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Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse... Have you considered that being critical, judgmental, or invalidating toward the other parent, no matter what she or he just did will only make matters worse? Someone has to be do something. This means finding the motivation to stop making things worse, learning how to interrupt your own negative responses, body language, facial expressions, voice tone, and learning how to inhibit your urges to do things that you later realize are contributing to the tensions.
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Author Topic: white to black = confusion and questions  (Read 922 times)
rosebud
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« on: February 22, 2010, 12:46:18 AM »

After a heck of a weepy, angry, weepy, numb week (i.e. confused), while also learning of new things with my uBPDxh and just trying to process it all ... .I happened across this tonight and had a Idea moment.  Sometimes we've got to rip off the rose-colored glasses and see it for what it is.  Just wanted to share this with you.


www.gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/discount-it-all-2/#more-5857


Discount It All

February 20, 2010 by Susan J. Elliott

When I was still married to the mother of all bananaheads, someone told me he was a pathological liar. I just stared at this person, unable to speak. The reason it left me speechless was 1) who SAYS that about your husband? and 2) I feared it was true.

There were so many things he said that were simply untrue and couldn’t be true because if they were true then a second set of things he said could NOT be true. It was head spinning stuff.

Upon our break-up a year or so later, I was so lost. He said I love you and will never love anyone as much as you. Yet, he was seeing someone else. He said I don’t want to hurt you while doing a lot of things that caused me excruciating pain. He said I care about the boys more than anything else in the world while doing many things that hurt them. He was, for a time, obviously sleeping with both her and me. He tried to come back to me and yet never quite gave her up.

He told me lie upon lie upon lie upon lie. Half of it had to be lies because it simply didn’t comport with the other half of anything he said. His words and actions did not match. At all. Ever.

My head was spinning. He keyed into certain things that I believed about us: we were together a long time; we had 3 kids together; we were friends before we were a couple; we had a long term history that went back to high school and no one else was going to match; we just bought a dream home together; didn’t I think he WANTED it to work?

When he said THAT set of stuff I believed him because it MATCHED what I believed and what I fervently wanted to think was true and MOST important.

When he said the second set of things: what was wrong with me; why it would never work out; why I forced him into the arms of someone else; why he was confused about whether or not he really loved her instead of me, I simply ignored it.

I ignored the second set because it WAS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR.

About 2 months into our separation someone said to me, “The truth shall ring true.” It was as if they had taken a giant gong and just smashed me over the head with it. You know why? Because NOTHING the ex said rang true. It was all a bunch of garbage. The only reason why anything he said ever rang true was because I wanted to fool myself into believing he meant it. But on its face? Nothing rang true.

Liar liar pants on fire.

I said to my therapist, “hoo boy, I don’t know WHAT to believe anymore…”

And she said, simply, “Believe none of it. Discount it all.”

WHAT?

And she repeated, “When you don’t know what to believe because a person is saying two different things or their actions are incongruous with their words, discount it all.”

Instead of trying to tease out the truth (as if there was any) or parse out what he was saying as I had been doing, just throw the whole thing out the window (followed, hopefully, by him).

It was a sad, sad day but that’s what I did in order to keep my sanity. And things got better after that. Once I learned to discount it all, all of it lost its power to upend me.

About a year later I was seeing a guy who was a sweet, funny, charming, exceedingly confused man. We had started seeing each other in a rebound (for both of us) situation. And while we would have fantastic times together and loved each other to death, he would get into these funks where he would be confused about his ex. Should he call her? Should he give it another try? Yes, she was horrible but they were together 3 years. Should he just forget those 3 years? He was getting in deep with me…was it too soon?

He would say “I love you” and “I’m so grateful for you” and “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me…” after a long and intensely wonderful weekend. He’d be smiling and hugging me and kissing me as he walked me out to my car. Telling me I was the very best thing since the folded napkin. We’d had magical and fun weekends whereas he described a relationship with his ex where arguments and misery abounded. He always told me how much fun I was…how funny and fun to be with and how happy I made him.

That night he’d call his ex and an hour later be on the phone to me saying how confused he was and perhaps we shouldn’t see each other any more. My balloon would burst into a million little pieces.

After a few months of this…I would sit with all the wonderful things he said and try to parse it out and tease out the truth…I was sure, very sure, that he DID love me and he WAS grateful for me and he WAS confused about his ex.

How to sort it all out?

Simple. Discount it all.

I had to get to the point where I simply discounted everything.

Guy B was NOT a liar. He was an honestly confused young man. I believed him when he told me whatever it was he told me.

But that didn’t make things any better than if he was lying through his teeth. Because Set A and Set B still did not mesh. Whether they were lies or just a product of his confusion, there was still a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense.

There were too many inconsistencies and incongruence going on there.

I honestly believed he was not lying to me and not playing me. Part of him was torn and part of him was incapable of making a firm decision and sticking with it. And we were a rebound couple, getting together on the heels of both of us breaking up with someone. I had broken off a 6 month romance that I was completely done with. He had broken off a 3 year relationship that he wasn’t quite done with. There was a difference.

