Oops, I did it again.

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

The short of it is I came close to going back down the BPD rabbit hole. I want to give some background info to help it make sense, though.

For those of you who have seen my posts around, I've had a LOT of people with BPD and other dysfunctions in my life. My mother is a pretty classic BPD case and was verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive. My father was connected with this local cult that plugged him in to a network of child traffickers, pornographers, etc. He groomed me with pornography and sort of used fear to control me (by doing things like singing songs about a deranged man who cannibalized his two children, one after the other, got away with it, and then laughed about it). He had a son who was my half brother, but after he got murdered by one of the abusers, my parents never spoke of him again. The kid's mother said his death was unimportant because four-year-olds aren't really people yet and because he didn't appreciate her enough to be worth crying over. So yeah. Lots of dysfunction in my family. They tried to kill me too when I was around eight but failed. I have a dissociative disorder and remembered most of this too late to really do anything about it (and yes, I'm serious - I have a diagnosis from a licensed therapist). As soon as I reached adulthood, I fell into a romantic relationship with a woman who had severe BPD along with paranoid delusions that Nazis were coming for her. Because of my dissociative disorder, she was able to do pretty horrible things to me without me remembering. I'd wake up bruised, bleeding, or choking on a wad of pubic hair (I am not making this up) I had trimmed and left in the bathroom trash the night before. I always remembered/connected the dots too late. There's still a lot I don't remember, but my therapist and I are working on it.

I thought I was past all this ___, but then I ended up with a best friend who'd say "I love you" to me, promise to always be there, and essentially act exactly like a partner minus the sex. She'd pressure me into stuff like sleeping in the same bed, letting her hold me, holding hands, etc. I sometimes fear she was doing more than just that. I'd dissociate and wake up with bruises or with my clothes torn off or with my door flung open, and she'd always tell me nothing happened and that I was being paranoid to think anything did. She was financally abusive and used this to trap me for a long time. I put up with this for years without any therapy as I kept having bad experiences with therapists (some of whom I think needed therapy more than I do), but finally in 2017 I decided now was the time. I got lucky and actually found a wonderful therapist who understands all this stuff pretty well.

A short while after I started therapy, the "best friend" found a partner (like an actual one, not just a friend she could use as one) and decided to move away, leaving me about a month away from a financial disaster. Luckily I moved up in the job world just in the nick of time, but things could've been bad.

In August, I met this new friend who was just amazing. I felt listened to, cared about, etc. This was a big deal as I was facing a world where I had no family or friends to call upon. I thought I'd really lucked out and started to have feelings for this friend. Yeah, she had a partner, but it was this long-distance thing that didn't sound very stable. I'm not one to hover over a failing relationship like a vulture and then immediately swoop in on the person I want (I swear), but a part of me was thinking that maybe if her relationship didn't work out, we'd end up together eventually. This was my first crush in a long time.

A few weeks in, she admitted she had BPD, but she said that she has done a LOT of DBT and that she has learned to regulate all the symptoms. I wanted to give her a chance because a while ago, I got a real tongue-lashing from someone for saying I can't do relationships with people who have BPD. I've been called literal ___ for this by a "friend" who claims that it's discrimination/privilege/whatever to avoid people with BPD. I didn't want to discriminate as I know some people won't date a person with OSDD (a dissociative disorder I'm diagnosed with) either. I'd hate to be that person who makes someone feel ___ty about their diagnosis, so I tried to give this person a chance.

You know that line in "We are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift where she says "we hadn't seen each other in a month when you said you needed space, WHAT?" That's exactly what I'm dealing with from the new friend! I haven't seen this new friend since September, and she wants more space. She was kind of in and out of my life for 2-3 months and then said she needed a roommate. My third roommate is moving out soon, so I thought we could help each other. At first, my landlord didn't like the idea of this new friend moving in because she has pets (which aren't allowed), but I vouched for her and eventually got my landlord to agree. I also vouched for her to my second roommate who dislikes cats. The third roommate actually adjusted when she was going to leave to make her departure more convenient ie: so this new friend could move in. Everybody was making changes to accommodate this new friend of mine, yet this new friend has done nothing to accommodate others.

