Taking stock - the scars of a BPD upbringing

[caughtnreleased]

One thing that I've been thinking about and wanted to write about is how has my upbringing with my uPBD/NPD mother affected me. 

I used have a lot of anger.  I also struggled with depression but would never admit that to myself since I was unable to accept weakness from myself and from others. 

Vulnerability: to me it was foreign concept, a sign of true weakness.  I felt disgust when I saw vulnerability and did everything in myself to avoid it.  In relationships I always had to be in control and confident and to be treated "well" in a superficial way.   I ended up in relationships with men who were extremely jealous of me and often did whatever they could to hold me back. They were highly conflictual relationships, some of them had addiction problems.

Shame. I have felt a great deal of this my whole life but can only now understand what it is and how it feels.  Before it was simply a normal thing for me to feel.  It was normal. How can it be wrong if it's the way I've always felt? Without even knowing it I was always putting on an act with certain friends. I was entertaining, smart and witty with friends.  I had some close friendships with whom I shared several things on intellectual levels.  But otherwise my relationships and friendships were relatively superficial and completely unsupportive during times of stress and difficulty.  I remember once I was sick to the point of being unable to get out of bed, and my life-in boyfriend couldn't stand it - he thought I was faking it to get out of doing household chores.  A lot of friendships involved competition. 

When I met my uBPDex something happenned to me.  I had just spent three months meditating three hours per day. Perhaps it openned me up to what I experienced with him. But meeting him hit me like a ton of bricks and I feel like somehow I relived a form of trauma. I never experienced such severe emotional trauma as an adult as I did with him. I fell head over heals for him despite myself. There was a kind of intimacy I had never experienced before. It was immediate.  I felt like we connected on multiple levels, but mostly on a very raw emotional level.  As that happened though he dumped some really intense things about his past on me. It wasn't like he was reconciled with his actions. Instead it was an emotional dump, and he seemed to be saying that his past actions could to be an indication of how he would act in the future: serial promiscuity, volatile relationships, heavy drug addiction, constant lying, and abandonment of his closest relationships.  I was traumatized that I could have such intense and real feelings for someone who was so damaged.  I didn't recognize myself and I went into a very serious emotional crisis.  I no longer trusted myself, my judgment.  I started to realize that I had never actually been able to experience weakness in my life as I had never had in my life someone who could support me during that weakness.  I did not know how to experience the crisis I was going through.  It was deeper than anything I'd been able to handle on my own previously.  People in my surroundings were unable to help me. They made me feel bad for having the feelings I had about my BPDex. They also started to compete with me - at a time when I was so down.
 
When I was little I don't ever remember someone comforting me.  I remember so many times after raging arguments with my mother, after being confiscated my dinner, after being sworn at, I would go in my room and cry alone.  No one ever came to help in those moments, except my cat. I remember he would be there to comfort me.  We had several cats over the course of my chidlhood, and he is the only cat who was able to give a lot of affection.  The other ones were kicked and yelled at by my mother and sister and therefore I think they developed BPD. 

I guess the things I can say with certainty is I deal with weakness very badly. Both my own and that of others.  Whenever I see or feel vulnerability I run away.  I chose people who tend to be selfish and unable to offer me help if I need it.  I feel strange when I help people, it feels very foreign to me.  And when I receive help I feel very guilty and undeserving. Has anyone else experienced these things as a result of being raised in a BPD home? If so, how does one get "comfortable" with weakness and vulnerability? How do I learn to surround myself with people who are kind as opposed to those who are selfish?  How do I grow out of what for me has always been "normal"?

[caughtnreleased]

I just also remembered something, speaking about never being comforted. The first night I met my BPDex, he comforted me.  I was stand-offish and defensive and somehow, he saw it for what it was, cut through it and gave me an extremely tender hug. On a very basic level he saw my pain and reacted with a gesture of simple comfort.  I think this is what sealed the deal for me with him.  I believe it was the first time in my life another person reacted in this way to what was concealed pain (my defensiveness).  Even I was not conscious of my own hurt and my pain.  But he saw it and simply comforted me.  And suddenly I saw my own pain.  After that, I wasn't able to let go of that moment for years, and years and years. Except that was the most empathy I have ever seen him express.  After that it became all about him.

[earlgrey]

How do I grow out of what for me has always been "normal"?

I was raised in aBPD home (mum) and my way of looking at the world (which seems very valid on the whole, jobs, money, parenting) is hopeless when it comes to romantic relationships. I would love to be able to jiggle my inner processes a little so that my choices of SOs delivered something approaching happy ever after rather than just grief.

But it is proving extremely difficult.

Right now I am in the process of divorcing uBPDw. She has done many horrible things to me and finally I broke and wanted out.

