Hi JerryRG,
The thing I struggle most often with is the obsessive thoughts about what happened and this is easy for me to accept and deal with because I'm trying to raitionalise unrational behaviours with my exBPDgf
The real struggle is my inability to accept her as flawed or seriously mentally ill, it just will not sink into my consiousness to stay.
It does not "sink into your consciousness" because this is part of the nature of a cognitive dissonance (i.e. when one holds simultaneously two thoughts that are in opposition). Your exBPDgf cannot both be the woman you fell in love with (i.e., all the qualities you fell in love with) and at the same time be flawed or seriously mentally ill.
And in a way this is also the nature of traumatic experiences. When the experience is too overwhelming, our brains shut out part of it (or shut down) until later... and over time, *try* to accept the experience and integrate it into our consciousness.
I think when your feelings get too overwhelming, you "forget" that she is mentally ill. Because part of you still loves her and it is too painful for you to accept that she is ill.
I read things in here, talk to friends who know my ex and they explain the "facts" but a few moments later I'm back to blaming it all on myself and I feel sick.
Sometimes we blame ourselves in order to feel as if we have some control over a circumstance that is completely out of our control. It is better (for the psyche) to believe that we are at fault because the experience is too overwhelming.
Is this part of fog and or trauma bonding?
F.O.G. (fear, obligation, guilt) if these are strong feelings you had during your relationship may have contributed to your feeling overwhelmed. The attachment you feel towards your exBPDgf could have been made more intense because of the traumas you experienced while being with her.
This reminds me of something I heard in AA, new members have no faith or lost what they had and the bottle became their god.
Advice is if they have no faith to borrow it from those who do, since we cannot argue with pure fact and when we see people who were once wrecks and on a track to destruction and misery and they are restored to sanity and live good healthy lives with peace and joy that we borrow from them until we have our own.
I think I need to borrow from others consiousness when dealing with my exgf until the fog is clear? Is this a reasonable assumption?
It think this is a reasonable approach. Many of us have been where you find yourself now.
Best wishes, Schwing