The first thing happened when I told her the roommate who's staying dislikes cat but is okay with having them around. She freaked out about that, stating that she can't live with someone who doesn't like cats because that person could severely abuse her cats when she wasn't looking and then lie about it. It took a lot of convincing for me to talk her down from this theory. It's really insane because as someone looking to rent a place that's $600/month or less for her share AND accepts cats, she really doesn't have room to be picky. I let it go. She proceeded to continue ignoring me for two months with the occasional "I'm going through hell, but I haven't forgotten about you, just please wait for me to be ready."

Well... .it's December. The lease is up in February. We kind of need to know asap if this person's gonna live with us or not. I wrote a gentle e-mail stating that I know she may still need space but that I need to at least know if she is or is not interested in moving in. I figured that it wouldn't be a violation of this person's space or limits just to let her know that there's a responsibility that needs dealing with. Well... .she blew up at me. I got this message about how I picked the worst possible time to message her and that she already told me to leave her alone and how I am not allowed to message her, even to respond to what she said in this message, AT ALL, until she says she's ready.

I just really don't want to be that neurotypical normie hating on people with mental illnesses who can't help their issues. Hell... .I have enough issues that plenty of people hate on me for it. I know how rotten that feels, and I don't want to do it to her, but... .she's treating me badly and using the concept of boundary-setting as an excuse to do it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do because it feels like every single time I try to make a friend, the person turns out to either be really mentally ill or to just have really ignorant, irritating things to say like that antidepressants aren't necessary and I should follow the diet that some quack with a website and a book out recommends instead.

I know people like to pull the whole "why don't you just be friends with NORMAL people" thing, but I can't be friends with normal people. Normal people have families and don't understand why I'm "holding a grudge" (ie: staying away from people who have literally tried to kill me, multiple times) against my family. I'm not normal. I'm not just some basically healthy with a few kinks here and there kind of person who got swept up in the folly of a BPD relationship. I'm a really unhealthy person, and sure I've got therapy, but guess how much that matters to your average normie?

I seriously have so many issues. Like... .I can't handle it when people touch my stuff with their pinkie fingers. I can't eat food out of a container with pictures of people on it. I get triggered when people talk to food like it's alive. Between PTSD triggers and the fact that an abuser literally cut off my clitoris + my vagina has all kinds of issues from being repeatedly raped wth knives and swords, I can't have sex at all (and surgery + exams are gonna require me to make a lot of progress with my triggers that hasn't been made yet). I do my best to keep this stuff to myself, but it's very challenging. No one cares that I've made huge strides in therapy this year. I can now wash a fork that has fallen in the floor instead of just throwing it away. I've completely stopped throwing "contaminated" things away because they've touched the wrong other thing in the house. I can finally work outside the home, drive, and cook for myself, none of which were true this time last year. So... .huge improvements are being made, but to a normal person, I'm still just damaged goods.

One of my co-workers likes to make disparaging comments about people who are "lunatics" and are "high-maintenance," and I know she'd see me as one of those people if she knew the whole story. I'm basically just acting normal to survive a job while ultimatey falling apart inside. I have to keep so many secrets and dodge/avoid so many topics to survive socially at work, and it hurts like hell. The other day, someone found out I was no-contact with my parents, and at the end of the day, I was scream-crying in my car because it hurt so much. I am stable enough that I don't take it out on others, at least. Having a therapist helps but doesn't just make all the pain vanish. It's hard work getting from rock bottom to anywhere good, and no one really understands how hard it is.

In other words, I feel like I have to make friends with people who understand mental health issues, but then those people all too often have BPD, and I can't deal with how they treat me. Aren't there people who are like... .messed up enough to understand me/like me but not so messed up that they'll treat me like crap?