I have a very long standing (girl) friend recently divorced who I really like (and vice versa). We are very compatible. But when she gets 'close' I run away!

Any sensible/healthy/normally programmed individual would jump right out of the fire and into the (figurative) feather bed.

Nope not me I pine the BPD and avoid the soft option.

How do I grow out of what for me has always been "normal" for me in choosing the familiar bad option!

It is just in us, innate... .but at least we are getting to recognise that. And maybe that is progress.

I cannot help more than that today help but I can sympathise. 

[heartandwhole]

Hi caughtnreleased,

Thank you for sharing this. I can really understand that you would have issues with anger, shame, and vulnerability after growing up in home where you lacked comfort. I don't know if anyone in my family has BPD, but I do suspect that two close family members have at least traits. That, I believe, has made me hypersensitive to certain behaviors.

I have trouble feeling vulnerable, too. Since many of us got involved with pwBPD romantically at a vulnerable time, that makes it doubly hard to come out of it willing to go there again. Since my foray into a romance with someone with BPD, it feels like I trust others to be there for me even less than I did before I met him. Like you, he showed an enormous amount of interest and willingness to comfort and be present for me. It felt good, but it also felt unsettling, because I wasn't used to it, and wasn't aware of how much I needed support. After the realization that we could not sustain a relationship together, and the breakup that left my heart in pieces, there were people close to me who tried to comfort me, and really offered to be there for me (e.g., my mom). But I didn't trust her motives. I practically pushed her away, when she was offering so kindly and sincerely to help me in any way she could. That's when I realized that I have some issues around trust that I had never seen before.

I think you can surround yourself with people who are kind and generous when you begin to offer those same things to yourself and others. For example, when you meditate and difficult feelings come up, how do you react? I assume you accept them as passing through you? Feelings and thoughts don't define you, so if you feel vulnerable, that doesn't say anything about your value as a person. It just might say, for example, that something you are thinking is triggering a response in you that feels tender and fragile.

Perhaps you can practice embracing those feelings within yourself and then with time, you can practice sharing tiny bits with others and watch their reactions. Small doses. Share a little, observe their reaction, assess the situation and how you feel about it. Share a little, observe, assess. If you see several responses from someone over time that are invalidating/uncaring, then you have all the information that you need to decide whether you want to share anything more personal with this person.  

I know it can feel very foreign when all you know has been a lack of empathy and/or even worse. These patterns are not always easy to change, but it's definitely doable and worth it to try, in my view.

I look forward to hearing more of you thoughts, caughtnreleased.  

heartandwhole

[caughtnreleased]

I think you can surround yourself with people who are kind and generous when you begin to offer those same things to yourself and others. For example, when you meditate and difficult feelings come up, how do you react? I assume you accept them as passing through you? Feelings and thoughts don't define you, so if you feel vulnerable, that doesn't say anything about your value as a person. It just might say, for example, that something you are thinking is triggering a response in you that feels tender and fragile.

Heartandwhole,

Thank you for your message.  When difficult feelings come up during meditation, I indeed do just sit with them.  One thing that has been happening to me during almost every meditation sitting more recently is that I break into tears, sometimes start sobbing uncontrollably.  I am not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it seems that a great deal of sadness is welling up inside me. 

I have also more recently started to share things with people and am finding a bit more support, or able to see those who cannot provide support.  It makes me feel like a failure though when I find that the people I thought were my closest friends, well some of them have some serious closeness issues and when I find myself making gestures to get closer they answer with distancing.  I feel like I have failed in creating truly meaningful friendships that are nourishing to me. I am now actively pursuing people whom I think might be able to give me more meaning, but I still feel like a failure for having spent years with people who always kept me at arms length and I am only now realizing this.

I was raised in aBPD home (mum) and my way of looking at the world (which seems very valid on the whole, jobs, money, parenting) is hopeless when it comes to romantic relationships. I would love to be able to jiggle my inner processes a little so that my choices of SOs delivered something approaching happy ever after rather than just grief.

Earlgrey, thank you for sharing your experience with me.  I think you really get at the heart of it.  After I met BPDex I did lots of research on BPD and how it can in fact be "cured".  I thought great, if only he does the work, it'll work out.  Here I am years later doing my own work and seeing how intensely difficult it is to make changes.  We all live in little bubbles that validate our own views of the world it seems.  We somehow need to pop that bubble and build a whole new world that is completely foreign to us.  It's like trying to build a bridge without having an engineering degree. It's terrifying, and there will be mistakes... .and sometimes our bridge might crumble into the river leaving us to start again.  But I guess it's also finding the right people to build that bridge with, and when all that is familiar to us are experts in building faulty bridges, we somehow need to take a leap of faith with those who know how to build bridges that won't collapse at the first wind storm.

