i feel so numb/lost, i want to recover, but have no idea where to start

[Downtown]

Justified, the behaviors you describe -- self loathing, inability to trust, lack of impulse control, emotional instability, cycle of push-away and pull-back behavior, fragile self image, and black-white thinking -- are classic traits of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). Significantly, every adult on the planet occasionally exhibits ALL of the BPD traits, albeit at a low level if the person is emotionally healthy.

 

At issue, then, is whether you have such behavioral traits at such a strong level that, by distorting your perceptions of other peoples' intentions, they are undermining your ability to sustain LTRs with loved ones and close friends. I don't know the answer to that question. You can find out, however, by seeing a clinical psychologist to obtain a professional opinion on what it is you are dealing with.

I have done things that I feel ashamed about. I have ...come to loathe who I am.

If you have strong BPD traits, you are carrying an enormous amount of shame you acquired at about age 3 or 4 -- shame about things you never actually did. Children mistakenly believe they are the center of the universe and hence must be at fault for things going on around them. This is why BPDers (those with strong traits) carry enormous shame about things they had no control over.

I felt So guilty and ashamed of myself...I felt like I was the cause of everything and became so sad...I felt so pained that I cut myself.

A recent academic study (pub. 2004) found that most cutters are women suffering from BPD. Indeed, one of the nine hallmarks of people having strong BPD traits is cutting and other types of deliberate self harm. It usually occurs when the BPDer's internal pain is so severe that she will seek relief by relocating the pain to the outside of the body. The cutting, then, actually reduces her overall sense of pain. It also is done when the BPDer is so numb to feelings that she will harm herself in a desperate attempt to feel something, anything at all.

I cannot trust anyone.

If you have strong BPD traits, you likely experienced a trauma at the very age (3 or 4) when you were trying to develop a sense of trust and strong self image. When that process is interrupted, you are stuck with an inability to trust and an unstable, fragile sense of who you are -- until you get professional training on how to repair that damage.

I feel like my Entire life has been this one big lie I keep telling myself so that I can keep my head up and pretend like nothing ever happened....

This is understandable if you have strong BPD traits. BPDers have such a fragile self image that they look to others for cues as to how they should be acting. They behave in that expected manner in order to be accepted and fit in. The result, however, is that they often feel like they are being "fake."

On the outside I am a very intelligent, fun, and out-going person.... I now realize how fake it all is;

Actually, you are those things on the inside too. The problem is not that you lack those attributes but, rather, that you don't have them with you consistently. Due to your emotional instability, you often will have to fake it. But not all the time.

I now feel like I am out of my body, looking down at this person I so direly wish I could really be....

It is common for a person with strong BPD traits to have such out-of-body feelings. It arises from the lack of a strong, integrated sense of who you are.

I have always had Tons of friends and never found it hard to meet people. But I have never in my life felt like I had a true friend.

Like I said last week, you do fine around casual friends, business associates, classmates, and total strangers. People don't trigger your two fears (abandonment and engulfment) until they become very close. You rarely permit that to occur. And, when you do, they will start triggering your fears, with the result that you start fights to push them away.

I am also very successful (especially academically).

If you are a BPDer, that is not surprising. BPDers have a problem with stability, not with intelligence. High functioning BPDers often excel in demanding professions such as being an attorney, doctor, nurse, social worker, or psychologist. My view is that BPDers generally have to be very smart to survive their stressful childhoods.

When I was little (I can't even remember exactly what age) I was molested by my dad.... Another major event in my life was when my mom died. She committed suicide and hung herself. I was the one who found her.

A recent study (pub. 2008) found that 70% of BPDers reported that they had been abused or abandoned in childhood. Significantly, most abused children do NOT develop BPD. But it greatly raises the risk of doing so. On the other hand, you describe your mother as volatile and unstable. If she was emotionally unavailable and non-validating when you were young, most of the damage could have come from her.

I made all my stuffed animals have sex with each other and I would pretend to have sex with them.

Do you still have a collection of stuffed animals? I ask because it is common for BPDers to maintain such collections in adulthood, trying to create a sense of the wonderful childhood they missed out on. Moreover, one can love stuffed animals without fearing that they will abandon you or reject you.

I just keep thinking to this day that if i wasn't such a god awful horrible person, and just showed her one ounce that i cared or loved her, she would still be here today.

