Can see it What's just happened but help

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hi

I have just had a phone call after an endless two days of texts. I have just had all the blame for everything going wrong laid quite squarely at my feet. I have been told that I have changed from the vibrant confidant person he first met into a pathetic needy mess. I was not allowed to say you have changed too, was told he hadn't. I have just been told I am boring and mentally ill. Every good thing or feelings I have done didn't happen. Every single little bit of it is all my fault. I have to have it all my own way. If I say it's dark outside then it is ( regardless of bright sunlight) I know how pointless it would have been to explain I am what he made me and what I allowed myself to become so this time I didn't try. I know the response of he is ill, this is not your fault, we have all been there.

I know from all my reading here that this is classic BPD.  But for the love of God will someone tell me how to stop this deep dark emptiness I have been left with. Knowing the truth is not helping me, I know I am unstable right now. Knowing what has caused this doesn't ease my pain. I am afraid for myself. I feel like one of those dolls you knock over and they pop up again, I don't want to pop up anymore. I have been here before but this time, listening to what he has said to me, hearing that he truly believes that and nothing I can do or say will change that. It's finished me.

[Sadly]

Hi

I have just had a phone call after an endless two days of texts. I have just had all the blame for everything going wrong laid quite squarely at my feet. I have been told that I have changed from the vibrant confidant person he first met into a pathetic needy mess. I was not allowed to say you have changed too, was told he hadn't. I have just been told I am boring and mentally ill. Every good thing or feelings I have done didn't happen. Every single little bit of it is all my fault. I have to have it all my own way. If I say it's dark outside then it is ( regardless of bright sunlight) I know how pointless it would have been to explain I am what he made me and what I allowed myself to become so this time I didn't try. I know the response of he is ill, this is not your fault, we have all been there.

I know from all my reading here that this is classic BPD.  But for the love of God will someone tell me how to stop this deep dark emptiness I have been left with. Knowing the truth is not helping me, I know I am unstable right now. Knowing what has caused this doesn't ease my pain. I am afraid for myself. I feel like one of those dolls you knock over and they pop up again, I don't want to pop up anymore. I have been here before but this time, listening to what he has said to me, hearing that he truly believes that and nothing I can do or say will change that. It's finished me.

[hope2727]

all projection

you are wonderful

he is a putz

the end

[married21years]

all projection

you are wonderful

he is a putz

the end

what he said

NC is the only way to resore sanity 

[Hadlee]

I would get him the hell out of my life.  NC all the way in order to give you the space you need to regroup and get your mojo back.

And I agree... .it's projection.

Look after yourself

[Ahoy]

Hi

I have just had a phone call after an endless two days of texts. I have just had all the blame for everything going wrong laid quite squarely at my feet. I have been told that I have changed from the vibrant confidant person he first met into a pathetic needy mess. I was not allowed to say you have changed too, was told he hadn't. I have just been told I am boring and mentally ill. Every good thing or feelings I have done didn't happen. Every single little bit of it is all my fault. I have to have it all my own way. If I say it's dark outside then it is ( regardless of bright sunlight) I know how pointless it would have been to explain I am what he made me and what I allowed myself to become so this time I didn't try. I know the response of he is ill, this is not your fault, we have all been there.

I know from all my reading here that this is classic BPD.  But for the love of God will someone tell me how to stop this deep dark emptiness I have been left with. Knowing the truth is not helping me, I know I am unstable right now. Knowing what has caused this doesn't ease my pain. I am afraid for myself. I feel like one of those dolls you knock over and they pop up again, I don't want to pop up anymore. I have been here before but this time, listening to what he has said to me, hearing that he truly believes that and nothing I can do or say will change that. It's finished me.

Maybe this is relationship rock bottom. Maybe THIS was the day everything changed. Maybe this was the time you said "enough, no more contact" and you were able to finally break away.

Maybe many years from now a family member sitting next to you in need of help and advice, you can tell them of your darkest day and with a little smile and some well earned pride, you can tell them how you rose from the ashes like a phoenix, reclaiming yourself and your destiny. And if you can do it, they can do it too.