What is hard is distinguishing fear of the familiar with fear of the unfamiliar... .  When I ran from BPDex, my mind told me to run like hell, and my soul said "oh god he's the one".  I broke apart as a result.  But when I now meet someone new and I don't have feelings of intimacy with him, or I find that he's a bit boring, or my mind runs to all sorts of excuses as to why I should end it with him... .what part of myself do I listen to? I think this is what I struggle with.  How to see through my own unhealthy conditioning to choose the right person to build bridges with?

Realizing that I have made very poor choices in the past with friends and lovers has paralyzed me in moving forward as I don't believe that I have the capacity to connect with someone capable of giving and receiving love.

[heartandwhole]

Realizing that I have made very poor choices in the past with friends and lovers has paralyzed me in moving forward as I don't believe that I have the capacity to connect with someone capable of giving and receiving love.

I really hear this and can understand that disappointment and apprehension. I can relate, and I know many others here can, too. We're right in there with you.

You seem to be in the middle right now, of a big realization. That can hurt and be so challenging. But it's also an opportunity to grow, learn, and change. I'd encourage you not to put too much pressure on yourself about "moving forward." Not that I want you to stay stuck, but feeling these feelings and testing the waters with new (and old) relationships takes some time and baby steps. You are probably going to stumble a few times—this is new for you, after all!—and in my view that's not the time to throw everything out and declare that you can't do it, the problem is too big, or you can't trust yourself. 

Keep going, keep trying. Your sincerity and genuine honesty and effort will pay off. There are people out there who are also learning and growing and trying to change old patterns, and you may very well find someone who can walk beside you as you do. 

heartandwhole

[earlgrey]

Here I am years later doing my own work and seeing how intensely difficult it is to make changes.  We all live in little bubbles that validate our own views of the world it seems.  We somehow need to pop that bubble and build a whole new world that is completely foreign to us.

seems so easy when you put it like that 

My various experiences of romantic r/s all seem to work according to a very clear script in my head... .meeting someone I find 'attractive', I would want in (ie to get involved) then when I would start to receive attention, I would distance myself. Depending on variables this engage/disengage routine would repeat x number of times. Something (I have never really understood what) would make me run away. Then I meet someone that doesn't make me run away. I feel I have cracked the r/s enigma... .only to discover the world of BPD with an uBPDw!

Yet I cannot understand enough my inner workings to know how to adjust and improve my attachment behaviour, and behave less fearfully (in my case) in front of what are most likely genuinely good people.

This is just the way I am! I realise the shortcomings, but seem unable to bring about change.

Now as we are discussing our issues here, we are able to admit 'dysfunctions', which is probably, in the overall picture a good thing. Now pwBPD, our SOs/parents/friends most likely have their own scripts for managing r/s, and like us they'll have limitations, and perhaps unlike us, they will not question the way it works, the way they work, and as such the chaos that most likely ensues will not be a result of their 'stuff'.

I like the gist of your thread.

Ok caughtnreleased, a question for you... .what repetitive behavioural pattern do you have that you would like to alter?

(mine would be NOT running away from people who seem genuinely interested in me)

[caughtnreleased]

Ok caughtnreleased, a question for you... .what repetitive behavioural pattern do you have that you would like to alter?

Hi Earlgrey, I think you and I may have similar behaviour patterns.  I think I can identify a couple of places I would like to change. 

The first one is to stop devaluing people who are interested in me.  It's really crazy, but if I see someone who I think is attractive, I immediately figure that they won't be interested in me.  If I make a move and they respond positively suddenly that person seems so much less attractive and kind of pathetic for being interested in me and I wonder what is wrong with them that they are interested.  It's a very deep gut feeling this reaction, which makes it very hard to change.  How do you stop devaluing people.  Or perhaps I don't but then dating someone you devalue is not very fun either.

I think the other thing is to stop valuing relationships which reject me or keep me down in life.  I always seem to end up with drama queens (kings) and people who are constantly competitive and or jealous.  I suppose having people be jealous of me is a superficial way of proving my "superiority" to those who are jealous. But in the end it's an extremely unrewarding relationship that strives only to clip my wings.

Perhaps for you it may be an interesting exercise to try and identify exactly what it is you are running from when someone comes towards you.  Perhaps you could try not running, and observing how your emotions are in front of someone whom you have resisted running from. 

[earlgrey]

 

woke up in the night with this.

I am pushing through with divorce and sometimes (often  ) I look back over my shoulder and think, and hope, if only she would do this this and if only she would do that, then maybe... ., and I get feelings of doubt about doing the right thing.

