Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde... Me?

[Pingo]

Hi all,

I have been reflecting on my life and my coping mechanisms, slowly healing from the fall-out of my 4 year r/s to my uBPDexh.  Some days I feel like I'm doing good and other days I think perhaps I'm insane.  Really.  At least no more healthier than my ex! 

The thing about him was his dual personality.  He could be so very sweet and passionate and funny.  He could also turn on a dime and be abusive, cold and scary.  Well what about me?  After all, I married this man!  How did I convince myself this was a good idea?  How did I even convince myself to have a r/s with this man?  I saw scary things about him very early.  I even had the thought that this man could be capable of stalking or worse if we should end things badly.  Yet I continued on with him.  How did I split those parts of my thoughts away so I could feel the love and compassion I did for him?  Is this what they mean by dissociation?

Since our split (by me) I have gone through such a roller coaster of emotions.  I hate him.  I love him.  I'm scared to death of him.  I'm angry and won't put up with living like a prisoner of my own mind.  Up, down, back and forth.  From one week to the next I feel like I'm a different person.  How can I go from one extreme thought to another? 

I've read about the importance of having a coherent script for your life.  I think this is where I've failed.  There is no consistency.  This is what brings me the most pain and suffering.  Because I ignore feelings I don't want to have, tucking them away thinking they'll disappear... .but of course they do not!

Am I crazy?  Maybe I'm the one with the PD.  I'm seeing my T tonight.  Thank goodness!

[Jos]

Dear Pingo,

    I'm glad you mentioned this topic, the emotional roller coaster. I am reminded of the time when I split with my ex. It was a little bit like jumping out of a moving car in the middle of nowhere, without knowing where I was or how to get back to the sanity of civilization. I kept putting one foot in front of the other and communicating with others (I did a lot of that on this site). Some of the bits of advice and all the encouragement I got back were so helpful and gave me an increased sense of resolve to keep going.

  It was for me a time of awakening, and after about a month of up and down (sometimes very severe), I settled on what seemed like a high peak of inspiration. Suddenly there were all kinds of problems that I no longer had in my life. I was feeling as free as a bird, and indeed I was. Freedom-- what a wonderful feeling! I've since learned that freedom is something I can feel in any relationship, and it is still a wonderful feeling.

  So I gave myself some time. Heck I even got myself a nice new shirt, had no idea of the wonders of treating myself kindly. And soon the awakening became the dawn of a very new day for me. The ups and downs and indecision leveled out. My story has some interesting twists, but the point is to keep going. One foot in front of the other, day by day.

  Finally I want to mention something about acceptance. You said that you have a tendancy to ignore problems. May I suggest an alternate approach? Face them one at a time. You don't have to have a complete solution for every one of life's problems or a big bag of money to throw at them. All you have to do is be willing to accept those problems, and as you work on them one at a time, they will turn into strengths.

  Glad you are here,

     J

[Pingo]

Thank you Jos for your encouraging words.  I saw my T tonight.  She says I pathologize too much.  It is true, I'm so analytical.  She also reassured me that I do not have a PD.  Nor am I insane.  When she points out how hard I am on myself she asks me who's voice that is... .of course it is my punitive mother's voice, telling me I am a screw up and always will be.  I haven't spoken to my mom in years but her voice is still in my head.  My T called her a tenant in my head . 

[Blimblam]

Yeah i don't find pathologizing to be especially useful.  So you have identified the punitive parent schema mode and it's one I struggle with also.  I can relate to growing up thinking who I am is wrong.  The punitive parent is a facet of in freuds model of the psyche the super ego also identified as the concience. Having a concience is a good thing if we didn't we would be psychopaths. There is another facet of the superego, the nurturing parent.  What I realized I did in my RS with my ex was subsume the nurturing parent aspect of the superego into my ego identity to sense of seperate self and often projected my, to use the schema mode model, vulnerable child onto my ex and took on a caretaker role.  So yes, this fell into the drama triangle BUT guess what that means I'm very in touch with exactly the parts of myself needed to heal! 

When we come up with a pathology and list of chriterea it is very one dimensional and fails to explain all of the complex psychology behind the label. 

One think I like about the MBTI model is it breaks personality types down to the orientation of psychological functions and how a certain type proceses their experience of reality. It is helpfull in understaning how ones functions work and them accepting oneself. My parents always told me to be a person with a different set of psychological functions so I grew up feeling I was wrong.  Understanding the functions I think can be a big step for anyone to understand how they process the moment and forgiving themself for not being a personality type you are not.  Also to not create a new script that is a tottaly different type than how your psyche functions.  It's not gospel truth and there is a lot of horoscopey type information that generalizes but the functions themselves are legit once you can identify your type. 

