Holiday sadness

[Finding Courage]

I find the holidays very sad and triggering.  I don't have to spend them with my uBPD mom, thank goodness, but I feel sad that I don't have the supportive family I wish I had.  I would love to hear from others about their experiences with this.  I feel like the holidays are a huge reminder of my loss. 

[GeekyGirl]

I'm sorry, Finding Courage.   While the holidays can be a fun and festive time, they can also be very lonely and painful. It's very understandable that you find yourself mourning and wanting a loving and supportive family. You'll find others here who can relate to what you said.

Sometimes carving out a new tradition or doing something new can help. Instead of spending Christmas Eve at my parents' house, for example, we spend it at home and watch a silly Christmas movie. We drive around looking at holiday lights and decide which displays we like the best. While it doesn't replace having a supportive family, it gives me something new to look forward to. I also find that having some "me" time is important.

What can you do to help you deal with this sadness?

[JulesC]

Hey Finding Courage   I can relate. I too am feeling sad this Christmas. It's the first time I will have been in my home country but not be with my family. That's a breakthrough really - I've said no to going to my Golden Child brother's house where he, sis-in-law and uBPD mother and unpd father will be. and am spending the day at home with my young daughter. Yet despite the breakthrough I feel pretty confronted with the enormity of dysfunction in my family and how alone it leaves me. I'm divorced from a uBPD man and the festive season brings up the cost to me of having grown up in a mad family   :'(

I like your suggestion Geeky Girl - to carve out a new tradition, however simple.

And to remember that even though it's not easy, we're not alone. The Boards help to remind me of that…... I haven't posted in ages.

Happy Christmas   

[mysoulishome]

Well... .yes. I often find myself feeling like I'm in that same boat. Time to have some realization and acceptance. Mine has gone like this. I am in my 30's. I have spent most of my life miserable. I regret it, greatly. I wish someone had told me at age 19 "Your feelings are not normal, you are severely depressed" and sent me to a therapist.

But, I'm not 80 and realizing my whole life has been sh**. I have lots of time left. Time to face facts.

Your family sucks. I hear you. You had a crap childhood, I hear you.

You deserve love and people who REALLY care about you.

The good news is, I bet you already have that. Maybe it isn't in the Norman Rockwell painting scenario... .mom and pop by the fire, smiling kids. And your parents smile and tell you how proud of you they are, and they are happy you are a healthy person.

I can't talk about your life specifically... .but hear me and believe me. I want you to be happy and have the family you want.

Please post again and rant about anything you like. Fill in the details. What specifically is going on. What sucks?

I would like to listen and talk to you more about it.

[PrettyPlease]

I feel like the holidays are a huge reminder of my loss.  

Often true for me also, although over the years I've done more of what GeekyGirl suggested, of making my own traditions.

This does help -- but until recently (when I found this site and information about BPD), the underlying issues still rankled.

For me the biggest thing was that everybody else disappears from my life; they all go to be with their families. I'm single, and generally a loner anyway -- I even like it that way most of the time -- but having the entire outer world go dead is a bit over-the-top. It's sort of like once a year I get to star in On The Beach (old novel/movie about post-nuclear apocalypse), and can wander around in the abandoned civilization, looking for another human who is rumoured to exist... . 

So, thank you for starting this thread, and I feel for you, and life is hard.  

But, in addition to starting our own traditions, and coming to this site, there's something else I find that helps -- it helps when I remember that not only in my own FOO (before, when we had Christmases together), but in fact in lots of other families, this is a time for extreme dysfunction and unhappiness. Although that's sad in another way, knowing this still allows me to realize that I actually like being with myself, and I get quality time over the holidays   -- which I can't say was true for most of my earlier Christmas years, which were filled with anxieties and unfulfilled needs and expectations.

I'm hoping this is merely a stage; maybe the stages go:

1. Christmas with BPD craziness -- bad

2. Christmas alone -- ok, but not good

3. Chrismas alone but with bpdfamily!  Much better.

4. Christmas with (as mysoulishome put it) "love and people who REALLY care about you"!  

I think I'm at stage 3 now -- and actually 3 and 4 are much the same, except in stage 4 you get physical hugs.      

Happy    !



PP

[Calsun]

Hi Finding Courage,

I very much relate to your feelings. I live alone and for the first time in my adult life, I got my own real Christmas tree. That felt really good!  And I am struggling to learn how to really build a home for myself.  I did some wonderful things around the holidays, got together to play music with friends the other night.  It was wonderful. 

But I decided not to spend Christmas with my uBPD mother and my golden child brother (splitting).  I do miss not having more of a connection with my nieces and nephew, his children.  I felt pretty good through the Holiday season, but then lonely tonight, Christmas Eve, and sad.

I guess I'm just trying to be OK with being sad.  When I was growing up, my uBPD mother would call me a sad sack (projection, she was depressed all the time) and I got labeled in the family system as being "sensitive" or a wounded soul.  So,  I'm coming to allow myself to feel what I feel.  I was not a sad sack, I was sad for very legitimate reasons as a child. It's so legitimate to feel that sadness most acutely at a time of the year when people draw closer to family and many can feel a bond of memory and history and true intimacy.  It's OK to feel sad.  Families where there is mental and emotional illness and abuse of children are sad families.  There is really no one there to connect with. In much of my adult life, I looked to romantic partners and even "friends" who were not really there, with whom attachments were tenuous and ungrounded, like my family of origin.  But I called it friendship. At one point in my life, the person I would have called my best friend wasn't even a friend at all, like the person I called mother growing up or brother (the golden one), wasn't mother or brother.  I think I needed to pretend that these were real attachments so that I wouldn't grieve the reality of what I was missing.  Accepting the reality of illusory relationship and being allowed to grieve it starts to break the cycle of looking to unavailable people for love and connection.  Illusions are broken, which is painful, but it opens the door for the reality of true love and connection.  Real love is far preferable to pretend and denial.

I did speak to two loving friends this evening and will see my sister and a friend tomorrow for part of the day.  And I am learning to love and protect myself, so I can add a third most important friend, myself, to the evening of experiencing some love and connection.

I do wish you joy this holiday and the sense of hope and possibility that you are moving in the direction of breaking patterns that will lead to truly loving connection going forward and Holidays that can celebrate and amplify what exists throughout the year. 

Best,

Calsun

[chickadee]

I find the holidays very sad and triggering.  I don't have to spend them with my uBPD mom, thank goodness, but I feel sad that I don't have the supportive family I wish I had.  I would love to hear from others about their experiences with this.  I feel like the holidays are a huge reminder of my loss. 

Hi Finding Courage, Merry Christmas.  I was going to start a thread about this too.  This is a very hard time of the year for me, since I don't talk to my parents anymore, so I know how this feels.  I try not to think about them, and focus on my husband and son instead, who really do love me.  Today, I'm cooking a delicious meal for them, watching favorite movies and just taking it easy.  I agree with what Calsun was saying about accepting the sadness that we feel.  It will always be there for me and I just let myself feel it.  I think that accepting the sadness about our loss is the key to not allowing it to overwhelm us.  I was taught by uBPD mom that I wasn't supposed to think about myself at all, and now I know that's wrong, so now I do try to enjoy life a little, without feeling guilty about it.  I hope you're able to enjoy the day and find some happiness.  

[Finding Courage]

Thank you everyone for responding.  Calsun, your post really resonated with me.  I am working on this journey!  It is nice to know I am not alone with the things I have been through.