Using one's relationships to move towards wholeness

[eeks]

I know there's a lot of discussion on this website about how, even though they can be painful, we can learn from our relationships with pwBPD.  For instance, many members discover that they have codependency traits (including the idea of "rescuing" someone).  We also talk about adult attachment styles and how they show up in our adult relationships (there hasn't been a survey, but I expect the idealization/devaluation cycle commonly engaged in by pwBPD would be particularly compelling for anxious attachment style - we want to try harder, make ourselves perfect to "win the love back".)

In this post I would like to talk about using that same idea but broadening the scope a little bit, personality traits as a whole, particularly noticing the areas where you find yourself in conflict with others, and the traits you are most likely to feel distaste for in other people.  

I have noticed that this work (sometimes called "shadow work" or "individuation" is often framed as a "gotcha" - as in, if you judge this trait/behaviour/feeling in others, you must have it yourself!  It's not that simple.  And for those of us with any perfectionist tendencies, it can sound like just another thing we are doing wrong so as not to deserve love.  :)iscovering these things in the context of relationship can feel a little like "discovering that you don't know how to swim by being thrown in the pool", so it's important to take things at a manageable pace, with appropriate nuance.

It's true that sometimes, the traits we judge most harshly in others are those we possess ourselves (not necessarily expressed in our lives!  That's important.  It could be traits that you were judged or punished for having in your FOO, and you buried them, and dislike them in yourself)  However, traits you judge in others could also be traits you disliked in your parents/caregivers. Also important to remember that admiration of a positive trait in another could represent a "lost" positive trait in yourself.  

Sometimes the thing you fall for in another person becomes the very thing you later can't stand ("he's so decisive"... .becomes "he's so controlling!"  "she's so free-spirited!" becomes "she's so scatterbrained!"  This is a good clue that the thing you dislike in your partner (or friend, or therapist) may be a denied trait in yourself.  

It may go as far as what I could call "pathological opposites" - for example, my mother represses anger (thinks it "doesn't do you any good", but I'd say this is more based on feeling defeated with her authoritarian parents), and my father expresses anger explosively and inappropriately.  So neither one of them has a healthy relationship with anger, but if you are in a partnership like this, you can use this information to try to work towards a healthy balance within yourself on the trait/emotion in question.

Is it possible for a person to become completely "well-rounded"?  I don't think so.  However, relationships seem to call us to wholeness, if we are paying attention.

I am just re-leafing through Harville Hendrix' Keeping the Love You Find and found this:

"The hard truth of the matter is that in order to have a healing marriage, we must change and become the kind of person that our partner needs in order to heal.  The kind of person your partner will need to finish childhood is someone different from his or her parents.  You will need to "parent" your partner's inner child in a way his or her parents did not.  In other words, you have to become the parent your partner's parents were not.  That will require changing the part of you that is similar to the negative traits of your partner's parents.

[... .]

The paradox is:  when we give our partner what he or she needs in order to heal his or her wounds, we have to call upon the parts of ourselves that have been suppressed.  In pushing the limits of our habituated behavior to heal our partner, we heal ourselves, for we reactivate our own evolution towards wholeness."

He's talking about marriage because these issues often only come up after a major commitment e.g. engagement or after the "honeymoon phase" wears off, but my experience has been, with enough emotional intimacy and self-disclosure, it can happen in friendships as well, and possibly even between a therapist and client.

Here is an example.  The men I am attracted to, as well as my male friends, tend to be more thinking than feeling, even going as far as "feelings are not a reliable basis on which to make a decision" (my mother says this, I believe it is a trauma defense, she is starting to consider that possibility).  I, on the other hand... .well it's hard to say, I think I often do use reason but what I just described in terms of who I'm most drawn to, does suggest I often operate on the basis of feelings.  Having reflected on some past decisions, maybe I am under the sway of emotions but not aware of it at the time.  I don't think I know how to harness emotions as the powerful energy I believe they could be for me.  I often find that people are not as empathic and validating as I would like them to be.  So, unhealthy emotionality + unhealthy rationality = ?  Well, it'll be interesting!

Your thoughts on all of this?

Has anyone got a story they would like to share from a past or present relationship, about something they learned about themselves, uncovering a "shadow" trait?

[thisworld]

I'm trying and trying honestly but I can't seem to find a shadow trait. It feels like I have everything my partner has - say, attention seeking, dishonesty, superficiality etc- but he seems to have these at a very magnified level. I feel like we are not divided by quality but my proportion. The level and circumstances under which we reveal these traits are different. Maybe there is something I cannot see and I need to do more nuanced thinking. But in your opinion what could be a trait that another human being does not possess to some degree?