To move on from him, I had to discount it all. It hurt and it was hard but it made no sense. And trying to live with the nonsense was causing my head and my heart to ache.

Breaking it off with him (or rather resisting contact later on) was one of the hardest things I ever had to do because it was so good between us…but I couldn’t live with the ex confusion and his dips into “What do I do now?” It drove me crazy that he could not or would not make a decision.

So I used the “discount it all” method with him. It was hard but it worked. I had to discount all the wonderful stuff he said because it did not jibe with the non-wonderful stuff. He wasn’t a liar. He just didn’t know what he wanted, his words and actions were not consistent and therefore, I had to discount it all.

If someones words do not match their other words or if their words and actions are not consistent, discount it all.

Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure which end is up. Discount it all.

Don’t feed your own denial by trying to hang on the parts you WANT to hear, listen for all of it and then, discount it all.

If someone does something that makes NO sense whatsoever, discount it all.

It hurts and its hard but in the end, it makes for an easier time of moving on once and for all.

Be good to you today. Discount it all.

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anker
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« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2010, 03:07:46 AM »

Thank you so much this helps me a ton!
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lifeisgoodx10
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« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2010, 04:44:29 AM »

Excerpt
And she repeated, “When you don’t know what to believe because a person is saying two different things or their actions are incongruous with their words, discount it all.”

Instead of trying to tease out the truth (as if there was any) or parse out what he was saying as I had been doing, just throw the whole thing out the window (followed, hopefully, by him).

It was a sad, sad day but that’s what I did in order to keep my sanity. And things got better after that. Once I learned to discount it all, all of it lost its power to upend me.



This makes so much sense to me... .":)iscount it all." THis is pretty much what I have done and am doing. It gets to the point that you do not know what to believe and you spend so much time trying to decipher between truth and lies that you have no time for anything else. So I have decided to believe none of what he says/said. Life is much simpler this way. I have no intention of going back anyway so what is truth and what are lies doesn't really matter. There were enough lies to out weigh any truth that might have been in the mix.
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turtlesoup
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« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2010, 04:48:15 AM »

It's certainly the easiest way to cope. I've spent two years breaking my brain trying to understand what she was trying to tell me, the extent of her real feelings.

Discounting it all, while painful, is certainly easier on the ol' grey matter.

Good advice, discount it all, so simple, but yet so freeing, well done  Smiling (click to insert in post)
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Lindylou

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« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2010, 04:54:29 AM »

This makes so much sense to me the lies really do mess with your head. Words and actions are not saying the same things.

Thank you for sharing this I am most certainly going to DISCOUNT IT ALL

Lindylou 
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2010
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« Reply #5 on: February 22, 2010, 05:17:49 AM »

The Author has common sense wisdom that is rarely common! I really like her blog. Measure a Man by his actions and not his words. So true.

Rosebud, the black and white thinking- it really comes down to what's known as Cognitive Dissonance. "Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously."

Try this wiki for a better explanation: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
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recovering
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« Reply #6 on: February 22, 2010, 05:21:21 AM »

I was told to ignore the "content" but understand the "process".

Love, hate, love, hate, love, hate.

I agree with the discount IT ALL thing.

Only way to get you by.

Good luck!
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rosebud
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« Reply #7 on: February 22, 2010, 03:23:41 PM »

So glad you all found this helpful too. It was a major struggle to understand these constant dueling messages during the relationship, and even more so in the aftermath.  Truth is we're never going to get the answers we seek... .because their aren't any.  It's an illness, a disorder.

I read this right place, right time, I guess.  You know when the student is ready, the teacher will come.  I have to say though I've found so many helpful posts here as well, otherwise I don't think I would have survived thus far.  And it's crazy reading posts all the way back to 2005 on here.  Never even heard of BPD until recently, discovering it on my own with a lot of research just to understand what the heck was going on.  It took a while.  Still a long road to heal, but this made the weight a little lighter, at least for me.

It just made so much sense.

2010, thanks for sharing the link on Cognitive Dissonance.  I'm further educated!  Really like her blog too.

All the best to all of us.  We so deserve a break!  ;p


rosebud
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freshstart12
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« Reply #8 on: February 22, 2010, 04:54:04 PM »

Just another note of thanks for this. I was a card carrying member of the Leaving board for 7 blessed months - newly Undecided, though I fully expect to be back here with y'all shortly.

I'm struggling with the mixed messages a lot right now. Been trying for going on 2 years now to parse it all out and it just ain't getting any clearer... .

If I can get to the place where I can "discount it all" on a consistent basis, I just might find the peace that I've been looking for for so long now.

Right place, right time indeed. This is one of the most helpful things I've read in awhile.

JPS
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jalk
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« Reply #9 on: February 22, 2010, 05:25:31 PM »

It certainely alot easier than trying to understand crazy.
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