How am I ever going to get over this?

[Traumatized]

I'm so glad to have found this website and a group of people who know what it's like to have their heart shattered by someone with BPD.

Since I've joined up here I've been on this site constantly.  It's been so helpful reading about your experiences, gleaning your wisdom and sharing the things that have happened to me.

I chose the name Badly Abused because I have been badly abused by the BPD person in my life.  In previous posts I've detailed her vicious verbal and physical assaults on me and the tremendous pain it's caused me. 

It's getting close to two weeks since she broke things off with me for what seems to be the final time.  We'd recycled countless times over the past 16 months since I've known her, but they kept getting shorter and shorter and her hostility towards me kept getting greater and greater.   

If dealing with her was my only major issue, that would be enough in itself.  Unfortunately, I have many other major issues and the stress I'm under right now is putting me on the verge of a total breakdown.  I feel like I have no future.  I can't see anyway out of this nightmare of a life I'm living.  She was such a vital part of my life and without her in it I feel empty, disconnected and lost.  I'm in therapy, I see a psychiatrist, I take medication, but it's not enough.  The tremendous void inside of me is too great for me to bear.

I've been having panic attacks.  I've been crying a lot; weeping in despair.  I have no desire to eat.  I've been so close to picking up the phone and contacting her because I want to talk to her so bad!  So far I've resisted, but it's driving me crazy!  I know that even if we do talk or meet, she's going to be mean to me again and I will end up even more heartbroken.  And the way her physical abuse has escalated, I could end up severely disfigured, disabled or at worse, in a body bag.

I'm in a situation where I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.  She's split me, painted me black, devalued and discarded me.  No matter what I say or do I cannot change the irrational things she thinks about me.  It's a no win situation, yet I keep on fighting even though I recognize the futility of it all.  She will never change and it's hopeless.  She'll keep gulping down pain killers like they're candy, staying out until the crack of dawn, having sex with anyone who comes across her path, shoplifting from stores and picking fights with anyone she thinks is looking at her funny or talking bad about her behind her back.

Meanwhile I just sit here alone.  Devastated over someone who's treated me worse than any other human being in my life. 

How am I ever going to get over this?

[Ironmanrises]

Badly... .

Know that you are not alone.

That what you have experienced... .

And currently experiencing... .

We all know... .

Exactly... .

How you feel.

I had panic attacks too... .

In the devaluation phase... .

Which extended... .

A short while... .

After she discarded me the second time.

The NC... .

Has helped with that.

Its been 3 months NC for me... .

And i still have... .

Many days... .

Where i cry.

The tears... .

Just fall.

Vent on here.

Let it out.

We will read your words.

We will cry your tears... .

Too.

Because we know... .

Your pain.

Look at my name... .

Ironmanfalls... .

Even my suit... .

Made of hardened alloys... .

Was no match... .

For what i experienced.

And i tumbled from space... .

That is the height of the pedestal... .

That was how good she made me feel.

This forum will help you.

Hang in there Badly.

[Conundrum]

Friend, it all starts by loving yourself. She does not define you. Do some things you love, to occupy your time. Eat ice cream, listen to music, watch movies, exercise, meditate, read a fine book, reach out to anyoone who will be there for you. Addiction can be overcome. She sounds extremely abusive. It is much better struggling to find peace within than permit another to destroy your soul piece-by-piece. The people on this fine board will listen and do understand. Post as much as you need to.

[eeyore]

You ask how are you going to get over it?

On the right of your screen is a box on detachment.  I believe it's what happens after you go through the 5 stages of grief.  It sounds like you are still grieving the loss of the relationship.

I  recycled so many times that the sense of disbelief that this is the last time has been a challenge.

In the past I never moved through the full 5 stages of grief because we'd recycle and I always had hope.  Then we'd be back together. 

The difference this time is that I felt so exhausted after 6 plus years.  For the first time this time I was the one that left.  Always in the past it was him who would threaten the end the relationship and I would respond by doing everything I could do to "straighten" out.  I got to the point that I knew I had lost all my sense of self living only to his drum beat.  Each time I softened a boundary he raised the bar of what I had to compromise to the point I absolutely could not live with myself. 

