Recovery Learning to Let Go of What You Never Had

[Depression = 72% of members]

I am recently back to this site.

The tremendous support it gave me a while back was such a profound gift and healthy anchor.  Not only in mourning the at long last realization that my often denied terror of my uBPD mother was not rooted in the scenario that my mother was entirely made crazed at times by a traumatizing alcoholic spouse and because of that reason she in turn made me walk a tightrope with no net of perfectionism on her terms so much of my life.  My mother had a disorder.  In fact, I make no weighing verdict today on her toxic behavior and my alcoholic father's. I am too impressed by the negative powers of both and I have no doubt his alcoholism exacerbated her behavior and no doubt her behavior exacerbated his alcoholism.  

All I know today is I really got pulled into a quicksand taking on responsibility for trying desperately to fix both of them. But I know a lot of my desperation to fix my alcoholic father was so that my uBPD mother would get off my back and I could go off and have an adult life of independence and joy and not be locked into surrogate spouse at times or insufficient and to be punished for it surrogate parent to her inappropriate demanding needs and child rages exploiting her authority as a parent at the same time.

The cruelest part of our relationship was when the nice mommy side seemed genuinely concerned and generous and then TURNED to the dark side usually only in one on one moments and said devastating things to me about my disgusting nature and identity.  When the seemingly nice mommy returned there was NEVER an acknowledgment of what she had said as dark mommy.  :)id she even remember, register the horrifying and violent cruelty she had uttered?. No accountability, no explanation now she was farther away from the I'd call it "smack down" but that is too gentle a phrasing. Her dark side self "tasered" me with shame and shock and terror.  

The times in our shared years together that I dared to approach nice mommy and do a reallity check about what she had devastated me with during a dark mommy moment retriggered dark mommy!  

During my estrangement with her and all of family for a decade which I had no idea would happen because I was sure she would not insist on her own righteousness and denial and irrational framing at the cost of a relationship entirely with me for year after year after year and would continue to help engineer primary and secondary families' image of me as "crazy" and "shocking" and "confusing" to a woman so good and supportive and self-sacrificing.  

The blackmail of having to stifle one's natural self to extract as much relating time with nice mommy and to keep dark mommy at bay.  A lot of that was focusing on mommy at expense of one's own will, needs, wants and life evolution and adventures.

Walking on eggshells.  When tasered and tasered and tasered one's being does not forget the tasering. One's being has a chronic (complex-PTSD) memory of it and that gets triggered easily by people IRL who suggest the old BPD parent's behavior or from the very BPD parent and we are sometimes pulled into believing we can finally get unconditional and safe love.  No we can't.  Hope was the last temptation of Christ.  Another good quote...  

There was one other personality with my uBPD mother.  Nice mommy, dark mommy and falling apart child mommy.  I would not know at times if dark mommy would appear if I dared to assert will or honesty.  Falling apart child mommy was capable of taking to her bed and sobbing for days over the slightest attempt by me or at times my father to communicate from an adult self honestly, from someone who had legitimate issues over such dictatorial expectations and rules of living.  Those rules were expected to be perfectly second-guessed.  Not only must you toe the line (high wire) but you must always know without being told where the line was.  

My life would have been easier with my uBPD mother if I had known the concept about what Lawson has written in her book Understanding the Borderline Mother, "object constancy."  Like with toddlers who panic for a period when the mother is away from sight the BPD needs a compulsive regularity of contact, informed scheduling with NO surprises.  Hysteria or rage ensues when expectations of contact are postponed.  Again, the uBPD can be overwhelmed by an unpredictable and lengthy for her absence  from her security "object", a particular child or all her children.  

Lawson does relay that as BPD people age, they become better often for some reason, sturdier than they were when younger.  

That is good for them and others in their lives.  

