Wellness check: Where are you in your healing?

[JNChell]

Those of us that are here, are here for reasons. Healing and support are a couple that we can relate to.

When I finally decided to be heard here, I was in a very low and dark place. This place saved me, and that isn’t an embellishment. There were other factors. My friend and his family. A great therapist, but this place got me. You all understood me. That’s a big deal. Simply being understood.

I’ve come a long way and feel much better. I’m more confident, less isolated, happier and feel ok with being by myself. I’ve learned enough to know that I’ll do better in my next romantic relationship if that ever happens. I’m not done learning. I never will be, but I feel like I’ve matured in that area.

I’m not angry at my parents anymore. Frankly, I don’t see the point in it. It doesn’t benefit me to be angry at them. I don’t excuse what they did to me, but it’s my choice on what I allow to occupy me. Yes, things linger, but there is always a choice.

I’ve detached from S4’s mom for the most part, but not completely. There is still a lot of anger there. For some reason I haven’t let go of that. The resentment seems to run pretty deep and I’m still holding on to it. I don’t wish anything bad for her, I’m simply angry with her. It’s annoying. The feelings will eventually end.

I’m curious where others are in regards to healing. How are you feeling?

[Vanilla Sky]

Hi JNChell
It is nice to hear from you, and I like the idea of this thread, thanks for checking on us  
I am glad to hear that you are feeling better and improving - it also gives me hope in the process of healing.

I am learning that healing is not a linear process indeed. I was feeling better a few weeks ago, feeling that I was finally able to accept things the way they are, and feeling less guilty of staying NC with my uNPD/uBPD mother for the time I need to heal and be more prepared to have contact with her again.

But I am in a series of sad days now. I feel like crying all the time. I am just going through the days, to be honest.  I am feeling very disconnected from my husband, my house, my plants. Feelings of loneliness are putting me down, and despite the need for having people to talk to, I am isolating myself. I am feeling fear of abandonment as well.

Although it feels too hard sometimes, like I don't have what is needed to go through it, I have faith in this process. On my worst moments, I always remember that I have this community - this really matters.

This might be one more layer of grieving that I need to go through to heal.

[LeneLu]

I feel like I can really live my life without my BPD now that I have been NC for 2 years.  I am running into more and more people offline with similar situations now that I know what my "situation" is. 

Having said that, when I have to consider her, even when she is orbiting any scenario, I get very tense still.  I just heard her make a snide noise in the background of a phone conversation the other day and it pushed me over the edge a bit. I still have this desire to expose her to anyone and everyone...for people to see her as I do and experience what I have experienced for validation.  I recognize it, I just can't help it deep down.

[LonelyButTrying]

This board has become a great help. I've only just emerged from lurking, but to know that there are others going through what I've been going through, having a uBPD mother, it gives me more strength and courage.

Growing up and well into my 20s, I mostly isolated myself. My thinking was, "Why would I want to bring anyone else into this?", meaning the emotional war zone I had lived in with my parents' marriage (now going on 32 years), and the emotional abuse I suffered from my mother, such as when I was younger (8-11, thereabouts, a few times) and I said something that set her off for some reason (I never knew what it was), and she tried to suffocate me with a pillow, screaming, "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!" When I was 15, something set her off again (maybe I was just standing up for myself), and she threw me out of the house and set about destroying my room, sweeping things off my shelves, tearing apart my books. When hell had finally settled enough, she let me back in, and the next morning, she was so profoundly apologetic, saying that she didn't know what she had been doing, that it felt like she was in a fog, with a veil over her eyes. She set out to help me put my room back together, and in the following days, took me to Barnes & Noble to replace some of my books. So why would I want to bring anyone else into this? Plus, in all those years, my sister and I always had to emotionally fend for ourselves (no other family to reach out to).

In my late 20s, and especially in the past two and a half years, which have been the worst of my life, I've been toying with the thought of getting to know more people. I'm cautious about it, of course. I'm not going to dive headlong into the first different life I see. But I graduated from high school early just to be done with it. I wrote for the school newspaper, but didn't involve myself in anything else because I didn't want to bring other people into what I had been suffering through.

