting is the inability to bring together together both positive and negative qualities of others and yourself. I have said it before that I think we do split.

When we grieve we split off the good parts of a person, anyone, not just our ex’s to make ourselves feel better. We can and do experience much shame in the aftermath of our relationships, as do our ex’s. Shame is often masked by episodes of splitting.

As you come through the haze of your relationship you do begin to piece it all together. I now see the good parts of my ex, no longer blame him for how I felt and can see him in his entirety – good, bad and indifferent.

Reminding ourselves of the good parts does not mean they are off the hook for what they did. Laying blame on them and solely them as the main creator of all this drama is painting them black. It helps to balance out thinking and is the reason why we encourage members to look within for the answers because we did play a role too – shame gets in the way of us seeking those answers out – that is where the true healing begins.

You cannot change another (your ex) however you can change your perception/perspective of your relationship demise by finding out what got you there in the first place. If you find yourself blaming your ex, turn the focus on you and why you stayed and why you were boundary-less, why you permitted someone to abuse you. Its about you!

Over to the left ---> is a panel that says ":)etachment leads to freedom". There are 5 steps to freedom and they all revolve around you and your feelings, emotions, self inquiry and action.

[Phoenix.Rising]

My answer is yes.  My observation is that most of us paint our exs black, just like we talk so much about how they do that to us.  That is what we are doing to them as well, whether we recognize it or not.  But they are the good and the bad, just like we are, just like all of humanity is.  I think what tripped me up the worst was projecting my own fantasy of what I wanted my ex to be for me.  In that phase I was splitting off what I internally knew were behaviors that were damaging to me because I felt so high when I was with her.  I ignored the truth. 

Of course, no one is perfect, but it is important for me to have certain boundaries with a potential relationship partner and stick to them.  Otherwise, I am setting myself up for a bad ride.  The pwBPD is projecting onto us as well.  It was largely built on smoke and mirrors.  I was not honest with her, and she wasn't honest with me.  She tried to make herself into what she perceived I wanted, and I must say she succeeded at first.  I also, however, tried and bend and contort myself into something that I was not in order to please her.  And I began to lose myself.  And to start to lose oneself, I think splitting almost always has to be involved. 

I agree with another poster that my own shame of what I inherently knew to be a facade kept me in a splitting mind set.  Now that I am able to assemble all of the pieces into a somewhat coherent whole, I can see much more clearly how toxic the whole dance was.  I was building my own house of cards, which involved deceiving myself.

[Take2]

I don't know that it's a form of splitting to reach the "stuck" place that so many of us have reached... .even after tremendous emotional abuse and sometimes unforgiveable actions from our partners, many of us still find ourselves unable to walk away when we know we should... .I haven't split my view of my ex into good and bad in my head, I know fully well that he has both sides to himself, I am now more focused on the dynamics in my own head that allowed me to remain frozen in place with him rather than simply walking away... . Intermittent reinforcement is huge in its affect on people... .   it's the same thing as battered women syndrome... .I stumbled onto this website and found an ah-ha moment reading about this rat expirment... .thought this was very interesting... .

www.annveilleux.com/articles/why-women-stay-understanding-the-battered-wife/

Essentially, a rat is put in a small enclosure. His food and water dishes are in one corner placed on an electric grid. When the rat goes to his dishes sometimes he is allowed to eat and drink. At other times he gets a shock. There is no way for him to prevent the shock because it is administered entirely at random. No matter how he tries to approach his dishes sometimes he is shocked and sometimes he isn’t. The rat has no control over the shock in this situation because getting the shock has nothing what so ever to do with the rat’s behavior. If the gate to his enclosure is open, studies have shown that the rat usually doesn’t leave. Instead he cowers, positioned somewhere between the food and water he needs to sustain his life and the gate through which he could leave. Essentially he is frozen, unable to approach or leave his source of sustenance.


Further down in the article... .

"A major reason we all pick the partners we do is in hopes of getting the love we longed for (and didn’t fully get) from our parents. The problem is that in our unconscious cleverness we pick psychologically “reasonable facsimiles” of our parents and therefore we wind up with a partner who in many ways acts like our mother or father. So if our parents mistreated us as kids, we will likely pick partners capable of similar abuse. Since we still need love and approval, we still continue to try, fruitlessly, to get their love and approval just as we tried with our parents.

Women that stay with abusive partners very often have had abusive parents. To them it’s normal to get hurt by the people you love. Their self esteem is very low from childhood mistreatment and is further undermined by violence from their partners. No wonder women can’t give a good reason for why they stay: It would take therapy (and education) to understand it themselves. If they had good therapy, they could learn that they didn’t cause or deserve the abuse. Then they would leave."