This whole thing sucked. I was really getting pumped full of false hope that someone might like me, for once.

My therapist has said that I need to find people who are at my functioning level or higher and that she thinks I'm attracting people who are lower-functioning than I am. Maybe that's true? I don't know.

[losingconfidence]

The short of it is I came close to going back down the BPD rabbit hole. I want to give some background info to help it make sense, though.

For those of you who have seen my posts around, I've had a LOT of people with BPD and other dysfunctions in my life. My mother is a pretty classic BPD case and was verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive. My father was connected with this local cult that plugged him in to a network of child traffickers, pornographers, etc. He groomed me with pornography and sort of used fear to control me (by doing things like singing songs about a deranged man who cannibalized his two children, one after the other, got away with it, and then laughed about it). He had a son who was my half brother, but after he got murdered by one of the abusers, my parents never spoke of him again. The kid's mother said his death was unimportant because four-year-olds aren't really people yet and because he didn't appreciate her enough to be worth crying over. So yeah. Lots of dysfunction in my family. They tried to kill me too when I was around eight but failed. I have a dissociative disorder and remembered most of this too late to really do anything about it (and yes, I'm serious - I have a diagnosis from a licensed therapist). As soon as I reached adulthood, I fell into a romantic relationship with a woman who had severe BPD along with paranoid delusions that Nazis were coming for her. Because of my dissociative disorder, she was able to do pretty horrible things to me without me remembering. I'd wake up bruised, bleeding, or choking on a wad of pubic hair (I am not making this up) I had trimmed and left in the bathroom trash the night before. I always remembered/connected the dots too late. There's still a lot I don't remember, but my therapist and I are working on it.

I thought I was past all this ___, but then I ended up with a best friend who'd say "I love you" to me, promise to always be there, and essentially act exactly like a partner minus the sex. She'd pressure me into stuff like sleeping in the same bed, letting her hold me, holding hands, etc. I sometimes fear she was doing more than just that. I'd dissociate and wake up with bruises or with my clothes torn off or with my door flung open, and she'd always tell me nothing happened and that I was being paranoid to think anything did. She was financally abusive and used this to trap me for a long time. I put up with this for years without any therapy as I kept having bad experiences with therapists (some of whom I think needed therapy more than I do), but finally in 2017 I decided now was the time. I got lucky and actually found a wonderful therapist who understands all this stuff pretty well.

A short while after I started therapy, the "best friend" found a partner (like an actual one, not just a friend she could use as one) and decided to move away, leaving me about a month away from a financial disaster. Luckily I moved up in the job world just in the nick of time, but things could've been bad.

In August, I met this new friend who was just amazing. I felt listened to, cared about, etc. This was a big deal as I was facing a world where I had no family or friends to call upon. I thought I'd really lucked out and started to have feelings for this friend. Yeah, she had a partner, but it was this long-distance thing that didn't sound very stable. I'm not one to hover over a failing relationship like a vulture and then immediately swoop in on the person I want (I swear), but a part of me was thinking that maybe if her relationship didn't work out, we'd end up together eventually. This was my first crush in a long time.

A few weeks in, she admitted she had BPD, but she said that she has done a LOT of DBT and that she has learned to regulate all the symptoms. I wanted to give her a chance because a while ago, I got a real tongue-lashing from someone for saying I can't do relationships with people who have BPD. I've been called literal ___ for this by a "friend" who claims that it's discrimination/privilege/whatever to avoid people with BPD. I didn't want to discriminate as I know some people won't date a person with OSDD (a dissociative disorder I'm diagnosed with) either. I'd hate to be that person who makes someone feel ___ty about their diagnosis, so I tried to give this person a chance.

