Rant/BPD like struggles
Hello! This is a long post, but I just want to rant about how I feel about my social life, and if anyone else with bpd relates with me(or without bpd).
So, I suspect I may have bpd, but I can't be sure enough yet. I have a lot of bpd symptoms and struggles, struggles I never thought were valid but just me being a selfish monster. You see, I am terrified to make friends, because I know exactly who I am. I am so insecure of myself, yet think extremely highly of myself like a god at the same time. A person has to literally chained to me in order for me to feel secure in a friendship/relationship, no matter the circumstance so I know they won't leave me. I can't help but easily feel mad at people internally if they say or do one minor thing wrong. I fear heavily if friends are about to abandon me, or don't seem absolutely excited to talk to me all the time or else I will feel such rage, get into mood swings that last weeks over a little comment or subtle action they've done. I am not terrified of the other person, I am terrified of myself going into friendship knowing I might give someone else trust issues, due to my extreme rapid shifts in moods from my intense fear of abandonment, from unintentionally giving silent treatments to people because I know If I'll respond during these mood swings, things won't go well. I worry about this since I give the silent treatment because if I text my anger will gain control of me to attack(emotionally) them in any way I can. Since during those moments, I genuinely believe during these moments they have betrayed me when realistically they never have. Anytime any of my friends (that I don't have anymore due to this factor) gets in a bad mood, I cannot help but subconsciously think it is because they are beginning to hate me, but won't tell me. Even when they tell me the truth, I don't believe it because in my head all I could think is why did you make me feel scared again, why are you so selfish for talking to me in a low tone, without enthusiasm, all these irrational thoughts stemming from my intense fear of abandonment that never goes away. I worry for weeks and months whether if a friend will abandon me, but hide it because I don't want to come across as needy, so I pretend to believe them because I am so deeply insecure from being abandoned all the time for how I feel because I know I am a flashing red flag. Since my childhood, I have lost countless friends, yet continue to lose more.
When I finally did meet a friend online who related to me who has bpd, she ghosted me and never talked to me again all over I triggered her mood swings by telling her her friend seemed toxic, so I'm beginning to think even my own kind is against me that I don't belong anywhere with anyone even if I tried to talk to other people like me, but yet I'd be a hypocrite to say I wasn't toxic either.
I chose to have no friends at all due to the extreme fear of my friends triggering me, (which is not their fault at all)
I know there will be some of you that will just say just become confident, just simply control my emotions, but it isn't that simple. I know there will be people who probably think I'm faking or just using this to gain attention, but I am genuinely struggling with keeping/making friends because I can go from hating somebody to idolizing them in a second. I hold intense grudges against people for things most people wouldn't care about. I feel so empty all the time, like I have no identity, empty, without an apparent reason why, I don't know why I feel this way but I do.
Apparently, what I just described was Bpd traits, usually I don't like to self diagnose but I feel like bpd truly resonates almost everything I feel. I've talked to some people with bpd who I relate to on a a high level more than anybody else.
If you've made it this far in my rant thank you. Please comment if you relate to this, want someone to talk to, I genuinely feel so alone in all of my struggles and would really like support right now 😢 I was scared to make this post, but I am doing it anyway in hopes I am not alone.
@Dreamy89
Hi there. 💜 Just wanted to say you've done an amazing job of expressing all of this.
I agree that what you've written feels like it lines up really closely with how people diagnosed with BPD might describe their experiences. (With or without a diagnosis, BPD does feel like a helpful lens for understanding what's happening.)
What I understood from reading through it:
- Fear of abandonment is really at the core of it and everything else flows out of that
- Then you're on the lookout for cracks in those friendships or possible threats (e.g. "that person didn't seem as excited to talk to me").
- When one of those threats happens, there's anger due to feeling betrayed or like it's yet another instance of a long-running pattern of other people not being good enough (i.e. another person leaving, nobody being stable).
- So then grudges/feelings build up that you have to keep to yourself, because you understand that if you shared them other people wouldn't respond well.
- But then distancing or holding feelings back isn't an option either (gets perceived as silent treatment and evidence that something is wrong).
- So then you're kind of stuck and there isn't a good answer (difficult feelings arise frequently, can't stop feelings from happening, expressing feelings leads to bad results, but not expressing feelings also leads to bad results).
- So there's this growing feeling of "I don't want to try to make friends if it potentially means pulling other people into this turbulence and hurting them. Things go wrong whenever I'm connected with people."
***
Makes a lot of sense what you mentioned where having that friend with BPD meant that they were able to relate to your experience (which is great), but it also led to some of the same dynamics happening, only from their side (i.e. they were the one feeling scared/angry and ending the friendship before it became too painful).
Wanted to respond to some of the criticisms you anticipated people might have:
- "Just become confident" - the lack of confidence feels completely reasonable/realistic when every friendship you try to enter into becomes complicated/unmanageable in predictable ways. People who say "just do __" don't understand what's happening behind the scenes or how messy/difficult/tricky it is.
- "Just simply control your emotions" - I've personally never gotten the hang of that. Maybe the outward behaviors are adjustable, and then that can sometimes subtly influence how the feelings evolve, but the original feelings themselves sort of are what they are. If you feel angry, there isn't necessarily an on/off switch. And once that feeling is there, it connects to the broader experiences/themes and is a challenge to deal with.
- I don't think you're faking. Someone who's faking wouldn't be able to describe it in the way that you have. 😊
- "Using this to gain attention" - that's a pretty sinister one, lol. I could see that creating some really nasty feedback loops (i.e. feel lonely => want to reach out => the very desire to reach out is labeled as bad/immoral => feel even more lonely => etc.). Those are generally tough loops... 1) have a thought/feeling that occurs frequently/automatically, 2) merely having that thought/feeling makes you bad in some way.