But re-trusting them, being able to open up naturally, with the uBPD parent or in my case most anyone after all that psychological tasering -- how does one do that?  :)uring my early years of denial and minimization I did at times acknowledge that I had an irrational fear of my mother and it made me disrespect myself for being weak when clearly my mother was so caring.  :)ark moments denied desperately by me.  That is why a uBPD parent is so dangerous to one.  Making you fear so much you hide reality from yourself for your coexisting survival with them. I knew that around my mother I barely exhaled.  I had a hypervigilant physical posture with shallow exhalations. It wasn't safe and too self-indulgent to take the time for oneself selfishly to empty the lungs and re-fill them again.  Take the focus and time away from uBPD mommy. It also might ground one too much as well to relax and fully fathom what reality really. Make one feel the legitimate separation of self-ness when there was so much indoctrination of self-lessness. That was dangerous and could trigger punishment and paranoia.  The uBPD had an amazing antenna for the potential of escape to selfhood of a selected child.  Antenna I say or a/k/a paranoia over what she saw as terribly threatening rejection and abandonment.

And now that I am the age I am with a deceased mother who suffered a lot with her childhood and marriage to an alcoholic and struggled at times to be a "good mother" and whose paranoia about me changing into some kind of mean creature if I dared leave the tightrope she had hung for me was a nightmare for her, as well as me.  I wanted "tough love" to have a breakthru adult to adult relationship with her and blamed myself for never achieving this for too long but tough love is nothing against uBPD PARANOIA.  Our decade of estrangement taught me that efforts to invite her to treat me as the adult being I was only triggered over and over her transformation into PARANOIA AND IRRATIONAL RAGE AND FEAR AND HYSTERIA.

There is a quote about recovery I cherish and use when I think of it.  

"Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had."

God, is that tough to follow through on.  But we have to learn to let go or we can never reach for and hold genuine and unconditional love and nurturance from others but first from ourselves.  This seems to take at least an entire lifetime. Sigh.  We have to stay conscious and vigilant of falling into numbness or repeat scenarios with narcissists and/or uBPD people.

Thanks for listening.  I know I have to keep mourning and reprocessing what happened re my BPD parent.  The five stages of grief.  Also the 3 As stages:  awareness acceptance and action.  

[bethanny]

I am recently back to this site.

The tremendous support it gave me a while back was such a profound gift and healthy anchor.  Not only in mourning the at long last realization that my often denied terror of my uBPD mother was not rooted in the scenario that my mother was entirely made crazed at times by a traumatizing alcoholic spouse and because of that reason she in turn made me walk a tightrope with no net of perfectionism on her terms so much of my life.  My mother had a disorder.  In fact, I make no weighing verdict today on her toxic behavior and my alcoholic father's. I am too impressed by the negative powers of both and I have no doubt his alcoholism exacerbated her behavior and no doubt her behavior exacerbated his alcoholism.  

All I know today is I really got pulled into a quicksand taking on responsibility for trying desperately to fix both of them. But I know a lot of my desperation to fix my alcoholic father was so that my uBPD mother would get off my back and I could go off and have an adult life of independence and joy and not be locked into surrogate spouse at times or insufficient and to be punished for it surrogate parent to her inappropriate demanding needs and child rages exploiting her authority as a parent at the same time.

The cruelest part of our relationship was when the nice mommy side seemed genuinely concerned and generous and then TURNED to the dark side usually only in one on one moments and said devastating things to me about my disgusting nature and identity.  When the seemingly nice mommy returned there was NEVER an acknowledgment of what she had said as dark mommy.  :)id she even remember, register the horrifying and violent cruelty she had uttered?. No accountability, no explanation now she was farther away from the I'd call it "smack down" but that is too gentle a phrasing. Her dark side self "tasered" me with shame and shock and terror.  

The times in our shared years together that I dared to approach nice mommy and do a reallity check about what she had devastated me with during a dark mommy moment retriggered dark mommy!  

During my estrangement with her and all of family for a decade which I had no idea would happen because I was sure she would not insist on her own righteousness and denial and irrational framing at the cost of a relationship entirely with me for year after year after year and would continue to help engineer primary and secondary families' image of me as "crazy" and "shocking" and "confusing" to a woman so good and supportive and self-sacrificing.  

The blackmail of having to stifle one's natural self to extract as much relating time with nice mommy and to keep dark mommy at bay.  A lot of that was focusing on mommy at expense of one's own will, needs, wants and life evolution and adventures.