That is a powerful feeling arising from the hurt little four-year-old girl who is still deep inside your mind. Don't believe it. You can learn how to intellectually challenge such false feelings. If you actually do have strong BPD traits, my guess is that you inherited a genetic predisposition to such traits from your mother. That would explain much of her unstable behavior and also explain why your dad suddenly "changed" for the better when married to his second wife.

I trust [my BF] with My Life and know I can count on him to be there for me no Matter what.

If your posts are accurate, you believe that only at an intellectual level. At a gut level, however, you are incapable of trusting him for more than a few days at a time. You can learn to do so but it will require professional guidance.

i pick fights with him about Every Single Little Thing. And make Huge deals about Everything. Every fight that turns big, I end up Screaming at him to tell me that he doesn't really love me or never really cared about me all along. It just comes out of my mouth.

Like I said, you are incapable of trusting him for very long. Until you learn to trust yourself, you won't be able to trust him. Most of the fights, however, are not about your lack of trust and jealousy. Rather, you start them -- when you are feeling engulfed (like you are losing your self identity) -- in order to push him away.

 

This gives you breathing space. You are unaware that you are doing so because the apparent "cause" of the fight -- an excuse for being angry with him -- is manufactured in your subconscious. At a conscious level, you really believe that he is guilty of that infraction (which is so minor you cannot remember it several days later).

i just feel like i need to Look for any little hidden thing that will reveal he Actually is an Ass or hasnt cared for me all along.

Part of that need to find a fault arises, as I said, from your need to get relief from engulfment. Part of it is likely due to your need to validate your false self image of being "The Victim." Because your self image is so fragile, that notion of being "The Victim" may be the closest thing to a self image that you have. So you keep a death grip on it, often looking for "validation." And part of the need to find fault likely arises from your self loathing, which has you convinced he will eventually discover the "real you" and abandon you.

I am determined to fix me no matter what; and i would please like some input, ...or advice on where to start.

While you are waiting for an appointment with a clinical psychologist, I suggest you start participating (or at least lurking) at BPDrecovery.com. Because BPD traits are egosyntonic -- i.e., invisible to the person having them -- it is very unusual to meet a BPDer who is self aware.

 

In my personal life, I've met numerous BPDers -- and was even married to one -- but have never knowingly met one who is self aware. Hence, if you do have strong BPD traits, you are one of those rare individuals who has an amazing level of self awareness. If so, you can meet a hundred other rare gems like yourself at that website.

 

I also suggest you read Borderline Personality Demystified, which is popular with the self-aware BPDers I've communicated with. If you have most BPD traits at a strong level, I believe you will find that book reads like a story of your life. If you decide that you do have strong BPD traits, and if you want to give your BF a book about them, I suggest you give him Stop Walking on Eggshells. It is the #1 best selling BPD book targeted to the partners of BPDers.

[Downtown]

Justified, the behaviors you describe -- self loathing, inability to trust, lack of impulse control, emotional instability, cycle of push-away and pull-back behavior, fragile self image, and black-white thinking -- are classic traits of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). Significantly, every adult on the planet occasionally exhibits ALL of the BPD traits, albeit at a low level if the person is emotionally healthy.

 

At issue, then, is whether you have such behavioral traits at such a strong level that, by distorting your perceptions of other peoples' intentions, they are undermining your ability to sustain LTRs with loved ones and close friends. I don't know the answer to that question. You can find out, however, by seeing a clinical psychologist to obtain a professional opinion on what it is you are dealing with.

I have done things that I feel ashamed about. I have ...come to loathe who I am.

If you have strong BPD traits, you are carrying an enormous amount of shame you acquired at about age 3 or 4 -- shame about things you never actually did. Children mistakenly believe they are the center of the universe and hence must be at fault for things going on around them. This is why BPDers (those with strong traits) carry enormous shame about things they had no control over.

I felt So guilty and ashamed of myself...I felt like I was the cause of everything and became so sad...I felt so pained that I cut myself.

A recent academic study (pub. 2004) found that most cutters are women suffering from BPD. Indeed, one of the nine hallmarks of people having strong BPD traits is cutting and other types of deliberate self harm. It usually occurs when the BPDer's internal pain is so severe that she will seek relief by relocating the pain to the outside of the body. The cutting, then, actually reduces her overall sense of pain. It also is done when the BPDer is so numb to feelings that she will harm herself in a desperate attempt to feel something, anything at all.

