Need from other BPD sufferers

[Lizrd3000]

When you are in a relationship, and something happens that triggers something inside of you that makes you think that your girlfriend/boyfriend will leave you, or hates you or doesn't love you anymore, what do you do?

 

I can't confront her anymore, she broke up with me before because of my insecurities ruling me over, I'm afraid if I talk to her about it she'll leave me again.

 

How do you stop thinking about it?

 

I'm not currently having one of these moments, but I know they'll come back again, and when they do, I want to be prepared and deal with them myself.

I know she loves me, but I also know when something triggers this thing inside me, I'll just disregard everything she does for me and says to me and think she'll leave me.

 

I'm wondering if anyone has any techniques to lessen the anxiety and thoughs and everything that comes with it.

 

I've already become less needy and clingy, as she is a VERY independant girl, she appreciates it, but I don't know how long it'll last

Edited November 17, 2013 by Lizrd3000

[AShogunNamedMarcus]

I'm going to bump this because what you describe is one of the toughest things I've dealt with.

 

Things feel like a threat to your emotional well being and happiness. Feeling threatened is likely giving you a fight or flight response. I think either response has it's consequences.

 

Now days, I am usually able to accept that things are the way they are. If something feels like a threat, I try to look at it objectively as if it were someone else. I try to use my knowledge of human nature to figure out what peoples' true motivations are.

 

Part of the problem is that people with BPD just can't accept the way life is. It's scary and it hurts so we either run from it or fight tooth and nail, which usually winds up making things worse.

[dreamingoftigers]

I found that as I got older and had that trigger stomped to death with me in a highly-toxic relationship (where my husband actually WOULD disappear for weeks at a time), that I got desensitized to it.

 

However, my husband and I have reconciled and even if I loaned him out to you, you probably wouldn't be able to fall head over heels in love and not want him to leave you. So, I have a couple of other suggestions that helped when he would trip my abandonment trigger.

 

Two books I read during that whole time helped me to detach from the pain (without detaching from loving him) and it helped me realize that even though it felt like sudden death, I still survive and it doesn't need to feel empty.

 

Taming Your Outer Child.

At first you read this thinking," oh God, I can't get past the first chapter of this drivel." But then when you do, it's awesome. The exercises may feel lame, but when you do them, you feel much better, much more in control. Like you don't have to have all of your feelings flood you and take over. And even if they do, it IS FINITE. Even if it knocks you down now, YOU CAN get back up and will when the physiological symptoms stop.

 

Start small. The first thing I did (which isn't part of the book) was I set a timer for 22 minutes every time the trigger was hit. I DID NOT allow myself to call or text during this time. Sometimes I slipped. But mostly I stuck to it, and the more I did, the better things got. 22 minutes where I HAD to will myself to do something else (like read or do math) until I got through the craving to call or check up on him. Then if after the timer went off, usually I was okay. If I wasn't.......I reset the timer. I've only had one time where the craving didn't die down after an hour. It feels like torture until your brain learns to distract itself and starts to automatically that "I crave this person, so now I need to do something else."

 

It makes you world a bigger place.

 

I firmly believe the abandonment trigger forms in infancy and is reinforced in childhood. That being said the book:

 

How to Break Your Addiction to a Person

Helps you realize that you aren't alone or "a freak/loser" (whatever) for having this trigger. It is simply something that is part of your makeup for now that you have to learn to cope with. It's important because you can drive away a healthy partner with the need for assurance and an unhealthy partner will use it to manipulate you. (My mother has done this to my father. She'll threaten to leave him when she's pissed enough abd he falls right in line, even though he's a real pill otherwise.)

 

As well, EMDR therapy firmly desensitized a lot of that abandonment trigger. I haven't finished my EMDR, so I still feel the backlash of it. But it is so reduced that I can function without that being a prevalent fear in my waking life.

 

I want to underline something: it does not tend to get better on its own, you have to put the WORK into it. And it is HARD. (But not so hard you need to hide under your blankets and cry, although I've been there too).

 

My Dad has not put the work in and I'm sure her crumple just as readily today as he would've nearly 40 years ago when he met my mother.

[AnyaNova]

I'm going to bump this because what you describe is one of the toughest things I've dealt with.

 

Things feel like a threat to your emotional well being and happiness. Feeling threatened is likely giving you a fight or flight response. I think either response has it's consequences.

 

Now days, I am usually able to accept that things are the way they are. If something feels like a threat, I try to look at it objectively as if it were someone else. I try to use my knowledge of human nature to figure out what peoples' true motivations are.

 

Part of the problem is that people with BPD just can't accept the way life is. It's scary and it hurts so we either run from it or fight tooth and nail, which usually winds up making things worse.

 

Now I am confused, because I experience this all the time. Is this something that spans the PD's or do I need to start wondering if I have BPD as well?

[AShogunNamedMarcus]

Now I am confused, because I experience this all the time. Is this something that spans the PD's or do I need to start wondering if I have BPD as well?