You know that line in "We are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift where she says "we hadn't seen each other in a month when you said you needed space, WHAT?" That's exactly what I'm dealing with from the new friend! I haven't seen this new friend since September, and she wants more space. She was kind of in and out of my life for 2-3 months and then said she needed a roommate. My third roommate is moving out soon, so I thought we could help each other. At first, my landlord didn't like the idea of this new friend moving in because she has pets (which aren't allowed), but I vouched for her and eventually got my landlord to agree. I also vouched for her to my second roommate who dislikes cats. The third roommate actually adjusted when she was going to leave to make her departure more convenient ie: so this new friend could move in. Everybody was making changes to accommodate this new friend of mine, yet this new friend has done nothing to accommodate others.

The first thing happened when I told her the roommate who's staying dislikes cat but is okay with having them around. She freaked out about that, stating that she can't live with someone who doesn't like cats because that person could severely abuse her cats when she wasn't looking and then lie about it. It took a lot of convincing for me to talk her down from this theory. It's really insane because as someone looking to rent a place that's $600/month or less for her share AND accepts cats, she really doesn't have room to be picky. I let it go. She proceeded to continue ignoring me for two months with the occasional "I'm going through hell, but I haven't forgotten about you, just please wait for me to be ready."

Well... .it's December. The lease is up in February. We kind of need to know asap if this person's gonna live with us or not. I wrote a gentle e-mail stating that I know she may still need space but that I need to at least know if she is or is not interested in moving in. I figured that it wouldn't be a violation of this person's space or limits just to let her know that there's a responsibility that needs dealing with. Well... .she blew up at me. I got this message about how I picked the worst possible time to message her and that she already told me to leave her alone and how I am not allowed to message her, even to respond to what she said in this message, AT ALL, until she says she's ready.

I just really don't want to be that neurotypical normie hating on people with mental illnesses who can't help their issues. Hell... .I have enough issues that plenty of people hate on me for it. I know how rotten that feels, and I don't want to do it to her, but... .she's treating me badly and using the concept of boundary-setting as an excuse to do it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do because it feels like every single time I try to make a friend, the person turns out to either be really mentally ill or to just have really ignorant, irritating things to say like that antidepressants aren't necessary and I should follow the diet that some quack with a website and a book out recommends instead.

I know people like to pull the whole "why don't you just be friends with NORMAL people" thing, but I can't be friends with normal people. Normal people have families and don't understand why I'm "holding a grudge" (ie: staying away from people who have literally tried to kill me, multiple times) against my family. I'm not normal. I'm not just some basically healthy with a few kinks here and there kind of person who got swept up in the folly of a BPD relationship. I'm a really unhealthy person, and sure I've got therapy, but guess how much that matters to your average normie?

I seriously have so many issues. Like... .I can't handle it when people touch my stuff with their pinkie fingers. I can't eat food out of a container with pictures of people on it. I get triggered when people talk to food like it's alive. Between PTSD triggers and the fact that an abuser literally cut off my clitoris + my vagina has all kinds of issues from being repeatedly raped wth knives and swords, I can't have sex at all (and surgery + exams are gonna require me to make a lot of progress with my triggers that hasn't been made yet). I do my best to keep this stuff to myself, but it's very challenging. No one cares that I've made huge strides in therapy this year. I can now wash a fork that has fallen in the floor instead of just throwing it away. I've completely stopped throwing "contaminated" things away because they've touched the wrong other thing in the house. I can finally work outside the home, drive, and cook for myself, none of which were true this time last year. So... .huge improvements are being made, but to a normal person, I'm still just damaged goods.

One of my co-workers likes to make disparaging comments about people who are "lunatics" and are "high-maintenance," and I know she'd see me as one of those people if she knew the whole story. I'm basically just acting normal to survive a job while ultimatey falling apart inside. I have to keep so many secrets and dodge/avoid so many topics to survive socially at work, and it hurts like hell. The other day, someone found out I was no-contact with my parents, and at the end of the day, I was scream-crying in my car because it hurt so much. I am stable enough that I don't take it out on others, at least. Having a therapist helps but doesn't just make all the pain vanish. It's hard work getting from rock bottom to anywhere good, and no one really understands how hard it is.