As for the "healing" marriage and the role of a partner as a parent, I know that the said parental role is something we may not be able to escape from the perspective of psychoanalysis no matter how much we oppose it culturally, consciously etc. I'm curious about how this applies to BPD though. Being a different kind of parent certainly helps but in your opinion is it "healing" on its own if our partners are not in some form of therapy? 

[fromheeltoheal]

I expect the idealization/devaluation cycle commonly engaged in by pwBPD would be particularly compelling for anxious attachment style - we want to try harder, make ourselves perfect to "win the love back"

Yep, pegged me there eeks; "compelling" is one way to put it, "brink of sanity" is another.

I don't like the 'moving towards wholeness' belief, I think believing we are already whole, always have been, perfectly imperfect, is more empowering that wondering if there's a chunk missing.

I've heard we either end up like our parents, a blend of both of them weighed towards the most influential, or like the opposite of our parents, depending on how the experience of growing up sat with us as we did that growing.  My perception is nothing real ever got discussed in the family growing up, it was all superficial whitewash, so it's very important to me to speak my truth, blurt mode I call it, as accurately as possible, in fact it gives me a kick when someone says 'exactly' when I do it well, so the opposite of what I grew up with is important to me.  There also wasn't much, or any, yelling growing up, which is an issue today, I really, really don't like people with low impulse control, people who fly off the handle in a heartbeat, and to me, when someone raises their voice it means they're mad, that's the only time I raise my voice and it takes a lot, and it's not a stretch to see how a borderline in rage mode fit into that model.  Someone raises their voice to me I either want to kill them or remove them from my life permanently, still working on that one... .

So shadow trait.  I dunno, the traits I didn't like about myself were obvious under borderline glare, nothing shadow about them, but I guess something I admired in my ex was her courage; she could fly off the handle and get in someone's face with a lot of confidence, when she was in narcissist mode, as opposed to borderline mode which included sobbing in a fetal position, but I really admired her for that, which could represent a trait I had 'lost' myself, proud to report it's reemerging, because enough of this sht already, but there's an example of something I admired because maybe I was missing it; nice focus.  

I think thinking and feeling are both important, although when there's a decision to be made, it needs to be a rational one, and making decisions from an emotional place feels like a lack of control to me, lack of control of myself.  And any decision made in a state of fear is the wrong decision.  Interesting: I was an emotional wreck towards the end with my ex, spinning and unable to make a decision, but finally waht emerged was my intellect, cold and grounded, and the decision to leave her became crystal clear and irrefutable.  That's something I can rely on.

[thisworld]

I expect the idealization/devaluation cycle commonly engaged in by pwBPD would be particularly compelling for anxious attachment style - we want to try harder, make ourselves perfect to "win the love back"

Yep, pegged me there eeks; "compelling" is one way to put it, "brink of sanity" is another.

I don't like the 'moving towards wholeness' belief, I think believing we are already whole, always have been, perfectly imperfect, is more empowering that wondering if there's a chunk missing.

I've heard we either end up like our parents, a blend of both of them weighed towards the most influential, or like the opposite of our parents, depending on how the experience of growing up sat with us as we did that growing.  My perception is nothing real ever got discussed in the family growing up, it was all superficial whitewash, so it's very important to me to speak my truth, blurt mode I call it, as accurately as possible, in fact it gives me a kick when someone says 'exactly' when I do it well, so the opposite of what I grew up with is important to me.  There also wasn't much, or any, yelling growing up, which is an issue today, I really, really don't like people with low impulse control, people who fly off the handle in a heartbeat, and to me, when someone raises their voice it means they're mad, that's the only time I raise my voice and it takes a lot, and it's not a stretch to see how a borderline in rage mode fit into that model.  Someone raises their voice to me I either want to kill them or remove them from my life permanently, still working on that one... .

So shadow trait.  I dunno, the traits I didn't like about myself were obvious under borderline glare, nothing shadow about them, but I guess something I admired in my ex was her courage; she could fly off the handle and get in someone's face with a lot of confidence, when she was in narcissist mode, as opposed to borderline mode which included sobbing in a fetal position, but I really admired her for that, which could represent a trait I had 'lost' myself, proud to report it's reemerging, because enough of this sht already, but there's an example of something I admired because maybe I was missing it; nice focus.  

I think thinking and feeling are both important, although when there's a decision to be made, it needs to be a rational one, and making decisions from an emotional place feels like a lack of control to me, lack of control of myself.  And any decision made in a state of fear is the wrong decision.  Interesting: I was an emotional wreck towards the end with my ex, spinning and unable to make a decision, but finally waht emerged was my intellect, cold and grounded, and the decision to leave her became crystal clear and irrefutable.  That's something I can rely on.