 

Uhh

 

Sometimes I don't know where one of my disorders ends and the other begins. They honestly kind of work together, and at the same time working against each other.

 

What I do know is that PDs can be confusing as hell.

[Lizrd3000]

I found that as I got older and had that trigger stomped to death with me in a highly-toxic relationship (where my husband actually WOULD disappear for weeks at a time), that I got desensitized to it.

 

However, my husband and I have reconciled and even if I loaned him out to you, you probably wouldn't be able to fall head over heels in love and not want him to leave you. So, I have a couple of other suggestions that helped when he would trip my abandonment trigger.

 

Two books I read during that whole time helped me to detach from the pain (without detaching from loving him) and it helped me realize that even though it felt like sudden death, I still survive and it doesn't need to feel empty.

 

Taming Your Outer Child.

At first you read this thinking," oh God, I can't get past the first chapter of this drivel." But then when you do, it's awesome. The exercises may feel lame, but when you do them, you feel much better, much more in control. Like you don't have to have all of your feelings flood you and take over. And even if they do, it IS FINITE. Even if it knocks you down now, YOU CAN get back up and will when the physiological symptoms stop.

 

Start small. The first thing I did (which isn't part of the book) was I set a timer for 22 minutes every time the trigger was hit. I DID NOT allow myself to call or text during this time. Sometimes I slipped. But mostly I stuck to it, and the more I did, the better things got. 22 minutes where I HAD to will myself to do something else (like read or do math) until I got through the craving to call or check up on him. Then if after the timer went off, usually I was okay. If I wasn't.......I reset the timer. I've only had one time where the craving didn't die down after an hour. It feels like torture until your brain learns to distract itself and starts to automatically that "I crave this person, so now I need to do something else."

 

It makes you world a bigger place.

 

I firmly believe the abandonment trigger forms in infancy and is reinforced in childhood. That being said the book:

 

How to Break Your Addiction to a Person

Helps you realize that you aren't alone or "a freak/loser" (whatever) for having this trigger. It is simply something that is part of your makeup for now that you have to learn to cope with. It's important because you can drive away a healthy partner with the need for assurance and an unhealthy partner will use it to manipulate you. (My mother has done this to my father. She'll threaten to leave him when she's pissed enough abd he falls right in line, even though he's a real pill otherwise.)

 

As well, EMDR therapy firmly desensitized a lot of that abandonment trigger. I haven't finished my EMDR, so I still feel the backlash of it. But it is so reduced that I can function without that being a prevalent fear in my waking life.

 

I want to underline something: it does not tend to get better on its own, you have to put the WORK into it. And it is HARD. (But not so hard you need to hide under your blankets and cry, although I've been there too).

 

My Dad has not put the work in and I'm sure her crumple just as readily today as he would've nearly 40 years ago when he met my mother.

Thank you for your post, and shogun, you too!

 

I was more worried about my gf leaving, but I came to the conclusion that I have to get through this with therapy, for myself, and if she leaves than so be it. I rather be healthy and single than unhealthy and with her.

 

thanks for the post, it really gives me insight and hope!

[dreamingoftigers]

Now I am confused, because I experience this all the time. Is this something that spans the PD's or do I need to start wondering if I have BPD as well?

 

Here's my take after reading the Hell put of everything under the Sun I could find:

 

Basically a disorder is a group of symptoms.

 

Most disorders etc. we're labelled as such simply because old-school psychologists/psychiatrists couldn't actively see what was going on inside the brain neurological connections at work etc.

 

Until recently, most diagnosis were done based on symptomatology.

 

So if you have these 5 symptoms, you have Disorder X.

If you have those five symptoms, you have Disorder Y.

 

If you have a mix of these and those you can have Disorder X and Y co-morbid.

You can have X hide some traits of Y. Y might get missed altogether. Etc etc etc.

 

Furthermore complicating it, psychiatrists/psychologists are human too. So lets say you are getting rated by a psychologist who has Disorder Z but thinks that there isn't anything wrong with them.

 

They might, (through the relative/subjective nature of evaluating someone) see you as having Disorder W and not Y because they can't really see Disorder Y unless its extreme.

 

So basically the whole system was based on:

 

1. If you are found to have symptom cluster 1; then you have Disorder X. 75% of people with Disorder X respond positively to Drugs A and B but not C. So since you have Disorder X, we'll try Drug A for a couple of months. If you are suicidal/homicidal by then, maybe we'll play with the dose and if you have measurable progress: we have a victory.

 

If Drug A aunt doing so well for you and you're about to climb up to a clock

tower, we'll try Drug B.

 

(I went through something similar with Wellbutrin. I actually threw a lasagna.)

 

Anyhow, just because you have a heavy abandonment trigger, doesn't make you BPD. You could just have a heavy, trauma-linked abandonment trigger. And you can work on that.

 

Recently, with the advent of SPECT scanning, diagnosis has become much more reliable. I am currently saving to get a SPECT scan done so I can actually SEE what's going on upstairs.