Walking on eggshells.  When tasered and tasered and tasered one's being does not forget the tasering. One's being has a chronic (complex-PTSD) memory of it and that gets triggered easily by people IRL who suggest the old BPD parent's behavior or from the very BPD parent and we are sometimes pulled into believing we can finally get unconditional and safe love.  No we can't.  Hope was the last temptation of Christ.  Another good quote...  

There was one other personality with my uBPD mother.  Nice mommy, dark mommy and falling apart child mommy.  I would not know at times if dark mommy would appear if I dared to assert will or honesty.  Falling apart child mommy was capable of taking to her bed and sobbing for days over the slightest attempt by me or at times my father to communicate from an adult self honestly, from someone who had legitimate issues over such dictatorial expectations and rules of living.  Those rules were expected to be perfectly second-guessed.  Not only must you toe the line (high wire) but you must always know without being told where the line was.  

My life would have been easier with my uBPD mother if I had known the concept about what Lawson has written in her book Understanding the Borderline Mother, "object constancy."  Like with toddlers who panic for a period when the mother is away from sight the BPD needs a compulsive regularity of contact, informed scheduling with NO surprises.  Hysteria or rage ensues when expectations of contact are postponed.  Again, the uBPD can be overwhelmed by an unpredictable and lengthy for her absence  from her security "object", a particular child or all her children.  

Lawson does relay that as BPD people age, they become better often for some reason, sturdier than they were when younger.  

That is good for them and others in their lives.  

But re-trusting them, being able to open up naturally, with the uBPD parent or in my case most anyone after all that psychological tasering -- how does one do that?  :)uring my early years of denial and minimization I did at times acknowledge that I had an irrational fear of my mother and it made me disrespect myself for being weak when clearly my mother was so caring.  :)ark moments denied desperately by me.  That is why a uBPD parent is so dangerous to one.  Making you fear so much you hide reality from yourself for your coexisting survival with them. I knew that around my mother I barely exhaled.  I had a hypervigilant physical posture with shallow exhalations. It wasn't safe and too self-indulgent to take the time for oneself selfishly to empty the lungs and re-fill them again.  Take the focus and time away from uBPD mommy. It also might ground one too much as well to relax and fully fathom what reality really. Make one feel the legitimate separation of self-ness when there was so much indoctrination of self-lessness. That was dangerous and could trigger punishment and paranoia.  The uBPD had an amazing antenna for the potential of escape to selfhood of a selected child.  Antenna I say or a/k/a paranoia over what she saw as terribly threatening rejection and abandonment.

And now that I am the age I am with a deceased mother who suffered a lot with her childhood and marriage to an alcoholic and struggled at times to be a "good mother" and whose paranoia about me changing into some kind of mean creature if I dared leave the tightrope she had hung for me was a nightmare for her, as well as me.  I wanted "tough love" to have a breakthru adult to adult relationship with her and blamed myself for never achieving this for too long but tough love is nothing against uBPD PARANOIA.  Our decade of estrangement taught me that efforts to invite her to treat me as the adult being I was only triggered over and over her transformation into PARANOIA AND IRRATIONAL RAGE AND FEAR AND HYSTERIA.

There is a quote about recovery I cherish and use when I think of it.  

"Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had."

God, is that tough to follow through on.  But we have to learn to let go or we can never reach for and hold genuine and unconditional love and nurturance from others but first from ourselves.  This seems to take at least an entire lifetime. Sigh.  We have to stay conscious and vigilant of falling into numbness or repeat scenarios with narcissists and/or uBPD people.

Thanks for listening.  I know I have to keep mourning and reprocessing what happened re my BPD parent.  The five stages of grief.  Also the 3 As stages:  awareness acceptance and action.  

[Clearmind]

Beth it takes time. I got to the stage where I consciously stopped thinking about what I lost and concentrate on how I could go about starting to live my adult life free of childhood emotional constraints.

OUr emotional capacity as kids is far different to us as adults. So I agree with you - we do really need to let go of what we never had. So important.

Its unhealthy to be constantly reminding ourselves of the past without processing how it impacts US now - its about US not them now.