Thank you for this FHTH, there is so much to think about in this and it also works like some good modelling for us, so I've decided to follow the pattern:))

I can't imagine how difficult in must be in these relationships if anxiety is triggered. I imagine in my ex's case, it could well trigger his strong narcissistic traits there so anxiety would be met with self-satisfaction on his behalf. Maybe this is just a wild guess, but I can just bring it in front of my eyes. I think this is one thing that prevented me from crying in front of him - intuition stopped me. I just did it once and he offered me sympathy, caressed me in a protective way. But he was so happy! Being able to do this certainly added self-confidence to him, which is OK to a degree I guess. But the super-happy smile on his face that looked like right out of an estate agent's ad was eerie to me, one of the most self-absorbed smiles I had ever seen in my life I think.

I think each attachment style is affected in its own way but I'm thinking, maybe, these relationships take all of us back to our own wounds and that's where any person with any attachment style feels their original pain, I felt mine badly. My secure attachment style meant every second I experienced was boundary busting, I discovered the term here and love it. It was like being under a constant, constant attack. One can only keep their sanity so much. If I stayed, I would have lost my sanity. I think health can only be experienced by leaving in some cases, I don't think trying to change the attachment style would help really. (I started to feel that maybe my partner was experiencing me as an emotionless, conniving psychopath or something and wished I could appear softer - which was difficult because jokes weren't allowed, softness engulfed him, vulnerability brought out a narcissistic cruelty and

it goes on like that. So, I didn't feel very motivated anyway.    

Per parents, I was a very empathetic child from the start I think - maybe not only a natural gift but also a survival skill children of narcissistic mothers develop (my mother is a hidden narcissist, she is non-gradiose and very giving in a lot of senses. Unfortunately that "giving" happens to include bucketfulls of invalidation. Luckily I had my father who very gracefully provided a protective layer without forming any triangles in our three-people family. That kind of counter-balanced certain things I guess, my high-functioning mother starting work a month after I was born may have helped as well:)) The rest I built on my own, basically building on the anti-thesis (of my mother) that I already was.  Anyway, this constant attack from my BPD partner triggered that very wound: Why am I being attacked for who I am even when I'm putting a lot of communication effort and emotional honesty into this? So much for the secure attachment style. Everyone gets attacked on the basis of what they have. That's what I strongly believe. I recognized this wound only after I left - not during the constant crises, hospitalizations etc during the relationship. I think I've once more managed to date my mother, which seems to happen once every decade:)) I've put a full-stop to this. I'm now more equipped to see what's going on and I'm not attracted to this anymore. Hallelujah!    

This constant attack and the way I feel now is interesting. I feel like if he tried to treat me like that in any way (which he can't in real life, this relationship is over for good) an authoritarian parent would raise in me and say "enough alreeady". I was surprised to read the same phrase in your response. Interestingly, I didn't hear that from my original family as a child. But yes, it's a very "enough already" situation. I don't know where that parent in me came from (I don't have children, either. I've never said enough already to anyone in my life  

I didn't admire that he could fly off the handle because I was a very angry young woman in my relationship with my mother. It was first a way of falling into her emotional traps (I think sometimes she provokes to release some inner tension, it must be helping her in some way and I believe I was used by it). Later, I admittedly punished her with everything I learnt from her. I wasn't proud. But I'm very proud of having gotten rid of that now. Not just behaviourally but in the way I feel as well. Growing up also helps. But this relationship almost caused me to regress. In a very strange way. I didn't feel very angry even when he broke everything in the house (and that came with him splitting me, with insults etc). But I honestly asked myself "Should I show him what my anger can be like now?" I could have put up a rage better I think. My calmness also irritated him. So, I chose "escaping calmly" and felt relieved. The wound I'm talking about only emerged later.

I think I admire the way he uses his body in dancing though. He can use his body freely like that, very naturally (though I suspect he practiced a lot in front of the mirror for this natural thing at once:))  I cannot dance like him - I think I dance like a two-year old to be honest So, yes, maybe that's a trait.

I left rationally, too. I was very cold. But I think, for me, that's emotions secretly doing their job even if I didn't have much time to experience them at that moment. (I need some calm and serenity for that, I was in constant alarm mode). I think emotions led me to rationality.

Thank you for giving me a model to work on:)) I think I've made serious discoveries about myself. 

Best,  

[joeramabeme]

Great post Eeks

Has anyone got a story they would like to share from a past or present relationship, about something they learned about themselves, uncovering a "shadow" trait?

I have an inverse Shadow Trait story(s).  I find myself disliking things I see in people that I would like to see in myself but don't feel I possess.  For example, if someone walks around claiming to have all the answers and is very confident, that can make me feel upset because I know I don't have all the answers but often wished I did.  It can also happen in social situations for instance when a guy seems to have all the right one-liners when talking with an attractive woman and I wished it could be that easy for me. I dislike his ability to be so at ease.

