reality bites
Well, it nibbles and it chews, but its starting to be a little less toothy. Yet, here it is.
I’ve known it for some time, but it really hit me this week that I was just not very in tune with reality most of my life. When I was young, I would actively live in a fantasy life – to the point that I would prefer to stay in my room by myself, then be outside. As I got older, I phased out that fantasy life, knowing that it was not quite a good idea, but I had a lot of difficulty connecting to people and the situation around me. Everyone was just a character in my life, not a real person. As such, I treated them in whichever ways I needed to feel better about things – and on the flip side, would get super frustrated if I couldn’t get them to do what I wanted.
More recently, the fantasy world morphed into more of a “fix it” mentality. While I acknowledged the situation as it was, I still didn’t accept it. There was always something I could do to fix it – or so I thought. I think that drove a large amount of the overanalyzing that I do, especially about emotions and actions of other people. If I could just pinpoint what went wrong, I could go back and change it… was how I thought about things, especially relationship-related emotions.
All of those things, I now see, were driven by my defense mechanisms. I simply could not deal with what reality was telling me: I had no control of the people around me or how they felt. Sometimes, things happen, and you just can’t do anything about it, no matter how sorry you are, or what your intent was. There may be good reasons – even understandable ones – but we still feel whatever it is we feel in response to the situation. Understanding that the intent wasn’t malicious might lessen the blow, but it doesn’t change what happened.
The Turning Point
I am finally getting to accepting the reality of my situation with J, and, dare I say it, my life. Its hard – believe me, I am struggling. But its not like when I was forcing myself to imagine him with his new gf, and just putting myself in the path of an emotional bulldozer. That itself was also a defensive reaction, much like not trusting someone in a relationship. Its like, if you assume the worst, you won’t open your heart and get trampled. I thought if I could crush myself, I could crush how I felt about him.
Unfortunately and fortunately, neither reality nor emotions are that clear. I am finally starting to understand why we’ll never get back together, and how he feels, simply because I am finally allowing myself to feel the end. Its like, duh – I get it. I hurt him, a lot. Even if I didn’t mean to, or if I did it out of my own fear or love for him, or if he contributed to it, it doesn’t change the fact that I really hurt him by cutting him out of my life so absolutely. I feel it now that he is doing it to me. I understand the burning anger of being blamed for the relationship, that comes with the other person treating you like you are a bad person that caused all of this to happen. I understand the shame and humiliation of hanging on and believing for as long as I did, for opening your heart and loving someone who tells you they want nothing to do with you anymore.
I am angry, and yet, I can no longer blame him. I am also conflicted about how I feel towards him. I don’t know if he still cares for me or wishes that I was a part of his life – maybe all that we have been through has put him past that. But while I am so angry sometimes that I want to peel the skin off his face, I also still care about him. I am so humiliated that I want every reminder of him gone from my life, that I wish that I had never met him. At the same time, I still hope that we can move forward, that one day we can reconnect somehow. I want to hurt him, and I want to comfort him and tell him that yes, I understand.
Now that my motivation isn’t getting back together with him, I am no longer blinded by what he has been telling me all these months: We just can’t get along. It didn’t hit me until this past Mon/Tues, when I got into the tussle with him. I had been so happy, so comfortable moving forward with myself, that it was a shock to regress back into that angry, vengeful, hysterical girl that took every word as him not caring about me, and wanted to punish him for it. It threw me for a loop, that’s for sure – even going so far as to doubt whether or not I’d really changed after all. Thankfully, I regained my ground later in the week, but I realized that its him that really does it to me. Whatever the reason, he pushes my buttons, and I hate the person I become when it happens.
I so wanted him to be the one that I created and kept a connection that maybe was no longer there. Maybe there still is/was some connection, but not the one that I imagined it to be. There were moments, these last two months, where I would take a step back and say to myself, “Huhn. Why am I making such a big deal of this? He’s not the love of my life, and I’m not going to die.”
And yet, I really wanted him to be. I stressed about how we were going to strengthen that connection, rebuild the love that we once had – the entire time, ignoring that, well, our relationship sucked. Yes, I care for him, and he is a good person. But the three months we were together was full of conflict, and even if we have the most amazing relationship in the world now, that won’t change it. I kept saying to him that I wanted to create something new, but what I really wanted was to erase what happened before and rewrite history. Sometimes, I really wish that I could have heard what he said when he said it.
Balancing Logic and Emotions
I am ruthlessly analytical; as a former history major, my natural inclination is to understand why something happened – what was the turning point, the key event. Just as my emotions are intense, so is my logical side – for a long time, I denied the validity of emotions as a motivation for people, including myself, because of how things “should” be. So, I find myself drifting into thoughts about why and how and this is how he feels and blah blah blah. The analysis is far more subtle than ruminating and obsessing, so it was hard to catch. For once, I am cutting myself off as soon as I recognize it going into my head. Right now, I need to just feel what I feel, regardless of rhyme or reason. It will never get out of my system until I let it run its course, even if that course lasts for the rest of my life. I want to feel and be, not understand and try.