More recently, I've become more open to it. Not only because of the board, but also because for me, it means different stories to know, different lives lived, and having grown up in a very negative environment, it gives me encouragement to get to know more positive people.

The last couple of weeks have felt very lonely, though. My father's in hospice from terminal stage IV colon cancer with a prognosis of six months and my mother goes between looking to take care of him and wondering bitterly why she should take care of him when he never took care of her, which is true. She even tried following my viewpoint for a while of letting it go and seeking to make things better for herself, and helping my father along, too, but that didn't work. After all, what's the point when the worst has already been handed down to him? Not to her.

One gloomy mid-Wednesday afternoon two weeks ago (at the same time, I'm still looking for work in this town, so I'm often home during these unusual hours), I stood in the kitchen of our apartment, wondering what the hell I was doing. I'm 35. My sister is 30. (Dutiful son that I was after high school, I stayed home because I felt that I couldn't trust my workaholic father to take care of my disabled mother (who also has Guillain-Barre Syndrome, diagnosed in 1982 before there were remedies for it). I was right.) We still have life left! It's part of why I'm reaching out because I want other perspectives, besides my deep reading.

So to be part of this board, to read other perspectives, is a huge help. It gives me more strength and it's a process, but I feel like I can try.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi to all of you! Thanks, JNChell for sharing your thoughts and asking how all of us are doing. It's a good topic for us to reflect upon, to look back and see how far we've come! Off and on my T decides our session time is going to be a celebration time. He starts by saying we are going to take turns naming the positive changes in my life. I get stuck, because I tend to focus on the things I haven't been able to change yet, but he won't let me get away with it, and he is patient and keeps poking me to come up with things.

I have a list of things, and I keep it in my 'Positive' box. When I feel down or sad, it is such a great place to go back to and read about all the positive things, such as words, actions, and kindnesses given to me or that I have given to others as I have healed. Often it is very hard for us adult children of a pwBPD to see any growth in ourselves or positive traits, so this is especially helpful to me, and finally after a long time, I have learned to trust my T enough to really appreciate his encouragement to do this. This is one of the ways I mark my growth forward.

 
Woolsie

[JNChell]

Wow, you all! These are great responses and great to read. Opening up is key. Thank you for sharing. S4 is in the bathtub and will want out soon, bu I’ll get to each of you as soon as I can.

[JNChell]

Hi, Vanilla Sky.

I’m sorry that you’ve been feeling down lately. It would be much easier if it were linear. But, as complex as our minds are, it makes sense that it can’t be that way. It’s a very strange and complex process. I’ve found that the important part of this is to not ignore or stuff our feelings. We need to feel them, and then let them go. It’s very hard to do. There’s a lot attached to those feelings, but practice makes perfect for lack of a better term.

The loneliness is hard. This stems from isolating. Been there. Do what you can to talk to others. Not just here, but in public. Talk to cashiers. Simply talk to people outside of your home. It will help you rebuild your confidence.

I share your fears of abandonment. That’s a hard one to overcome. I think that we both benefit by being aware of this. Your comment about that caused me to think about it on a deeper level. I’m not sure that this is the thread for it, but I’m glad that you triggered the thought.

One more layer. Yes. We’ll peel them back until we don’t have to anymore. I’m very curious about how that feels or what that day looks like. Are you?

[JNChell]

LeneLu. It’s quite awakening to hear and understand other’s stories once we understand our own. A good friend of mine is going through something similar and I’ve introduced him to this support group. I’m waiting to hear back from him.

I understand your desire to expose your mom. Your feelings are justified. I know it’s hard to swallow your pride, but attempting to expose her would cause you hardship. You know that. I can only say that by admitting that I’ve tried to expose a toxic person and it blew up in my face. Best to let that idea go and focus on yourself.

[JNChell]

Hi, LonelyButTrying. Thank you for posting. What you’ve shared hits home with me. My life was threatened by my parents more than once. I know how terrifying it feels. I’m sorry that your mother did that to you. That was attempted murder. I’m pissed off by reading about it.