I cannot trust anyone.

If you have strong BPD traits, you likely experienced a trauma at the very age (3 or 4) when you were trying to develop a sense of trust and strong self image. When that process is interrupted, you are stuck with an inability to trust and an unstable, fragile sense of who you are -- until you get professional training on how to repair that damage.

I feel like my Entire life has been this one big lie I keep telling myself so that I can keep my head up and pretend like nothing ever happened....

This is understandable if you have strong BPD traits. BPDers have such a fragile self image that they look to others for cues as to how they should be acting. They behave in that expected manner in order to be accepted and fit in. The result, however, is that they often feel like they are being "fake."

On the outside I am a very intelligent, fun, and out-going person.... I now realize how fake it all is;

Actually, you are those things on the inside too. The problem is not that you lack those attributes but, rather, that you don't have them with you consistently. Due to your emotional instability, you often will have to fake it. But not all the time.

I now feel like I am out of my body, looking down at this person I so direly wish I could really be....

It is common for a person with strong BPD traits to have such out-of-body feelings. It arises from the lack of a strong, integrated sense of who you are.

I have always had Tons of friends and never found it hard to meet people. But I have never in my life felt like I had a true friend.

Like I said last week, you do fine around casual friends, business associates, classmates, and total strangers. People don't trigger your two fears (abandonment and engulfment) until they become very close. You rarely permit that to occur. And, when you do, they will start triggering your fears, with the result that you start fights to push them away.

[Downtown]

I am also very successful (especially academically).

If you are a BPDer, that is not surprising. BPDers have a problem with stability, not with intelligence. High functioning BPDers often excel in demanding professions such as being an attorney, doctor, nurse, social worker, or psychologist. My view is that BPDers generally have to be very smart to survive their stressful childhoods.

When I was little (I can't even remember exactly what age) I was molested by my dad.... Another major event in my life was when my mom died. She committed suicide and hung herself. I was the one who found her.

A recent study (pub. 2008) found that 70% of BPDers reported that they had been abused or abandoned in childhood. Significantly, most abused children do NOT develop BPD. But it greatly raises the risk of doing so. On the other hand, you describe your mother as volatile and unstable. If she was emotionally unavailable and non-validating when you were young, most of the damage could have come from her.

I made all my stuffed animals have sex with each other and I would pretend to have sex with them.

Do you still have a collection of stuffed animals? I ask because it is common for BPDers to maintain such collections in adulthood, trying to create a sense of the wonderful childhood they missed out on. Moreover, one can love stuffed animals without fearing that they will abandon you or reject you.

I just keep thinking to this day that if i wasn't such a god awful horrible person, and just showed her one ounce that i cared or loved her, she would still be here today.

That is a powerful feeling arising from the hurt little four-year-old girl who is still deep inside your mind. Don't believe it. You can learn how to intellectually challenge such false feelings. If you actually do have strong BPD traits, my guess is that you inherited a genetic predisposition to such traits from your mother. That would explain much of her unstable behavior and also explain why your dad suddenly "changed" for the better when married to his second wife.

I trust [my BF] with My Life and know I can count on him to be there for me no Matter what.

If your posts are accurate, Justified, that is true only at an intellectual level. At a gut level, you are incapable of trusting him for more than a few days at a time. You can learn to do so but it will require time and professional guidance.

i pick fights with him about Every Single Little Thing. And make Huge deals about Everything. Every fight that turns big, I end up Screaming at him to tell me that he doesn't really love me or never really cared about me all along. It just comes out of my mouth.

Like I said, you are incapable of trusting him for very long. Until you learn to trust yourself, you won't be able to trust him. Most of the fights, however, are not about your lack of trust and jealousy. Rather, you start them -- when you are feeling engulfed (like you are losing your self identity) -- in order to push him away.

 

This gives you breathing space. You are unaware that you are doing so because the apparent "cause" of the fight -- an excuse for being angry with him -- is manufactured in your subconscious. At a conscious level, you really believe that he is guilty of that infraction (which is so minor you cannot remember it several days later).

[Downtown]

i just feel like i need to Look for any little hidden thing that will reveal he Actually is an Ass or hasnt cared for me all along.