So perhaps the Shadow Traits cover not only those things we see in others that we want to repress in ourselves, but also, things we see in others that we wished we possessed.  Perhaps that is just called jealousy.   

I am just re-leafing through Harville Hendrix' Keeping the Love You Find and found this:

"The hard truth of the matter is that in order to have a healing marriage, we must change and become the kind of person that our partner needs in order to heal.  The kind of person your partner will need to finish childhood is someone different from his or her parents.  You will need to "parent" your partner's inner child in a way his or her parents did not.  In other words, you have to become the parent your partner's parents were not.  That will require changing the part of you that is similar to the negative traits of your partner's parents.

I have not read this before but it has peaked my interest.  I had 2 knee-jerk reactions.  First, I bet there is some truth to this and second, wouldn't a lot of people call this an unhealthy relationship, trying to parent your spouse?  I think most people regard having a healthy relationship as choosing a partner who is emotionally whole.  But perhaps this thinking convention argues that we pick a person who IS somewhat needy and use that as the basis for healing ourselves.  Sounds very counter intuitive.  My thoughts are that we are going to end up with the person that fits our unresolved conflicts so in that way perhaps if we parent that person our conflicts become addressed.  Is that what Hendrix is trying to say?

[eeks]

Maybe there is something I cannot see and I need to do more nuanced thinking. But in your opinion what could be a trait that another human being does not possess to some degree?

The first time I heard/read about the concept I described, I thought to myself, "... .could I be a genocidal dictator?  Well, if I'd been raised in a different place under different circumstances... .maybe? I guess?"  So I see where you are coming from with this question.  

I will read your longer post in more detail and see if I can pick up any clues.

As for the "healing" marriage and the role of a partner as a parent, I know that the said parental role is something we may not be able to escape from the perspective of psychoanalysis no matter how much we oppose it culturally, consciously etc. I'm curious about how this applies to BPD though. Being a different kind of parent certainly helps but in your opinion is it "healing" on its own if our partners are not in some form of therapy?  

Well, this principle of "re-parenting", the way I interpret it, works both ways.  So in order to have this type of relationship, your partner also has to be willing to change themselves in order to be the parent you need (including therapy, or addiction treatment, if necessary).  I imagine that high-conflict couples (despite the fact that they may have chosen each other because they are at a similar level of emotional maturity) would struggle to implement these principles without both quality individual and couples therapy.  

[eeks]

I don't like the 'moving towards wholeness' belief, I think believing we are already whole, always have been, perfectly imperfect, is more empowering that wondering if there's a chunk missing.

I meant it in the sense of having the full range of one's emotions/traits/experiences in our awareness, and where we can acknowledge them, without shame or anxiety.  I did not intend to imply brokenness or something missing - if anything, becoming more "ourselves".

Someone raises their voice to me I either want to kill them or remove them from my life permanently, still working on that one... .

So shadow trait.  I dunno, the traits I didn't like about myself were obvious under borderline glare, nothing shadow about them, but I guess something I admired in my ex was her courage; she could fly off the handle and get in someone's face with a lot of confidence, when she was in narcissist mode, as opposed to borderline mode which included sobbing in a fetal position, but I really admired her for that, which could represent a trait I had 'lost' myself, proud to report it's reemerging, because enough of this sht already, but there's an example of something I admired because maybe I was missing it; nice focus.  

This could be an example of what I meant by "pathological opposites", although I didn't explain it very well.  Because my mother represses so much anger (not healthy) and my dad expresses it in unhealthy ways, she then gets to look at him and say "see? this is what happens when you're angry" and continue to label anger as "something that doesn't do you any good", which I speculate is rationalizing to herself to avoid facing her own anger.  Maybe I should call them tragic or self-reinforcing opposites. 

So I thought maybe, this observation about your ex has something to do with not just courage and confidence (although that's likely part of it) but also "spontaneous expression of emotions"?  It sounds like your ex had poor emotional self-regulation and when spontaneity goes as far as poor impulse control, then it becomes unhealthy for self and others, but at the same time too much constraint can have a negative impact as well, the energy doesn't get to "flow freely"? 

I think thinking and feeling are both important, although when there's a decision to be made, it needs to be a rational one, and making decisions from an emotional place feels like a lack of control to me, lack of control of myself.  And any decision made in a state of fear is the wrong decision.  Interesting: I was an emotional wreck towards the end with my ex, spinning and unable to make a decision, but finally waht emerged was my intellect, cold and grounded, and the decision to leave her became crystal clear and irrefutable.  That's something I can rely on.