My suggestion is that you continue to move through the grief to get to detachment.  I wish in the prior recycles I had finished  grieving because I think I would have been strong enough to end the relationship and maybe not spent so many years torturing myself.  Unfortunately as fast as he'd end it he'd be back to pursing me and saying and doing things I feel for too easily.  This time I had to continue my journey and when he attempts the recycle I see the manipulation and how I had so easily fallen for his words and token actions that were temporary at best.

I have to continue my journey through grief and detachment because I know it's my true hope to getting to a healthy relationship.  Hoping for a healthy life with him would just be more false hope. 

But it sure is easier to have friends on the journey.   I am thankful to have a place (here) to help me. 

[Learning_curve74]

Hey BA, we hear you and you're not alone. Like you, I'm here on the site constantly. It's somewhat comforting to realize that we're not alone in what's happened, that other people have experienced the crazy things we have.

I was going to ask you what made her such a vital part of your life, and I realized that it was also a question that I needed to ask myself of my exBPDgf. I understand now that while we were together, so much of my time and energy were spent in trying to cope with her and the drama she generated due to her BPD behaviors, things beyond just the normal things couples enjoy together. And then when I cut her off there was suddenly a void that I previously filled with dealing with her BS. So even though it's a positive thing that we're no longer together it still makes me feel bad because I'm no longer filling up my time being busy trying to figure out how to keep our relationship from dying. And now that it's over, I am grieving the loss, like somebody died. I'm not sure this is how you feel, but maybe you are willing to explore what you miss and write it out? Sometimes it helps just to see it written down.

If you don't mind me asking, what other issues are you having that are stressing you out? Do you have any diagnoses from your psychiatrist that you are dealing with? Sometimes it can feel overwhelming dealing with our own issues in addition to being burdened with those from a pwBPD. Hang in there, BA... . 

[laelle]

I am really sorry to hear you are having to struggle so much in the "collateral damage" of your relationship with your ex BPD partner.  After reading your post, I think your response to the break up is normal.  You are not to blame for this.  Anyone who has ended a relationship with someone they love feels that deep pain and panic that you mention.  In a BPD relationship you are deeply entwined and enmeshed right down to your core self.  Let me tell you, It is tough stuff to deal with.  There is good news, you are here and you are talking about it to people who really "get" what you are going through.

Your post sounds alot like mine 7 months ago.  It SUCKS!

If you are like me, I did not want to hear that it will get better, I just wanted someone to take the ing pain away. To stop the bleeding.  I wanted to feel like my old self again.  You can come out of this even better than you were before.

Detachment, Grieving, and understanding why you "bought" into this relationship.  When you feel you are at your very worst, that is actually when you are at your very best.  I use to sit and literally cry and scream (   ) for hours.  As the hours went by, I started to understand that after each cry I become stronger.  If I made it through this terrible wave of despair and panic, I can make it through the next.  I know now that I will not break as easily as I thought I would.

Take each moment and feel what you are feeling.  I know that sounds really stupid, but it is really helpful in finding your strength.  It is ok that you are feeling defeated.  Anyone would be.  It is good to feel anger, it is good to miss her, it is good to hate her.  It is good to feel lost without her.  They are "YOUR" feelings and you deserve the time it takes to nourish and care for those feelings.  Allow them in, and tell them that it is ok to feel that way, and that you are going to care for yourself and help make it better.  

You are a loving person, and you loved your ex... . Now turn some of that love in on yourself and show yourself some of it.  You are the most important person to yourself.  Without self love, you can have no other love.  Why do you think BPD's can not "truly" and "authentically" love?  Because behind the mirror, they hate themselves and can not tend to their own wounds.  They ask the world to do that for them.  This time it was you.

They are sick and they cant help it... . You are not BPD and you are strong!  You can work your way through this and out the other side and happier and mentally healthy person.

We are here for you!

 Laelle

[DragoN]

How am I ever going to get over this?

Lots of great advice on the thread. And having dealt with the BPD hell for too many years, it's almost, " not this again". Still hurts like hell though.

Working through all the lousy feelings is very useful, and looking for the root cause of those feelings in your thoughts. Thought => Feelings, not the other way around. So if you can find out what is driving the feelings you can get better control over it. Could be FOO, could be self esteem/ worth issues. Only you can know that.