You endured severe abuse. She tore your bedroom apart. The only somewhat safe place in the house, but not really. The bedrooms just bought us time and had us cornered.

in the past two and a half years, which have been the worst of my life

What’s going on here?

I’m sorry to learn about your father. I watched my mother pass in this way. What are you feeling while seeing him pass?

[JNChell]

Hi, Wools!  I’m glad that you joined the convo. My T does similar things and I get stuck as well. I can’t give an answer. I worry about frustrating her.

Wools, my mind immediately goes to those places as well. Failure. Asshole. Son of a Bitch. Mother F’er. None of which are true, it’s the conditioning. It is what it is and I don’t buy into it. They were projecting and were mentally lost. I can’t even begin to imagine speaking to my Son like that.

Your positive box sounds like a great journal. Is that what it’s meant to be?

[LonelyButTrying]

Hi JNChell. Thanks for being here. It helps enormously.

In August 2016, my father was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer and immediately began chemotherapy. At the same time, I was in what became my final year working as an elementary school library aide in Henderson, Nevada, under a real hellbeast bitch of a librarian who was clearly just marking time, and had no hesitation about making kindergartners cry. There was no support from the administration to address what she was doing, and I learned a few weeks ago from her LinkedIn profile that she has been with the Clark County School District since 1993. Way too entrenched for anything to be done. Better just to let her retire someday. That's the district's approach, no matter the damage done. So between that and my father undergoing chemotherapy, you can imagine the sheer stress, my parents' bad marriage notwithstanding, those fights still ongoing at the same time.

Then we decided that it was time to move, yet again, though this time it was a useful move because CCSD barely pays anything, and my father deserved more than they thought he was worth. We weren't going to be able to survive much longer in Las Vegas.

We headed for San Diego to see what it was like, but no go. Then Ventura, which we had often visited when we lived in Santa Clarita for nine years. This was mid-2017, and by this point, my father had been hired over the phone to be a computer and business education teacher in the Oxnard Union High School District. So we had to move fast in finding a place to live.

We found one in Ventura, and all seemed to be well in the process in person, until the idiot property manager ran our credit reports and claimed that had a Chapter 9 bankruptcy on my report, and they couldn't rent to us until that was cleared or addressed in writing. I learned later when I contacted the parent company of the apartment complex that the lack of manager had read it wrong. But those next few weeks were frightening. I was scared that we would end up homeless. And the reason that we unfortunately needed that apartment complex is that they were one of the very few there that accepted dogs, and we had two aging dogs.

So I found a credit fixing firm to clear what turned out to be fraud on my credit report, perpetrated by someone else, and with a letter from the firm showing that it was being addressed, they finally sent the leasing documents over.

I learned last month that that property manager (we live somewhere else in Ventura now) had a heart attack, and then a mental breakdown and was subsequently fired. So there is karma, but I actually feel for him because I've been on the latter precipice. I know what it feels like.

That complex turned out to have a terrible flea problem toward the end of our year there and infested our dogs. I had to scrub the apartment top to bottom and get rid of a few rugs and pillows. Before that, in January 2018, my father ended up in the emergency room and then the ICU with a nearly decimated white blood cell count due to his course of chemo, and we nearly lost him. But he did gradually make it out of ICU, and onto the 4th floor, and of course my mother had to pick a vicious fight with him, which led to her storming out of his hospital room. So there I an, scared beyond belief, and I had to go down to the lobby to try to talk her down from leaving him right then and there, especially given that she didn't have the funds to do it.

So there was that, and getting to a new apartment complex, which was finishing construction and my mother going on yet again in her emotionally violent tone about how she didn't want to move with him again, and meanwhile, we're trying to decide on an apartment there, and I'm wondering if we'll be living indoors by the time they're done fighting.

