I've decided to go to a psychologist. Why? No real reason really in as nothing is happening that is any worse than normal in fact it's probably better than usual. But ok to be honest I prayed for guidance and whether I should be seeing someone and on the way back from the Gold Coast recently I met a girl on the plane who just started talking about how she is studying in this area and how she also has her own psych who she sees and funnily enough she also gave me a lift home from the airport. I figured this was kind of direction enough to give it a try.
I've never talked about my personal situation, my home life, my relationship status. But I plan to let you in on my world a little at a time as I feel comfortable and/or if I want to. Mainly to talk about it's relevence to the BPD and how it effects or impacts my life.
My partner who I have been with for almost 2 years has what is called OCPD. Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. This is not to be confused with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) These conditions are VERY different! similiar in some ways but not the same ball park! Then again I actually have a little bit of OCD they say, which helps me not to cut! ( I'm too 'in control' to want to cut thankfully lol) So between us we almost have a whole alphabet!!!!!!!!
Anyway with my BPD and his OCPD we are both reacting to each other. OCPD'rs find it difficult to connect emotionally and spend most of their time working and fullfilling tasks to get them perfect and they are often neat freaks and very controlling (did you say control? i'm allergic to controlling behaviour! argh) of those around them and will be exceptionally bossy and critical. Oh great! what a great mix! I don't think I even need to tell you guys what goes on in these four walls. Yes WORLD WAR 3!!!
Now in saying all this, being a positive person underneath all the crap and rubbish that BPD dishes out, or is it more I have learnt to turn aim to turn situations into positives where I can or as much as I possibly can I can honestly say that I believe that being in such a horrid, hard and perilous situation for the last 2 years of this relationship and sticking it through (whether I should have or not is another question) my issues have really been brought to the fore. I have cried bitter tears of rejection first brought on probably by my Father as a child. So maybe the pain I have suffered has enabled me to allow these hurts to surface in order to pray and ask God for his beautiful healing balm and touch and softly wipe all my sorrows away. This doesn't mean that I am now floating on air and feel like a completly new person. It just means to me that what used to devestate me doesn't feel quite as bad as before. But then there are many layers of the onion. I don't think all my pain can go in one foul swoop. It's more like a layer is taken off to leave the more sensitive skin of the onion underneath. It almost feels like the further I go the more exposed and fragile I feel as I go deeper into my past and begin to really get to the nitty gritty of what probably put me in this place in the beginning. As I'm not a professional therapist I don't know the origins of BPD, whether it is a genetic condition or it is learned behaviour. But I do believe I am a therapist as I learn 'myself' over time. I figure the more I get to know my insides and what makes me tick. What sets me off and how that relates to my childhood where I originally suffered feelings of powerlessness. For me it's not so much for the sake of digging up old hurtful memories just for the sake of it. As I say it's not so much the memories that I am digging for if any digging is going on, it's more the emotion that was behind it at the time. I find if I can feel that emotion, the one I couldn't articulate at the time when I first suffered it as a child and not just feel it but now as an adult articulate it to myself and/or to God at the same time I feel a real release as I give it over for him to take away. Or even by feeling that grief I felt at the time. The pain and the hurt and by describing it sometimes out loud and with tears, In other words feeling the grief and letting it pass I can actually trust that it does. You see I believe that all grief will take care of itself in our lives given the chance. But if we don't ever allow ourselves to feel it then we can't trust for it to pass like a wave. There is a difference in living in our past and living in grief and hanging around our childhood to use as and excuse for how we are and going there with a specific purpose to grow beyond those memories and to begin to heal and let that little child go. Sometimes I've even comforted that child as though she was another me and given her what she needed from me at the time. The understanding, the validation, the soothing words, the love. In doing that she has been happy to go and play just like any child who comes to an adult for those things and then after feeling the comfort is happy to go and play and forget it happened. I believe that when we didn't have that as kids we were left feeling neglected possibly and didn't have the ability to self soothe, so we began choosing other options like children do like banging thier heads to hurt themselves, screaming and tantrumming, expressing bullying or angry behaviour. Or many other things. Children don't have the ability to know thier feelings articulate how they feel always because they don't have those skills. Or they know that hurt me, I will go for comfort. Thier language is limited for starters and if a parent or carer can't validate thier feelings for them and also soothe them when they are at the important stage of growth and before they can learn these skills I believe they/ we can remain stuck.