This is interesting.  I consider some feeling-related aspects (intuition, making decisions based on values and desires) healthy to consider in decision-making.  Fear, though, I agree that that can have a negative influence on decision-making.  I'll have to think about this some more.  

[eeks]

I have an inverse Shadow Trait story(s).  I find myself disliking things I see in people that I would like to see in myself but don't feel I possess.  For example, if someone walks around claiming to have all the answers and is very confident, that can make me feel upset because I know I don't have all the answers but often wished I did.  It can also happen in social situations for instance when a guy seems to have all the right one-liners when talking with an attractive woman and I wished it could be that easy for me. I dislike his ability to be so at ease.

So perhaps the Shadow Traits cover not only those things we see in others that we want to repress in ourselves, but also, things we see in others that we wished we possessed.  Perhaps that is just called jealousy.   

It could be just jealousy, but then I also thought of The Wizard of Oz when I read your example.  I have read psychological interpretations of it along those lines, like how each of Dorothy's companions discovers at the end that they possess the characteristic they thought they lacked ("if I only had the nerve!" etc.) 

I have not read this before but it has peaked my interest.  I had 2 knee-jerk reactions.  First, I bet there is some truth to this and second, wouldn't a lot of people call this an unhealthy relationship, trying to parent your spouse?  I think most people regard having a healthy relationship as choosing a partner who is emotionally whole. 

Good question.  I think the unhealthy situation would be between spouses who "parent each other" as enmeshment, lack of emotional differentiation, caretake each other as a sort of a mutual agreement not to have to grow, distinguished from the type of "parenting" that truly facilitates the other's growth, as well as requiring oneself to grow in order to accomplish it.

But perhaps this thinking convention argues that we pick a person who IS somewhat needy and use that as the basis for healing ourselves.  Sounds very counter intuitive.  My thoughts are that we are going to end up with the person that fits our unresolved conflicts so in that way perhaps if we parent that person our conflicts become addressed.  Is that what Hendrix is trying to say?

I think so.  In addition, that person won't seem so needy (or like they fit the unresolved conflicts) at first - we'll just be head over heels in love.  This isn't a conscious process.  He gives the example in the book of saying that even though he did not like hanging around depressed people, he always found himself in relationships with depressed women.  He had a therapist ask him "so how long have you been depressed?" and at first he thought "no way!" then realized that he had not processed his grief around his mother's death when he was 6.

[fromheeltoheal]

Synchronicity eeks.  I've been digging into CPTSD lately, and just read this passage from Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving last night.  It's a very difficult read for me because it speaks to me exactly, which means I need to keep at it because there is a lot there for me.

The survivor, who is seeking a healthy relationship with his emotional being, will strive to accept the existential fact that the human feeling nature is often contradictory and frequently vacillates between opposite polarities of feeling experiences. It is quite normal for feelings to change unpredictably along continuums that stretch between a variety of emotional polarities. As such, it is especially human and healthy to have shifts of mood between such extremes as happy and sad, enthused and depressed, loving and angry, trusting and suspicious, brave and afraid, and forgiving and blaming.

Unfortunately, in this culture only the “positive” polarity of any emotional experience is approved or allowed. This can cause such an avoidance of the “negative” polarity, that at least two different painful conditions result.

In the first, the person injures and exhausts himself in compulsive attempts to avoid a disavowed feeling, and actually becomes more stuck in it. This is like the archetypal clown whose frantic efforts to free himself from a piece of fly paper, leave him more immobilized and entangled.

In the second, repression of one end of the emotional continuum often leads to a repression of the whole continuum, and the person becomes emotionally deadened. The baby of emotional vitality is thrown out with the bathwater of some unacceptable feeling.

A reluctance to participate in such a fundamental realm of the human experience results in much unnecessary loss. For just as without night there is no day, without work there is no play, without hunger there is no satiation, without fear there is no courage, without tears there is no joy, and without anger, there is no real love.

Most people, who choose or are coerced into only identifying with “positive” feelings, usually wind up in an emotionally lifeless middle ground – bland, deadened,and dissociated in an unemotional “no-man’s-land.”

Moreover, when a person tries to hold onto a preferred feeling for longer than its actual tenure, she often appears as unnatural and phony as ersatz grass or plastic flowers. If instead, she learns to surrender willingly to the normal human experience that good feelings always ebb and flow, she will eventually be graced with a growing ability to renew herself in the vital waters of emotional flexibility.