I can feel compassion for him, and I can understand why. Its balancing that with still allowing myself to feel the anger and hurt that is really hard. This is how I finally realized that all that overthinking was a defense mechanism in disguise. Yes, it is important to see other people’s points of views, but not at the expense of invalidating your own feelings. Understanding can lead to healing between two people, but that’s only after our hearts heal ourselves through our emotions. When I apply the understanding and punt my own feelings, the rift between us can never close, because there is still a part of me that is open and raw. Its sort of like a pimple: all that nasty pus needs to rise to the surface before the bacteria can be outed from your skin.
I am a compassionate person, and I don’t want to hurt anyone. But again, I am finally valuing my own humanity, and my own feelings. I’m not a martyr – I don’t want him to be happy with someone else, I don’t give a shit about her as a person. I may not wish that they break up anymore so that he can be with me, but no, right now, I hate it that he’s happy where he couldn’t be with me. I don’t care that he felt this way before – I feel this way now, and I wish that he does too.
I can allow myself to feel and say all of those things because I can have my feelings, while controlling my impulses to act on them. No matter how much I want to hurt him right now, I won’t – maybe not even for him, but because I feel regret afterwards. I can allow myself to feel and say those things because I know that it will pass in due course. Its the more that I deny my own hurt and anger that resentment builds. I don’t want anymore emotional tartar 
So yeah – reality is hitting me like a ton of bricks right now. And its not fun. But oddly, its not as bad as struggling to keep the fantasy alive. There is a sense of peace that comes from relinquishing control against an uncooperative current. I may think and I may feel, but I am not stressing about how to get back into his life anymore. Along with that, I’m not depressed because my plans are not falling into place. Its a huge burden lifted from me.
I am able to reconcile the compassionate part of me with the reality of how I feel. Being compassionate does not mean certain pain – I don’t need to make myself suffer just to prove to him that he meant something to me. When I am ready, I can still open my heart to him – being sorry for creating a rift, admitting my own pain, telling him that I care when there’s no guarantee that he feels the same way – but I don’t have to expose myself and go out of my way to hang my ass out there by accepting his relationship and inviting her to things. I mean, duh. I did that with my ex’s before, trying to be friends with them and act like I didn’t care that they hurt me, and look where it got me. I’ll be honest and open with them, but I don’t have to be a masochist about it.
Maybe one day, we can be something more than ex’s from a bad relationship. I do care about him, even if simply because he was a part of a huge transformation in my life. And I do think he’s a good person. But if we do interact, my goal is no longer to rebuild a connection with him. I think that if we can get to a point where we are not arguing or driving each other mad, it would be a huge win. I’m tired of hating the person I become whenever I am around him.
becoming a real boy
For those of you coming from the bunnyBlog, this is already posted there.
*~*~*~*
One of the hardest things for people to understand about me – and possibly Borderline Personality Disorder – is this feeling of not being quite real. One of the documented characteristics of BPD is having no sense of identity. That description hardly conveys what it feels like to not know yourself – to not know if what you are feeling is real, is right, is wrong, is because of this, or is because of that.
When you don’t know who you are, its very difficult to guage what you think is the right thing to do or feel. My identity, for lack of anything else, was being crazy and unstable. What that meant was that everytime I felt something, I would overanalyze it to death. I would try to figure out why I felt this way, how it related to my past. I wouldn’t know if it was the “right” thing to feel, or how “normal” people felt. Beyond being so easily triggered, my reactions were intense and extreme. As a result, I always felt that my emotions were inappropriate for any situation.
I felt like Pinnochio – a 2 dimensional character that walked and talked like everyone else, but just wasn’t quite real. Because I doubted my own feelings, I tried to outwardly react the way I thought I “should”. I had an extremely difficult time expressing to people my real emotions. It was a lot easier to be defensive, angry, or strong than it was to admit vulnerability over something that I thought people would think were stupid. I never felt like I was representing who I really was. I never felt like I got the support and soothing I needed for my real pain, because I could not tell people what my real pain was.
I was a character, playing her part, but really – needing other people to pull the marionette strings to determine her direction, identity, thoughts and responses. My anchor – the marionette cross, so to speak – was usually determined by people that mattered to me: my boyfriends or some guy I liked, mostly, but also friends that I wanted to impress, managers that I wanted to respect me, even my therapist, to a certain degree.
But then what would happen was that my real emotions – being as intense and as strong as they were – would explode out in rebellion of the constraints of the “shoulds”. The explosion would cause a mess that I would need to clean up, which of course further reinforced my belief that my real emotions were wrong. Not only did this create constant fear and anxiety in my life, it also gave people the impression that I changed my mind frequently, made violently strong but contradictory decisions, and that they could not predict how I would react next. In essence, instability.
In the last 4 – 6 weeks, though, my quest has come full circle. I finally feel like a real, 3 dimensional person, and I did that by no longer resisting who I am and how I feel. Maybe its a little bit of emotional hemorrhaging right now, but the more I acknowledge and validate how I feel, the more I feel like I know who I am. One of the most amazing things I have realized is that I’m really NOT that screwed up or different from everyone else. Everyone has their issues, and in some cases, I am actually better at handling mine.
I can see other people’s points of views and understand why they do the things they do, but still believe that its ok to feel whatever I feel about it. I can understand logically why, and acknowledge that I am having a reaction to it. I can do something good, and realize that it may not necessarily make me happy. I’m not beating myself up for feeling human emotions anymore.