Anyhow the  was this. If we (as nons?) know and accept our shortcomings yet are still unable to bring about useful change, just imagine the difficulty someone has (I'm thinking pwBPD) to bring about change when even the idea of knowing or accepting anything is wrong is just not accessible.

Which (if I am on any sort of right track) would explain why people in the know say pwBPD seldom shake it off.

And this idea lets me think that looking over my shoulder is not actually going to reveal anything new or that I didn't already know!

A bit OT there caughtnreleased, will get back to changing our ways shortly.

bye EG

[caughtnreleased]

just imagine the difficulty someone has (I'm thinking pwBPD) to bring about change when even the idea of knowing or accepting anything is wrong is just not accessible.

Hi yes. I think you've really hit on something.  I think acknowledging and taking responsibility for our mistakes at very deep level is actually perhaps the hardest thing when it comes to change. Because it means dismantling our defense mechanisms (which perhaps is what caused many of the mistakes in the first place).  I am still coming to terms with some of my own actions, which I used to be convinced were the absolutely "correct" way of dealing with difficult situations (I was actually rather hard on people - normal, I was never shown kindness or empathy when I experienced difficulty).  It's painful to realize what you thought was the right thing to do, perhaps wasn't really, or that rather there was a better way to deal with a certain situation, or that your actions caused hurt in someone else.  In a way it's coming to terms with what you have lost as a result of your mistakes.  That has caused me a lot of pain.  I feel like I have lost time, lost many opportunities to actually get what I truly wanted.

I think also in my mind I ended up taking on more than my share of the responsability for the BPD relationship I had... .but that is the nature of a relationship with BPD.  They are in fact a child, and you the adult.  So in a way, you are in control... .except it takes an understanding that you are a parental figure, not a lover, and you need to be a parental figure with exceptional skills and patience and strength to get through it.   

My BPDex had self-diagnosed as BPD.  And yet, he refused therapy - in fact he was insulted when I suggested it.  I think self-diagnosing, as opposed to being a self aware thing, was more of an "excuse" for not taking responsability.  I'm sick therefore I can't help what I do. You must accept me for the immature child that I am if you truly love me. When I said no, and told him to go to therapy, well... .all hell broke lose and he has never been able to "forgive" me.  Interestingly, this is the second boyfriend I've had who came to me with a problem and when I asked him to work on solving it, he rejected me.  He told me he was an alcoholic and that a lot of the time when we were living together he had actually been drunk... .or would come home drunk after work. When he told me this we were considering making the relationship much more serious, so I asked him to get counseling for alcoholism, and he got angry with me.  He said if I truly loved him I should accept that he's an alcoholic.  I'm glad I didn't do it.  Again, they are seeking unconditional parental love from a lover. Like a friend of mine recently said to me "I'd like to be a mother but to a cute little child, not a full grown hairy man."  when her boyfriend told her he didn't want kids with her because he would be jealous of the attention the kids would get from her.

There are people who have a superficial understanding of their problems, but insufficient maturity to really accept responsibility for them and work towards solving them.  Perhaps in order to really mature from these experiences we need to grieve our losses. For a long time I gave my uBPDex so much credit for self-diagnosing, and while he deserves some for being honest about it with me, he actually doesn't change himself.  My own process has been very painful, and yet I never betrayed, lied, or abandoned people in the violent way in which my BPDex has done.  I had certain rules that I never broke.  Having to accept responsibility for those actions, and getting rid of your false identity, I would imagine would be really difficult for someone with such a fragile identity in the first place, and such a limited capacity to forgive.  Black and white thinking I think leads to an inability to forgive - forgiveness comes in the grey zones. It is accepting that someone who has done wrong, can still be a good person. I think I used to sway towards black and white. I'm happy to say I don't anymore.

[earlgrey]

despite the  I am finding it very hard at the moment to focus on forwards.

Many of my long standing issues (shortcomings) are coming at me hard and fast at the moment, and what is rather alarming is that stbx would seem to see very clearly my mechanisms.

One of my issues is fear of conflict and a strong sense of appeasement. I know it but it is still dominant and I will seek to squash conflict, often in self damaging ways. This is happening and it makes me feel very uncomfortable. But this is autopilot, my way of doing it and I would really like to know how to begin to change these very fundamental behaviours.

Perhaps though these traits while not great and quite possibly improvable are exacerbated by the BPD environment. I understand pwBPD can be very savvy at reading others - para 2 above would suggest that. Also add to the mix the learning period, when the non (me certainly) would say yes all the time, the pwBPD became very atuned to getting their way at zero cost. And i imagine giving up on something for nothing would not necessarily be in their nature.

So while things are looking very bleak today I'm guessing that once removed from a BPD environment my life skills will perhaps appear not quite so useless.