The repression of the so-called negative polarities of emotion causes much unnecessary pain, as well as the loss of many essential aspects of the feeling nature. In fact, much of the plethora of loneliness, alienation, and addictive distraction that plagues modern industrial societies is a result of people being taught and forced to reject, pathologize or punish so many of their own and others’ normal feeling states. Nowhere, not in the deepest recesses of the self, or in the presence of his closest friends, is the average person allowed to have and explore any number of normal emotional states. Anger, depression, envy, sadness, fear, distrust, etc., are all as normal a part of life as bread and flowers and streets. Yet, they have become ubiquitously avoided and shameful human experiences. How tragic this is, for all of these emotions have enormously important and healthy functions in a wholly integrated psyche. One dimension where this is most true is in the arena of healthy self-protection. For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments. Those who cannot feel their sadness often do not know when they are being unfairly excluded, and those who cannot feel their normal angry or fearful responses to abuse, are often in danger of putting up with it without protest.

Ding ding ding... .!

I don't like the 'moving towards wholeness' belief, I think believing we are already whole, always have been, perfectly imperfect, is more empowering that wondering if there's a chunk missing.

I meant it in the sense of having the full range of one's emotions/traits/experiences in our awareness, and where we can acknowledge them, without shame or anxiety.  I did not intend to imply brokenness or something missing - if anything, becoming more "ourselves".

Someone raises their voice to me I either want to kill them or remove them from my life permanently, still working on that one... .

So shadow trait.  I dunno, the traits I didn't like about myself were obvious under borderline glare, nothing shadow about them, but I guess something I admired in my ex was her courage; she could fly off the handle and get in someone's face with a lot of confidence, when she was in narcissist mode, as opposed to borderline mode which included sobbing in a fetal position, but I really admired her for that, which could represent a trait I had 'lost' myself, proud to report it's reemerging, because enough of this sht already, but there's an example of something I admired because maybe I was missing it; nice focus.  

This could be an example of what I meant by "pathological opposites", although I didn't explain it very well.  Because my mother represses so much anger (not healthy) and my dad expresses it in unhealthy ways, she then gets to look at him and say "see? this is what happens when you're angry" and continue to label anger as "something that doesn't do you any good", which I speculate is rationalizing to herself to avoid facing her own anger.  Maybe I should call them tragic or self-reinforcing opposites.  

So I thought maybe, this observation about your ex has something to do with not just courage and confidence (although that's likely part of it) but also "spontaneous expression of emotions"?  It sounds like your ex had poor emotional self-regulation and when spontaneity goes as far as poor impulse control, then it becomes unhealthy for self and others, but at the same time too much constraint can have a negative impact as well, the energy doesn't get to "flow freely"?  

[eeks]

(I started to feel that maybe my partner was experiencing me as an emotionless, conniving psychopath or something and wished I could appear softer - which was difficult because jokes weren't allowed, softness engulfed him, vulnerability brought out a narcissistic cruelty and

it goes on like that. So, I didn't feel very motivated anyway.    

So he seemed to want more softness, but did not react well to it when it happened.  Would you say you ever experienced a "can't win" dynamic like this with either of your parents? 

Per parents, I was a very empathetic child from the start I think - maybe not only a natural gift but also a survival skill children of narcissistic mothers develop (my mother is a hidden narcissist, she is non-gradiose and very giving in a lot of senses. Unfortunately that "giving" happens to include bucketfulls of invalidation. Luckily I had my father who very gracefully provided a protective layer without forming any triangles in our three-people family. That kind of counter-balanced certain things I guess, my high-functioning mother starting work a month after I was born may have helped as well:)) The rest I built on my own, basically building on the anti-thesis (of my mother) that I already was.  Anyway, this constant attack from my BPD partner triggered that very wound: Why am I being attacked for who I am even when I'm putting a lot of communication effort and emotional honesty into this? So much for the secure attachment style. Everyone gets attacked on the basis of what they have. That's what I strongly believe. I recognized this wound only after I left - not during the constant crises, hospitalizations etc during the relationship. I think I've once more managed to date my mother, which seems to happen once every decade:)) I've put a full-stop to this. I'm now more equipped to see what's going on and I'm not attracted to this anymore. Hallelujah!    

You say you've put a stop to dating people who are like your mother, you're not attracted to that anymore, and that may be true!  The ideas from Keeping The Love You Find are only one way of looking at things.  I find the book persuasive, and it seems to explain some of my experiences, but I'm not convinced that every single romantic relationship out there fits this pattern. 

The bolded part, where you felt you were putting a lot of effort and honesty into the relationship and yet finding that you were getting attacked anyway, that sticks out for me.  It would not surprise me if you end up having to deal with some variation of this theme in your future relationships, but maybe not as severe as with your pwBPD.  Another point from the book is that as a single person, you can get therapy and do self-work and that will lessen the severity of these dynamics in your future relationships, but won't remove them entirely.  I find this reassuring, because then if "it" happens again I won't be going "What?  I did all this work on myself and here is this same old issue again?"   

