Envisioning the story

[Depression = 72% of members]

One thing i realized is how hard it is to describe our experiences with our BPD exs to someone that hasn't lived it.  As an exercise I've begun to envision the experience and make it into a story that would explain it to someone else. All of the complicated dynamics at play.  I was wondering if anyone else has done this or thought about it?

I find when doing this the search for meaning in the story I am creating reflects the search for meaning in life and what it was I was seeking that made this relationship so attractive. Their is something very cryptic and mysterious about this exercise and the story itself.

[Blimblam]

One thing i realized is how hard it is to describe our experiences with our BPD exs to someone that hasn't lived it.  As an exercise I've begun to envision the experience and make it into a story that would explain it to someone else. All of the complicated dynamics at play.  I was wondering if anyone else has done this or thought about it?

I find when doing this the search for meaning in the story I am creating reflects the search for meaning in life and what it was I was seeking that made this relationship so attractive. Their is something very cryptic and mysterious about this exercise and the story itself.

[Blimblam]

I also wanted to note that a large percentage of us are dreamer visionary romantic types on the Myers brigs test. It seems to be a common theme on the boards to deny this imaginitbe part of ourselves as the believe that it is part of the problem.  What I find is this exercise plays into my strengths as a dreamer and as I find meaning to add into the story that it always does not quite capture it there is something more to it than that and drives me to further explore how I relate to the story and the great mystery behind it all.  It reflects my experiences and what I trully seek out of life.  As I continue my relation to the the story evolves.  As the story evolves so do I.

[talithacumi]

I actually did this as a regular part of my therapy. Not just thought about it. Wrote it down. Every three months. Then every six.

I've found it very interesting/informative, actually, to go back and read what my story was at different points in my recovery process - and to see what kind of progress I've actually made in terms of how I see myself, my ex, the disorder, our relationship/life together, the way that ended, and what happened/what I went through after.

My first version was 26+ pages long! I read it and realize how good it obviously felt/how much I actually needed at the time to have someone ask me to tell the whole story from my point of view without even trying to be objective.

My last version was less than a page long - no real questions or doubts - a lot of radical acceptance - more sad than anything else really - which is pretty much how I've come to feel about the whole thing at this point.

So - yes! Definitely! Write your story. Save it. Write it again later. Save that.

Some people are going to say it's just another way of obsessing/keeping you stuck in the past. Having been there, I'm going to say, if you're thinking about it, you're already obsessing/stuck. Write your way through it and back to the present again, rather than lose hours/days/weeks of your life trying to ignore, deny, dismiss, or otherwise fight that urge.

It might help in the immediate - and, for me anyway, it's definitely helped in the long term.

Just my two cents.

[Blimblam]

Thank you so much talithacumi

For me it has been very therapeutic and it comes to me in visions and dreams.  It has really began to fit for me into a larger framework with archetypical Charachters and a plot. I have a open "ending" to the story that ties it altogether in a way that makes sence.  I still need to go back through and write the naritive of the relationship. I plan to make it into a screenplay. It is so trippy how when I isolate the different aspects of my own and the boderline personality as symbols they each tell their own story. It is a story of suffering and redemption. A beautiful tragedy. A big help to me was to create story of the inside of the borderline mind and each of their schemas a seperate charchter. My interaction with these different Charachters when I was dragged into the karpman triangle and embodied them myself. When I was see. As one of those characters and bewildered by the projection.