 

I have had the following diagnosis (and others suggestions) from Doctors/Psychiatrists and just people that know me:

 

-bipolar (my father had a diagnosis of bipolar at one point so it seemed to fit somewhat but not very well. I think I may have had some learned behaviours from him.)

ADD/ADHD: definite possibility, I work much better with ADD meds, but it isn't the whole issue

Schizophrenic: I honestly have no idea why this was suggested and neither does my other personality, Nancy. (Okay that was a bad joke, but I don't have schizophrenia, there is some family history of it though. It doesn't fit me at all.)

Autism: my brother and sister are both autistic and I am pretty sure I could easily fall on the spectrum somewhere, but Classic Autism, oh heck no.

OCD: blah ha ha. I am a slob.

Aspberger's: I think it's possible. I miss social cues. My grades are excellent. Who knows?

My mother has also said I'm just "fu*king crazy." I think she has ADD, we're even.

PTSD: I have had significant trauma. I don't doubt it's a factor.

-BPD (at the time, this absolutely fit. BPD when looked at more thoroughly is layers of childhood PTSD. I'll explain:

 

1. If a man was wrongfully sent to prison for 15-20 years and he received beatings, shaming etc etc etc. was deprived of regular human contact etc. and then he was released, people would not expect that man to able to cope with all of the changes in the world, the trauma he'd been through etc etc etc. people wouldn't expect him to be okay, and certainly not right away).

 

2. Having a childhood that causes BPD is much like growing up in prison (in many senses) it completely skews your life-context and into adulthood, forming relationships is extremely pleasurable but also extremely stressful, nerve-wracking and painful. It's hard to tell what to expect and since you have very little control over yourself internally (never having learned that in a chaotic environment) you alternate between feeling fantastic that you are out of that deprivational prison. Someone now cares for you! Yay! It's love! To the deepest, darkest fears of: when does it end? What happens when there isn't love again? I can't go back to that deep, dark lonely prison! I won't survive it again after learning what love feels like!

 

But the thing is, it takes about 10-15 years of not recreating that instability to really get your bearings if you don't have treatment. If you do, things CAN go better.

 

And people who don't have these issues don't understand them, which is even more frustrating. Like being dyslexic. Other people are just like "just read the thing, like I do." Just like they are "get over it, you'll get another girlfriend, it's not worth your life you coward."

 

But they never lived with that deep, dark flood of emotions. They never went to prison so they don't understand why you can't see "life can be a picnic if you think positive." It's very frustrating.

 

BUT as you get older and learn to cope with the nightmare you find you can cope with a lot of things that people generally struggle with. Especially if you get some EMDR (I swear)

 

Your brain gets so swamped in the "fight or flight" and the "I'll never replace her and she was my everything" that it is INCREDIBLY HARD to see past it. You just think "what was the point? Everytime I love someone it dies and than I want to die too." BUT I am telling you it doesn't work quite like that. The more that you learn to let go, the more that you have room for in your life. Letting go of the pain, even if it takes time to subside is not the same thing as letting go of love.

 

I think BPD people have often been conditioned to associate love with pain. That we have to really, deeply suffer for the ones we love to show them how much we do care. And when we push them away, we expect them to brave it because we would do the same for them. But it's really unstable and unfair to us and those around us. Plus we feel out of control in our relationships. Like we must do all we can for them, but they still won't love us enough. So complex and hard and sad.

 

But truly, we are worth it as people and partners. We just have to learn the skills to make our relationships calmer and easier on ourselves/others.

 

Anyway, that was kind of long.

[dreamingoftigers]

Thank you for your post, and shogun, you too!

 

I was more worried about my gf leaving, but I came to the conclusion that I have to get through this with therapy, for myself, and if she leaves than so be it. I rather be healthy and single than unhealthy and with her.

 

thanks for the post, it really gives me insight and hope!

 

Don't get discouraged or feel like a "loser" if you forget this every now and then. BPD is brutal and those abandonment triggers really smack you down, sometimes right out of the blue.

 

And remember that sometimes intellectually knowing what your dealing with and what you "feel" or "believe" you are dealing with are in conflict.

 

Go with your thinking brain. Not the feeling one. It seems so backwards, cold and counter-intuitive. But in time you see that it isn't "cold" or "unfeeling" it's protecting you from being overexposed. BPD people by nature emotionally overexpose themselves and then try to numb. It's a vicious cycle and hard to break.

 

Don't dump on yourself if you aren't "cured" by next Wednesday at noon.

 

You aren't any less than anyone else. Just like the guy in the wheelchair isn't. Etc etc etc.

[dreamingoftigers]

Lastly, OP,

 

I think you'll pull through okay overall in comparison to your peer group.

 

Many dont find out until much later in life and often push against any kind of help thinking that it will "dull" them or that they won't "be their real selves." Or that it isn't them, "it's everything around them."

 

You have enough self-awareness to see that something is "off." I did too, but not until going into hospital multiple times and figuring that something was amiss because not everyone I know did that.

 

Good for you OP for finding appropriate social supports!