[eeks]

The repression of the so-called negative polarities of emotion causes much unnecessary pain, as well as the loss of many essential aspects of the feeling nature. In fact, much of the plethora of loneliness, alienation, and addictive distraction that plagues modern industrial societies is a result of people being taught and forced to reject, pathologize or punish so many of their own and others’ normal feeling states. Nowhere, not in the deepest recesses of the self, or in the presence of his closest friends, is the average person allowed to have and explore any number of normal emotional states. Anger, depression, envy, sadness, fear, distrust, etc., are all as normal a part of life as bread and flowers and streets. Yet, they have become ubiquitously avoided and shameful human experiences. How tragic this is, for all of these emotions have enormously important and healthy functions in a wholly integrated psyche. One dimension where this is most true is in the arena of healthy self-protection. For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments. Those who cannot feel their sadness often do not know when they are being unfairly excluded, and those who cannot feel their normal angry or fearful responses to abuse, are often in danger of putting up with it without protest.



Ding ding ding... .!

Ding ding ding indeed.  I like how this alludes to a sort of building of an emotional range or "repertoire".

I've put a hold on the Pete Walker book from the library.  Someone mentioned it here several months ago, I read his website and didn't really relate to it, but when I recently re-read the descriptions of complex PTSD I started to realize it sounded a lot like me in some situations (for a while now I've wondered if the only difference between anxiety disorders and PTSD is severity, and the author's views seem in line with that)

[fromheeltoheal]

Ding ding ding indeed.  I like how this alludes to a sort of building of an emotional range or "repertoire".

I've put a hold on the Pete Walker book from the library.  Someone mentioned it here several months ago, I read his website and didn't really relate to it, but when I recently re-read the descriptions of complex PTSD I started to realize it sounded a lot like me in some situations (for a while now I've wondered if the only difference between anxiety disorders and PTSD is severity, and the author's views seem in line with that)

Whew!  This is going to be great stuff for me, I need to take the book in chunks because it is very triggering, and very fruitful as well.  There's a significant difference between PTSD and CPTSD as well, explained in the book.  The book focuses on childhood trauma caused by abuse and neglect, which speaks to me a little, I felt emotionally neglected although I consider my parents more woefully unprepared than malicious, but more significant for me was learning that we can be traumatized as adults as well, the symptoms the same, the solutions the same.  Me likey, I look forward to where this path leads, and comparing notes with folks who are on it too.

[Blimblam]

I thought how it worked was we pick relationships that sort of reopen our core wounds from unresolved familial conflicts. So what we see that makes us complete in the other person is the potential to resolve the conflict. If that is the case then isn't reopening the wounds necessary to move past them? Like grieving a loss so we don't have a part of us emotionally invested in carrying them around kind of thing.

[thisworld]

Eeks hi,

Thank you for your help. Writing responses to your comments makes me come closer to certain things about myself and discover some more.

Yes, I experienced the no-win dynamic with my mother. I thought she invented it:)) My longest and most significant adult relationship was unconsciously based on finding another no-win person and transforming the dynamic - among other things I suppose; the guy was of course more than this dynamic. Where I'm standing at life at this moment is somewhere else, emotionally. I want to put it into words in another thread because I think putting my thoughts into words will help me. Thank you for opening up another area for introspection in the awareness forum for me. And no, I'm not attracted dating my mother anymore:)) For one thing, these male actors of that dynamic are not my mother, they are a shallower version actually. And I'm fed up with the sociological implications of that, too. I have been thinking about this for a while, too.

The bold part, yes, is a childhood wound. Having read it myself again, it reads like an adult re-construction of my history in these things I suppose. The most raw feeling behind that is to recognize the attack: "What do you want from me? Why are you hurting me?" With my mother, I think I always felt this. When I was younger it was mostly sadness (and maybe unknown confusion), in my teenage years anger and frustration, in early adulthood a serious colder confusion though I would still react strongly emotionally (what is this?, my mother is doing something very very wrong, she is actually doing the opposite of what kind people usually do). This is when I also managed to name her problem with help from therapists. 

Going back to the second part of that sentence: when I'm putting all the effort hints at a lot of things for me. One thing: all my life, I have received constant negative judgments about my personality from my mother. I'm 38 and I know how many positive judgments she has about me: two:)) And one can easily turn into a negative one depending on circumstances:)) Admittedly, I didn't put a lot of conscious effort into changing my dynamic with my mother when I was young, I was angry (and too immature to try to be constructive myself, I believed I was wronged). My 12-year marriage changed this for me. That's where I learned most even though I hurt and felt hurt a lot. I'm actually very happy that we both became healthier people in certain ways through our difficulties - even though the marriage ended very soon after this:)) Here, putting a lot of effort and its not working doesn't bother me much because I know that I needed to put that effort for myself, under whatever circumstances. It stays with me. 