Please understand this is my own analasys and I really don't know how the professionals see this. I can only speak from my university experience. I went to the university of Eve's life and I am now working on my Masters Degree. It's taken me all my life to complete my education and I probably will study for the next part until the day I die. These theories I am talking of I have only studied on myself and havn't released my findings before, so they really will be open to scrutiny and I can only go on my own limited findings and how they have worked in my case study. I would recommend you only use my thesis as a case study and not as a proven fact. Maybe just something more to add to your vast bank of knowledge that has yet to be proven.
I think with all our councelling and self help we can only use what works for us and not feel bad if something works for someone else and it doesn't quite fit for our lives.
I want to stress that for years there was a very large trend toward digging up childhoods which I think just made us going around in circles and find excuses to blame parents etc. But I am not talking about that. I'm suggesting that whatever resources or skills we use to work on 'our stuff' be used for the purpose of growth and actually moving forward toward a common goal and that is bettering our lives and the lives of those around us. In conclusion I judge a tree by it's fruit. If it is producing fruit and good fruit then I think that's a tree worth investing time and effort on and if not then it's not worth it. What I mean is by me using this way of growing that I have explained, if it producing good fruit in my life then I figure I am investing in the right tree. In digging at my past my relationship with my parents are actually improving because I am not seeking to blame but to get beyond my pain and then be able to forgive and love them for where they are at and who they are. and in raising the pain of my past I am noticing that my inner issues are becoming far less painful then to me that is all worthwhile. It is all good!
I'd really love to hear some feedback of what you might think or what also helps you and we can swap ideas. No one way is the right way, we all need help and as much as we can possibly use.
thanks again for listening
Eve

It's just not fair! I hate Bpd

Here I am all this time later, almost 10 months since my last post. I've been through hell and back and now I'm going through another real downer to say the least. Where will I start? OK, I'm gonna keep this short.
I went to a BPD course, hated it! It made me worse, I didn't fit in like the others. I felt like I couldn't be me, they wouldn't let me talk and talking is what helps. I had to sit down, shut up and just be a good girl! Exactly how I've felt all my life and that just made me want to explode. In the end I ran out during one of the breaks commenting to some of the other 'students' or should I say 'naughty Bpd children' crying hysterically and saying "I just can't do this, I just can't do this! "
They just stared as if to say 'oh yes the crazy one that can't get it together, the non conformist who was trouble anyway" I walked down the road not really caring that I was crying but as I went the incredible, huge relief came upon me and I began to feel some amount of peace. I wondered why I had put up with what I saw as abuse for so long in the first place and why I doubted what was and wasn't good for me. I could go on but I have to go to work so I have to make this as brief as possible.
So months down the track things really did improve for me, my relationship got better, we have had some beautiful times, he is OCPD and I felt that as I was asserting myself and seeing that it wasn't 'just me and my stuff' I was handling him better and not taking his crap either. But we still have had many battles to get through. I was still acting typically Bpd when in a rage about being common problems that go on in a relationship, well not all that common, he is one extreme and I am the other. If you know anything about Ocpd then you would know that Bpd and Ocpd are a bad combination in the alphabet. His 'stuff' really isn't good for my 'stuff'.
I got to the point of violence toward him and then finally he, me. When we finally were belting each other on the floor one day I realised I had to control myself as in take control or we would have to separate. I can only take control of my life not his that's why I say 'I' had to control myself. After all I was the one instigating the violence and I guess he just eventually retaliated after many punches in the arm and hits across the head etc. You can't blame a man for being unable to cope anymore and get to that point I guess. Well you can but you can't, I think you know what I mean. Nevertheless it was what I saw I had to do, I took responsibility. It didn't solve the whole issue behind the violence but it stopped it in it's tracks.
Anyway the problem is that with my Bpd whenever I have been physically violent I have managed to stop it mostly but then it goes to verbal or self harm. I have never cut myself but I my thoughts and actions are very self defeating and negative. I get very down on myself and can have suicidal or wanting to die thoughts. The pain is so excruciating any wonder, I mean who wouldn't want a way out? So yes I stopped hitting but then I went to just shouting, venting, swearing, saying horrible nasty things, ranting! You know the rap. Well the other day my partner wanted to 'instruct' me again (in my terms, tell me how to suck eggs AGAIN!) which I hate!! because I feel controlled demeaned and treated like a damn idiot and what do I do?
