Doubting your perceptions

[Ittookthislong]

Does anyone else have difficulty with doubting their perceptions of things? Injustices etc. In my family I can feel more certain than certain about the way an incident has occured, or an injustice, etc. but am always told I do not percieve things right, or am trying to stir things up, dwell on the past, or play victim. This confuses me because BPD itself is described as a pattern of skewed perceptions. So I find myself getting confused about everything.

Does anyone else have this experience? Do you doubt the way you see events? Do you second guess your own emotional reactions, etc. Id love to hear if others face similar struggle.

[Bella Storm]

Hi Ittookthislong,

I can definitely relate to doubting perceptions and second guessing things. I have struggled with that. After finding out that my mom has uBPD and that I have been tightly enmeshed with her, I am second guessing myself even more. I feel like I am having a bit of an identity crisis- not sure who I am anymore. Thankfully, I am starting therapy tomorrow. I am hopeful that it will help.

Confusion is a big part of BPD. The behaviors of those who have it are unpredictable and illogical, which is why those of us who like things to be predictable and logical struggle to find the logic in the chaos.

Anyway, you aren't alone in your struggle. Good luck to you.

~ Bella

[Calsun]

Hi Ittookthislong,

Absolutely, I had the same experience growing up with my mother and still have that issue.  Being on this site has helped enormously.  When you hear so many others having the same experience it increasingly makes the BPD parent and the family that denies the behavior start to correctly feel like the distorted and troubled ones.  

Christine Lawson, in her book Understanding the Borderline Mother, discusses the role of the non-BPD parent in affecting the future of the children.  If the non-BPD can validate the reality that the BPD parent is distorted and off, dysregulated and abusive, then the children have a far better and easier chance healing from the experience and placing it in its proper perspective, an easier time developing the psychological boundaries for right-sizing the BPD behaviors.  

In my family, my father, who was in many ways a nice man, constantly invalidated my reality that my mother was ill.  He would say to me, you've got your mother wrong.  She cooks and cleans for you, she does a lot of things for you.  He would also tell me to "not get her started."  My siblings don't remember most of their childhood, so they can't validate the reality of what went on.  My sister would say that I should just put it in the past.  And she still lives with my mother and suffers from terrible panic attacks.  My brother would say that I was too sensitive. Aunts and uncles and cousins, also part of the sickness, would reinforce how wonderful my mother was.  One aunt, who I loved, would tell us to do more for my mother, so that she didn't get "nervous." And, of course my mother would accuse me of being hateful to her, not wanting to be close to her, being just like my father, and when I went for counseling when I was seventeen, she accused me of being a "sicko" who needed help because I was a mother hater.  Not going to have a reality validated by BPD mother, for certain.  

This is the minimization and denial.  The family system was built around hiding and denying my mother's mental and emotional illness, the severity of her condition, her dysregulation, depression, abusiveness and distorted thinking, covering up her illness.  Because of that the entire family became diseased.  It was as desperately vested, as my u-BPD mother, in covering up the illness and invalidating the reality, in undermining the one who tried to expose it.

Yes, I relate so much to your experience. Tragically, the family system in which the BPD of a parent is denied is a sick one.  The reality of the one who honestly sees it and tries to do something about it, tries to heal and live a full life, is constantly attacked and undermined. And when that happened, for me, I ended up terrified, feeling as though this was a very attack on my being, an attempt to annihilate me, because the truth of my mother's sickness was too threatening for this system to accommodate.  If they could eliminate my perception, my eyes, me, they could deny this "inconvenient" and painful truth that my mother was and is mentally ill.  And better and easier to eliminate and invalidate the reality of a child than to have to come to terms with the painful reality that mom is mentally and emotionally ill. Undermining the child's reality was and is the tragic path of least resistance. My father would otherwise have had to do something about my mother's illness, and doing something about it would have been difficult, would have required a kind of strength and vigor, a healthy self-love and self-esteem that my father regrettably lacked.  Because of his own emotional issues, in the process of invalidating my reality, he buttressed an abusive BPD and family system and ultimately betrayed and abandoned his child and himself.

