Managing negative self talk

[DetoxLilly]

Hi everyone,

I’m fairly new to this site. I’ve only recently begun really doing a deep dive into BPD and the reality that my eldest sister is most likely undiagnosed (or unwilling to accept a diagnosis at this point).

I’m the youngest of four but all my other siblings are from my dad’s first marriage which ended in a nasty divorce. My parents met after the divorce and had me some years later. It was always a rocky relationship, especially with my oldest sister but once our other sister passed away in a car accident when I was 15, all hell broke loose. I was in high school and my remaining siblings took it upon themselves to make my and my life a living nightmare. My eldest sister, who has shown significant signs of having BPD, has done the worst of it. She has abused me psychologically, emotionally, and at times threatened physical violence while painting herself to friends and family as a doting, supportive, peace loving sister.

I’ve been in therapy for about 14 years on and off. For the past 7 I’ve been as consistent as possible and after two years of serious back and forth, I finally decided to cut her off completely 5 years ago. I posted about how she’s been trying to come into my life via my workplace (I work with a major sport where we live).

During the time we were still having contact, I was in a really rough state mentally. I suffered from heavy depression following my sister’s accident and my other siblings’ war against me. They said awful things to me and my parents constantly and there were times when I was afraid for dear life that given the chance they would’ve actually clobbered me just for the hell of it. They went so far as to tell my cousins that they only wished me ill and hoped I’d ruin my life just to get back at my dad for divorcing their mom.

Needless to say, all of this has played over and over in my head, consciously and unconsciously for half of my life. It was kind of like a snowball effect with my eldest sister and ultimately I had to cut her off because 90% of our interactions were toxic, terrifying and left me in a state of pure misery. I had been able to slowly detox from the experiences, mostly just ignoring it all. Now that she’s back and she’s begun the games again, it’s all flooded back with a vengeance. I am unable to shake her and my brother’s words from my mind. She has changed my name from spoiled princess brat to evil witch who wants to ruin her life and honestly, it’s ingrained itself into my self worth. My brain speaks to me as if it were true. I know healing isn’t linear. I know these things are not true, logically speaking. I know just the fact that I can see it for what it is is a step in the right direction for I am mindful of what is going on but I am also exhausted.

I worked so hard to try and move on with my life after the horrible process of deciding to cut her out. The guilt and the pain of cutting off a sister when I had already lost one was too difficult to put into words. I’m so tired of this fear and guilt. I’m so tired of having my brain repeat all these nasty things to me. It’s like having my sister on repeat telling me I am not worthy of what I have. That I don’t deserve good things. That my success is only a product of being “the golden child” and that I stole
It all from her. She really does such a great job at reducing me to absolutely nothing and it is so hard to break that pattern.

She is forcing herself into my life again and I feel helpless. I feel like I can’t do anything about it. Like this is just it. I’m just going to live in the miserable groundhog nightmare forever. I don’t know what to do. Is this normal? Is this just part of the process? I’m really overwhelmed and I just don’t know what else to do. I’d appreciate any words of advice. I’m just so tired.

[zachira]

It sounds like you are trying to build a healthy separate emotional system that is authentic, based on the real you and not what your family members have said about you. Being present in the moment, facing all the overwhelming emotions, can be extremely challenging when there is childhood abuse and ongoing abuse from your whole family. In my case, I could not move forward with all the abuses I suffer from my family members and a large extended family and the flying monkeys they recruit, and what worked for me was EMDR therapy. EMDR therapy can be extremely overwhelming, and what seems to be the most current view on resolving trauma is to gradually learn to manage the overwhelming emotions by bringing oneself back to baseline, a state in which one is neither too hypervigilant nor too shut down, a state in which one feels calm and collected AND is able to work through any overwhelming emotions. Many therapists have quit doing EMDR therapy because of how overwhelmed the clients were, yet many people, including members on this site, say that EMDR made a big difference. What many members are doing, is working on keeping themselves in a calm tranquil state by checking in with themselves often and practicing activities that help them process their emotions before they become overwhelming like meditation, yoga, long walks, support from people who are empathetic and able to listen, etc., I was unable to benefit from meditation, yoga, therapy, etc., until I did EMDR. The EMDR was overwhelming for me; it was like being faced with all the pain I was dealing with all at once, yet it worked for me and made me able to do self care like meditation, yoga, seek out healthy relationships etc., My heart goes out to you knowing that it is so difficult to heal when the abuses are ongoing. It seems your sister is very threatened by you and wants to keep you down. I have had to face that my family, including the large extended family, avoids their uncomfortable feelings by scapegoating other family members, been doing this for up to 6 generations as far as I know. It can help to remember that how a person treats others is really a reflection of how they feel about themselves. What can you tell us that is true about yourself that your family is never going to recognize?

