Home page of BPDFamily.com, online relationship supportMember registration here
March 28, 2024, 08:23:13 AM *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Board Admins: Kells76, Once Removed, Turkish
Senior Ambassadors: Cat Familiar, EyesUp, SinisterComplex
  Help!   Boards   Please Donate Login to Post New?--Click here to register  
bing
Things we can't afford to ignore
Depression: Stop Being Tortured by Your Own Thoughts
Surviving a Break-up when Your Partner has BPD
My Definition of Love. I have Borderline Personality Disorder.
Codependency and Codependent Relationships
89
Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: This helped me understand what it must be like to exist with no core self.  (Read 404 times)
Educated_Guess
***
Offline Offline

Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Gay, lesb
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 138



« on: October 19, 2018, 10:26:48 AM »

One of the things that has perplexed me about BPD is what it is like to be a person with no core.  I think I came out of the womb with a strong sense of self and I cannot imagine what it is like to not have that.  It is literally a different way of existing in the world than what I know.  You might as well ask me what it is like to be a dog or a cat - it is that foreign to me.

About a month ago, I was pondering on this and trying to work it out in my brain.  I had a dream about my BPD ex.  She was being adorable and funny (characteristics that I had kinda forgotten about since the breakup).  She was packing up her belongings to move out.  I kept trying to have a conversation with her about how we felt and what was happening between us.  She would squirm her way out of any discussion of anything true or anything truly felt.  Even though it was a dream, it captured my experience of being in a relationship with her - her being simultaneously adorable and endearing while keeping me at a distance as she was preparing to leave.

At one point in the dream when I was reaching out for her and she pushed me back, she said, "I am a tumbleweed."  Wow!  When I woke up I thought, "That's it."  I wrote the dream out in my journal before even getting up to get coffee because I wanted to capture as much as I could before it faded from my mind.

A tumbleweed is a thing that has no core.  It just has an outer shell of rootless sticks and debris that were formed into a shape by the wind.  It is not a thing that can decide where it goes or what it does.  It is blown by the wind.  It is not a thing that decides what it is made of.  It is shaped by the wind and whatever debris it picks up along the way.

One thing about my ex that I could never understand is that she approached life as a person that has things happen to her, not a person who decides what she wants or where she will go.  If you experience abuse, neglect or enmeshment in those early childhood years when you are supposed to develop a sense of self, maybe that is what you learn - you are someone that things happen to and nothing more.  You don't have the guidance or support needed to develop a true sense of self.

Anyway, I thought I would share this with the group.  It helped me to get an idea of what it must be like to exist with no core self.
Logged

Lucky Jim
********
Offline Offline

Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 6211


« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2018, 11:54:00 AM »

Excerpt
If you experience abuse, neglect or enmeshment in those early childhood years when you are supposed to develop a sense of self, maybe that is what you learn - you are someone that things happen to and nothing more.  You don't have the guidance or support needed to develop a true sense of self.

Hey Educated Guess, Great post!  I think you're right on target: those w/BPD, like tumbleweeds, struggle with their sense of self, because the center is unstable.  That's an amazing dream!

LuckyJim
Logged

    A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
schwing
Retired Staff
*
Offline Offline

Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Parent
Relationship status: married to a non
Posts: 3614


WWW
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2018, 12:24:58 PM »

I like this metaphor too.  Thanks for sharing.
Logged

Educated_Guess
***
Offline Offline

Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Gay, lesb
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 138



« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2018, 01:01:57 PM »

I was rethinking this post and thought I should add something.  Although my BPD ex acted as if she were a person who things happened to and she was not able to make decisions, she actually did make a lot of decisions.  She would just deny that she had any choice in the matter.

We didn't argue during our relationship about much of anything.  One weekend she went into what I assume was a rage blackout and told me how worthless I am and how I had never done anything good.  It came out of no where.  I was trying to make sense of it and the argument continued on and off for 3 days.

On the third day she broke up with me and said we should just be friends.  In the weeks afterward, she would deny that she was the one who decided to breakup.  When it became clear that I wasn't buying the alternate reality that I broke up with her, she told me that she didn't want to break up but felt that she had to that.  When I asked why, she said that I asked repeatedly if she loved me and, despite what she said, she couldn't convince me that she did.

There is some truth to this claim.  She could not convince me that she loved me.  Some of that came from my own fears of being unlovable.  But there was also the fact that she was not behaving like someone who loved me.  You don't tell someone you love that they are worthless and never did anything for you.  You don't try to rip apart the psyche of someone you love.  I was just beginning to understand that what she felt for me was not love but something else that dressed up and called itself love.  That is why she decided to retreat by breaking up with me.  But in her perception of it, she thought she was forced into that decision by me.

My ex was also the one who decided to move out.  She did this during a discussion when I pointed out the double standard she used to judge me.  For example, one of the failings she cited during her rage blackout was that I did not take her out on dates often enough when she never once took me out on a date during our entire relationship. 

I didn't point this out in anger.  I spoke calmly.  Really I was just asking that she was aware that she was using a double standard (she wasn't).  She shouted, "I'm moving out because I can't handle all these talks with you!"  She would go on to say that I was emotionally badgering her.  I don't think what I said was abusive; it's just basic logic and decency to point out a double standard.  But for someone who finds the truth to be hostile, particularly when that truth is uncomfortable and might point to some accountability, I suppose it did seem abusive.

Again, she thought that I forced her into the decision.  She denies her own choice in the matter.  But there were other options for her in that moment.  She could have recognized what was obviously there - that she was judging me by a much stricter standard than she judged her own actions.  She could have asked herself if that was a fair thing to do to someone.  If she realized that was not fair, she could have re-evaluated how she was judging me.  But in her mind, there was only one option and she was forced into it.
Logged

once removed
BOARD ADMINISTRATOR
**
Offline Offline

Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 12608



« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2018, 06:34:59 PM »

I think I came out of the womb with a strong sense of self and I cannot imagine what it is like to not have that.

people with BPD traits are often attracted to a person with a strong sense of self.

ive always had that too, its just that looking back, im not certain it was the most differentiated sense of self.

there are things about me, that are part of me, make me who i am, that i really like about myself. then there are things about myself that i dont necessarily like, reject, or at least have difficulty accepting and working with. this is true for all of us to greater or lesser extents. nevertheless, those things persist. all of us have ways of managing or covering those parts of us. to lesser or greater degrees, that managing can become a "false self". a self that may be quite strong, but not necessarily authentic.

i think the same is probably true for my ex. i think both of us, on some level, knew this, about ourselves and each other, which in a lot of ways gave us feelings of familiarity and safety. i suspect that part of the rush, part of the fantasy, part of the bond, part of the merging, was about that. what drew us together so powerfully, or at least drew me to her, is that she spoke to those things, the reasons i most wanted to be loved for, and she validated or mirrored those things. i dont think that was insincere, i think she was very attracted to those things, i invested a lot in her attraction, mirrored it back, and it gave her a powerful sense of merging and becoming, part of the initial idealization that tends to be heavier with someone with BPD traits.

but of course that was a fantasy on both of our ends. as the two of us grew closer and more intimate (each of us with an underlying fear of genuine intimacy), we clashed. i wouldnt realize this at the time, but i struggled with the loss of her mirroring that sense of self, the reasons i believed i should be loved, back to me, even confused me as to who i was. a lot of us experience this as "devaluation". some of us, in our ways, fight to get it back. but what so powerfully brought two forces together, wasnt necessarily who i was, or who she was, and in ways both large and small, we both felt cheated.

the fact is, if i had a strong, authentic sense of self, it would not have depended on her validation or mirroring, nor would it have for her. the ways in which we grew together, would have been built on a foundation of two both independent and interdependent identities, that over time, established genuine intimacy, trust, a secure bond/attachment.

it was hard to see my relationship that way and how it played out, that we bonded over mutual neediness. it was harder to see myself, even threatening, in that light. can anybody relate?
Logged

     and I think it's gonna be all right; yeah; the worst is over now; the mornin' sun is shinin' like a red rubber ball…
Educated_Guess
***
Offline Offline

Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Gay, lesb
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 138



« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2018, 07:38:23 PM »

the fact is, if i had a strong, authentic sense of self, it would not have depended on her validation or mirroring, nor would it have for her. the ways in which we grew together, would have been built on a foundation of two both independent and interdependent identities, that over time, established genuine intimacy, trust, a secure bond/attachment.

it was hard to see my relationship that way and how it played out, that we bonded over mutual neediness. it was harder to see myself, even threatening, in that light. can anybody relate?

Thanks for the reply once removed!  I can appreciate what you say.  I big part of my learning in the aftermath has been asking myself why I needed the validation of an idealized love in the first place.  I knew who I was - I just didn't exactly value who I was.  I recognized myself as the authentic mess I was and am 

We may be talking about two sides of the same coin here.  Maybe I'm not explaining this well; sorry if I get too philosophy geeky here.

What the tumbleweed dream revealed to me was two different ways of understanding the self.  I have always known who I am.  I have always been a person with autonomy.  I have always known that I could make decisions and have some degree of control over the direction of my life path.  I haven't always valued who I am.  I haven't always valued the choices I've made.  But whether I value them or not is independent of the fact that I am still an autonomous person with the capacity to make decisions.

Because I recognize my ability to choose and act, I can make the mental connection between my choices and actions and the consequences of those actions.  If I do something good and a good consequence comes of it, I can tie that back to my own choices and pat myself on the back.  If I do something bad and a bad consequence comes of it, I can tie that back to my own choices and do what is needed to try to fix it or make amends.  I am a person who can choose and act and can mentally connect that with the consequences.

Imagine what it is like if you do not think you are a person who can make decisions.  Imagine you are a person who doesn't understand that you can do things to change your situation.  Imagine believing that you are where you are in life completely because of external circumstances and what other people have done to you and you have no autonomy to change it.  That's my ex.  That's why the image of the tumbleweed made things click in my brain.  A tumbleweed only exists because of the wind that blows it.  A tumbleweed only moves because of the wind that blows it.  I think this is how my ex understood herself.

Of course she made decisions all the time. She just did not perceive that she made choices or that she acted - it was always because of something external to her.  Without that understanding that you have the autonomy to choose and act, there is nothing to tie your actions to the consequences of those actions.  Hence the BPD propensity to not be accountable, to not be responsible.

I hope this explains what I am trying to get at better.

Logged

once removed
BOARD ADMINISTRATOR
**
Offline Offline

Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 12608



« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2018, 07:48:50 PM »

I hope this explains what I am trying to get at better.

i follow ya, EG. the metaphor for a person with an unstable, or lack of self, of a tumbleweed is an apt one, a brilliant one.

im connecting/extending that to what it has to do with us, which i understand wasnt necessarily the intent of your post. i dont know about everyone, but if my ex was/is like a tumbleweed, i wonder where my draw to that came from and persisted, how it blew me over so to speak, why it was drawn to me.
Logged

     and I think it's gonna be all right; yeah; the worst is over now; the mornin' sun is shinin' like a red rubber ball…
Chitchat
***
Offline Offline

What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: Romantic (on - off) August 2017 to June 2018. DV. Both reached out but both mostly No Contact since.
Posts: 106


« Reply #7 on: October 23, 2018, 09:05:36 PM »

 
Excerpt
I think I came out of the womb with a strong sense of self

People are developing their sense of self in their teens. It's why first love is so painful.
Logged

Che sara, sara.
Turkish
BOARD ADMINISTRATOR
**
Offline Offline

Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Other
Relationship status: "Divorced"/abandoned by SO in Feb 2013; Mother with BPD, PTSD, Depression and Anxiety: RIP in 2021.
Posts: 12104


Dad to my wolf pack


« Reply #8 on: October 23, 2018, 09:40:43 PM »

Quote from: Educated_Guess
She could not convince me that she loved me.  Some of that came from my own fears of being unlovable.  But there was also the fact that she was not behaving like someone who loved me.  You don't tell someone you love that they are worthless and never did anything for you.  You don't try to rip apart the psyche of someone you love

I felt the same. When both of these things are true,  where does it indicate to look,  especially the former?

While I didn't rationalize it for many years, my mother told me a couple of times,  "sometimes I wish I'd never adopted you!" I grew up with Splitting and that's likely why I put up with it as an adult many years later.  Logically it felt  Cursing - won't cause site restrictions at Starbucks (click to insert in post) up, but emotionally I minimized it on order to cope. 

Back to what you said in the beginning about being differentiated, part of what attracted my ex to me was that she observed that I felt comfortable in my own skin. On the outside,  she's prim, proper, pretty and petite. Yet,  she ultimately feels worthless and unlovable like she doesn't matter (the core debilitating feelings of a pwBPD). Dad was largely absent and when not,  abusive to the family; her mother enmeshed her.  There was no healthy mirroring in that household. 
Logged

    “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” ― Rudyard Kipling
Educated_Guess
***
Offline Offline

Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Gay, lesb
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 138



« Reply #9 on: October 24, 2018, 01:39:21 PM »

im connecting/extending that to what it has to do with us, which i understand wasnt necessarily the intent of your post. i dont know about everyone, but if my ex was/is like a tumbleweed, i wonder where my draw to that came from and persisted, how it blew me over so to speak, why it was drawn to me.

Gotcha, once removed.  I get concerned that I'm not saying things clearly, particularly when talking about abstract concepts like the sense of self.

As for what the draw is, I'm still working on that.  If the pwBPD is a tumbleweed and doesn't recognize their own capacity to make decisions to direct their lives, maybe the opposite is true of the non-partners.  Maybe we are so comfortable and competent in making decisions that we go overboard and think we should make decisions for others - like an aggressive form of caretaking.

It makes sense that someone who feels they cannot direct their lives would be drawn who appears to be able to do that.  For the non who finds acceptance in taking care of others, it would make sense that they are drawn to someone who appears to need caretaking.
Logged

once removed
BOARD ADMINISTRATOR
**
Offline Offline

Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 12608



« Reply #10 on: October 24, 2018, 01:47:31 PM »

Maybe we are so comfortable and competent in making decisions that we go overboard and think we should make decisions for others - like an aggressive form of caretaking.
... .
For the non who finds acceptance in taking care of others, it would make sense that they are drawn to someone who appears to need caretaking.

absolutely. and the tendency in these relationships is that it is validated and mirrored back. i think its often a huge part of the draw and the connection.

if im honest with myself, really honest with myself, i think i was drawn to her because i wanted to impose my world and sense of self on hers, she was eager to have that, and i equated that with love. it was poorly differentiated love, as was hers.
Logged

     and I think it's gonna be all right; yeah; the worst is over now; the mornin' sun is shinin' like a red rubber ball…
Educated_Guess
***
Offline Offline

Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Gay, lesb
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 138



« Reply #11 on: October 24, 2018, 01:57:09 PM »

I felt the same. When both of these things are true,  where does it indicate to look,  especially the former?

While I didn't rationalize it for many years, my mother told me a couple of times,  "sometimes I wish I'd never adopted you!" I grew up with Splitting and that's likely why I put up with it as an adult many years later.  Logically it felt  Cursing - won't cause site restrictions at Starbucks (click to insert in post) up, but emotionally I minimized it on order to cope. 

Yes, I think I was drawn to the idealized love because of my own belief that there was something about me that made me unlovable.  This was something that was unconscious and its source was in experiences in my childhood.  My breakup with my BPD ex brought this out of the unconscious and up to the surface.  She had bullet lists of all the things that made me unlovable and all the ways I was not good enough.  

That ended up being the hidden benefit of the breakup for me - it brought all this stuff to the surface.  Her words and actions reminded me of things that happened to me long ago that I had mostly forgotten.  Now that I'm an adult and could think on those experiences with an adult's perspective, I could see that it was wrong that those things happened to me when I was a child.

See, when it was buried in my memory - it was buried with only a child's understanding attached to it.  A child is prone to blame themselves for mistreatment because a child wants to maintain the belief that their family is good and benevolent.  As a child, I believed that the mistreatment occurred because there was something fundamentally wrong with me.  And so that belief has remained under the surface all this time until that belief was recognized and confronted this year.  Now, looking on those experiences as an adult, I realize that those things did not happen because of something wrong with me.
Logged

Sadly
******
Offline Offline

Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: Very Single
Posts: 886



« Reply #12 on: November 07, 2018, 12:44:26 PM »

How strange to read this right now and also the one about tumbleweed. I was looking through an old purse today and found something I had written many many years ago before I had met my exwBPD. It was this.
“ ever since I was a child I have felt these two things in my life. Freedom and Loneliness. Sometimes I feel neither, it’s safer to feel nothing. Maybe it’s my destiny to be free and lonely and I shouldn’t fight it question it. Maybe I will always be on the outside looking in. Other people have a solid shape to their lives, something I have never felt I had. It’s like they are living their lives and I’m just letting mine be blown into whatever shapes fate moulds me.”.
How sad. I know I am a proper mess but imagine me finding that just before reading these posts. It sounds like I have no sense of self, am a tumbleweed.
Logged

Never let someone be your priority whilst you remain their option
Can You Help Us Stay on the Air in 2024?

Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Our 2023 Financial Sponsors
We are all appreciative of the members who provide the funding to keep BPDFamily on the air.
12years
alterK
AskingWhy
At Bay
Cat Familiar
CoherentMoose
drained1996
EZEarache
Flora and Fauna
ForeverDad
Gemsforeyes
Goldcrest
Harri
healthfreedom4s
hope2727
khibomsis
Lemon Squeezy
Memorial Donation (4)
Methos
Methuen
Mommydoc
Mutt
P.F.Change
Penumbra66
Red22
Rev
SamwizeGamgee
Skip
Swimmy55
Tartan Pants
Turkish
whirlpoollife



Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2006-2020, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!