Part of that need to find a fault arises, as I said, from your need to get relief from engulfment. Part of it is likely due to your need to validate your false self image of being "The Victim." Because your self image is so fragile, that notion of being "The Victim" may be the closest thing to a self image that you have. So you keep a death grip on it, often looking for "validation." And part of the need to find fault likely arises from your self loathing, which has you convinced he will eventually discover the "real you" and abandon you.

I am determined to fix me no matter what; and i would please like some input, ...or advice on where to start.

While you are waiting for an appointment with a clinical psychologist, I suggest you start participating (or at least lurking) at BPDrecovery.com. Because BPD traits are egosyntonic -- i.e., invisible to the person having them -- it is very unusual to meet a BPDer who is self aware.

 

In my personal life, I've met numerous BPDers -- and was even married to one -- but have never knowingly met one who is self aware. Hence, if you do have strong BPD traits, you are one of those rare individuals who has an amazing level of self awareness. If so, you can meet a hundred other rare gems like yourself at that website.

 

I also suggest you read Borderline Personality Demystified, which is popular with the self-aware BPDers I've communicated with online. If you have most BPD traits at a strong level, I believe you will find that book reads like a story of your life. If you decide that you do have strong BPD traits, and if you want to give your BF a book about them, I suggest you give him Stop Walking on Eggshells. It is the #1 best selling BPD book targeted to the partners of BPDers.

[Downtown]

i just feel like i need to Look for any little hidden thing that will reveal he Actually is an Ass or hasnt cared for me all along.

Part of that need to find a fault arises, as I said, from your need to get relief from engulfment. Part of it is likely due to your need to validate your false self image of being "The Victim." Because your self image is so fragile, that notion of being "The Victim" may be the closest thing to a self image that you have. So you keep a death grip on it, often looking for "validation." And part of the need to find fault likely arises from your self loathing, which has you convinced he will eventually discover the "real you" and abandon you.

I am determined to fix me no matter what; and i would please like some input, ...or advice on where to start.

While you are waiting for an appointment with a clinical psychologist, I suggest you start participating (or at least lurking) at BPDrecovery.com. Because BPD traits are egosyntonic -- i.e., invisible to the person having them -- it is very unusual to meet a BPDer who is self aware.

 

In my personal life, I've met numerous BPDers -- and was even married to one -- but have never knowingly met one who is self aware. Hence, if you do have strong BPD traits, you are one of those rare individuals who has an amazing level of self awareness. If so, you can meet a hundred other rare gems like yourself at that website.

 

I also suggest you read Borderline Personality Demystified, which is popular with the self-aware BPDers I've communicated with. If you have most BPD traits at a strong level, I believe you will find that book reads like a story of your life. If you decide that you do have strong BPD traits, and if you want to give your BF a book about them, I suggest you give him Stop Walking on Eggshells. It is the #1 best selling BPD book targeted to the partners of BPDers.

[turnera]

When I was little (I can't even remember exactly what age) I was molested by my dad.

My dad is a good person; I Know he loves me. He has done so much for me and I can see that he really cares about me...

 

justified, Jerry Sandusky was a 'good person.' And he ruined the lives of dozens of boys whom he 'loved.'

 

Incest and rape is a SICKNESS, justified. Your dad is sick. And abuse victims nearly always side with their abuser. Cite their 'love.' You are still being abused.

 

Nothing is going to help you but a professional psychologist. I'm sorry, but you can't fix this yourself. If you think you can't afford it, go to your city hall and ask them to help you find the resources you need to find a counselor whom you can afford. If you don't, you will spend the rest of your life sabotaging every relationship you develop out of misquided self-hatred.

 

{{{justified}}}

[Downtown]

i just feel like i need to Look for any little hidden thing that will reveal he Actually is an Ass or hasnt cared for me all along.

Part of that need to find a fault arises, as I said, from your need to get relief from engulfment. Part of it is likely due to your need to validate your false self image of being "The Victim." Because your self image is so fragile, that notion of being "The Victim" may be the closest thing to a self image that you have. So you keep a death grip on it, often looking for "validation." And part of the need to find fault likely arises from your self loathing, which has you convinced he will eventually discover the "real you" and abandon you.

I am determined to fix me no matter what; and i would please like some input, ...or advice on where to start.

While you are waiting for an appointment with a clinical psychologist, I suggest you start participating (or at least lurking) at BPDrecovery.com. Because BPD traits are egosyntonic -- i.e., invisible to the person having them -- it is very unusual to meet a BPDer who is self aware. In my personal life, I've met numerous BPDers -- and was even married to one -- but have never knowingly met one who is self aware. Hence, if you do have strong BPD traits, you are one of those rare individuals who has an amazing level of self awareness. If so, you can meet a hundred other rare gems like yourself at that website.