[Take2]

I wanted to write more at the bottom but had trouble with the bottom of the post - but this is the same idea that Charred said earlier in this thread and it's a tough one but it seems to ring true... .it's tough for me because as far as I know, I was never neglected or abused as a child.  I had tremendous love and support from my parents... .   I suppose more therapy and more work on myself will hopefully help me find the answers to why I found myself so willing to accept such horrible treatment... .hopefully something we can each learn for ourselves and be able to grow from our experiences... .

[Phoenix.Rising]

"A major reason we all pick the partners we do is in hopes of getting the love we longed for (and didn’t fully get) from our parents. The problem is that in our unconscious cleverness we pick psychologically “reasonable facsimiles” of our parents and therefore we wind up with a partner who in many ways acts like our mother or father.

I agree with this.  A very talented therapist told me the reason I was so hung up on my ex was that she is the woman most like my mother that I've dated.  I had a hard time recognizing this at first, but once I started to see it, it started to crystallize, and it is still crystallizing.  My ex also has some characteristics of my father. 

We are unconsciously trying to work out our own internal trauma in our partners.  Once we recognize this, we can start learning how to choose partners that are more healthy for us.  I am almost certain that my mother has BPD, and I had no idea of this before.  I always knew something was off with her, but I could never put my finger on it.  Now it seems to make almost perfect sense.  I am still actually trying to wrap my head around this, but it is getting a little bit better.

[iluminati]

One, it is interesting how people are saying their pwBPD was a part of a lifelong dating pattern.  Ironically, in my case, I ran into this mess because she was different then my norm.  This isn't demonizing one or the other.  I am just saying that it's clear how their patterns of behavior was different.   I didn't see this coming precisely because this was so outside of my comfort zone.

Still, I think you are assuming an insight into yourself that few if any people have.  in their own relationships.  In normal relationships, many people assume that they can dispassionately look at their mistakes when they clearly can't.  Throw in the crazy making behavior above and beyond normal relationship drama, and there you have it. 

In other words, don't beat yourself up over the rage.  It is normal.

[Ironmanrises]

For me, as another member, Superior, so eloquently wrote, "I searched my soul, blaming myself for everything. I had to create a special place in my mind where she existed with me still to not kill myself because the pain was so intense." literally describes the splitting I have had to do in my mind of my exUBPDgf. Yes, I know she is both sides, the good and the bad. I get that on some conscious level. Yet my mind reels at the same time trying to fully accept that as such. I have created another place in my mind where her other side, that truly awful and vile filled side of her exists. Is this healthy? No. I know this. I keep her sides separate in my mind because the overwhelming sadness of combining both hurts me. The good and the bad. Does any of this make any sense? Probably not.

[winston72]

Hey IMF, your post makes perfect sense to me.  By the way, you are as elegant in your long form prose as you are in your poetic form.  Both speak so wonderfully.

This thread is amazing.  I have been fully aware on an intellectual level of the complex dimensions of my ex's personality.  I could speak with you at length about it, and could have a couple of years ago.  Yet, at another level or in another dimension (the terminology fails me here) I idealize her and refuse to integrate into my "consciousness" my "emotions" my "I don't know what word!" the aspects of her personality that reject me and harm me.  It is a form of splitting or denial or fantasizing or idealizing on a more primal, sub-conscious level.  And it is this level, I think, that keeps me so attached.  IMF, you speak to a key piece of this for me, I think, which is that if I refuse to accept her rejections of me, than I do not have to experience the consequent pain.  So, all this denial is an elaborate defense mechanism for me to avoid pain.  The oddity of it is that I can understand and write it, but it happens so deeply that it seems to overwhelm logic. 

I am reading this thread over and over... .each post is so insightful.

I was in the rat maze of intermittent reinforcement with my ex, and was raised in a home where this was also the case.  This rings so true.  I have actually been conscious in my life that one of my strengths was the ability to withstand the abuse in order to benefit from any limited reward.  Oops!  This was a big mistake for me!  Yikes!  But, it was an acquired skill while being raised by my mother. 

My mind is churning.  More to write later.

[Take2]

[quote author=winston72 link=topic=214416.msg12350744#msg12350744 t

if I refuse to accept her rejections of me, than I do not have to experience the consequent pain.  So, all this denial is an elaborate defense mechanism for me to avoid pain.  The oddity of it is that I can understand and write it, but it happens so deeply that it seems to overwhelm logic.  [/quote]
You know... .that totally describes what I do... .now I understand the splitting concept here better... .how many times I have refused to acknowledge the rejection to avoid dealing with the pain... .the pain of so many losses all wrapped up into this one... .that seriously gives me something to think about... .