In other words, I feel like I have to make friends with people who understand mental health issues, but then those people all too often have BPD, and I can't deal with how they treat me. Aren't there people who are like... .messed up enough to understand me/like me but not so messed up that they'll treat me like crap?

This whole thing sucked. I was really getting pumped full of false hope that someone might like me, for once.

My therapist has said that I need to find people who are at my functioning level or higher and that she thinks I'm attracting people who are lower-functioning than I am. Maybe that's true? I don't know.

[heartandwhole]

Hi losingconfidence,

I'm so sorry to read of what you've been through. It's heartbreaking.    I commend you for working toward health and goodness in your life. I have confidence that you will continue to get better, as it sounds like you have some good support at the moment. I know a therapist is not enough—we need relationships—but it's a step toward understanding yourself and others. That helps so much when we connect with others.

Depending how severe your friend with BPD's symptoms are, you can count on changeable emotions and behavior. Sometimes very abrupt, in my experience. That can cause a ton of stress, so I encourage you to learn to manage your own emotions as best you can. You don't want to be blown hither and yon because your friend may not have the skills to manage her feelings.

You are working hard in therapy, and you've come so far, as you mention in your post. Keep going; you are on a path that will lead to better relationships. It all starts with us, however. We all want to be liked and loved—we need connection—but when we aren't getting what we need from others, who is left? We are, so connecting with ourselves is the best thing we can do, in my experience. 

I would also encourage you to allow your friend to take responsibility for her life and decisions. Put a date on the acceptance/rejection of the offer to live with you. If she doesn't respond by that date, the offer is gone. If you are not firm on boundaries like that, I fear that if/when she is living with you, it may be difficult, as she knows your limits are flexible.

Also, taking the responsibility away from others (whether they have mental health issues or not) can appear to be a kind gesture, but in reality it doesn't help them and doesn't help you. It puts them in a one-down position (person who needs help), with you as the "better" person. I say this as someone who has put myself in the rescuer role, thinking I was just being empathic.

You say that you can't connect with "normal" people, which I can understand, given what you've been through. I've had similar thoughts, and I haven't experienced anything near to what you've described. I might encourage you, though, to look at that attitude and ask yourself if/how you are limiting your growth. I think there are many people out there (including your friend) who would enjoy being close to you. We all have issues; some more than others, of course, but no one is immune from painful feelings and stressful events in life. You can be choosy, you deserve kindness and love—you're worth it.

heartandwhole

[pearlsw]

hi losingconfidence,

I read your post and heartandwhole's reply with a full heart. I am so impressed with all the work you have done and I really hear your dilemma. You feel like "normies" would reject you and so you go with folks who are more troubled or have mental health issues, but I do want to let you know that it is totally okay not to take on so much extra pain or challenges in life via your choices in friends. Myself? I was not into drugs, but when younger I let people into my life who were using them, it almost seemed impossible to find people who didn't use them when I was in high school and college, but you know what? Letting those folks in did do damage to my life to one degree or another, and as much as I love those people I'd have been far better off in life had I not allowed that into my world. Now I am with someone who I thought I'd have a stable and happy life with, but it seems that life had new challenges in store for me. Just keep learning and moving forward and never give up on making the best life you can!

You are not discriminating or even being hypocritical by making important life choices for yourself. I think a lot of us here would hide much less about our lives and relationship histories in making new friends too. You can keep parts to yourself or share as you like - it really is up to you. I am so sorry for all you have experienced though. It is painful and tragic, and yet, how amazing are you? You are truly amazing! You are incredibly articulate and thoughtful and kind and considerate and seem to be a very loving person... .despite everything... .and that is really beautiful. Go ahead, treat yourself to better friendships with fewer problems. It's okay to do so! It is okay to opt for an easier life for yourself. heartandwhole outlined very skillfully about setting boundaries.

wishing you peace and happiness from all my heart! pearlsw.