 

I also suggest you read Borderline Personality Demystified, which is popular with the many self-aware BPDers I've communicated with online. If you have most BPD traits at a strong level, I believe you will find that book reads like a story of your life. If you decide that you do have strong BPD traits, and if you want to give your BF a book about them, I suggest you give him Stop Walking on Eggshells. It is the #1 best selling BPD book targeted to the partners of BPDers.

[goodthingscome]

I just want to reach out with a big warm hug.

[William]

Bumping this up for the thread starter's attention. New postings have been approved. My apologies for the delay. I was on vacation. No reason I can see for the software to moderate the postings. My guess is the poster is posting from an IP address forum software has identified on a blacklist. I'll monitor future posts. Carry on.

[Downtown]

William, thanks so much for your help. Justified, I apologize for the duplicative posts. When the software blocked my posts, I made several repeated attempts to post by breaking my lengthy post into smaller posts, suspecting that I had somehow exceeded a limit on length. Several of the shorter versions were blocked too until William approved all of them.

[justified3474]

hey everyone,

i am truly thankful for everyone's comments. there's been a lot going on in my life right now - i have read everyone's comments, just havent had time to respond yet. give me some time to really soak in, look up all the advice everyone's been giving and then make a response.

thanks again and talk soon!

[Downtown]

Married, thanks so much for sharing your experience. Like you, I was married to an abusive spouse (15 years in my case) who had been sexually abused for years by her own father. He also molested her two sisters and, she believes, her brother too. I eventually came to realize that my exW suffers from strong traits of BPD.

[Downtown]

Married, you are not describing a woman with strong BPD traits. BPDers are not monsters. Rather, they are emotionally unstable people with a stunted emotional development -- thought to be largely caused by the childhood trauma. They therefore alternate between loving you and hating you and can flip from one state to the other in ten seconds.

 

If your exW truly was incapable of ever loving you, it is far more likely she has strong traits of NPD (Narcissistic PD) or ASPD (Antisocial PD). Whether or not she has the full blown disorder is a determination that only a professional can make.

[sendme]

The abandonment fear is easily triggered whenever your BF does some minor thing that makes you question his loyalty and his love. Until you learn how to love and trust yourself, it will be impossible to love and trust anyone else. But excellent treatment programs are available to teach you how to do exactly that.

 

Similarly, the engulfment fear is easily triggered whenever your BF spends an intimate evening or a great weekend together with you. Although you crave love and intimacy like everyone else, you likely find the experience very uncomfortable -- even frightening at times -- because you feel you are vanishing into thin air, being taken over by his strong personality. It is a feeling of being controlled or suffocated by him. To get breathing space and a sense of your own identity, you will push him away -- usually by creating an argument over nothing. This is why it is difficult to recall what you two were arguing over. And this is why your worst arguments will tend to happen right after your very best times (when you were having a wonderful intimate experience). The engulfment fear arises because you have a weak, unstable sense of who you are -- which is why you sometimes feel "fake," feel you have an emptiness inside, and may even feel you are "outside your body" at times.

 

The main reason that the combination of these two fears is so devastating to your close relationships is that they both lie on the very same spectrum. That is, they are the two polar extremes of the same spectrum. This means that you and your BF are in a lose-lose situation. As he backs away to give you breathing space and avoid triggering your engulfment fear, he is necessarily moving closer to your abandonment fear at the other end of the spectrum.

 

Significantly, his repeated attempts to find a Goldilocks position -- not too close but not too far away -- all likely will end in failure until you get professional guidance. Such a midpoint solution cannot exist until you've had several years of training to learn how to reduce those two fears -- and how to do self soothing to calm yourself down.

 

 

Downtown... I want to talk to you... find me... I couldn't figure out how to PM you...

[Downtown]

Downtown... I want to talk to you... find me... I couldn't figure out how to PM you...

Hello, Sendme. Until you've become an established member by staying longer and writing more posts, you are not permitted to PM and none of us are permitted to PM you. If you click on "FAQ" above, you will find the rules describing that -- but the rules do not say how long or how many posts are required. I therefore posted a response in your "Bad Relationship" thread.