Fortunately, you are in a place where others will understand and can support you.  And together we can help each other put the pieces together. We can have and hold our truth, really become increasingly healthy ourselves, knowing that our truth is essential to our healing and salvation, and we are safe and supported in having and expressing it.

The Best,

Calsun

[Ittookthislong]

holy crap calsun you just told me my story. all the same. one thing i noticed is when i leave the area and begin talking to people, i feel so normal. i mean i get nervous that the things i say dont make sense and im very quiet but after some time i realize theres nothing wrong with how i think at all. my dad actually told me several times growing up that i had a skewed perception of reality. my trouble is, this is carrying over into my relationships and i tend to feel scapegoated, but am not totally sure. i know that it has something to do with my own family dynamics, but i also know that if i speak about relationship troubles my family tends to tell me to drop it, ive always been too sensitive, skewed perception, they tell me im a handful... . which is so strange because im really more of a caretaker.

it gets so confusing, and i know i dont want to hurt people that sometimes i think i should just accept it and choose to stay alone for life. which is sad.

[Calsun]

Hi Ittooksolong,

That seems to be the dynamic of what happens in families infected by a BPD parent.  My guess is that my father's mother had some of the same tendencies as my mother, so it was normal to him on some level.  Yes, I was definitely scapegoated in my family, and I played out that role in relationships and in one particular work situation.  Now, I have more awareness around it, and I'm changing the pattern.

When I was a child, my mother would rage and scream and curse like a truck driver.  All apologies to truck drivers.  Then she would say, when I complained, "you think other mothers don't do the same thing."  Now, in public my mother was very mild and benign, usually.  So, I started to think maybe she was right, that other mothers who were nice in public, did the same things behind closed doors.  That made me terrified of other people.  Everyone secretly was a BPD. Not so, she just assumed because she behaved that way that everyone did.  You know, a thief thinks everyone is dishonest.

But what I have come to see is that my uBPD mother's perceptions were skewed.  There was a study done at Cornell Hospital Dept. of Psychiatry indicating that people with BPD have brain abnormalities.  So, what's normal for them is really abnormal.

My mother would say things, horrible, cruel things, and then deny having said them.  The frustration of trying to relate to a mother who was out of touch with reality because she had a mental illness and probably brain dysfunction.  But how sure and with such vigor and intensity she defended her version of reality and with such violence, as if her whole sense of self and her survival was on the line every time.  Any small challenge to her could set her off in an uncontrollable violent, destructive rage.  And the family denied it. And everyone, including my father, was terrified of her. Someone once said that people who grow up with a BPD parent become like film editors.  They have to splice out of the story, out of reality, whole portions of film that are inconsistent with the BPD's understanding of reality.  My mother would proclaim what a wonderful mother she was.  That was the propaganda. But Mom's beating us, splice. Mother raging for hours until she was hoarse and couldn't speak anymore, splice.  Mother cursing and screaming the most verbally abusive words, splice.  

What she didn't get and couldn't understand and what Dad and the family denied was that she was mentally ill.  She was not bad; she was ill, severely ill and dysregulated and unsuitable to be a parent.  And that is a terrifying thing for a family to really assimilate.  There is a stigma and there is shame in it, unfortunately.  My mother, with her scapegoating and splitting, blaming everyone else, covered up the severe problem, and everyone else played their part to cover it up, including my brother and I, who played our projected roles of hero and scapegoat, respectively.  This was to the detriment of everyone, including my brother and a BPD mother, who needed and never received serious help.