Why do I bring this up now? Well, because I am finally – finally – processing and accepting the breakup. Its 9 months too late, and I feel sort of stupid about it, but the truth is, 9 months ago, I was grappling with what it meant to have BPD, and if there was ever a way I could have a fulfilling life. Everything about that breakup, my reaction to it, my actions, the way I relate – all of those things took on a bigger and more significant meaning than what it really was. I spent so much effort trying to understand the why and the how, that I never let myself feel the grief. I pushed J to explain every single thing to me, because that was the only way I thought I could deal with it, and when he didn’t have an answer, I felt like he didn’t care or assumed the worst. I couldn’t fathom that he was another person going through his own period of pain. I couldn’t forgive myself for making mistakes and feeling my insecurities; the only thing I could focus on doing was fixing it.
All those things, of course, were not exclusive to my relationship and breakup with J, but it certainly was highlighted there. Which is why, when I came back from PA in early June, I really shoved back hard at my friends for trying to help me deal with the end of the relationship. It wasn’t that I felt you guys were wrong, it was just that I really needed to feel whatever it was I felt, ridiculous or not. And I need you guys – all of you guys – my friends, my family – to recognize that its ok for me to feel it. Its not that I didn’t appreciate your help, its that I needed to establish that I could do it on my own. So I went overboard, and I’m sorry for that.
And now, I am going through all the stages of a breakup – all the ones that would be completely logical if I had done this 9 months ago. So bear with me. Its been a long journey, and I haven’t completely felt the fruits of my labor yet. I’m not completely confident that my life is for the better, that I can be for the better.
I am still struggling just to let things be the way they are, instead of always trying to fix it. For someone whose entire childhood was spent being blown off, its very hard for me not to associate not wanting to deal with it or talk about it with not caring about me or the consequences. Now that I’m in my own stage of anger, I get it. I don’t want to be reminded of what happened, of how angry I am, and how ashamed I am of my own behavior. I just want to put it aside and try to move on, its so painful to think about it. But remember folks – I am basically trying to relearn every reaction, every behavior that I have built my survival on. Sometimes, my body just violently objects. I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet.
And you know what? I’m going to make a hell of a lot of mistakes. I don’t know what I’m doing, I can only try and see if it works. I’m not going to pretend I know better anymore, and I’m not going to waste my life trying to figure out the right way to live. I’ll apologize in advance if I offend or hurt anyone in my efforts – but just know that it is not done out of malice, but ignorance. I am fumbling around this thing called adulthood, like everyone else out there.
So… I am finally a real boy. I am finally a person with love and happiness and compassion in her heart, as well as pain and frustration and insecurities. I don’t need to be tethered to anything in order to figure out my direction, I can find it inside.
med withdrawal not fun
Yuck. For whatever reason, Walgreens ran out of my brand name med (Welbutrin), so they gave me the generic. Does not work for me! I have that awful withdrawal, where I’m dizzy, nauseous, and basically can’t focus. It sucks.
The one good thing about it is that, even though I feel like crap, I know that my longing/impatience for J and my depression are directly related to the med issue. So I am telling myself that it will pass soon enough (they get the brand name in stock tomorrow), and its helping me not sink into the depression or do something rash.
things are coming together
Its been a while since I’ve posted here, especially considering the volume of writing I was doing before. This is both good and bad – good, because it means that I’ve been busy / productive / distracted enough that I’m not sitting in front of a computer musing all day, and bad, because writing really does help me sort through things.
A lot of things have happened over the last 3 weeks. I finally got a job (at Adobe – yay!), after practically non-stop interviewing. I swear, I felt like my brain was dripping out of my nose, and I was starting to repeat myself at least 2 or 3 times each day. Pumpkin *finally* came out of heat, which is wonderful, because I didn’t realize how alienated I was from her during that time. We were both going through some not-so-fun stuff, and it wasn’t until she was back to her sweet, cuddly self that I realized how much I missed her.
I’ve been religiously going to therapy 2x a week, and have made some major breakthroughs. I won’t go into them now, because its late, and I really want to write thoughtfully about them. I guess the bottom line there is that, by accepting myself for who I was and appreciating what I am, I’ve ironically managed to change and become the person I wanted to be. I thought that it was going to be a long time before I started to feel a difference, but wow – my entire perspective on life and love has completely shifted. I’ve found peace, and I’ve found balance, and I’ve recently decided that I’m a pretty awesome person
On the social front, I’ve made some tremendous progress. After fighting with my friends for the first two weeks, I both made up with them, but also became extremely clear on where my boundaries were and what I needed from them. Its finally struck me that I really have some amazing friends – ones who love you and stand by you, no matter what, and really accept you for who you are. I think partially this has to do with me actually being honest about the way I feel – I no longer feel like a fake around people. And, amazingly enough, the loneliness is starting to dissipate.
Additionally, I have started strengthening my friendship with V, who is just the sweetest and most positive person around. She’s my new restaurant/foodie buddy, which is incredibly exciting. Things really haven’t been right since I broke up with Mi and K over the last few years, and I’ve felt really lonely from not having a close girlfriend to hang out with. Even more exciting, I’m making new friends – Ma, who will be working with me at Adobe (we’re starting around the same time!), and I just met two chicks at a party today, and we’re already making plans to take dance classes together.