Cognitive dissonance, the polar opposites and the juxtaposition of the duality that cannot be reconciled. I hate you, don't leave me. or I love you, I'm leaving The self fulfilling prophecy of BPD.

Take a look at your own thinking here:

I chose the name Badly Abused because I have been badly abused by the BPD person in my life.  In previous posts I've detailed her vicious verbal and physical assaults on me and the tremendous pain it's caused me.

It's getting close to two weeks since she broke things off with me for what seems to be the final time.  We'd recycled countless times over the past 16 months since I've known her, but they kept getting shorter and shorter and her hostility towards me kept getting greater and greater.   

If dealing with her was my only major issue, that would be enough in itself.  Unfortunately, I have many other major issues and the stress I'm under right now is putting me on the verge of a total breakdown.  I feel like I have no future. I can't see anyway out of this nightmare of a life I'm living.  She was such a vital part of my life and without her in it I feel empty, disconnected and lost.  I'm in therapy, I see a psychiatrist, I take medication, but it's not enough.  The tremendous void inside of me is too great for me to bear.

Can you see where it is a little black and white? Catastrophic thinking/ All or none?

Who were you before you met her and were dragged through the bowels of hell? Who is that person? Tell us about the old you before you became enmeshed.



Overlap those two circles completely and you have a BPD enmeshment schmalz hell of an R/S where you start and they end/ start becomes blurred. If your boundaries were hammered and they were by the way, then you are in a world of hurt to rebuild them. You can do that though. Accepting your own failings is perfectly fine and necessary. It's looking in that mirror of all that is ugly about ourselves and what we allowed be done to us, but it doesn't change who you Are. It's ok. 

[Traumatized]

Ironmanfalls:  Thank you for your words.  They really encourage me.  I feel honored that you even respond to me.  I hope you get your Iron Man suit back together soon, and if not, perhaps you should do as Tony Stark did in Iron Man 3…abandon it altogether!  Start fresh without it.  Go back to just being you.

Conundrum: I love the screen name you’ve chosen.  I had to look the word up to be reminded of what it meant.  I think it applies to me right now.  I’ve done many of the things you’ve suggested to occupy my time…and try to get a handle on my mind.  They have helped but ultimately they have not solved my problem.  The problem is me.  The problem is that I, like her, don’t love myself.  I feel as though I deserve to be abused and without consciously knowing it at the time, USED HER to abuse me.  I could have kicked her out of my life at any point, but I didn’t.  I allowed her to stay and do as much damage as she wanted.

Eeyore:  I am doing my best to get through my grief and get to the point of detachment.  It hasn’t been easy for me to get over this person and I have a long way to go.  One minute I have a strong resolve that it’s for the best and the next I desperately miss her so much that I am in tears and full blown panic.  I may be getting a little bit closer to acceptance now that I realize the mirrors we held up to reflect one another have been shattered.  Once shattered, the pieces of a broken mirror can never be put back together the way they were before.  She even told me herself that things will NEVER be the same again between us again.  The relationship we had is irreparably broken.  The idealized “love” we shared is over.  It’s endgame.

Learning Curve 7:  What made her such a vital part of my life was that she was the person I had been waiting for my entire life.  She was the best friend I never had, but always wanted.  She loved and accepted me for who I was and I felt like she was the first person I ever fully let know me.  She helped get me through a major period of transition and I will always be grateful to her for that!  She helped fill the void inside of me that has been there since my childhood.  Now that she’s gone I am experiencing that void again…alone.  It’s so painful!  I miss her so much!  When she was good, she was great and I really felt loved by her.  I felt like she deeply cared about me.  She was fun and exciting to be with.  She helped get me out of my shell.  She used to say that I was the, “Yin to her Yang.”  We seemed to perfectly complement one another.   What I had she needed, and I needed what she had.  We were polar opposites, yet one in the same.  Now that she’s gone I’m back to spending most of my time alone, rarely saying a word to anyone.  I am grieving heavily.  It’s like a death.