Best,  

Calsun

[Ittookthislong]

my mother was directly insulting... . and she had this strange voice and flared her nostrils when she was really pissed. she'd say i never wanted you, or your disgusting, you make me sick, nobodu will ever want you, thats why you dont have a boyfriend. and after the rage episode she was sweet as pie. my best friend and confidante.

if you have time would you expand on this part of your post "Yes, I was definitely scapegoated in my family, and I played out that role in relationships and in one particular work situation.  Now, I have more awareness around it, and I'm changing the pattern."

its very helpful to read this, and helping me clarify some things. i just found my heart shatterred into a million pieces after paying for, supporting , and being in love with a person, where i felt i was over extending in how kind i was, left me by saying i wasnt going to get in the way of his dreams, and other cold remarks, that made such little sense tht it confused me and then i started to believe it and feel guilty that i was holding him back. felt scapegoated in another relationship as well, they all cheated, i didnt, i was blamed and left feeling like i really must be doing something awful tht Im not aware of, because one person can be wrong, but not 2,3,4,5,6 people who all say these things. I dont want to play victim, so i just wish i had clarity.

very helpful, again, reading your explanations

[Ittookthislong]

PS- every time i get out of a relationship i try harder and harder to be "good" to the point of exhaustion and im figuring out slowly that im not doing it right by trying to be perfect.

[Ittookthislong]

also another thing that scares me is that, its been confusing because this last relationship i lost it. I never tried so hard and was devalued and made fun of by his new friends, but couldnt figure out if i deserved it or not and then I went into some sort of crazy verbal assualt mode. it hurt so badly and came out of nowhere and I just lashed out saying the meanest things ever. this really scared me and Im hoping im not BPD. i dont lie, cheat, manipulate, but man did I rage, i sounded just like my mom. Is it possible that when confused and hurt that I may have resorted to copying moms old behavior to defend myself, or maybe took out moms old abuse on him, or maybe, and i hope its true that it was a normal reaction to having basically found out in one day that i had been cheated on, lied to, stolen from, and now I was being made fun of.

[Calsun]

Hi Ittooksolong,

It sounds like it was painful.  A number of years ago, a relationship ended finally.  And eight months later, the woman who I had been in a relationship with was engaged to someone else.  It was extremely painful. She just moved on and found someone else, she stopped loving me. And I fell apart.  What I came to understand through all of it, and it was very, very painful, was that it had been repetition of what I grew up with in many ways.  I really didn't believe that I could be loved for who I am, and I couldn't really commit myself to someone who was really solid and grounded in all of the ways that real love demands. Of course, I didn't know how to truly be grounded and committed either. I never saw that in my home and I never experienced it from my parents.  Parents who really showed up for me in all of the tangible ways that communicate love.  I grew up with such instability and such contempt for me.  Of course, as a child, you internalize the voice of your mother, who is like god, and you feel that if mom doesn't love me, I'm unlovable.  I felt I needed to prove I was lovable in order to be lovable.  And so I often felt drawn to women who were withholding or disapproving of me.  Women who were loving of me I didn't really see or value. 

That is the understanding of the child who needs to feel as though Mom's abuse is discipline or that Mom's behavior makes sense.  A child cannot grasp that Mom is mentally and emotionally ill, that her behaviors really were not responses to the child, but were her own issues projected onto the child.  Mom didn't see me at all, really.  And that had nothing to do with me.  I was just there.

When I meant that I played the scapegoat in relationships.  In a healthy relationship both people acknowledge their issues, what they need to work on, ways in which childhood forces might have impacted them.  Granted I had some serious issues coming from a home in which there was a borderline mother and terrible abuse, so I'm not blaming anyone, but I often found the person with whom I was in a relationship waiting for me to get my act together, rather than acknowledging we both had things to work on separately and together. 

I had one work situation which had a lot of the dysfunction of my family of origin.  I clearly ended up the whipping boy for what went wrong.  And so used to taking on that role, I didn't know how to confront it and deal with it differently than I did in my home growing up.  I didn't have the tools or the awareness at that time in my life.

As for raging, there are things that can trigger us.  I think that raging became a normal response in a BPD home, when there are healthier more regulated, more helpful responses.  My mother's rage never accomplished anything.  It never got out cathartically the pain she was in.  It was like a temporary fix to feel powerful I suppose when deep down she felt so helpless and powerless.  My uBPD mother's rages were terrifying, just terrifying.  I started to feel some of that rage too a number of years ago, all of my bottled up fear and pain.  Gradually the feeling of rage gave way to the pain and grief that was underlying it.

Calsun