My redecoration project is well under way. I’ve got the layout, I’ve sold my bedroom set, and I have scheduled contractors to come in for the labor part. I’m ordering my couch tomorrow, and my bedroom furniture on Monday! Next week, I’ll be focusing on decluttering and getting rid of crap I don’t need – which I have to do, since I’ve just sold my dressers! Its mildly terrifying to actually be getting rid of the old furniture and buying new pieces that are a true investment in maturity, to be honest with you.
Last, but not least, I am starting to finally accept J’s new relationship. We have ventured on a tentative friendship, to try and rebuild trust between us. I don’t think either of us have spoken honestly about how we felt, and what happened, until about 2 weeks ago, and I feel like its a breakthrough. The fact is that we have a lot of rebuilding to do before we can be friends, much less anything else, and this is the first honest attempt to tackle and move on from what happened. Although I still have moments of heartbreak, I think I finally understand what happened – all the different nuances and layers and shades – and I’ve definitely learned from it. Whether its with J, or with someone else, I am really ready to meet someone, and commit to a healthy relationship.
So, things are coming together nicely. As my therapist said, I’ve worked my ass off the last year or so to get to this point, and everything is starting to come to fruition now. I’ve really come full circle since I set out on my journey 6 weeks ago, and I am really looking forward to starting this new phase in my life.
article: empathy deficit disorder
Inneresting…
Empathy deficit disorder — do you suffer from it?
(OPRAH.com) — I swear on the “Thelma & Louise” video we watched into a scratchy oblivion: I didn’t mean to be the worst friend ever. When Lisa — my roommate and boon companion of three years –stepped into our apartment, sank to the floor, and clutched our cocker spaniel, I asked, “What’s wrong?” with sympathy.
“I got fired,” Lisa told me.
“Wow.” I pulled her to her feet. “You’ll have an amazing story for Jim’s party tonight!”
Lisa’s eyes went round and wet as the dog’s when we left her at the vet. She said, “Come on, Maya” (who gave me a reproachful glance before obeying), disappeared into her bedroom (for three days), and never discussed career matters with me again.
Boy, was I annoyed. At age 26, I was a sublime friend. Lisa, also 26, was blessed to have an ally so honest about dates and hairstyles, so fiercely supportive of her dreams, and willing to defend her choices (the dates, hairstyles, and dreams) to her habitually nettling mom and dad. Never once in our relationship, I was proud to think, had I ever even been tempted to commit a single mortal friendship sin: being competitive, gossiping, or backstabbing.
To me, Lisa’s job loss was no big deal. She had complained about the position. Her parents were rich and gave her money. She had nothing to worry about. I thought that reminding her we had something fun to do that night was an appropriate and kind response.
Psychologist Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., director and founder of the Center for Adult Development in Washington, D.C., disagrees. He explained to me that my dearest friend was humiliated by receiving a pink slip, feared she might be incompetent at everything she tried, and, because of me, felt utterly alone. I was, LaBier tells me, “catastrophically unempathetic” to Lisa.
Today, 15 years later, I know why my attempt at consoling my friend was so ham-fisted. As LaBier explains, virtually everyone learns the basics of empathy in childhood (from our parents comforting us when we’re in distress), but my father died when I was 4, and afterward my mother had to be very can-do, juggling three jobs, graduate school, and two kids. When I was upset, she never said, “Oh, I’m sorry. It must be hard to have me away so much after losing your dad.”
Instead, on good days, she’d say, “Why are you crying? Nothing is wrong.” And on bad days: “You’d better toughen up because life can get a lot worse.” Looking back at my 20-something self, I realize that if, as LaBier says, empathy is “the ability or the willingness to experience the world from someone else’s point of view,” I wasn’t brought up to be able to do that.
At least my lack of empathy was not unusual. Having practiced as a psychotherapist for 35 years, LaBier believes that what he calls empathy deficit disorder (EDD) is rampant among Americans.
LaBier says we unlearn whatever empathy skills we’ve picked up while coming of age in a culture that focuses on acquisition and status more than cooperation and values “moving on” over thoughtful reflection. LaBier is convinced that EDD is at the heart of modernity’s most common problems, macro (war) and micro (divorce).
When Lisa crept into her bedroom, I couldn’t have articulated any of this. She might have felt abandoned, but all I knew was that I felt alone. My roommate had her dog, and they were both shunning me, and my boyfriend of four years wouldn’t rescue me from the loneliness I increasingly felt by agreeing to get married. I went into psychotherapy.
Faking it a step to becoming empathetic
I thought my therapist would help me break up with my commitment-phobic lover, figure out how to choose less sensitive friends, and, of course, let me rant about my mother’s shortcomings. I did get to rant — about my mom, Lisa, and my boyfriend.
What surprised me was my therapist’s response to these tirades. She never said, “Leave that rotten bastard.” Or “Your roommate is a big baby.” Instead she said, “Gosh, that sounds really hard.” And, “That must have felt terrible.” And, “How did you feel after that happened?” My reaction to those spectacularly bland comments was even more astonishing. I loved them.
“These very simple responses make you feel understood,” says New York psychologist Frank M. Lachmann, Ph.D., author of “Transforming Narcissism: Reflections on Empathy, Humor, and Expectations.”