Maybe, just maybe, the lowest moment of your life, with a little grit and determination, can blossom into the beginning of a beautiful transformation and end with you becoming who you were always mean to be =)

Never lose hope.

[JerryRG]

I agree with Ahoy

Helping others is one big positive of my relationship with my BPDgf, my life is soo much better because I dug my heals in and I'm a survivor. I've been through hell most of my life and much of the hell was self inflicted but just because I was don't mean I have to stay that way.

One day you will laugh and smile when you realize you stood toe to rtoe with distruction and you survived!

Your happiness is still right where it always was, in your hands.

Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress.

No pain, no gain, not my plan but it is reality. Most if not all our greatest gifts lie just outside our comfort zone.

[Lucky Jim]

Hey Sadly, Agree w/those above: JerryRG, Ahoy, busygal, married21years and hope2727.  Sure, it's classic BPD.  The way to stop the "deep, dark emptiness," in my view, is not to let the darkness in.  Poison is harmless as long as you don't ingest it.  Right now, I would say that you are ingesting it.  Trying to understand BPD and make it reasonable and rational is a thankless task akin to chasing shadows.  You'll never comprehend it entirely and you'll never catch those shadows.  The place to start, in my view, is with yourself.  Be kind to yourself and start taking care of yourself again.  At some point, I predict you will be grateful when you look back at the turning point when you decided to get off the roller coaster.

LuckyJim

[steelwork]

Remove him from the formula. I mean literally, but also like this:

You know this isn't true. But if there's any part of you that's tortured by the thought that he's speaking the truth, or a partial truth, ask yourself if all the evidence is coming from him. Remove him, the evidence is gone.

If there's still a sliver of truth, then you need to start working on yourself. Find the source for whatever it is you're not liking in yourself. It might be the r/s with him. It might be other, longer standing patterns that emerge under stress. The first job is to have compassion for yourself. The next job is to work on any behaviors, beliefs, attitudes in yourself you don't like. All that is only possible with him out of the formula.

Do you have a good support system? Friends, family, T?

[C.Stein]

I know how pointless it would have been to explain I am what he made me and what I allowed myself to become so this time I didn't try.

Sadly ... .I feel your pain and despair.  I almost wish my ex had done what yours just did, it might make it easier to detach.  I got essentially the same thing from her, but it was conveyed through subtle implications and her behavior at the end.

I chose to quote the above section so you can see that you realize he has had a very negative and damaging impact on you, so much that it changed you.  I was the same, I also changed as a result of the things my ex did or did not do that emotionally impacted me in a very negative and destructive fashion.  She naturally blamed me for misleading her into thinking I was someone I am not but the truth of it is she was really speaking about herself.

Look at this as a turning point for you.  You see now how destructive he is to your emotional health.  This is where you stand up and say enough is enough and turn your back on the darkness he has brought into your life.  It is time for you to start believing in yourself again and you can do it.  

We are here to support and help you heal but it is up to you to take the first step.  

[JerryRG]

Another thing I've learned is our self esteem, self love and self care are our responsibility and seriously? Listening to someone who literally lothes themselves and trusting them to give us love, fairness and a clear consistent objectionable opinion of our worth and value? Might as well sit down with a toddler and ask them to explain the Space shuttle and flight. Complete waste of time and energy.

My exgf did nothing but complain and put me down and laugh at my mistakes. It was all her misery projected on me. I just didn't know enough about her disorder. I took her insults personal and now I know I gave her this power. NO ONE has the power to harm me unless I give them that power.

No one deserves to be abused

I write down all the crazy and almost have a notebook full, it helps validate what happened because her behaviours made NO sense.

Another thing is write a pro and con list of what we lost and what you still have without them in our lives.

Hope you feel better, keep working to get well. There is hope and things can get better.

[patientandclear]

Sadly -- how are you faring today?  Worried about you.

I can really relate to your feeling that somehow you have transformed in this course of this r/ship from someone strong and self-determining (I well remember your strength when you decided to move and you declined his bargaining to a status of less than partners) to someone whom this guy says is weak and you can't tell if he's right or not.

When my BPD r/ship ended, I felt two horrible things: (i) I felt I would always be sad and lonely, and (ii) I couldn't recognize myself.  I was operating at about 10% of my normal capacity in the world.  I just wasn't able to be me, and that lasted for a long time.

