Help needed to feel centered

[waitingwife]

Hi All,

As I had mentioned earlier, I have codependency issues that I am working hard on. I recently visited my FOO in another country and even met with uBPDH's FOO as they live near my parents. There was a violent interaction with my uBPDH's sister where I drew a boundary coz she went into attack mode towards my H and mom. I know they have issues but I didn't want to discuss those with her. That movedme away from my center and I think the reason it did that was because it was a true test of emoathy for me and I feel failed or unstable to beable to listen through to her. I thought if I'd listen to her, I would feel violated or take it too personally. I have been reading a lot about empathy and validation. She triggered me in someway.

There was an episode with my mom and our religious beliefs not aligning where I validates my mom and then invalidated her too.

Before these 2 episodes,I was feeling so centered and focussing on myself and what I can work on.

Now I am trying hard to come back to where I left off. How can I make this more acceptable to myself? I was feeling the power of forgiveness so strongly before I went to visit FOO but I can feel like that is depleting a little after these 2 interactions.

To too this all, I have been having a great r/s with my brother's wife(another SIL) for the last 14 years and all of a sudden she is exhibiting major bipolar 2 symptoms. She is cycling into hypomania since it is spring time and she started showing such strong symptoms last spring. So the more I introspected, I feel like I forced myself into having a great r/s with her all these years coz my brother & I were like besties and hence subconsciously I felt like it is my duty to maintain the r/s with her or else my r/s with my brother would be jeopardized. So now I am drawing boundaries with her and there are times I simply cannot listen to her any more. I feel like she is not my obligation and she keeps treating me like her therapist which I was okay being up until now. Now that I am overcoming my codependency issues, I am trying to invest my time in myself by reading, creating a support system for myself and I feel like anymore listening to my hypomanic SIL is enabling her coz she thinks I am her biggest supporter and I don't want to be. I want my daughter to have a stable r/s with her cousins and that's my goal for now. My other personal goal is to better my r/s with my H in which w're making huge progress. So am I being selfish in disengaging from the hypomanic sil?

The H's foo, I have decided to take a timeout from for the time being coz they live far away in another country & they're his obligation.

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[waverider]

Disengaging, at least in the short term, when you feel something pulling you off center is good. It is showing awareness, and probably why you never did it before and so expectations were created.

Learning about personality disorders is a double edged word. Whilst you learn better how to protect yourself you will start to see unhealthy behavior where previously it seemed normal.

it is important to not allow yourself to start feeling guilty, you are simply learning to protect yourself rather than everyone else.

[waitingwife]

Thanks so much for hanging in there during my times of change. Change is feeling very wierd but I am taking it one day at a time.

[waverider]

Thanks so much for hanging in there during my times of change. Change is feeling very wierd but I am taking it one day at a time.