He points out that many of the common responses — “It could be worse”; “You should do X”; “Let’s talk about something else” — appear to be kind and aimed at soothing. But no matter how well intentioned, Lachmann says, these remarks are a rejection, a denial, of what the other person is going through. “They are code for ‘Don’t confront me with things that are unpleasant,’” he says. “Or ‘Don’t bother me with your pain.’”
About six months into psychotherapy, I started using what I thought of as my therapist’s “lines.”
When Lisa was offered a job at an organization she did not want to work at, I said, “Oh, that’s a tough spot to be in.” When my boyfriend was invited to study abroad, I said, “How do you feel about that?” What I really felt was: “Lisa, that job pays a ton of money, but I guess you can turn it down because your parents are loaded.” And, “You selfish bastard, I’ll kill you if you go to Europe without me.”
Still, Lachmann says, I had taken the first step to becoming empathetic — which is faking it. If you want to act more empathetic, you follow certain steps: Instead of telling people what they ought to do or becoming tyrannically optimistic, you offer sympathy, inquire about feelings, and validate those feelings. You’ll be giving comfort to the other person, even if you yourself can’t feel what they’re going through.
It’s true that for a long time, while I could say the appropriate thing, I could not relate to their struggles. Still, I took satisfaction in the fact that my relationships were improving. Then a year after starting therapy, I began feeling something intensely when comforting friends: terror.
This turned out to be a signal, Lachmann says, that I was actually feeling empathy.
Final insult
I didn’t recognize it because I’d always run from emotional discomfort — and, at least in the beginning, I found trying to be empathetic profoundly uncomfortable. Most of the time, I managed to avoid the impulse to blurt out unhelpful suggestions to my friends — “Happy hour, anyone?” Or, “Here’s the number for a credit consolidator!” — and instead say the appropriate thing. But for years and years, I could stand genuine empathy only five minutes at a time.
For those five minutes, though, I was not alone. And once I had experienced the wonder of that, I was willing to stumble out of my comfort zone to try to be not alone again.
Virtually everything I have ever tried to improve about myself — my weight, my sleep habits, my housecleaning — has resulted in an endless seesaw of improvement. But empathy, I’ve learned, is not like dieting. (Or, at least, how I diet, which involves ending up back at square one.) Cultivating empathy has its own rewards: The more you do it, the better your relationships are and the more you want to continue.
Feeling understood in that therapist’s office taught me that human beings are not doomed to be alone — and empathy is life’s connective tissue. If you have a romantic partner, he or she will someday believe that you are entirely wrong about something, and if you can see the problem from your partner’s point of view, you’ll be able to get through that conflict without smoldering in the corner or splitting up.
If you work with someone you despise (and who despises you back), and you try to understand why that person dislikes you, then you stand a chance of not hating every minute with her at the office. If you live in a world that you would like to see less divided by ethnic, economic, and religious strife, you’ll find that attempting to comprehend the needs of your sworn enemies is a prerequisite to any meaningful action you can take.
Empathy will also require you to get past rationalizations and admit wrongdoing.
For about a decade after I started working to be more empathetic, I told myself that I hadn’t hurt Lisa too badly because she never told me I had. But Lachmann points out that the final insult of being treated with a lack of empathy is that the hurt person usually can’t complain. “If you say, ‘That was such an unempathetic thing to say,’ it can easily be heard as, ‘Feel sorry for me.’ And no one wants to be pathetic.” So most people don’t say anything, Lachmann says, and relationships “are often ruptured and ruined.”
Lisa and I are no longer close. We live on opposite coasts. We have very different lives. But still, I couldn’t bear the idea of us being “ruptured and ruined.” I recently called her and said I was sorry for being selfish when she lost her job. I said I had eventually learned that it must have been a terrible time for her and that I had made it worse by leaving her so alone with all her confusion. Lisa was gracious (“You did your best”), forgiving (“Really, you were a wonderful friend to me overall”), and honest (“It was 15 years ago, and I’m over it now”). She changed the subject, and we caught up on our summer plans.
Her family — along with the cocker spaniel, Maya, who was still alive and giving reproachful looks — was planning a camping trip. Packing up, Lisa realized none of her jeans fit. Her pregnancies had stripped every curve from her body. She was skinny as a post. I began to wail,
“Oh my God, you lucky rat! I gained 10 pounds … “
But then I stopped myself. “Um. So how does it feel to have to buy new jeans?” I asked.
There was a silence on the line. Then Lisa started laughing. “Wonderful,” she said. “Absolutely wonderful.”
how does this pain end?
You know, I have done quite a bit to help improve myself and manage my BPD since last September. But I am still not sure I understand how to end this pain?
I feel anxious. I feel fear. I feel fear of rejection and pain, and I feel pain. I want to be the type of person who can open up to others, to be vulnerable. I know that’s the only path to love. But I don’t know how to do it when it is so painful.
I feel frustration easily. I know that blowing up at ppl, and taking things out on innocent parties is a way for me to direct pent-up frustration and anger. Or even if it is the one person who is causing it, that its not productive. But how do I redirect it? How do I tolerate it?