I say s h u t u p! very very loudly. This to me was my warning sign. He didn't get warned. He just got that red rag out and started waiving it to me again in my face. I got louder! and more furious. I was losing control ......................woops gone! I've lost it. Well the sleeves got rolled up and out came the bullets. pow pow pow pow pow. He got it with both barrel's. My tongue was wagging off with those pellets at a thousand miles an hour. In my mind I still wasn't out of control I was still just warning him and telling him this isn't acceptable to do this to me, now get out of my face, he stepped up the anti and his face said to me " Eve, you are looking at your fathers face right now, that aggressive hateful face that said you are despised young lady, because you are just such a horrible child" !!! I can still see my partners face. He hated me. I want so much to be loved when I'm hateable, I need so much to be loved when I'm bad, when I'm naughty, when I have feelings that I want heard. I don't know I just want to be loved full stop.
I want to be loved for just who I am, what I am.
How can I expect this from another human being, how can I expect this love that I am so needing when I mouth off and make myself so unlovable and unattractive to my partner.
You see I see no harm in it because I know what I mean and what is just frustration, fear, letting off steam and warning someone that they have to back off. I feel like a tiger who is saying "don't go near my cubs or I will have to bite you."
These are my kittens. My heart, My life, My rights, being heard, being listened to, respected, not not being walked over, equality.
What are your kittens? What do you want to say when you are angry?
what are you mad about that you didn't ever get heard that people threaten to do again?
anyway these are mine.
I live a life of frustration so much of it
A lot of my life is spent 'putting up' with things I don't like and basically just wearing it so as not to cause problems and so I feel accepted and fit in to society at large I guess
but when something sends me over the edge all that unfairness and feelings of "hey why do I have to hold this all in and put up with shit"? comes up. How come everyone else gets heard, or can put up with not being heard? I think they do get heard mostly. It's my voice that gets drowned out. The only way I can be heard is when I'm angry. Then people are forced to listen.
Problem is they hate me for it and think I'm nutz.
What a roundabout this is.
I feel like I've been on it forever and I'm getting dizzy.
Will I be on this forever?
Oh btw the reason I haven't been on this site is because I just feel like talking about BPD and concentrating on BPD makes me worse. I feel knowing what it is is good, but it can be very negative just concentrating on the negative aspects of it for me. I want answers. Sometimes just looking at the word BPD it can make me feel so helpless and quite literally sick in the stomach. The word reminds me of hopelessness. I can't feel that way or I won't want to go on. Everyone has to have hope. There is always hope. No matter what the situation. As much as I could give in and say "no there isn't" with Bpd. I HAVE to think hopefully. I have to fight to keep going and believing that there is either a light at the end of the tunnel. A reason for this or an answer that I haven't found yet. I don't know all the answers. I don't know if I'm just not seeing the obvious and/ or I'm a bad person who just hurts others and isn't repentant of it. I don't know if I'm just a failure because of my sin or if God sees me as a tryer or stubborn or what the go is.
I feel incredibly desperate and fearful beyond belief. I feel so fearful to the point that no one should live in fear because it's torment really. I don't know where this came from this Bpd. I don't know how I ended up with it and whether it will one day go or I will work through it. To be honest I long sometimes for the end of my life where there will be rest from all this hard work.
It's a jungle out there says my partner. No for me the jungle is in here, inside me. All those animals hanging on those trees and swinging on those vines that I don't ask to speak to me and annoy me with their annoying grunts and groans and threats of violence in the form of accusations about who I am and generally just being there and therefore not providing me with the silence of stillness and beautiful peace. All those loud shrieks they wake me in the middle of the night that keep me awake and give me tormenting dreams of my past mistakes and times I would prefer to forget. The camelion and the parrot that copies my voice and mocks me. The scary darkness where all I can see is eyes and I wonder what is going to get me next.
Why am I defensive they say. hahaha wouldn't you? I think. wouldn't you be?
Try living in your own personal jungle without puffing your chest out and being scary, looking weak and like you can be eating in one big gulp. Try living their without a weapon or two. Just try it, see how long you'll last.
People have no idea what the average Bpd has suffered and gone through and why we feel we 'have' to be angry and stay on our defense. How can they know? I'm jealous that they don't know, not that I would wish that on them but I'm jealous when my partner says "I don't understand because I just had a simple loving home, none of these things happened to me."
It's not fair that I went through it and now I am a mess because of it and now I can't even be understood for the result. That I now have to go through life feeling bad because I have anger, because I feel the need to be ready and on the defense.
it's just hard! that's all I'm saying and it's not fair.
Eve