[Pingo]

Yeah Blim, I think I spent most of my life trying to fit into some box but it never worked.  Now I am 45 yrs old and just really trying to figure out who I am, who I want to be.  It's like having a chance to change the ending to my story, a story told by someone else.  Now I'm the author.  Except I'm a bit lost.  Not sure which way I want it to go.  I like the MBTI models too but have only read articles online, haven't dug too deep into it.  (I'm INFJ)

[Pingo]

Yeah Blim, I think I spent most of my life trying to fit into some box but it never worked.  Now I am 45 yrs old and just really trying to figure out who I am, who I want to be.  It's like having a chance to change the ending to my story, a story told by someone else.  Now I'm the author.  Except I'm a bit lost.  Not sure which way I want it to go.  I like the MBTI models too but have only read articles online, haven't dug too deep into it.  (I'm INFJ)

I was a real rebellious type as a teenager and young person, never wanted to do what was expected (especially towards my mother).  Unfortunately being rebellious is still being controlled by others.  You end up doing things just because they are the opposite of what people are telling you that you should be doing, instead of figuring out what you really want to do that feeds your own soul, makes you happy.

[Blimblam]

Infj. Ahh, I figured you were an nf type.  So if Infj is really your type, the online tests are not the most accurate, the your dominant function would be Ni or introverted intuition and you auxiliary function would be extraverted feeling your teritiery function would be introverted thinking and inferior function extraverted sensing.  There's some good you tube videos where people break down their understanding of the functions.  So it's like you take in a bunch of information and all of a sudden you get insights into what that means and then you spend a lot of time thinking about it creating models. You Intake the information in large part through your feeling interaction with others. This is my take on it. I suggest reading Carl jungs psychological types.  Ni is a really interesting function and rather mysterious I have my own theory on it that I was recording myself ruminating about earlier today that I am considering posting on youtube.

Yeah infjs are the rarest type and probably the hardest for other people to understand.  I Infxs require a lot of alone time to process and when we get someone in our bubble can be thrown off ballance really hard.

Infjs tend to be able to focus and really good at creating the internal model that rises into your conciousness like a stream of symbols and stay with them. Something difficult for the infp to do.

But yeah check out some Infj stuff it will pretty validating.

Melanie klien and and Donald winnicot really explore the mother child dynamic and they also really dig into projective identification and counter transference.  These concepts are super deep and I think would be a game changer for how people on the board understood wtf happened.  I highly suggest looking into it. The nf types are probebly the best at understanding psychology and especially infps and infjs.

The way I see it is Melanie klien is in many ways elaborating in detail a lot of things jung was getting at and putting it into the context of object relations. I also see the schema modes as a simplified way of applying the archetypes to psychology. 

[Pingo]

Blim, I'll check those out.  I actually tried watching the youtube videos you linked on another thread last night but my attention span is short these days, got too much on my mind to concentrate on anything highly intellectual .  I watched a few youtube videos on INFJ's... .scary accurate! 

[BuildingFromScratch]

Hey Pingo, I have the same issues. I feel good very rarely but it's still kind of random it seems like. And I have tons of repression, along with scoring as a serial killer on the personality disorder test (joking). Anyways I think it just takes time. Also, I find what helps is when I started to feel like it's the end of the world to brush it off. Then I don't fall into the trap of feeling sense of dread.

It is possible that some of us have a PD, but I would assume most of us would be the less threatening types like avoidant/schizoid/etc (it's not likely though, most likely we're just infect by the BPD cooties) Also, if we are facing our issues, it gives reason for hope. Personality disorders are tough to overcome, but they aren't the death sentence we keeping hearing about on the boards. Hope you feel better, hang in there.

[Pingo]

Hey Pingo, I have the same issues. I feel good very rarely but it's still kind of random it seems like. And I have tons of repression, along with scoring as a serial killer on the personality disorder test (joking). Anyways I think it just takes time. Also, I find what helps is when I started to feel like it's the end of the world to brush it off. Then I don't fall into the trap of feeling sense of dread.

It is possible that some of us have a PD, but I would assume most of us would be the less threatening types like avoidant/schizoid/etc (it's not likely though, most likely we're just infect by the BPD cooties) Also, if we are facing our issues, it gives reason for hope. Personality disorders are tough to overcome, but they aren't the death sentence we keeping hearing about on the boards. Hope you feel better, hang in there.

Thank you BuildingFromScratch, you are right, if we are facing our issues this is a reason for hope.  This is what my T reminded me of.  She pointed out that I wouldn't be diligently coming there every other week, spending the money I'm spending, if I wasn't willing to do the hard work of bettering myself, healing myself.  Sometimes I get so discouraged.  But it is usually temporary. Not the end of the world like it sometimes feels like.