[bethanny]

Clearmind, Thank you for commenting. 

You tell me it takes time but then you tell me to focus less on what happened back then. I hear an unhelpful for me judgment a bit intimated in there and am sorry if I sound defensive.

To not express my memories and my distress today over them would not be helpful I feel. Feelings aren't right or wrong at any stage of our lives. I don't think my adult dysfunctions do not stem from my enumerating my history back in childhood borderland and co-alcoholville -- which issues are resurrected with human beings at times in my present life. Ferociously. 

It is not the first time I heard that from someone in adult recovery to leave the past focusing, but focusing on my childhood history did finally lead me to facing down the uBPD conditioning so late in life considering but vital nonetheless, learning what I knew all along but was emotionally fearful to admit even to myself -- admitting what I knew I knew but my ego or consciousness did not welcome the very hard, very sad truths.  If I hadn't been so tenacious as i have been I would have been robbed of the terrible but important healing capacity of knowing the full scope of the truth, as I can possibly reconstruct it. 

Was it Dr. Phil who said that there are only 8 or 9 defining moments in our lives and knowing these moments is helpful to coping. Facing down the uBPD moments of psychological tasering are certainly on my list of defining moments. Not all of them, but some pretty potent ones.

I find that putting that maybe near final puzzle piece of what the heck is still wrong with and haunting me and how come being intellectually aware of things does not prevent me from at so many times still knee jerk irrational responses to conflict and difficulty with conflict resolution. This is my challenge -- past, present and future.

This puzzle piece is a huge one, among what dysfunctional scenarios -- entirely -- existed back then, and helps me from self-condemning since those of us with profoundly wounded parents in climbing the mountain of life started below sea level as opposed to "normal" and "more functional" and "successful" types who did manage to start at sea level. Depending on our temperaments and family roles I maintain significantly also determines our degree of "stuckness" or "unstuckness" as adults and our choices for psychological safety and the ever quest for a sense of existential security we lost out on at a precious and early age.

My negative character traits I have wrestled with I need to remember were defense mechanisms for childhood survival that infected my coping patterns in adulthood. I am striving to re-parent myself in terms of self soothing and self compassion and self unconditional acceptance.

They say in 12 step rooms inventorying is important.  Inventorying ourselves is very vital to growth. But I believe also inventorying my parents.  Eventually we become strong enough after inventorying them to recognize and face down some of our similar patterns, from the proverbial "fleas" spoken of on this website or from our own actual borderline-ness we actually may have.  I am still doing my homework on that.  I know that I can be flooded with panic and over-sensitivity and irrationality facing conflict.  My PTSD, threat from uBPD historical patterns or my own now disordered psyche.

On a different note, I wonder if you are a parent.  I am not.  I know that that makes me less seemingly empathetic to and knowledgeable about the normal challenges of parenting and less at times empathetic to my own parents than those fellow survivors who are parents along with triggering understandable guilt and defensiveness in them and impatience projected out at me. I have no idea and do not want to presume re your response, just sharing my take on some responses in that vein, and then there is the johari window concept where there are things we know and others don't about ourselves, things we don't know and others see in ourselves, things that we and they both know about us, and finally things both we and they don't begin to know about ourselves.

Anyway, I do think those of us non-parents can help ourselves and others with our  more ruthless and tempered by common experience memory journeys facing down the reality of the past.

Blaming the sin itself is not unhelpful I feel. I think with the natural flow of the 5 stages of grief a healthy balance will happen. But to me  leaving off emotional responses and focus to history for our "recovery" is trying to push the proverbial river.  We can only put both feet in the present when we are inherently prepared to do so.  Risk taking is hard and assuredly helps.  So does emotional awareness and consciousness raising.

My thoughts. 

best, bethanny

[Clearmind]

That was my journey Bethany - everyone needs to do what works for them. Detaching from my dysfunctional childhood involved a lot of delving back there for sure. It also included a lot of how it has shaped me now as a adult and the choices I make and the way I feel about myself. I needed to forgive my father and move forward.

[bethanny]

Appreciate, Clearmind!  Thank you.  