Find[/i] are only one way of looking at things.  I find the book persuasive, and it seems to explain some of my experiences, but I'm not convinced that every single romantic relationship out there fits this pattern. 

The bolded part, where you felt you were putting a lot of effort and honesty into the relationship and yet finding that you were getting attacked anyway, that sticks out for me.  It would not surprise me if you end up having to deal with some variation of this theme in your future relationships, but maybe not as severe as with your pwBPD.  Another point from the book is that as a single person, you can get therapy and do self-work and that will lessen the severity of these dynamics in your future relationships, but won't remove them entirely.  I find this reassuring, because then if "it" happens again I won't be going "What?  I did all this work on myself and here is this same old issue again?" With the ex with BPD I experienced this in confusing, new ways. Another thing to look into perhaps. But one very clear feeling is being cheated. The other is losing my power position. I don't have so much frustration because my efforts were not recognized or reciprocated - I found him too dysfunctional (for lack of a better word) for those, I knew he would be unable to do those without the help of something else. I'm mostly angry with myself for accepting so many fait accomplis and losing track of my life. I have always hated fait accomplis, I feel engulfed by them:)) How did I lose that boundary. Hell)

You are so spot on about future relationships. I was planning to work here on "lies", that is an important subject for me, too. I'm not afraid for my future:)) I have this meta-cognition (?) about what's going on and I'm so glad that in my brief relationship with my ex, I wasn't attracted to old dramas one bit, neither did I believe many things were about me or things I could or should control. I wasn't pulled into arguments. I'm very proud of these actually because these were my old vices:)) I'm also very happy that my attraction for him plummeted and limited contact helped me in unexpected ways - I can so clearly see that I'm not attracted to any of this or to him. The future should be bright for me hopefully, if I change certain things about myself but I feel equipped to do that, too.

Again, thank you for your reply.

[unicorn2014]

This is a very interesting thread and I've read that book once before, I'll read it again.

I think for me at this point in my life I want to learn how not to fight in intimate relationships. I fought with my dad, I fought with my ex, I fight with my pwBPD. If I were to speculate I guess I want to learn how to handle my anger without raising my voice, yelling. Now when it comes to making witty comments that's a hard one. My dad is super smart but he can also be super nasty. I grew up hearing caustic remarks from my dad all the time, not just directed at me, that's how he interacts with everyone. My ex in turn has a chip on his shoulder, he carries around a victim card and uses that to justify the things he does. My pwBPD, well, that's self explanatory.   and I notice I get in trouble with my pwBPD when I make snarky remarks to him.

[eeks]

This is a very interesting thread and I've read that book once before, I'll read it again.

I think for me at this point in my life I want to learn how not to fight in intimate relationships. I fought with my dad, I fought with my ex, I fight with my pwBPD. If I were to speculate I guess I want to learn how to handle my anger without raising my voice, yelling. Now when it comes to making witty comments that's a hard one. My dad is super smart but he can also be super nasty. I grew up hearing caustic remarks from my dad all the time, not just directed at me, that's how he interacts with everyone. My ex in turn has a chip on his shoulder, he carries around a victim card and uses that to justify the things he does. My pwBPD, well, that's self explanatory.   and I notice I get in trouble with my pwBPD when I make snarky remarks to him.

Hi unicorn,

This is an important self-awareness.  Anger is not a bad emotion, it's the impulsive actions people take based on it that gives anger a bad rap.

Anger is an appropriate response to someone violating our boundaries.  It's up to us to learn how to direct that anger skillfully. 

On the other hand, some people express/vent anger or "rage" at others not as a result of boundaries being crossed, but as a cover-up for other emotions like fear or shame.  Perhaps for them fear or shame feel too vulnerable, anger seems more powerful (maybe they grew up watching one parent bully the other, and it hurt the target parent but the bully parent got what they wanted, didn't they?) 

I think the challenge for you might be to figure out what your true emotions are, what your REAL needs are (not your wants, not avoiding things that feel unpleasant) and deciding how to act on it.

And with the "snarky remarks", again, my question is what need of yours are you trying to meet by doing that? 

[unicorn2014]

Hi eeks, recently I was given the links to the asking validating questions article. I've pretty much come to believe that I may have an invalidating communication style when I get frustrated. Today when I was on a docent tour at a museum I had to tell my dads snarky voice to get out of my head. He likes to make fun of overweight and out of shape people and museum tours are full of those kind of people. My dad has no patience for such things. Well he wasn't even with me, at least not physically. My brothers that way too as was my ex husband. I grew up with criticism being the norm. My inner critical parent not only wants to criticize me but others too. I suppose I'm healing because I'm beginning to notice myself as separate from those inner critical voices.