Living two lives vs. Reality acceptance

[Kwamina]

Hi everyone

I wanted to share something with you that I think might be relevant for more people on here. Like many of you who have family-members with BPD, acceptance is something I have struggled with too. Yesterday a thought went up my mind that I hadn’t had before  that gave me a new perspective on the need for the acceptance of reality. I realized that for many years I was basically living two lives. On the one hand I was living in the present but at the same time in my mind, I was also constantly living in the past, constantly reliving and rewriting past experiences. Yesterday I realized that it can be difficult enough just leading one life, let alone two. On this website the concept of radical acceptance (Marsha Linehan, Ph.D.) is mentioned and I believe acceptance is really about making a choice between reality and fantasy. In this particular example of mine, between reliving and living in the past or fully living in the present.

When you've radically accepted something, you're not fighting it.  It's when you stop fighting reality.  That's what radical acceptance is.

It costs a lot of mental and emotional energy when you’re not accepting the reality of the past and are in your mind always trying to relive, rewrite or reject the past. When all that is going on in the background it’s nearly impossible to ever be fully present in the now. Just like when there are too many processes running on a computer at the same time and your computer just seems to freeze. Living two lives is just too much.

I also like this quote about what it can feel like to accept reality:

Often when you've accepted you have this sense of letting go of the struggle.  It's just like you've been struggling and now you're not.

That’s also how I felt, like I was fighting my past all the time. Constantly rejecting and denying the immutability of the past. It isn’t easy to accept unpleasant things, letting go of these things can be very hard. But when you’re fighting reality, you’re basically fighting a battle you can never win. When I look at my own life, I cannot change the reality of my difficult past and I cannot change the reality that several of my family-members have BPD. This isn’t a pleasant reality but it is what it is. Radical acceptance doesn’t mean giving up or accepting that things will always remain unpleasant, just that you got to accept the reality of how things are right now and/or have been in the past, as unpleasant as things may be. And then if needed/wanted you can work on changing them as the next quote illustrates:

If you want to change something, you have to accept it first.  You can't change something you don't accept.  If you don't face the reality as it is, if you deny it how are you going to change it?

……

So if you want things to change, accept them.  Then change them. Because when we talk about accepting reality as it is, we're not saying, 'Accept reality as it is and believe it can never change.' Reality is always changing.  If you want to have an influence on how it changes, you see your interest is to accept how it is right now.

In the case of dealing with BPD family-members, we can’t change them but fortunately we can change our own behavior and by doing so also change the dynamics of the relationships we have with them. Just some thoughts and insights from my end I wanted to share. Living two lives is just too draining mentally and emotionally so that’s why I choose to try and accept the reality of my past so I can be more fully connected to the present reality.

I’m also very interested in hearing the thoughts of others on the concept of radical acceptance as a tool to help us accept reality as it is and move on from there.

[Ziggiddy]

Hi Kwamina

I can see what you mean about 'living two lives'

I do really think that for me, at least the rehashing and rewriting of the past is actually critical to get the 'new take' on my uBPDm to stick.

I suppose in the case of SO's or kids with the disorder it might be different but being raised by 2 disordered people is going to dictate your entire schema and as you know that is going to create an extremely skewed view of life.

For me, i find over and over again that the review of old memories in terms of disorder has helped no end to bring me back to a yardstick of  'normality' if you like.

By growing up in that environment you never question the normality of it all and in order to accept that there is dysfunction in my mother and father I need to find evidence - overwhelming evidence of it.

It IS draining however but I think that's more from sheer workload more than content!

I am finding that if I truly grieve over every memory that I suddenly realise is abnormal that I get a step closer to accepting not only did it happen but that nothing will ever change it from having happened - no wishful thinking needs to be entered into and I can put away hope for the future without losing personal optimism.

Maybe what we were doing in our reflecting was different but I don't want to put away the reflection till I've got the handle on it.

Zigz

[HappyChappy]

I would agree with your point that we can “never win if we fight against reality”, but note the irony that someone with a PD spends their life “fighting against reality”. I wonder if we pick up flees in terms of the tenacity that keeps us fighting and charging at Windmills ? 

[Kwamina]

Hi Zigz and HappyChappy

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I do really think that for me, at least the rehashing and rewriting of the past is actually critical to get the 'new take' on my uBPDm to stick.

... .

By growing up in that environment you never question the normality of it all and in order to accept that there is dysfunction in my mother and father I need to find evidence - overwhelming evidence of it.

... .

I am finding that if I truly grieve over every memory that I suddenly realise is abnormal that I get a step closer to accepting not only did it happen but that nothing will ever change it from having happened - no wishful thinking needs to be entered into and I can put away hope for the future without losing personal optimism.

I totally agree with the above quotes. I think to process and accept what we have been through it is essential that we re-examine our past. When you grow up with a BPD parent, your reality is basically written by them so you're essentially raised in a fantasy world. Now that we are adults I also believe that it's important to rewrite the story of your past then and replace the fantasy by what really happened. This kind of rewriting is absolutely necessary to grow and heal.

I realized that for many years I was basically living two lives. On the one hand I was living in the present but at the same time in my mind, I was also constantly living in the past, constantly reliving and rewriting past experiences. Yesterday I realized that it can be difficult enough just leading one life, let alone two. On this website the concept of radical acceptance (Marsha Linehan, Ph.D.) is mentioned and I believe acceptance is really about making a choice between reality and fantasy. In this particular example of mine, between reliving and living in the past or fully living in the present.

However, there's also another type of rewriting of history that I think is far less healthy. In my above statement I was thinking about situations that have happened in our past that we are unwilling to accept. So instead you deny them or in your mind always go back to them and play out all the other scenario's that you might feel should have happened. An obstacle standing in the way of accepting reality as it is, can often be feelings that thing shouldn't have been the way they were or feeling that they shouldn't have happened to you. These 'should' statements can cause a lot of frustration and cause you to remain stuck unproductively in the past and even lead to 'magical thinking' in which the past is suddenly the way you feel it should have been. So I think the rewriting you are talking about is great and absolutely essential for our recovery because it leads you to the core and to reality and ultimately to acceptance. But this other form of rewriting is more like the total opposite of acceptance and in fact constitutes a total rejection of reality because you feel that it shouldn't be this way.

I would agree with your point that we can “never win if we fight against reality”, but note the irony that someone with a PD spends their life “fighting against reality”. I wonder if we pick up flees in terms of the tenacity that keeps us fighting and charging at Windmills ?  

Ironic indeed. I think you raise a very good point here. When the example that has been set to you by your parent(s) was always one of fighting against and not accepting reality, it's quite likely that we as kids would also incorporate this coping style. It's a good thing to be aware of the possibility of 'flees' and now that we're adults keep analyzing our behavioral patterns to determine why we do what we do and if it's really healthy or productive to behave the way we do. Considering our childhood it's probably only logical that we would pick up some flees.

I think another part of the tenacity that keeps us 'fighting and charging at Windmills' is the longing to finally have the loving parent we always wanted. Letting go of that fantasy parent is painful and scary and sometimes it might feel easier and safer to just keep fighting reality. However, I believe in the long run letting go of the fantasy parent is less painful than holding on to the fantasy and getting hurt over and over again when reality just doesn't match up to the fantasy.