I am not even talking about being heartbroken over J right now – simply the physical sensations that seem to be constantly going through me. I have been shaking for the last week, nauseous, unable to eat. For a long time, I kept waiting for these sensations to end, thinking that when I loved myself, believed myself to be loved, got the BPD managed, that it would lessen. But it doesn’t. And now that I’ve realized that learning to love myself, be compassionate, stop being scared, etc etc is a life-long process, I don’t know if I can tolerate the pain that goes along with it. Its one thing to keep believing that it will stop, and soon. Its another thing to realize that for me, its always a part of me.
I know I have been trying to fill the hole in my heart with one person all of my life, and I know that filling it with friends and family, even if it doesn’t fill the entire gaps, leaves it less difficult. I understand that I have been acting out of fear and pride. But its so HARD to try and tell myself to have patience, to keep practicing, when it is so physically intolerable. Will DBT skills help me tolerate it? Can drugs help me manage it? Could meditation ease it? Will it ever go away?
I have been making big progress, I know. I am luckier than most. I can think through and understand a lot of this, and it is starting to extend to my emotions. I am calmer. But still, why is it so hard? If I was just born with this naturally low frustration threshold, can anything change it? When will the progress start to be enough?
finding the balance
I admit that I am a rather extreme person – I always want to completely ditch and do everything over again. I guess its part of my whole my-life-is-broken thing. But one of the things that I have discovered in this last week is that there *is* a balance between moving forward and being yourself. I’m proud that I’ve come to this conclusion on my own, because even though I’ve always sought balance, I never realized what I was trying to balance.
Since I came back, I’ve been on this mission to change my life. New person, new furniture, new job, new boyfriend. I have tried not to clean or be obsessive about to-do’s and projects, because I wanted to “relax”. I’ve tried to force myself to let John go by imagining him with this girl he’s dating. And the thing is, I have felt like a complete stranger in my own life. I tried to tolerate mess, but in the end, it just made me feel transitional.
I have seen something really incredible in me the last three weeks. I have seen the person that I can be, the person that I am inside, the person that I want to be. I have had moments of pure love and peace. But I am still the same person. And just because I know what I want to be, doesn’t mean I’m going to get there right away. And just because I have opened up another side/aspect of me, doesn’t mean that what I was before isn’t valid or cannot be a part of me.
I’m not ready to sustain that “new me”, because I haven’t lived in it for long enough. Its going to take micro concrete steps to ingrain it into me, to stop feeling the fears that I have. Additionally, I’m still the same person I was. It took me 31 years to become who I am, and even though I often feel empty, or like I don’t know my identity, in fact, I do. I worked hard to get my chores done, to tackle projects and become productive. It took me 3 years to finally straighten out my finances. Why would I ditch – against my better instinct – a positive habit that I actively cultivated?
I was on an interview last week, and someone asked me if I had to choose between doing X and Y, what would I choose? My answer was that it wasn’t about choosing – it was about prioritizing. I may enjoy X, and choose to make that my primary career choice, but I still want to explore Y. It just means that Y gets less mental real estate and time.
This is the way that I am seeing myself, and my gradual transformation into a stronger, more open person. I have seen the X that I want to be, but I still am the Y. As I develop the X, and it becomes more natural to me, it may become my priority or focus, but the Y is still there. I just may spend less time on it. And it makes sense, right, because I have spent years developing the Y part, so its more a natural part of who I am now. It just takes less time to be Y. I focus less on being more Y, but I still retain all the values of becoming Y to begin with.
The truth is, I’m no different than I was before. The compassion and love that I’ve finally released has always been there, just buried under pain and fear. I’m choosing to focus and develop it now, now that I have a solid sense of my personality, my career goals, my ability to be strong and survive. I don’t need to be any stronger, focus anymore on my career, or struggle to survive anymore. I have gotten to the saturation point with those areas, and continuing on that trajectory starts putting me in the negative curve where it becomes too extreme or counterproductive. At the same time, I shouldn’t just throw it all away.
Today, I got off my ass and did laundry. Yes, you heard right. And that made me feel more normal again. I don’t want to change everything about my life, because I am realizing that not everything about my life was miserable. I don’t want to be a completely different person, because I like who I am – I just think I could be a better person. And frankly, if this is not what J wants in a partner, as much as that hurts me, it is not something I am willing to give up.
As far as J goes, well – I’ve decided my path there. My goal to regain his trust by just being is ultimately the kind of person I want to be: someone who will sacrifice her own sense of safety, vulnerability, and pride to preserve a relationship or put someone else’s needs ahead of hers. If I am ever to be a wife and a mother, I better not be walking away and saying, fuck all, I’m moving on. So even if my friends think I’m dumb for putting myself out there, I’m going to do it. Because I believe that that is the right thing for me.
I’m not ready, by any stretch of the imagination, to put myself in that vulnerable position with J. I do not trust that I don’t have ulterior motives, that I’ll be able to tolerate the time and potential rejection that it will take to rebuild his trust. I’m not strong enough, sure enough about myself yet, and I can easily fall into the trap of being controlling, or defensive. Until I feel ready, it would be counterproductive. But its something that I want to work towards, and it crystalizes my vision of myself as a loving and compassionate being, a mother, a wife.
And in the end, doing this would be the ultimate form of letting go of control – not even controlling my own vulnerability, much less how J reacts or what he chooses to do.
