I'm free but can I walk alone?

[leftcountrytoliveagain]

I have always loved to travel. As far away from my family as possible.

I've reached for help when I was 17 and went to therapy for four years.

My family of parents, brother and BPD sister had all denied that something was wrong in our family. Complete denial from every side until my brother reached out for help as well and I had at least one companion to share those question marks that hovered over my parents' house. Still, my parents keep denying the fact that her daughter's bulemic, suicidal and outbursting, mental- physical and drug abusive behavior destroyed our family.

I moved to another country with a different time zone and my sister is following me. She keeps texting me, she wants to visit and she forces me to stay in touch.

I am pretty good in making complete cuts and ignore those calls. My family asked me to come back home for Christmas and I managed to keep myself out of the "lets pretend to be happy until she throws knifes"-circus.

So my weapon is that I don't care anymore and humor.

But sometimes it overtakes me again. Mainly when it comes to a new love relationship, that I push this person away as if I want to see proof of his worthiness. Is it a behavior I've learned in growing up with her? My last relationship worked out very well and lasted for 4 years and this guy offered his entire heart with the option that I can take it or leave it, without being mad about my desicion. He did that many times until I saw he was the right person for me and we had a very harmonious relationship with almost no arguments.

I completely lose my self-worth if I finally happen to find someone who may suit my ideals of a potential partner.

After all these years I still hear my sister talking (in my mind) and down-grading a person I like.

Each time I want to open up to someone I'm afraid he doesn't get it at all and the moment I should be enjoying to date someone (because it's supposed to be fun), I start dealing with my past again... .what's wrong with me?

Do I really need to test out every guy until he gets annoyed? Has anyone else experienced that?

[Clearmind]

Welcome!

It’s important to not use armour as a way of coping my friend. We tend to shutdown emotionally when we use coping mechanisms such as that to get by. We really do need to face the impact, the emotions it has on us and let it be OK to sit with the uncomfortableness of it all. We don’t heal if we shutdown and yes we push our partners away – it becomes a way to cope rather than deal.

I use to do that too.

A hang over from an invaliding childhood is that we find it hard to feel and be vulnerable – we shy away and even run from anything remotely comfortable, loving and healthy because we are accustomed to turmoil, chaos and uncertainty – it has become our ‘norm’. Testing our potential mates is really about self sabotage – we are fearful and scared that this person will let us down – that armour is up and its thick ready for a knock down. Much like we were knocked down as kids. We are reliving our childhood in our adulthood.

We need to relinquish our childhood conditioning that taught us that if we were good, compliant, didn’t ask questions then we would be saved from abuse. We are adults now and we have the ability to stand up for ourselves. We however must be OK with being vulnerable rather than hiding behind shame.

Two fantastic books – to be read in order:

1.   He’s scared, she’s scared by Carter and Sokol (www.amazon.com/Hes-Scared-Shes-Understanding-Relationships/dp/1567313701)

2.   Daring Greatly by Brene Brown - www.amazon.com/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable-Transforms/dp/1592407331

I cannot recommend these two enough.

[leftcountrytoliveagain]

Wow thank you for your words and suggestions!

I really do feel a relief to hear there is a connection between my childhood and my behavior as an adult.

– not meaning that I can rest on some excuses, but now I know where to start searching for an answer.

I will read your post a couple more times to settle some facts and reality in this emotional turmoil and read into the two suggested books.

Many thanks for your respond!

[Blondy90]

I can relate to how you feel completely.

My dBPDsis caused us untold nightmares when I was younger. My mum also tried to constantly brush things under the carpet and wanted me to join in the charade which I did until I snapped when I was 17. I set my boundaries and stuck to them with my sister with or without my mum's backing. I was called selfish and cold and my sister manipulated my mum in to blaming me for every fight we had because I could generally get the upper hand. It took my mum a very, very long time to accept that we couldn't keep playing happy families and to properly address my sister's problems.

From a young age I stopped hugging my family and didn't want close physical contact with them. My mum always says I was an independent child but my counsellor suggested that this could be because of child hood experiences. Growing up my mum gave my sister the majority of attention as she was a very clingy child and my dad wasn't in the home so I learnt to bottle things up and keep things to myself. My mum had depression and I didn't want to burden her with my feelings.

When my sister's BPD was bad, I had my mum calling me selfish for protecting myself and my feelings were constantly being invalidated and pushed to the back of the shelf. I was bullied at the time for being overweight and I had no self esteem whatsoever.

My first relationship was very intense because we both had family issues and found normality with each other. My mum was jealous of this because I found it difficult to show her outward love but didn’t with my boyfriend and she made things difficult between us. On top of this I had my sister manipulating my mum in to kicking him out and making issues and it was hard. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest of relationships but we loved each other more than anything and understood what each other was going through. We clung to each other for dear life.

I broke up with him when I went to uni (mutual decision) and had 2 boyfriends who just weren’t good for me at all. The space I’d had at uni meant I couldn’t deal with any more emotional intensity so I ended up being with people who were very blaze and nonchalant about me. One ended up choosing drugs over me and the other cheated on me and destroyed what little self confidence I had left. Needless to say after all of that, I was an absolute mess. I got involved with a couple of ridiculous men that hurt me and disregarded my feelings (sound familiar?).

I met my current partner and was completely shut off. He thought I was a cold fish but kept on trying. He broke my walls down and I gave it a chance but in the first month or so I was constantly telling him I wasn’t sure about us and that I didn’t know if we could work which did hurt and upset him. I got some counselling and I think then I started to understand myself and my behaviour better and it helped me open up to him more.

Part of my issues with child hood and protecting myself from my dBPDsis meant that I could never really give my everything to someone because I was always holding back a part of me as protection in case things went wrong. I had learnt to anticipate the worst and became very pessimistic and disillusioned about relationships. However, now things have settled down a bit in my life and I’ve had therapy to understand myself I have thrown my all in to my current relationship and we are doing brilliantly. It was hard and getting over the emotional shutting off was really difficult. I still have my wobbles and do find myself sometimes doing things to push him away. I need my space to think and I can’t be with him constantly because when it gets intense my first instinct is to run! I think he understands this though and loves me enough to make it work.

I just wanted to say that having been through what you have it is natural to want to push people away – it’s a protection mechanism. Sometimes it’s worth a chance though and just throw your all in to it. It can be done! Good luck.