[livednlearned]

I cannot imagine having my uBPD sibling show up where I work. I really identify with the way this must make you feel, how powerless it can be when there are no good ways to protect yourself.

It's like a shark in the water  

Have you done any EMDR like zachira has?

There may be a part of you screaming for a way to neutralize your sister, and maybe the suggestion to get therapy seems lame. The body-based therapies are a bit different than talk therapists, though, if you're new to them. They are evidence-backed, too. The book Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is pretty profound for a lot of us who have internalized trauma and carry it in our bodies.

As adults we can get out of the shark-infested water but sometimes our bodies convince us we're still kids who can't. If you haven't come across them before, EMDR and somatic experiencing therapies kind of unravel the knots and fight/flight/freeze instincts disengage. For many of us who internalized chronic trauma in childhood, it's like our bodies are constantly fighting sharks. Or we come back into contact with sharks and we freeze, even though we've come so far in learning to manage them.

Talk therapy helped me in a lot of ways but the body-based trauma therapies helped something else I didn't even know was there until healing it.

These types of therapy obviously won't make your sister go away but taking some measure of control over yourself can go a long way to diminishing the threat you feel. She may recognize she can't get a reaction out of you and move on.

If she is like my sibling, she may take tremendous delight in having a kind of silent, threatening control over you.

My sibling likes to shoot menacing looks with an almost imperceptible smile, like he's a nice guy just enjoying himself. Only I know that he's threatening me.

At my father's 80th birthday, there was a buffet so people were getting up and down to serve themselves. My niece ended up talking to me, one of the first times we've talked alone (there were 10 years of estrangement between me and my brother). Suddenly her demeanor changed and her facial expression went from open and relaxed to tense and scared. My sibling had spotted her from across the room and with a look he pressed a button in her head and she all but fled. He probably forbade her to talk to me.

This kind of covert aggression can be even worse than the overt aggression, I find.

With your sister and the witch/curse thing, that strikes me as more of an overt type of aggression that exposes her. To you, it blends in with the covert behaviors and may be hard to separate but 9 out of 10 people are going to think she's nuts.

The challenge is re-training your body to believe that she's less of a threat than she wants you to believe so you can make decisions without feeling terrorized.

[NarcsEverywhere]

What I do when someone’s thought tries to invade my mind like that, is I disagree with the thought, but I don’t fight or judge it, I call it bs and explain why, then I try to replace it with a better belief/thought.

Another thing you can do is try to say the word “pass or no thanks” something non judgmental.

At one counseling place they had us imagine a stop sign and stick our hand out and say stop.

If it still bothers you, a feeling might underly it, so journaling about how you feel about it all can take gas out of it.

Lastly you can just try to improve your beliefs about yourself. I find the belief “What matters most is what I think of me, not what others think of me” is most helpful in combating what others think of me.

Sorry about the trauma with the accident and fallout, sounds really tough to go through.

[HappyChappy]

Hi DetoxLilly,

Sorry to hear your struggle, I get this a lot to. What's worked best for me during negative thoughts (depends on how hard they are to break) is:

* Distraction - do something else that engages you (exercise , art etc...)

* Focus on relaxation - hot baths, exercise etc...

* Positive affirmation tapes (I use ones on youtube)

* Or a change of scenery to take you away from all the triggers. Take a holiday from your  worries (I'd avoid Afghanistan this time of the year, it's too hot).

[HappyChappy]

EMDR therapy can be extremely overwhelming, and what seems to be the most current view on resolving trauma is to gradually learn to manage the overwhelming emotions by bringing oneself back to baseline

Hey zachira,
Thanks for sharing. I've been gradually managing for years and the NHS (state healthcare) keeps losing it's ERDM  therapist to private practice, so their waiting list keeps growing. But if it can speed things up, I don't mind being overwhelmed. Is it more overwhelming that a panic attack ?  How many sessions did you have ? Do you know of any good sources of info on this ?

[zachira]

The challenge I had with EMDR therapy was that I was disassociating for days afterwards. My therapist was giving me a one hour session. Once the therapist gave me 11/2 hour sessions which is the normal protocol for EMDR, I was fine.

[TelHill]

My therapist recommended EFT (Emotional Freedom Tapping - it's an odd name I realize) to help calm me during stressful times. (I do it 2x daily because life is stressful!)

I move my right hand to tap my left and then right shoulder for 3-5 minutes straight going back and forth. . That's it. I sometimes time it to a song I like from YouTube.

 I feel calmer. It's helped me get out of the house when I feel like staying here due to fear, depression. It took me a few times to feel some relief. Then it's been been immediate after the first few tries.

No memories come up. She told me it's like getting a welcome hug.

https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-eft-tapping