[charred]

Trying to avoid painful situations/feelings/emotions... .rather than dealing with them and working through them... may be at the root of our problems.

After doing it a while you disconnect from feelings, and keep people at a distance rather than risking being hurt... .and get sort of numb.

The BPD r/s cuts through the boundaries we put up and then inflames the core hurt/issues we have tried to avoid much of our life... like a big painful infection around a wound.

As to being stuck... much of the BPD r/s consists of our dreams and illusions coming in to play. Facing dreams that shatter is hard, we would rather cling on to them as they may have been all that gave us hope. I spent over 25 years believing "the one" was the girl that got away and my life would be wonderful if I had her back... .then the self deception behind that became clear, as I got her back and it was hell. Life is wonderful if you are present and living it and being genuine, experiencing it. No perfect person is going to rescue us... .and we don't rescue them... that part is what can lead you down the path to ruin.

[Nicco]

My answer is yes.  My observation is that most of us paint our exs black, just like we talk so much about how they do that to us.  That is what we are doing to them as well, whether we recognize it or not.  But they are the good and the bad, just like we are, just like all of humanity is.  I think what tripped me up the worst was projecting my own fantasy of what I wanted my ex to be for me.  In that phase I was splitting off what I internally knew were behaviors that were damaging to me because I felt so high when I was with her.  I ignored the truth. 

Of course, no one is perfect, but it is important for me to have certain boundaries with a potential relationship partner and stick to them.  Otherwise, I am setting myself up for a bad ride.  The pwBPD is projecting onto us as well.  It was largely built on smoke and mirrors.  I was not honest with her, and she wasn't honest with me.  She tried to make herself into what she perceived I wanted, and I must say she succeeded at first.  I also, however, tried and bend and contort myself into something that I was not in order to please her.  And I began to lose myself.  And to start to lose oneself, I think splitting almost always has to be involved. 

I agree with another poster that my own shame of what I inherently knew to be a facade kept me in a splitting mind set.  Now that I am able to assemble all of the pieces into a somewhat coherent whole, I can see much more clearly how toxic the whole dance was.  I was building my own house of cards, which involved deceiving myself.

I've been reading at this many times before sleep last night.

I find it very "enlighten"... .thanks to share.

IMO all this has a big part in the difficulty of detachment... .if facing them we are facing ourselves too,our dreams,needs,illusions... .that must be a big part of the detachment problem... .cause detach from them means detach from ourselves too... .at least from many of our sides... .more or less unconscious... .don't know if i've been  enough clear explaining what i mean.

[CdnSunrise]

Thought provoking thread - thank you!

I definitely am splitting right now -- I can only see the bad, black side of soon-to-be BPDex after years of splitting the other way, only seeing the good and denying the true toxic nature of the bad. I was the one who left the relationship, but the shattering of dreams was still incredibly painful.

I feel that if I see/acknowledge the good side right now, that I will have to face the guilt and fear that I've made the wrong decision -- that I should have stayed and tried harder to fix what was wrong because of the good side, that was also rejected with the bad. It's just so hard to acknowledge those feelings while at the same time feeling that I was right to leave, that I tried way longer than I should have and that I now I'm in a much better place... .

[TakingWingAtLast]

Terrific thread!   So much insight here with each post.   

I had and still have very supportive parents.  I'm very lucky there.   They validated me perfectly saying to go on and have a great life.  I deserve it.  They didn't even say anything negative about the expwBPDgf, just that I move on and make my life the way I want it.  Perfect!

In fact Thanksgiving was one of the best ever without the overly competitive ex trying to win at any costs, the board games that we love to play.

I don't split my ex in my own mind.  I can see the good and the bad at the same time.  She is no more evil than me in fact.  Just hurting herself and the r/s's that she is in.  I know that she has split me with texts one day with the oscillating rage and then the next with a more congenial post hoping that we'll be friends.

I'm so grateful to all of you who continue to give good advice.  And my heart goes out to the owner of this thread and to all who continue to hurt.  We are there for you good people! As EarthAngel (I think) said, we got your back!

[Phoenix.Rising]

I was in the rat maze of intermittent reinforcement with my ex, and was raised in a home where this was also the case.  This rings so true.  I have actually been conscious in my life that one of my strengths was the ability to withstand the abuse in order to benefit from any limited reward.  Oops!  This was a big mistake for me!  Yikes!  But, it was an acquired skill while being raised by my mother. 

I relate to this, Winston72.  Might be a good idea for another thread?  Maybe on PI.  I was beginning to jump through hoops for rewards only to find even greater hoops to jump through.  And round and round we go, where it stops, nobody knows!  The effort put forth was definitely not worth the reward, but I was so hungry for 'love' that I would do it. 

I have to learn to love myself.