Forgiveness does not necessarily "fix" re-trusting in adulthood as I see it, though it is vital also -- eventually -- but I think it has to be gotten to after some legitimate rage is experienced, allowed by ourselves to be processed.

Too often we want to surrender to the old call for impression management and we try to convince ourselves and others all is "FINE" when we are not.  I heard someone call that kind of F-I-N-E "F****d up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional!"  :)enial and minimization by ego cover up.

Nor does forgiving our parents necessarily fix forgiving ourselves even if it is irrational not to forgive ourselves from all the evidence to how ferocious the indoctrination of ourselves had been -- we feel guilt and shame and failure at times for lack of movement and risk taking and our paralytic moments emotionally then and now, our willingness to numb to escape pain.  

Someone once told me the anger stage is a conversion process to get to acceptance.  And we can get stuck in anger for sure and resort to the blaming game to too great a degree.  "Ain't it Awful" which clearly you do not play at this point in your recovery and which I need to steer away from to a degree admittedly.

To great degrees I have come to recognize the woundedness of my parents and their helplessness and arrested development which projected outward at times at me or siblings or each other. I had a confused anger at my mother looking back since I painted her as simply a victim of my Dad and a fellow survivor but her disorder caused her to victimize, too and recognizing she suffered a disorder makes me really understand her better and my failure at getting her to consistently respect and love me.  She and my Dad had big issues not being able to give that to themselves or each other.

My inner child has been banging on the pipes for so long, begging to be heard. I thought I had finished doing the hard homework when I took on appreciating the alcoholism of my father for my inner child.  But not that long ago relatively I was whammied once again (but not ungrateful) to have to reframe my beliefs from then about the uBPD factor, not a small one.

Thanks for exchanging with me, CM. :-)

best, bethanny

[MovingOnInMyLife]

But re-trusting them, being able to open up naturally, with the uBPD parent or in my case most anyone after all that psychological tasering -- how does one do that?  

 

Bethanny, I can relate so much with your situation. I, too, had a very cruel and terrifying BPD mother, and my childhood was extremely traumatic. I escaped from her when I was 18. I'm 39 now and finally starting to truly recover... .

If you are anything like me, you need validation. You describe your mom as "nice mommy" and "dark mommy". You don't say but if your experience was anything like mine, you were the only one who witnessed "dark mommy," weren't you? You were the blackened, scapegoat child, it sounds like. I was, too. We need validation that it HAPPENED. You talk about your mom doing these awful things and then acting like nothing happened. My mom did that, too. That is absolute crazy-making for a child! We learn not to trust ourselves or our own feelings. We learn our feelings don't matter. All of this means that NOW, as an adult, YOU NEED TO BE VALIDATED! Can you find someone to tell your stories to over and over and over again? Someone who will validate that what she did to you was wrong and unfair? As a child, nobody was a witness to the terror you experienced. And as a result, you have a deep need to be validated. So see if you can find someone to do that for you.

There were a couple of other things that I found very helpful in my healing process. One was EMDR therapy. See if you can find someone to perform EMDR on you. It is not talk therapy. Google it. I found it extremely helpful and quick at releasing some long held pain. Another helpful solution for me was reading a book called "Healing the Shame That Binds You" by John Bradshaw. After reading that, I realized that my mother probably had bad things happen to her while she was growing up. It gave me more compassion for her, and thus, I felt less like a victim. It increased my understanding and allowed me to heal in immense ways.


Know that you are not alone!

[Clearmind]

I agree - I have in the past said all is fine when in fact all I had done was avoid the hurtful feelings that come up about my past, father, the works. I have a few trusted friends that I share with and I have been seeing a therapist for 2 years. They all really help me process how I feel in a safe environment.

For me I have forgiven my father - it took a long time however I now see him as a imperfect man who I love and admire deeply. He loved me the best way he can. While sometimes he doesn't know how to show it, I know the ways he does show it.

I too take 2 steps forward and a step back sometimes however for me its not to do with my father its to do with those faulty beliefs I carry - I have relinquished much of them but still have a few - especially around criticism.