But I guess the biggest lesson that I’m learning – and the reason why I really believe that I am on the path to real change – is that everything takes time. Everything takes practice. I cannot just have an epiphany one day and suddenly things are different, just like I can’t explain J or anyone to just forgive me because I’ve realized the errors of my ways.
And finally, everything takes balance. Anchoring myself to my old life, by doing something as simple as laundry, as acknowledging that my life goes on as is, has helped me stop feeling like such a stranger in a strange land. Sometimes its good to see things from a different perspective, but its not sustainable.
So for now, I am focusing on getting a job, becoming whole, learning compassion. I need to give more love to Pumpkin, who has had my time, but not my mindshare as of late. If I meet someone, great – my profiles are all still out there – but I’m not in a rush. As much as I can understand J’s desire to find someone else to soothe the hurt, I know for me that that is not what will take the pain away. If I can feel happy in myself, then it will be a hell of a lot easier to say, well, if he doesn’t like me the way I am, oh well.
the hyper-empath
A long time ago, when I was “working” as a consultant at PG&E and basically did nothing from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm, I was bored enough – and obsessed enough – to read Harry Potter fan fiction. I had just discovered Harry Potter earlier that year completely by accident, and devoured the first 4 books all at once. Unfortunately, that was the time that JK Rowling decided to take like 8 years off between book 4 and 5, and I was dying from the wait.
In any case, HP fanfiction developed the wizardry mythology to a whole different level. I mean, Rowling’s world was rich, but because there were so many fanfic writers out there, the imagination was endless. One of the concepts that one fanfic author or another fleshed out was the concept of the Empath. Basically, its a wizard whose skill was to be able to feel and absorb the pain of others. This wizard was quite powerful, because by drawing away others’ pain into themselves, they were able to heal the injured.
I feel a little like the Empath right now, except I don’t know how much healing I am doing. All I know is that, once my compassion and empathy for others opened up, I have been flooded with not only my own, already-heightened emotions, but the pain of others as well. Its so bad that I am constantly sick and ready to throw up.
Now that I have stopped closing myself off to others, I realize part of the reason why I did so to begin with: survival. I have always been super-sensitive to how other people feel, have always had this “soft heart”, as my family puts it in Chinese. There was absolutely a large component of this wall that was built to protect me from being hurt by those I loved as a child. But I also become somewhat insensitive and intolerant because I could not handle feeling everyone’s point of view. It became almost impossible for me to pick out how I felt.
Well, I feel like I’ve opened myself up to emotions – definitely feeling my own, and letting them run their course – and to feeling compassion with those in my life who have hurt me. And suddenly, I feel like I am bombarded with all the pain and suffering that I may have caused, or what people were going through when they inadvertently hurt me. Its almost intolerable. That, on top of my own grief over J.
My own feelings are a whole other story. For years, I’ve repressed them, and so I’ve recently learned to try and let them take its course. Well, I’m starting to see a distinction between feelings that well up and cry to be released – such as past angst, or hysteria – and feelings that stay with you. I have been trying to “feel” my grief for J whenever it comes up, but unlike those that have been bottled up, they don’t subside after being let out. It ebbs and flows, sometimes stronger, sometimes more tolerable. I only realized today that I cannot continue encouraging myself to face the grief everytime it comes at me. Like Dr. P said, I need to ride the wave, not confront it. I may not be able to control how I feel, but I have to make some effort to either go with it or master it. Otherwise I keep getting sucked in under the tide.
Emotions, I am finding, are a balance, just like anything else. Yes, it is important to be authentic about them and to let them run their course. However, I am also seeing that sometimes, you do need to use distress tolerance skills, distractions, filters. It will continue to be a challenge to me how I do that, without reverting back to the complete suppression-spillover cycle that it was before. I need to continue to learn how to master my emotions and direct them positively, because while it has been educational and honest and brave to experience my grief, it is not something that I can do for the long term.
*~*~*~*
What does that mean about what I want to do about J? At some point, I do want to be able to give myself over to making things right with him, even if it means pain for me. Right now, I know that I am not ready to put myself out there yet – I don’t trust my intentions or my ability to control myself, its simply been too soon since I’ve learned this new part of myself. I want to work towards learning how to balance my own needs and being happy, with sacrificing myself to making a relationship right. I want to be strong, and to turn the compassion and pain that I feel into love. I want to learn how to take my connection to other people and make it positive, rather than only feeling their pain and mine.
The connection itself is a tricky thing. I feel like I have been fighting with all of my friends recently in trying to assert myself and my trust in myself. I know that they all mean well, but I want to do things my own way. I’m like a little child that is just starting to separate his own identity from his parents’, and I am tussling right now. How do I balance the protective words of friends with me needing to go out and make those mistakes? How do I say, let me be, without alienating them? I haven’t found that out yet, and I certainly haven’t done a very good job so far.
regaining trust
I’ve been thinking more and more about the concept of regaining emotional trust lately. To be honest, when I decided on the course of action that I am taking right now, in terms of moving forward with my life, I don’t think I really thought it through. I think that I was still reacting – out of fear of rejection, the need to reset, what everyone is telling me is the right thing to do. I don’t think that I have had enough time to learn to trust myself yet, and that what I want in my heart is going to be the right course of action.