Besides her I am dealing with major financial issues.  I became so depressed that I stopped working and was no longer able to support myself.  I have been depending upon public assistance and family members just to survive.  I am in debt and feel trapped by my poverty.  It feels like I have no future and there’s no way out.  There’s a lot more to it than that, but I don’t want to get into the rest of it right now.

As far as other diagnoses go, at this moment I am officially diagnosed with major depression and anxiety.  In reality it’s much deeper than that, and I think my proper diagnosis would be Complex PTSD if it was officially recognized in the DSM, but it’s not.  My BPDx has accused me of having multiple personalities, being a paranoid schizophrenic, a classic narcissist, and a sociopath/psychopath.  She is wrong about all of them.  I know because I asked my psychiatrist .  He told me, as well as she did, that she has BPD.  He’s been on the receiving end of her rages.  She’s screamed at him over the phone, put him down and told him off.  She’s also left numerous messages informing him what an evil, horrible person I am.

Laelle:  Thank you for encouragement.  Thank you also for verifying that my reaction to this situation is normal and that I am allowed to have my own feelings.  She denied me my feelings and quite frequently would say, “You have no right to feel_____.”  Now I am sitting with my feelings and allowing myself to feel whatever emotions I feel and express them however I feel is appropriate.  It’s painful.  I still cry and experience panic, but by allowing myself to go through this I believe I am already getting stronger.  Hopefully I will eventually figure out how to love myself and stop thinking that I deserve to be abused.   It’s a huge challenge for me.

Sabratha: Before I got enmeshed with her I was:

- able to support myself financially

- had savings

- only charged things on my credit card that I knew I could pay back

- had a sense of who I am

- had dreams and goals

- had my own style and tastes

- had specific interests

- had a strong, sustaining faith and hope that things would get better someday

- would never put up with such an extreme amount of abuse from anyone

- wanted a genuine best friend who would think I was special

- was known to others as a kind, caring, sensitive person with good character

After:

- no longer able to support myself financially

- savings depleted

- massive credit card debt with no means to pay it back

- have no idea who I am 

- have no dreams and no goals

- styles and tastes defined by and pending approval of her

- no idea what I like to do or am interested in anymore

- have no faith and feel hopeless; like I can’t go on

- put up with an absurd amount of abuse that has severely beaten me down 

- had a fraudulent “best” friend who to her I was just another warm body

- known to others as an evil, sadistic, lying, manipulative, backstabbing, thief (thanks to her false accusations and slander)

And yes I do tend to catastrophise and look at the dark side of things.  Doom and gloom.  I got this from my father and have run with it. 

[DragoN]

May find this helpful as well Tara P Shrinks4Men blog.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/25-signs-your-narcissistic-or-borderline-wife-or-girlfriend-is-traumatizing-you/] Trauma Bonding[/url] 

[Ironmanrises]

Badly... .

Welcome.


I am glad my words reached you.

Nice analogy... .

Via the movie.

[Traumatized]

May find this helpful as well Tara P Shrinks4Men blog.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/25-signs-your-narcissistic-or-borderline-wife-or-girlfriend-is-traumatizing-you/] Trauma Bonding[/url] 

My favorite quote from the article was, "She uses the trauma symptoms you’re experiencing, which she induced, to further traumatize you.  Nice."

That absolutely happened to me... .over and over again.

One of the physical times was shortly after she beat the hell out of me.  I showed her the blood and bruises on my arm and all she could say was, "Get over it."  No apology.  No remorse.  Nothing.

[Traumatized]

Nice analogy... .

Via the movie.

I just watched that movie the other day and it was fresh in my memory.  I thought you might appreciate the analogy.

[GlennT]

I will tell you the truth. You will never get over it. Whenever you think about this person, you will always think about WTH happened and why. But in time, the amount of time you spend thinking or ruminating about WTH happened and why, will be alot less. I will bet the farm on it!

[huhhuh]

The subject made me remember the old Britney Spears joke:

If Britney Spears Can Make It Through 2007 Then You Can Make It Through This.

[HarmKrakow]

I will tell you the truth. You will never get over it. Whenever you think about this person, you will always think about WTH happened and why. But in time, the amount of time you spend thinking or ruminating about WTH happened and why, will be alot less. I will bet the farm on it!

Never getting over it is a bit far-fetched no? Never getting over it? Like never ever?