When your life-force of the past was fueled by fear and egotism

[bethanny]

I had an honest phone conversation with an old friend tonight and I ended up confiding about some old wounds and angers to the point of tears at times. 

I had had a traumatic bond with my unrecovered borderline mother and felt betrayed by a "borderline" family I was devoted to, who, when my mother so many years ago turned on me with her annihilating anger over a modest assertion by me  (but to a borderline parent that is SUPER TREASON), and I realized how my obsequiousness to her will over the years was not based on me being an empathetic, hypervigilant daughter to her neediness, but I was in reality terrified of her and driven to be a perpetual beggar for her love and respect. 

When I became clinically depressed in my 20s from my mother's inappropriate codependency and punishment for my basically wanting to embrace my adulthood, and my father's alcoholic traumatizing behavior, my mother unleashed such confusing and devastating ongoing rage at me. I couldn't face the reality.  I chose to believe I deserved her contempt and I had let her down. My self esteem collapsed and I was too weak for a long time to detach.

Unconditional love was never nor would ever be forthcoming from her, and I resorted to scrambling for conditional love.  My identity became dependent on her reluctant approval. Taking my focus off of her needs easily brought out her contempt and rejection.

When I finally rallied to  modestly assert myself to my borderline mother, I discovered that my mother not only was incapable of relating to me as a fellow adult and not capable of any degree of conflict resolution with me, but also wielded amazing manipulative power over my siblings and some of my social network, and effectively character assassinated me to them. 

Her ruthlessness and their malleability crushed my spirit for a very long time. 

I removed myself physically from her thrall recognizing that she and the family were incapable of nurturing me in a healthy way and my "role" was what was demanded by the family system, not my real self.  My real self had been the mole in a perpetual game of whackamole to my borderline mother.  Her ego indoctrinated me to a reactive not proactive mode of relating to life and its challenges. I was meant to be the perfect version of her, thinking and feeling always as she expected and demanded. Especially addressing her needs.

Scott Peck once wrote it is evil for someone to control you and tit-suck from you at the same time.

The blueprint of perfection she had presented to me as a kid, playing on my grandiosity, and giving me an incentive to strive to be someone I knew i couldn't be except for some self-delusional ego highs, was a recipe for chronic frustration and self-doubt.

Affinity was what my borderline mother valued from those around her, the continued status quo reliability of others to be controlled by her needs, and if that affinity fell short, she had no capacity for real love. Opportunities for love from other sources could not be explored, sacrificed to sustaining that affinity from her that constantly demanded attention.  "Keep her company in her isolation".  I thought my alcoholic father was the narcissistic one who kept the family in such emotional chaos, but the covert narcissism of my mother looking back was gobsmacking.

I thought I was finally challenging her with "tough love" to try to untether myself and the backlash from her was colossal,  If there is no capacity for real love, tough love applied in a relationship is an exercise in futility and an incentive to bring immediate rejection and/or outsized and perpetual punishment.  Her way or the highway, and also, while she was at it, she handily and quickly smeared my reputation with the significant people in my life.  Something I didn't begin to anticipate when I challenged her, and what I never realized she could so successfully pull off and for so many years.

My heart was broken.  My sense of identity and the security of belonging to a support family network shattered for a very long time. My capacity for trust seriously damaged.  My capacity for hope.

My life force was so diminished.  It had been fueled in part by the terror of disappointing my controlling mother (and eventually a more general people-pleasing codependency especially with toxic narcissistic people I crossed paths with in life), and also an egotism that was not founded on my real self which was unique and worth loving and nurturing in spite of a legacy of dysfunctional issues that I became more and more aware of.

My life-force was gone.   

I tried to sustain hope that my mother would eventually respond to me, but she was not capable. Nor was the rest of the family free of my borderline mother's thrall, and the intimacy and devotion I presumed would automatically have been there for me in an emergency state of need in me was so not.

I did manage to renew relationships with my siblings after a long time, and today they provide warmth and love.  But I guess my issue in this posting is the desire for self-love and a love of life that I can't begin to sustain.

So, where do I get the life-force of hope?  Where do I get the grounding for an identity of self-respect and dignity?  I appreciate good will from others, and return it to them, not in a robust way unfortunately, but I feel like a lost soul.  I am crying suddenly as I admit that.

12 steps reminds of an unconditionally loving HIGHER PARENT. Sustaining that sensibility brings some fuel to fight the ridiculous punishment of our over-active from childhood egos. Eckhart Tolle says EGO stands for  "edging God out".  I have strayed from the 12 step network for a good long while.  I had gone back and then the pandemic struck. I can still return to that program and philosophy maybe.

I feel tonight at a loss to replenish hope and grace in my life. Even when I was in denial and desperately serving my unrecovered borderline mother and trying to bailout us all from the family quicksand, I had more of an identity than I do today.  I had more hope that there was the proverbial end of the tunnel light.

I am a sadder but wiser girl (woman) but a life force isn't fueling my heart and my soul.  There is a quiet despair shadowing my life.  Intellectually I know so much about my psychic history.  i think I had assumed that intelligence gathering of my past trauma would free and enliven me.

I know about complex PTSD, which prisoners of war suffer from living in a situation from which hope of escape is forever eliminated. I believe children in toxic family environments can easily become stricken by it, too.  I feel like I am suffering from that same kind of hopelessness.  I was a prisoner in another's thrall for decades. I rejected and abandoned myself then. 

Why can't I not do that today?

My life is no longer an insane roller coaster of a chaotic, borderline and alcoholic family, but me as a human being now settles for avoiding stress and not expecting and reaching any more for joy and adventure. I am still reactive, not proactive.

Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had.

Maybe I still can't totally let go of what I never had? Maybe that is the key to my getting that new, healthier life-force?

[madeline7]

(I am a sadder but wiser girl (woman) but a life force isn't fueling my heart and my soul.  There is a quiet despair shadowing my life.  Intellectually I know so much about my psychic history.  i think I had assumed that intelligence gathering of my past trauma would free and enliven me.)

This paragraph hit home with me. I understand your sadness, I am right there with you. I think many of us who are dealing with BPD can relate. Such a sad realization to come to, once we are wiser but not necessarily free from the toxic residue that is our PWD and family. I just want to shake the toxic waste off but it clings to me and I feel like the trauma has altered my DNA. Sending you a virtual hug.

[bethanny]

Madeline7, your message is so elegantly and eloquently stated.  Thanks for relating.

Sometimes the denial or minimization concerning the past behaviors of the ubpd significant person in our lives by others close to us can be seriously daunting and dispiriting. Our grieving has to include that dimension as well as the primary grief for the lack of unconditional love that we craved and needed from the ubpd person.

We can try to raise the consciousness of others, but we can't control the degree or the consequences when we try. 

Too often I opt for the comfort zone of numbness rather than the excitement of risk taking in trusting others, whether new or old acquaintances.  I also do what they warn you not to do in 12 step rooms, "compare my insides to other people's outsides."  My albatross of automatic shame assumes that I am always much more dysfunctional than others.  Old negative messaging. 

Also, perhaps learning how to celebrate that my spiritual glass is half full rather than half empty might also be a way to go. 

A hug back to you.   

[beatricex]

hi betthany,
You said

but I feel like a lost soul.

Well, you are not a lost soul, because you are here and you found us.  Intuition?  Instinct?

probably

You also said "But I guess my issue in this posting is the desire for self-love and a love of life that I can't begin to sustain"

That is really a noble cause, and I am inspired by your story and your honesty.  Hope to hear from you more.

b

[bethanny]

Thanks so much for your warm, good will, beatricex!