Interesting youtube on Amber Heard

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Yeah...good idea to always leave them a "open door" to exit some flare up...so they can leave without doing too much damage. 

Combine that with the "nons" building up some "armor" so that weird comments like "knowing you..." just bounce off harmlessly..

Good grief..."knowing you...I could believe you could (insert harsh thing)".   How is that for an outlook on your intimate partner...?

Sigh...

Good thread..keep it up!

Best,

Allen

[formflier]

Yeah...good idea to always leave them a "open door" to exit some flare up...so they can leave without doing too much damage. 

Combine that with the "nons" building up some "armor" so that weird comments like "knowing you..." just bounce off harmlessly..

Good grief..."knowing you...I could believe you could (insert harsh thing)".   How is that for an outlook on your intimate partner...?

Sigh...

Good thread..keep it up!

Best,

Allen

[Riv3rW0lf]

I need to focus on the boundary and the consequences moving forward and not get stuck litigating the timeline.

Aye, aye

I think this is what keeps my inner turmoil alive with my pwBPD. Part of me just wish to untangle the lies, the manipulations. Part of me wants her to recognize what she is doing, how dishonest she is acting by twisting realities to meet her emotions, not adapting her truth to mine like I am trying to adapt mine to hers, so we can move forward.

It is their truth, and nothing else. But their truth is not anchored in reality. Part of it is though, hence the border in borderline, which confuses things more...

And this is the hardest thing for me : in order to untangle ourselves emotionally from them, we have to let go of ever learning the truth or having our truth heard and recognized as valid.

We simply don't live in the same world they live in.

Also, what LivednLearned said really stood out to me... They have no self... No Self. No peaceful, mature Self. Is that truly what BPD is like? ... Hit me like thunder, this sentence. Saying no self, instead of no sense of self changed the meaning for me... funny how language, how words work sometimes.

[Manic Miner]

Aye, aye

I think this is what keeps my inner turmoil alive with my pwBPD. Part of me just wish to untangle the lies, the manipulations. Part of me wants her to recognize what she is doing, how dishonest she is acting by twisting realities to meet her emotions, not adapting her truth to mine like I am trying to adapt mine to hers, so we can move forward.

It is their truth, and nothing else. But their truth is not anchored in reality. Part of it is though, hence the border in borderline, which confuses things more...

And this is the hardest thing for me : in order to untangle ourselves emotionally from them, we have to let go of ever learning the truth or having our truth heard and recognized as valid.

We simply don't live in the same world they live in.

Also, what LivednLearned said really stood out to me... They have no self... No Self. No peaceful, mature Self. Is that truly what BPD is like? ... Hit me like thunder, this sentence. Saying no self, instead of no sense of self changed the meaning for me... funny how language, how words work sometimes.

Second this, everything you wrote. So true and so painful.

I also remember my W always being furious and so annoyed everytime I said in our arguings "look, I know who I am and what I am". She was always receiving that almost insulting and threatening. Before I didn't know why but now... sigh.

[livednlearned]

About no self: some psychologists would probably say BPD behaviors stem more from having a "false" self versus "no" self, though it seems to me a matter of semantics.

James Masterson has a quote, "The human mind can provide an endless reservoir of self-justification, of "good" reasons to conceal the "real" reason for just about anything."

Lying and dishonesty and self-justification are not limited to pwBPD 

However, this quote is in context of having a "false" self that, through a failure to individuate and become whole separate self, is not adaptive to reality, therefore cannot master it. Instead, the false self focuses on protecting itself from painful feelings, at the "cost of mastering reality."

He talks about a "catastrophic set of feelings" a pwBPD experiences at the thought of separation, what he calls an abandonment depression. Healthy separation, healthy individuation, was arrested during child development for whatever reason. The false self is the result, and it is not capable of mastering reality because it's whole purpose is strictly to defend and protect.

Abandonment depression strikes me as having an almost existential meaning, which would seem melodramatic unless you think about what it might mean to not have a "real" self. Wouldn't not knowing the existence of your real self mean that the loss of your false self could feel like death? There would be no faith that there is a there to default to, no?

Masterson also explains that fluid ego boundaries go with having a false self, making it difficult to distinguish whether feeling states are internal or external. Sometimes what we might consider dishonest could also be a form of doubling down on a feeling. I think SD25 did this when she told family members her ex BF shoved her. Later, it became "It felt like he pushed me" after she felt saddened to see him removed from her life after her mother (also BPD) insisted that feeling hit and being hit were the same thing because they both hurt.

This is an explanation, not an excuse, for BPD lying or dishonesty.

It's more a way to make sense of where these behaviors are coming from and what they are solving, since they are definitely not about mastering reality.

[Turkish]

Masterson also explains that fluid ego boundaries go with having a false self, making it difficult to distinguish whether feeling states are internal or external. Sometimes what we might consider dishonest could also be a form of doubling down on a feeling. I think SD25 did this when she told family members her ex BF shoved her. Later, it became "It felt like he pushed me" after she felt saddened to see him removed from her life after her mother (also BPD) insisted that feeling hit and being hit were the same thing because they both hurt.

That's a great insight to share and a great example.

When the mother of our children cried out when I was holding her, "you abandoned me! It felt just like my father!" I knew deep down it was done. Though she did have a point, even if I wasn't the one out clubbing and hooking up, I had been cast as the avatar and proxy for her unresolved pain.

[Notwendy]

I had been cast as the avatar and proxy for her unresolved pain.


This seems similar with my BPD mother, except that it's everyone cast in that role, with her immediate family in the leading roles. It's been frustrating and sad, because we are the ones who are the most invested in her well being, and yet the ones who she perceives have been the main agents of hurt to her.

[Riv3rW0lf]

I had been cast as the avatar and proxy for her unresolved pain.

This is the realization that led to me cutting contact with my BPD mother.

When I went to her house last November, it became apparent that she was not living in the present.

Once, she even went as far as calling herself "mama" to my kids, and calling me "grandma". I looked at her in confusion, and she tried to frame it another way, but it wasn't a mistake, it didn't feel like it anyway, and it happened many times... I think it was a slip out of how she was feeling inside... She was reliving some kind of unresolved conflict with her own mother, using my children and me as a proxy and me as the main culprit/persecutor. It was really strange to see that... I had never been close enough to her to notice this kind of behaviors, I held distance with her as a teenager to protect myself. This was the first time I was actually trying to bond with her consciously and it was a bit traumatic honestly.

In her emails, she also accused me of being exactly like my father, and proceeded to dump all her unresolved conflict with him on me.

So no matter what I do, it seems she is unable to see me. I am a proxy for her unresolved traumas, and as such, I am also a terrible trigger for her.

I do believe she rearranges "reality" to meet her emotional world. She is not lying, in the sense where she really believes what she says. when she goes through a negative emotion, she loses tract of reality and reenact her past traumas with whomever is around. I like the idea that she never learned to "master reality", it makes sense.

It is impossible to resolve an actual conflict that exist in the present and in our relationship, because she is not solving this problem, she is reenacting something else through the conflict I am trying to resolve. I am talking about A, B and C, anchored in reality and in my relationship with her specifically, while she is talking about 1, 2 and 3 that happened somewhere in her lifetime with other people, and will mention D, which is true but irrelevant and add to the confusion.

My brothers don't seem to suffer from the same kind of projections for some reasons. They seem casted as her rescuers and protectors, while I am casted as the main persecutor. Sometimes, she will paint me as a savior, all white and shiny, but usually, it flips back to persecutor as soon as I am to a specific emotional distance.  

It seems I can only "help" her from a safe distance. And I can only help myself by staying away.