Anticipating revenge.

[GreenEyedMonster]

My friends apparently saw the light and removed my ex from our social group for his crazy behavior.

Thank God he doesn't know where I live.  I wonder how long it will take him to find out.  I wonder what he will do when he does.

He doesn't take things like this well and I'm scared of what he will come up with as revenge.

[Leonis]

He doesn't take things like this well and I'm scared of what he will come up with as revenge.

GEM, take precautions ASAP.

I could say the same thing about my ex when she blurted out how she wants to see me in pain and sabotage me over text few days ago.

Better safe than sorry.

[Turkish]

What did he do that finally resulted in this?  Do you have a safety plan?

[married21years]

hi

my friends and both familys have seen the light

the community where i used to live has not

there are a couple of people there that know the truth but she has the majority convinced i am crazy

she dis-regulates when she dosnt get the responses she wants

for 25 years i kept her condition in check with my love and support

now she dosnt have that her crazyness is shinning through and people are seeing it

 

[GreenEyedMonster]

What did he do that finally resulted in this?  Do you have a safety plan?

I am currently staying with family in a different city from where my ex lives.  I am contemplating what I will do when I go back home.  The problem is that my ex is probably not physically dangerous.  He operates by using more psychological intimidation, i.e. smearing my reputation, trying to jeopardize my job, convincing my friends that I'm crazy, and trying to give me a legal record that makes it look like I am the problem.  Unfortunately, there's not much you can do to protect yourself against attacks like this.  I do have a lawyer who I have chosen and informed about the situation.  I would just have to pay the retainer fee and get the ball rolling.  But the legal abuse is something I am trying hard to avoid as well.  My ex might fantasize about killing me, but his specialty is taking away my voice and turning me into a scared child.

My friends had been witnessing the harassment for several months.  I guess they finally got sick of hearing me complain about it.

I talked to one of my friends last night and it was a horrible experience.  She told me that she thought that I had brought some of it on myself by trying to be nice to my ex after the breakup.  (What normal adult doesn't try to be at least decent to someone after a breakup?  Especially when you share a group of friends?)  She then told me that in my friends' eyes, I was the problem, because I drew attention to the abuse and kept everyone from "just getting along."  I have news for you -- when I am being abused behind the scenes, it is my ABUSER'S fault that everyone is not "just getting along," not mine for pointing it out!  This friend used to be a domestic violence counselor, too.  I wonder if she told the victims that they had brought it on themselves and that they needed to shut up and just get along with people.

I am coming to the realization that I have a lot of PTSD symptoms.  I am currently reading Pete Walker's book on Complex PTSD (cPTSD).  It's a controversial diagnosis but it also seems to describe my situation and experiences perfectly.  As a child, I was frequently punished for sharing inappropriate (i.e. negative) emotions.  Adults tended to be very invalidating toward me when I shared experiences of being bullied, fear of teachers, anxiety about certain situations, etc.  I think that I was depressed as a teenager largely due to this issue.  I have come to realize that I feel a deep level of shame when I stand up for myself and my feelings because I internalized the message that the best thing to do is just cope with negative experiences on your own because no one else wants to hear about your sadness.  My BPD relationship was an exercise in trauma in that regard, because every time I would stand up for my feelings, he would cut me down and call me "childish."  It reopened a lot of old wounds.  Now my friends are doing the same thing by saying that I was wrong to rock the boat, and in their words, should have just "tolerated" the abuse.  Drawing attention to it, they said, made me look like the crazy one.  I guess I was just supposed to sit around and hope and pray someone else noticed it.  Coming to the realization that I have a deep-seated idea that my feelings are bad has been sort of the silver lining of this situation.

I have a new appreciation for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, bullying, and all kinds of other abuse.  I feel their pain when they are told that they should just quietly tolerate their situations and that drawing attention to their unfair treatment is wrong.

[married21years]

hi GEM

i realize i have PTSD too, but only recently found cPTSD

it fits with my history, i am a co dependent with cPTSD

i am in recovery in a 12 step progam and i am getting better 

[GreenEyedMonster]

hi GEM

i realize i have PTSD too, but only recently found cPTSD

it fits with my history, i am a co dependent with cPTSD

i am in recovery in a 12 step progam and i am getting better 

I am really fascinated by reading about Pete Walker's 4Fs.  He says that people respond to traumatic threats with Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn responses.  He has descriptions of the different coping strategies and he encourages readers to figure out what their dominant and secondary response types are.  I'm realizing that I'm a Fawn/Flight hybrid.  That means that I tend to respond to threats by trying to "fawn" over my abuser and please them, hoping that if I am super nice to them, they will be super nice to me.  I realize now that a lot of the nice things I did for my exBPD were actually my "fawn" response getting ramped up because I felt like he was a threat.  Even the feelings of "love" I had for him were probably the fawning response kicking in.  The "flight" response is my OCD, where I constantly try to be perfect to protect myself from invalidation and harm.  I did that in that relationship, too.  I do that a lot in life in general.  Being perfect, I've found, is a great defense against people invalidating me or rejecting me.

I am glad I asserted myself in this situation with my friends, but I am going to pay for it.  Now that my ex is blocked I do anticipate some revenge.  My friends have lost respect for me because I spoke up for myself.  I feel deeply traumatized by everything that has happened and I feel like I just want some time alone with family and old friends to recover.  I need a break from the friends I shared with my exBPD.

I am baffled that people don't see someone threatening my reputation, my job, and my future as a "real" threat because it is not physical.  People tell me to get a PPO against him, but that is a total joke.  First off, my ex is terrified of any label resembling a criminal one, so he would come after me with both barrels in court to get rid of the PPO.  Then I'd have nothing.  Secondly, he is using the legal system to harass me, and a PPO can't prevent that.  Last but not least, if he really wanted to commit violence against me, he'd do it anyway, because he wouldn't be afraid of things like prison.  The entire campaign he has going on is essentially a plan to rob me of my voice and make people invalidate everything I say, and I have to say it was fairly effective. 

I spent last night having horrible nightmares about my ex coming after me as revenge.  Sigh.

[steelwork]

Hi GEM,

I've been following your story for quite a few months. I just wanted to say that it seems you are turning a corner in your personal recovery, and I'm so optimistic for you--even if you can't feel it yourself. Yet.

Please take care of your safety--I'm so sorry to hear that you are back to this state of anxiety again.

[GreenEyedMonster]

Hi GEM,

I've been following your story for quite a few months. I just wanted to say that it seems you are turning a corner in your personal recovery, and I'm so optimistic for you--even if you can't feel it yourself. Yet.

Please take care of your safety--I'm so sorry to hear that you are back to this state of anxiety again.

My ex might be able to drag me to court, cost me a lot of money, turn my friends against me, and give me some anxiety, but I am going to be the real winner here because I will have learned how to assert myself and not be ashamed, and that is priceless.