Paranoid Thoughts Consuming Me

[sea_of_wounds]

I am currently in NC.  Painful, traumatic relationship---my story is echoed a thousand times over on these boards.

Right now I am struggling with paranoid/ruminating thoughts.  She contacted me via email last week---a beautiful, beautiful email that ripped open my heart  ---but I was forced to tell her I could not be in touch right now.  I didn't know if I could bear ignoring the email because it was so overwhelmingly beautiful---it hurts to respond, it hurts not to respond.  The words are ethereal, the actions---they just don't match.  I know everyone here has lived the horrible pain of this discrepancy.

I am grappling with feelings/thoughts that she feels like I am an insensitive jerk for not responding to her open-heart gesture.  I feel like I am BPD when I have to set a boundary and appear not to care---when I care so very much.  But if I were vulnerable and gave her the response I so desperately wish I could have---I fear that would have started up this whole terrible cycle again.

And so I had to be more guarded---more to the point.  So unlike me.  Feels so alien, so cold, so cruel.  I love her so much, but I have to hold back so much to protect myself, and I feel so impossibly evil when she presents that soft, shy waif side again... .and I have to still stay NC.

I am also feeling shame/humiliation for, in a moment of desperation, posting online a few weeks ago---(after she had breezed through town and I agreed to meet her---a quick, horrible "recycle" episode that has landed me in therapy 2 x a week now... .I caved... .:'()  I had posted online a request for someone to cuddle with---someone to hold.  Said I had a broken heart, and just needed to be held.  So horrible and desperate, right?  I have hit rock bottom, such a shattered mess.

I have this sick feeling that she somehow came across that post and thinks I am a whore who just f***s around with people, using them at will, then tossing them aside.  These thoughts are obsessive and I know irrational, but I feel so much shame right now---knowing how broken I am, almost feel like I am losing my mind, really.

Someone had responded to my post and came and held me for a few hours.  I got a text from her last night asking me if I was a prostitute.  I felt totally gutted.  I think this started a chain reaction of paranoid thoughts that have me questioning my own sanity.  I know it was weird to even post anything like what I did---maybe it did sound like what a prostitute would do.  God, I am totally losing it here... .

I have always been a shy, respectful, thoughtful person--running my own business, enjoying the arts, writing, anything creative.  When I met "B" I felt so strong and together---My friends don't even recognise me anymore, and I don't recognise myself, either. 

I have never been a one-night stand person.  This feels embarrassing to admit, but I was a virgin before I met "B"  Just never felt safe with men, and I finally felt like I could open up and be safe and loved with B----Hard to talk about this---hard to understand what is happening to me.

These horrible paranoid thoughts are haunting me.  This post is so scattered.  Not sure what I am seeking here---Maybe I feel like a whore because of how gutted I feel, how used I feel, how little I meant, when I had thought it meant so much.

And for how stupid I feel for posting that onlooking for someone to cuddle with.  Lots of shame there---no one to blame but myself for this desperation.

Scared by how much this pain is consuming me.

[Blimblam]

sea of wound,

there is no one to blame.  It is so funny because I remember a few months back I was looking online for someone to cuddle with but didn't think to make an advert.  I felt ashamed to.  I felt ashamed for being so vulnerable and desperate.  I felt ashamed for wanting her back so much. I felt ashamed for losing her. I felt ashamed for not being able to end it and forget about her.  I didn't realize I felt ashamed though I was just trying to stuff it down.

It was when I started to question why I felt ashamed how I related to it why I kept going back to it.  Then reading your post and boom I had a breakthrough perhaps the most intense experience of my life. I realized I was trying to solve something trying to prove something.

[sea_of_wounds]

Thank you blimblam for that response.

I think at the root of this is so much shame

In the relationship, I felt so much shame for needing basic human contact, love, and respect.

I felt humiliated when she turned cold when I ventured to ask for these things.

I felt punished, and like I had done something to lose her favour.

I felt like I needed to do whatever it took to not upset her, turn her away, lose her interest.

I still suffer so much shame right now.  Feeling like I failed in so many ways.  Feeling like I am the sick one, and she is healthy.

[Blimblam]

all you wanted to do was for your love for her to not cause you pain.  The more you love her the more it hurts you.  But you know you have to stay away because it hurts too much. there is nothing wrong with your love your ability to love is a gift sea_of_wound.  Your deep feelings are a gift and your ability to express them have personally helped change my life.  thank you for being such a sensitive compassionate human being full of love.

[Blimblam]

yes, I totally understand the shame... It was at the root of my core wounds.  question the shame. How you relate to it?  When in your life you felt ashamed?   What were you trying to achieve you ended up feeling ashamed for? Who in your family does your internalized shame remind you of?

Other members have recommended the author Brene Brown on the matter of shame and vulnerability.