We moved into the new complex last August. This past January, my father ended up in the hospital twice, and it was determined that his colon cancer had become terminal, with a prognosis of six months. At the same time, we had to have our aged (15 and 13), ailing dogs put down, which my mother and my sister handled at the all-night vet because someone had to stay home to look after my father, being that he had just gotten out of the hospital for the first time that night (he was back in a second time two nights later because they had discharged him too early) and was most certainly not in our orbit. So my final time seeing my dogs was through the outside of the car window.

Meanwhile, I've been looking for work through all this, office work, clerical, data entry, what have you, in this insular town that likes networking, which took me a long time to learn. I'm trying every day though and have taken every possible test in the county government, the community college district, and landed on so many eligibility lists, also trying for other industries. Still I try. I need to. I've got to try to offset the coming financial precipice in my family.

What am I feeling? I'm angry that he put us in this financial situation, all his credit card debt and spending money constantly instead of saving it in case we might need it, like right now. He'll formally retire from his school district at the end of next month, and I don't think his pensions and Social Security will pull us through. One part of his California pension, the non-monthly part, might, since we can take that as a lump sum and drop it into an IRA, and it's a pretty decent amount. But all this is why I'm trying to land something (not that I haven't been trying like hell already) soon, trying to figure out what the secret path in this town is to open those doors.

I don't have great love for either of my parents. But at least I could talk to my father on the rare occasions that he wasn't such a workaholic.

[sklamath]

I’m still having imaginary conversations with my mom, especially when I’m alone in the car, and they still start with, “I don’t know what to tell you, Mom.” But otherwise I’ve been doing alright. We’re at 14 months of NC.

VanillaSky, I am sorry to hear it’s been a sad time. I can very much relate to the non-linear piece. Hopefully not TMI, but I personally notice that there’s a hormonal component. I have to be particularly mindful of what time of month it is and remind myself that certain thought patterns or beliefs are not helpful.

Last night I met up with a childhood friend, along with his father and stepdad. My friend has gotten very into bike commuting recently, which is IMO a great step towards my friend taking care of his health and living his values regarding the environment. His step dad made some snarky comments about how dangerous it was and insinuated it was self-centered, and then just turned abruptly to leave. My friend just said, “What the hey...?” It was not at all unlike something my mom would say, but so interesting observing someone else’s family dysfunction like that. I realize that just as I felt protective of my friend, in the same way I can and should feel protective of myself.

Just because a parent says you are hurting them, selfish, self-centered etc. does not make it so. I always thought of gaslighting as somehow being much more literal or concrete.  For years I have carried this vague but pervasive anxiety that I must be letting someone down, but I am only starting to realize it is the result of being constantly blamed and shamed and never understanding what I did wrong...because maybe I didn’t do anything wrong. I am hoping that by realizing this wasn’t my weight to be carrying in the first place—and more therapy, of course—it can help me lighten the load.

[Vanilla Sky]

Thank you JNChell, sklamath and everyone here 

JNChell

One more layer. Yes. We’ll peel them back until we don’t have to anymore. I’m very curious about how that feels or what that day looks like. Are you?

Me too. Reading others here that are further down the road in healing helps me. I know it is different for every person, but it's a sneak peek that makes me have faith in the future but also grounded in reality of what is possible and it's not when dealing with pwPD.

[JNChell]

Lonelybuttrying, you seem angry. That’s ok. That’s a normal emotion when dealing with this stuff. Is there any way that you can break away from the dysfunction that you described? Are you sure that your dad is completely to blame for the credit card debt? How is he doing with his cancer?

[JNChell]

Vanilla Sky is going to be just fine. I’m glad to read what you wrote. Time and work, my friend. 

[LonelyButTrying]

Lonelybuttrying, you seem angry. That’s ok. That’s a normal emotion when dealing with this stuff. Is there any way that you can break away from the dysfunction that you described? Are you sure that your dad is completely to blame for the credit card debt? How is he doing with his cancer?

There hasn't been a way in the past few months, what with all the despair, stress and worry emanating from my father's situation, and my ongoing job search on top of that, hoping for something to come so I can be able to offset the possible financial precariousness to come.

But in the past few weeks, I've begun doing some soul searching, figuring out who I truly am, which wasn't really possible all these years between their fights (even all the way from Florida), and living in Santa Clarita, California for nine years, where, to do anything interesting there, you had to leave for the day; and Las Vegas for five years where you spend some money just to ignore the fact that you live there. Not gambling, but just distractions, such as my beloved Vietnamese iced coffee from 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway, near the University of Nevada Las Vegas. And other dining like that, and some shows. So there was no space to really consider myself.

Living now in Ventura, it's the first town I've lived in that lets you breathe at night. You may have some turmoil during the day, but when the evening hits, you're secure. Whatever you're worrying about can wait until tomorrow. You have time. Therefore, it's the perfect place to sift through one's memories, to think about where you were in the midst of all this, if there was anything you knew about yourself despite all the concentrated stress, worry, and sorrow.

I found my ways to break away from the dysfunction now in rapid succession. First, between Jetsons: The Movie being one of the first movies I ever saw, when I was 5 years old in 1990 (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the other), my love of Blade Runner and Tron: Legacy, the unfortunately late TV series The Middleman, and books such as Ready Player One, it became clear to me recently that science fiction is home to me, and I set about exploring more of it, first with anthologies that I've checked out from the library and continue to do so. I feel like I can escape through that.

Second, I've become despondent at times during this job search for the past year and a half. My first mistake when I started out after we moved here was assuming that with my experience, I'd simply drop into a job, which apparently the Ventura County Library system didn't agree with, as I didn't land anything there, despite my library experience. I think I had made some kind of surprised, displeased face when I was told that the library page position was part-time, and they noticed. It was an automatic reaction because I was looking for full-time. I needed full-time. I still do.

I've gone through so many tests and interviews and still nothing yet, and I think it also comes from the fact that I didn't truly know myself in my work, what I want from it, what I seek to accomplish. I realized it today.

Here I was, worried about if this one would call, or that one would call, and set up an interview. No call, and I just sank lower and lower. So it's obvious I needed to rethink all of this, besides finally figuring out the main points I want to make during interviews, that fully represented me to the people who might want to hire me, including that I want to learn from those who have come before me. Most important in this town, it seems, since they're very fond of networking. Even moreso than you think it might generally matter anyway.

But that wasn't what I had figured out. That part came over the past few weeks. Today, I realized that it's not only data entry, or clerical work, or typing, or recordkeeping, or filing that I love. I loved being an assistant to two resource room teachers, librarians, and various journalism types over the years. My great ambition in life is to have some books published. I don't want to create a business or run a business. I want to work diligently in the background so that my superiors can go about doing the work that's crucial to the health and value of the company/business/world domination plot. That gives me time to write. But more than that, I remembered fondly being the assistant to one editor, his seflessness, his graciousness, his utter kindness, and I want to recreate that somewhere, to feel that rush of accomplishment from doing various tasks for others.

Then I realized at the suggestion of an acquaintance who knows about my job search: Virtual assistant! Find work like that! Then, if you can get it going steadily enough, you don't have to worry as much about this town! Mind you, I like it. The college library here is my one true home.

So not only have I hit upon data entry as something to pursue (I've done it in various freelance capacities before), but being a virtual assistant! I finally feel like I'm getting to who I am, what I seek in my life. I feel no hesitation about it. Just pure understanding, which is a first. So tomorrow, I can wake up without as much dread and low-grade panic in the pit of my stomach, knowing that I can search for all of that and see what appeals to me.

As to my father's credit card debt, I'm 100% sure because I took over managing the household finances after he got out of the hospital the second time, and there's nothing in my mother's name. It's all him. Every American Express card he's had for decades and even a few others we didn't know about because he always hid it.

The main thing with his cancer is that he's still trying to get past that he has to retire from the school district he was so grateful to finally get (he calls it the highlight of his career) and can't drive like he used to. But he plans to find out about online schools, which he's done at night over the years after he's taught during the day, and that should help pep him up some. He's a little weak at times, but no indication that the cancer has completely overpowered him. According to one of the hospice nurses, it looks like this is a slow-moving cancer, so we at least have some time. I'm grateful for that.