3 years out, total NC and I still can't talk about it for long

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

The last time I told my story from beginning to end to someone was in 2012.  It took about 1.5 hours and I was a total wreck afterward and it took 2 days to recover.  Today I talked to someone that I felt was understanding and expressed an interest in knowing some things in more depth so I spent about an hour going over some of the experiences and explaining what I know about the behavior of my BPDexw and I could feel myself coming apart.  I had to stop abruptly and leave to compose myself and just BREATH. 

Good grief. 

Just try to get ANYONE who hasn't experienced this to understand THAT.  And I consider myself fairly well grounded at the point that I'm at now with my life.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't go back there mentally.  It's not worth it.  Let whoever wants to figure this out do so on their own by doing research.

We as survivors have to guard ourselves FROM ourselves sometimes.

Phew! 

Loving life without manipulation.   

Cheers

[imstronghere2]

The last time I told my story from beginning to end to someone was in 2012.  It took about 1.5 hours and I was a total wreck afterward and it took 2 days to recover.  Today I talked to someone that I felt was understanding and expressed an interest in knowing some things in more depth so I spent about an hour going over some of the experiences and explaining what I know about the behavior of my BPDexw and I could feel myself coming apart.  I had to stop abruptly and leave to compose myself and just BREATH. 

Good grief. 

Just try to get ANYONE who hasn't experienced this to understand THAT.  And I consider myself fairly well grounded at the point that I'm at now with my life.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't go back there mentally.  It's not worth it.  Let whoever wants to figure this out do so on their own by doing research.

We as survivors have to guard ourselves FROM ourselves sometimes.

Phew! 

Loving life without manipulation.   

Cheers

[fromheeltoheal]

That's one mindset, really it's whatever works, and another way is to keep going back there until there's no energy left.  I've found as I detached, and played out shtty things that happened time and again in my head, my perceptions slowly shifted, and I knew I was detaching because I could look at those situations in disbelief that I'd gone so far down the rabbit hole, and confidence that if I found myself in the same situation today things would go down very differently, like I wouldn't take any of her sht at all, and any kind of boundary enforcement would have been met with a barrage of disrespect and crap, and I probably would have walked away immediately, since there was a slim to no chance that anything could have gotten resolved civilly.  So today, the memories are still there but the emotional energy is completely gone, a result of going back there again and again until it just didn't matter.  One man's journey, apply as needed.

[imstronghere2]

I should expound a little more on this.  I was raised by the queen/witch version.  I barely made it out of that with my sanity intact and I struggled for years to get a grip on it.  Then at about 10 years out I got involved with my BPDexw.  I married her after 2.5 years of utter turmoil for reasons that I still don't have a solid understanding of other than it felt "normal".   Mostly because of what I was raised with.  My BPDexw was the waif/hermit type so I thought that was "better".   Yeah, what an idiot I was.

Add another 19.5 years on to that.

Now you have a human being who will most likely suffer PTSD for the rest of his life.  That would be me and possibly others who have endured this amount of time with a psychopath.

This is some very serious mind F'ing s**t. 

[fromheeltoheal]

Sorry man, my adventure was much shorter, but I can sure relate to wondering What the heck was I thinking?  Or not thinking because I was caught up in the intensity of feeling.

Are you getting professional help?

[imstronghere2]

My BPDexw imploded in 2011 and within a period of just a few months we were divorced.  I have a therapist that I started to see regularly during that time and for the next couple of years but I've been fairly stable this year and it's getting better so I haven't seen him since February, 2014.  I've come to accept my life for what it is and I'm content with that.  I honestly thought that I was at a point where I could start talking about my ordeal again in some detail without it affecting me but I was WAY wrong in that regard.  That's all I was really trying to get out there was to say that we need to be careful.  After we've come through the other side of this mess, for some like me it's best to just leave the details behind us.  I guess it's a lot like the way a war veteran who has seen and been through the horrors of war doesn't want to talk about it.  It takes you back to a mind frame where you were just damn lucky to survive it.

[fred6]

I've actually found that I'll talk about it with whoever will listen. I feel better talking about it for some reason. Since so much of what my ex said and did didn't make sense to me, I find that others opinions are helpful and validating to me. However, it seems that most people don't like hearing about this kind of stuff, they seem uneasy.

Actually, my ex's family members were pretty understanding of things when I talked to them. Maybe they were just patronizing me until I was out of the picture. But they sure as hell didn't seem to want to get involved to any extent. They just let her do her thing and they just went about their business. That's one issue that I have with them. To my knowledge, no one ever told her that she was wrong about anything. No one ever stood up for me. It seems like they just looked the other way, almost like they were scared of her or something. It wouldn't have mattered much anyway, she would have still done whatever she wanted to do, it's just the point of it.

[Infared]

I've actually found that I'll talk about it with whoever will listen. I feel better talking about it for some reason. Since so much of what my ex said and did didn't make sense to me, I find that others opinions are helpful and validating to me.

I find myself having the same experience.  I will never wrap my head around what went down there and talking about it helps. I also never got any closure except what I was able to give myself, so I still feel like I am still seeking that sometimes and talking about the details somehow helps with that.

[Deeno02]

I've actually found that I'll talk about it with whoever will listen. I feel better talking about it for some reason. Since so much of what my ex said and did didn't make sense to me, I find that others opinions are helpful and validating to me.

I find myself having the same experience.  I will never wrap my head around what went down there and talking about it helps. I also never got any closure except what I was able to give myself, so I still feel like I am still seeking that sometimes and talking about the details somehow helps with that.

Talking about it has helped me greatly. I dont talk much about it anymore as I am coming to terms with the fact that I didnt mean a thing to her and, frankly, I was just a replacement. The more I talked about it, the more I realized this fact, and eventually I would have been put out to pasture anyway. Im just glad that it all happened before I proposed. No cheating, but enough verbal, mental and emotional abuse to last a lifetime. And Im done with it... .

[Dutched]

After a 4yrs out I can talk about it with seemingly ease towards others, no emotions involved.

However, although having my son, who visits mom of course, then the story gets different.

Time after time he is hurt. He has a different mom (doing things exw never wanted to do with the family and me before, other interests and seemingly live by “different” values/norms) but denies it. I think in order to protect himself from emotional pain.

That causes me still emotional upheaval. How a person (yes, although being aware of BPD) is able to disown oneself! How a person is able to drop with ease all one ever lived by!

That is still for me unbelievable and questions me more and more how fake in a sense the 30+ yrs. of my life were. That causes pain of which I am only honest about on this Board.