A lot of this comes from the long-held belief that I was so “different” than other people. That my actions were always driven by some internal neediness, that I couldn’t see straight because of the emotional storm that was always throwing me into turmoil. That I was more sensitive and fragile ego-wise than others, and that if I listened to what I wanted, it would lead me down the wrong path.
The truth is that, while my past and my BPD certainly have made things more intensely painful or emotional for me, and have cast a negative perception on a lot of things, everyone out there experiences the feelings that I do. In fact, I think what all of my emotional trauma has done to me is to doubt myself so that I do feel different, when we all have our ego issues, fear of rejection, pain from a breakup, feelings of pride. I mean, it hasn’t been that long since I really started to believe in myself and know who I am, but everyday, that crystalizes more and more.
I didn’t do a very good job of regaining J’s trust when we were trying to work things out. A large part of it was because I wasn’t ready. My ego was too fragile to be able to handle rejection, and so I would get frustrated and angry because he still doubted me. In reality, regaining trust is a long-term effort – one that may never come to fruition – and it takes being open and vulnerable, and being willing to accept that its not going to turn around immediately. J has always said that its only been [x amount of time] and that I couldn’t expect him to turn around so soon, and I think that the more I pushed him, the more he figured that I would not accept him at his own time and pace.
And you know, he’s right. My tremendously strong desire to “fix things” back when we were together was not so much about getting his forgiveness and needing to prove to myself that I could fix something. I was still angry with him for the things that he did. I needed to know that I wouldn’t lose a relationship b/c of the BPD. I held onto him and our broken relationship (not really wanting to get back together with him) because it was a catalyst for pushing out my own issues, because he was an “other” that I needed to validate my worth and loveability. It was never about him that whole time, it was about me.
Now that I know myself better, and am slowly starting to trust myself, I wonder if I made a mistake in just “letting him go.” I don’t doubt that I need to move on, move forward. But have I really, genuinely tried to regain his trust – for him, not for me? Have I really put myself out there? I don’t think so.
In fact, I know I haven’t. I’ve only realized recently how much I genuinely love him. It took me a long time to figure out if my feelings for him were because of my needs/issues, versus who he actually is. I’m sure underlying that, no matter how much I told him I wanted to be with him, my own doubts came through. Its hard to believe that someone loves you when its all about them. And I know that I have not been able to make myself vulnerable to anyone else.
So now I am rethinking what I want to do, what I really want. There’s no question that I am going to move forward and accept that he is with someone else. But do I give up? If I think about who I am as a person, I am not someone who gives up. I didn’t get to where I am by shying away from the hard stuff, either professionally or personally, and those have been my greatest accomplishments. And there is a part of me that has always been angry with my mom for giving up on me when I was a kid, just because she couldn’t handle it. I feel compassion for her now, but it still hurt me.
On the other hand, I don’t know if I am able to be in his life without resorting to my old doing things for him ways. And certainly, I know that its going to hurt, be very very hard. Perhaps I am not at that place yet where I can handle that kind of hurt, and that’s ok. Maybe I need time to be stronger. Can I really move forward and still try? Will it be fair to him for me to do so? It certainly won’t be for his gf.
I am at a crossroads, and I need to think through this more. I know I am more willing to put myself out there, its just a matter of whether this is the right time. Have I given myself enough room to really know that this is what I want? That’s also a question that needs to be answered. But at the very least, now I know what needs to be done to mend my relationship (friends or otherwise) with him.
the fear of being happy
Ironic, isn’t it? We spend most of our energy and lives seeking happiness. And yet, when there is an opportunity to *be* happy, it is absolutely terrifying.
I’ve come back to SF and dived into my new life with a vengeance. And it is a whole new life – new job, new attitude and way of seeing myself and others, even new apartment furnishings. I’ve let go of J, started making plans to meet people, and am starting to date. I had an interview today that I was really proud of, because I was myself – I embraced my flaws and even emphasized my dynamic energy instead of trying to play it down – all because I am finally, finally filled with love, self-love, compassion, and peace.
And yet, I am just completely terrified.
My heart is beating rapidly; I feel anxious, and the hollow fear in the pit of my stomach. When I think about it, I don’t even know why, b/c I am heading in a good direction. But change is hard – its painful. As one of my friends always says, “People will usually choose familiar over good.”
I’ve lived so long hating myself, feeling broken, feeling like a victim filled with rage and shame, that letting go of it is so hard. Its almost like, the rage and the brokeness and the shame are tools to defend myself against a deeper, more intimate pain. At least I know the misery of being alone, right? But what happens if I open myself up, and accept the love, and give the love, and then am hurt? Will I be able to survive?
The answer is, of course, “yes.” I know now, because I’ve experienced it, that the joy, peace, happiness that comes from giving love can eradicate any pain; that pain can lead to compassion; that compassion can lead to understanding and healing. I feel good about myself for bringing something good and positive to this world, even if I don’t get what I want. That goodness is what I can hold on to to survive any pain.
Still – change is hard. The old fears and doubts and wounds are trying to hold on for dear life – it feels like this hand is trying to pull me back down into the icy water, as I fight to stop myself from drowning. I’ll pull through, I know. Its so so hard, so so scary. What am I getting into, this great unknown? What will happen if I’m actually happy?
BUT – I think I finally crystalized where I am in my experience. I am taking my life off hold.