[Blimblam]

Who couldn't you make the pain go away for by loving in your family of origin?

[Blimblam]

Sea_of _wound,

You are beautiful.  The depth of your emotions the way you express yourself is amazing.  I even repost your post that changed my life in a thread 'what has helped you the most' here is the response to your post.

Blim, I cannot thank you enough for reposting this absolutely spot on post by Sea. When I read this, it just stopped me in my tracks.  Yes, this is exactly what it feels like. Exactly. It's just beyond words to read and share the same exact emotions here and truly, as if I could have written much of the same. How is it that this is not more heard of? My goodness, thousands of us here on these boards and i had never heard of this thing called BPD. This is profoundly well stated. Thank you again. 

The process of detaching from a person we have loved this intensely will never come in one step---it is a thousand steps, a thousand heart-wrenching realisationss, and re-realisations... .an exhausting tumult of having to keep fighting back the urge to hold on to the beautiful words and gestures as the "reality."  Trying to convince the heart   that the reality was something incomprehensibly different---is nearly impossible in the early stages of grief.  Time has to intervene---and we have to surrender to time's invisible healing hand, even though that hand moves things along so painstakingly slow.


A PD will not enmesh with someone unwilling to put up with their abuse--if a person denies them after one  flies, the PD will dismiss them, and continue the pursuit to find a willing host.  It always ends up being people who identify so  much with being the giver, the compassionate, willing, patient, loving, tender, understanding soft-hearted soul that the PD is both drawn to and repelled by. 

It is sobering and shattering to wake up each day and have that harsh reality slam us in the face---we were not so much as loved, as we were just NEEDED... .we could provide something for them when they needed it, when it suited them, when it served them.  And when that need evaporated for whatever reason (justified by them in countless creative, cruel or confusing ways) they cut and run.  When the need resurfaced and they remembered we had once filled that need, they came back----selfishly, disregarding how it would rip our hearts open again after we had been trying so hard to pick up the pieces on our own---with no help or remorse on their part, no ownership of their part in the dissolution of the bond that felt so incredibly alive and real when we were being idealised.

Your love and ability to express it changed my life.  You really are amazing.

[Emelie Emelie]

I'm sorry SOW.  I feel very much as you do... .that I don't even recognize myself.  Cannot believe some of my reactions to this.  I don't understand how I got here.  I'm afraid the pain will never end.  It's a frightening and lonely place to be.  Remember that we're all here for you... .for each other.  You're okay.  You're not alone.  

[sea_of_wounds]

Blim, your posts have brought tears to my eyes.  It's hard to believe, in my shattered state, that I could do anything good for anyone... .but you have gently reminded me that I am not a ghost, that I still have something to offer, even if I am feeling so wounded, broken, and lost right now.

Yes, looking at the source of shame--I have pondered this deeply over the past two days, and especially after I got that text last night.  I remember a core message imparted to me in my childhood was that I  needed to feel shame for who I was, and the feelings I had.  It seemed to be, at times, the most important lesson my mom and my grandfather wished to convey to me.  I internalised the message intensely.

Re-parenting myself has been a slow process.  I think so much of my connection to B was just the little girl in me blinded again by the messages of shame.  B inadvertently triggered the shame over and over again.  I know it is not her fault, and it wasn't intentional.  I know she didn't really mean to hurt me the way she did.

I was trying so hard to be the "good little girl" for her so that she would retract all the messages of shame and finally love and appreciate me without all the manipulation and abuse.  I thought the more I tired, the more chance I would have to regain her favour.

I know it was a trauma bond, and was unhealthy, and I need to maintain my distance so I can heal.

I wish so much I didn't feel so much guilt for walking away.  Her last email was so tender.  If only I could believe it wasn't "just for now."  It's so tempting, her open-arms----her approval, her return to her soft self, the one who seems to value me.

But I know if I respond with an open heart, I will have to face the de-value and discard cycle again.

My heart can't survive one more round.

I love her, miss her, and hold her in my heart.  I want her to be happy.  Maybe in another lifetime, I can embrace her once again, and there will be no more pain.

I am sorry, B.  I love you... .I am sorry I could not answer your email in the way I wanted to.  Please know I love you... .and want so much beauty and peace for you... .

[sea_of_wounds]

Emelie, thank you for your beautiful reply.  Thank you so much for reaching out, for showing compassion.  Thank you for helping me feel I am not having to battle this alone.  We are here for each other---such beautiful words that go straight to my heart.

We are all here for each other---when the fear brings us to this dark place, one gentle word, one kind phrase---it means so much.

Thank you... .

And thank you Blim, for your insights, for uplifting the broken souls on here even as you battle your own pain... .

Thank you all so much... .

[Blimblam]

do you you remember your mom weak and hurting? Why are you suffering mommy?

[Blimblam]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZIXGLGFWNQ