Last update here:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=357905.0I've worked a little bit in therapy on differentiating between real crises/real red flags, and me artificially elevating a generally normal occurrence to feel like a real crisis. The best description I can come up with is that a real crisis is something that actually shows up on my "BPD radar" -- it's a real signal -- whereas when I artificially raise the intensity level of a normal situation up to a crisis situation, that's me layering my "filter" over it. I talk a bit about that idea
here if that helps.
Anyway, the idea is that sometimes, based on real experiences and Mom and Stepdad's historical choices and actions, I do have a pretty good sense of what "normal looking" things are actually weird and might point to a conflict coming up. However, because I've been operating so far above emotional baseline for so long, I do have a knee-jerk reflex to put a "BPD filter" on normal events, "just in case", so that I can be prepared if it turns into A Thing.
It is not good for my nervous system to operate at a 10/10 vigilance 24/7, so my T has suggested that I work on differentiating between real signals and ones that I put my filter over.
...
I got an opportunity to practice that on Sunday.
Brief background; we are not a "Hallmark holidays together for the kids" two-family setup. Occasionally (back when the kids had a counselor working with them and all the four adults) we adults might give each other a birthday gift, a Christmas gift or card, or (only once) Mom texted me to wish me Happy Mothers Day. This stuff was generally always from one
pair of adults (i.e., me plus H, or Mom plus Stepdad), not from one individual adult to one other, and on "socially recognized occasions". But I could probably count on one hand how often this happened. There is not like a strong regular record of "every year kells76 & H give Mom a birthday card, and every year Mom and Stepdad give H a Christmas present".
Stepdad was picking up the kids from our place, and pretty much the first thing he did when we opened the door was to tell me that he had something for me. He gave me some stickers he got from his workplace that were sort of related to my occupation, saying he'd already given SD18 a ton of them (both kids really like stickers for their water bottles). I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was pretty polite and noncommittal, like, "wow, thanks, cool". What H told me later is that he'd happened to be looking at SD18 when Stepdad gave me the stickers, and she rolled her eyes.
I am working on understanding if my radar (accurate perception of PD weirdness) or filter (elevating a "generally normal" occurrence to A Thing) is at work here; or, maybe it's both.
On the "radar" side, Stepdad has a history of actively pursuing unavailable women going back nearly 20 years -- that's not debatable. There has never been gift-giving between the adults beyond socially acceptable occasions, and those were infrequent. And now that he has been with his girlfriend "officially" and publicly for a while, part of me wonders if he wants to pursue someone again.
On the "filter" side, it's
stickers, not flowers or wine or jewelry or something big or expensive. He may have given me those for some odd reason having very little to do with me. I don't feel unsafe or outmatched -- I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, as my mom would say -- and me spending time and energy thinking about this interaction is probably much more than it merits.
If I were to put together where I am now, maybe it's 25% "radar" (yeah, it is actually weird, and there's some history giving it context beyond a "normal boring event") and 75% "filter" (spending more mental energy "figuring it out" and "forecasting what it means" than it deserves)?
I am also sorting out if it would help SD18 if I mentioned it to her. I'm wondering if it might be beneficial for her to know that yeah, I see this stuff going on, and she doesn't have to worry about if I'm OK or if I get the dynamics or if I'm taken in by it. Maybe dropping the comment out there: "That was kind of odd when Stepdad gave me the stickers" and see if she does anything with that.
I'm trying to walk the tightrope of not badmouthing Mom or Stepdad, yet at the same time, I don't want to invalidate by essentially responding to her, whenever she bring up something she struggles with about them, "Well, I'm not going to talk about that with you".
She has been receptive to problem-solving approaches where if there is an issue at Mom's house, I provide a solution for her to do, without talking about whose job it should have been to solve it (i.e., there was/is a really bad flea problem, so I bought SD18 a bottle of flea spray and told her that she and SD16 needed to read the instructions and make sure their cat and little brother followed them), but I don't really go into "so what's Mom doing where she's too busy to do that for you?" In those, the focus isn't on "who should have done what, who is bad and who is good", but bypasses that to "here is the issue, I can help you with a solution". This doesn't feel like a "problem solving" conversation.
Anyway -- working on radar vs filter, and wondering if this is a situation where telling SD18 "that was a weird interaction, I definitely have thoughts about it" would be validating her experience or pushing mine on her.