I haven't fixed (i) yet, to be honest.  But (ii) has straightened itself out.  I'm myself again, and to all external viewers, it must seem as if I'm just fine.  It was a long road here but it happened almost inexorably.  One thing I did that seems to have helped was to embrace the pain and sadness.  Rather than making me feel weak, it made me feel strong.  I accepted that I had earned that pain and sadness and it was right for it to be here.  I had experienced something deeply damaging.  Etc.  Once I put that in its correct place, somehow, it made me feel stronger and be stronger.  It was like I was accepting my assignment for the time being.  I wasn't battling it or wondering why it was here ... .it was supposed to be here.

I wonder if it would help you to go back and read some of the posts I remember from maybe 18 months ago, in which you explained really clearly what was at stake for you & why you needed not to do what he wanted you to do.  You were very strong, and that all came from inside you.

[balletomane]

I think steelwork's advice is excellent. Like you (and like many of us) my last conversations with my BPD ex followed the same theme - he was accusing me of being selfish, violent, aggressive, abusive, of manipulating him, of emotionally extorting him. He came out with the emotional blackmail accusation right after telling me that he had just been forced to cut himself because of me. He accused me of being aggressive right after he snapped at me, "I don't give a sh*t if you can cope or not" as I was in floods of tears and telling him I was struggling to manage. On one level I could see the projection happening. It was very clear. On another level, I felt the emptiness and pain that you describe flooding in. Like patientandclear, I felt as there must be something wrong with me and I'd never be happy. I couldn't recognise the person I'd become.

My ex is the only person who has ever accused me of doing or being any of those things. He has also made the same accusations to multiple other people, mainly his exes. I'm not saying I'm the embodiment of all the virtues, but as he is the only person ever to have found me aggressive, manipulative, and all the rest of it, and as he has a pattern of accusing people of these things, then that suggests the problem lies with him. Once his problems had been removed from my life, things began to get better. It took time. It's still an uphill process. But looking back I can see that my recovery began the second I thought to myself, "I don't have to take this any more and I'm not putting up with it."

At the time it didn't feel like that was a choice. It felt as though my back had finally been broken by everything he'd heaped on me, and that I was crawling away just because I couldn't do anything else. Like you, I felt that it had finished me. I was denying my own power, because I could no longer see my strength. But it was a choice and I have only recently been giving myself the congratulations I deserve for making it. Doing this helped me to recognise myself again. I have been feeling more and more myself lately, after eleven months without contact, and while I still have bad days there are other days when I can literally feel myself coming back to life. Taking an interest in things again. Remembering how I used to be before him.

You need to do something good for yourself. Step back from him. It will hurt horribly. You probably will suffer from temptations to try - just one more time - to make him see your point of view. Step back from that. You need to concentrate on yourself now, not on what he thinks and feels and how to change it - just yourself and your own needs.

[Sadly]

Once again, thank you all for your help and support, It is an oasis of sanity in my insane world. I don't have much left in me to give right now but I would like to give the lyrics of one of my favourite bands. Please read and if you would like to listen they are called The New Shining, this is called Breaking the Spell. Love to you all. Xxx

It's hard to move on,

maybe I've been playing this game too long

You've been lying to me all along

Kept me needy, planted this fear in my heart

It was bound to go wrong from the start

I pretended I was still in charge

It turns out I'm not that smart.

But I'll tell you what I won't do

come crawling back to you

But I'll tell you what I won't do

Come crawling back to you

Cos I'm breaking the spell

Here's where I draw the line

You will have to find another soul

To play your tricks on

I'm breaking the spell

Sending you straight back to hell

It's time to say goodbye

The shadows grow longer as the years are passing bye

You've been pulling me back too long

Still I blame myself for all the things that went wrong

I was bound to go wrong from the start

You can change the man but not the heart

You can kill his dreams but not his soul

So I'll tell you what I won't do

I won't come crawling back to you

So I'll tell you what I won't do

Come crawling back to you.

Cos I'm breaking the spell

Here's where I draw the line

I'm breaking the spell