@QuietMagic
Thank you for the thorough interpretation! You hit the nail right on the head! You seem to be very good at analyzing and interpreting other people's emotions.
All these struggles combined makes my life feel impossible to live, all my struggles highly contradict themselves, so I've always felt like there was more than one person in my body because of this.
It doesn't help that my mom disapproves of me showing or hinting at any kind of emotion (she is a narcissist), so it makes my struggles even more harder since she is a miserable woman who tries to put me down in a deeper hole when I express anger or depression. Another rant here because you seem to understand, my symptoms are worse because my own mother has threatened to take me to a mental hospital all because I was crying in my bedroom, this monster of a human - threatened her own daughter over the most stupidest thing. Since then, I've been terrified to express any emotion, yet other people laugh at my face when I try to tell them I can't express emotions in my house that my mother is awful. I feel my symptoms are worse than they could be all because of my own mother who also deals with emotional dysregulation, but sees nothing wrong with herself- she's 50 and acts like a child.
Even right now, as I'm typing this I'm feeling insane anger from how deeply depressed I've felt, all because I have to force a smile when I see her, or else she will make my day worse if I look at her "wrong". I've called CPS on her a couple years ago, but I've scared her to stop screaming at me everyday for triggering her mood swings. (over looking or talking to her "wrong") Now, it's just shaming me in very subtle ways or outright shaming me for how I feel without yelling. I just don't understand how society allows monsters like her to become parents. I feel I could be so much more happier right now, If I had different parents. There has been so many times I wanted to cry this week, but fear struck my eyes dry before a single tear could come out, I felt even more pain. I could leave the house temporarily, but there is nowhere to go since I live in the middle of nowhere in a small village and have no friends to turn to, so basically I am always home and you can imagine the emotion flooding inside of me that are forcibly suppressed unless I want trouble from my mom.
I know everyone has family issues, but my mother is beyond regular family issues, she forbids me from talking to any of my biological family since she wants me isolated from what she calls "bad people" despite the fact my sister is a sweetheart and told me the truth about what happened to her when I secretly reached out to her on F@ceb00k.
I am sorry for the unsolicited rant, you just seem so very sweet and understanding :)
If it bothers you, I can stop too.
Thanks for listening!
@Dreamy89
Hey, I'm glad that I wasn't too far off in how I understood things. 👍
Wow, that situation with your mom sounds like it makes things a lot more difficult.
I feel like it's really challenging to dwell in a sense of "it's okay to have feelings" if the practical reality is that having feelings leads to your mom reacting in a way that causes tons of additional, unwanted stress/suffering. It's kind of like your own ability to let yourself do the thing that feels right/healthy is dependent on having people around you that will actually allow you to do that. The actual everyday experience is "If I have feelings and allow those feelings to exist as they are without pushing them down, that causes lots of problems."
Adding insult to injury, people assume you must be lying about what your mom is doing. (I guess it's not normal for parents to respond to "oh my child is crying" by saying "don't do that or else I'll institutionalize you". 🤦♂️ Or to be trying to completely isolate you from everyone else.)
The emotional dysregulation thing you mentioned with her also feels like it connects to all of this. Since she can't manage her feelings and her feelings explode outwards in ways that affect you, you indirectly end up being responsible for managing her feelings (i.e. by carefully restricting your own inner/outer self)--because your own well-being depends on keeping her feelings stable. Not an ideal situation, but makes total sense.
So the bigger picture now is:
-"I can't express momentary feelings without other people (e.g. my mom) reacting in ways that make things much worse"
-"I also can't express my meta-understanding of the situation as a whole without people reacting in ways that make things worse (e.g. minimizing/disbelieving)"
***
Is there any chance of your living situation changing at some point in the future and you not being around your mom as much?
@QuietMagic
@QuietMagic
Yes this is all right, I feel my suspicion of bpd all connects down to the behavior of my mother: She gets mad when I look at her wrong, gets easily triggered by me whether I phrase something wrong or look at her wrong, can very easily rapidly change moods very easily by those around her. It effects me very much, since I've been around her all my life she is part of the reason I avoid people because of the way my brain and hers work, I can't help but think everyone is secretly mad at me but won't tell me the way my parents pretend to be not be offended by me until they burst. Even if they care, it makes me wish I could've gotten taken away to a different more loving family where the family parents me, not the other way around.
I feel like she cares a bit about me, but in a different way, but can't be a good mother. She spoils me with gifts, chocolate, anything physical I want yet when It comes to anything emotional or mental she shoots it right down. She tells me all the time how she wish she never had kids because they made her life miserable, it makes me think do I make you miserable? Why are you telling your kid this?
She ALWAYS finds a way to minimize everything I say or do, I always feel awful around her so it makes it worse when people only laugh at me when I tell her horror stories about her to be completely thrown underneath the rug.
It is a danger to express my emotions, that's what people don't understand. Unless I want to risk being called a spoiled brat, be demanded to tell them what's wrong with a stern tone (that doesn't sound very kind) or be accused of being rude because my tone will obviously be lower when I'm in a bad mood I've learnt to heavily suppress my feelings to the point if you looked at me you couldn't even tell i was unhappy.
I don't like that, I'm tired of faking how I feel to please others. I just want to scream, yell, fight, but my extreme rejection sensitive dysphoria is a whole OTHER story.
That is a chance, right now I live in a small village with barely over 200 people and we plan to move to the city in a couple or few years once we save up the money. Right now I am stuck living with my mom everyday, I don't have a friends house I could have sleepovers multiple nights with, there are no libraries open more than 2 times a week that I could go to either to escape from her, It feels like I'm choking on my own breathe most days. She wants me to live with her forever, but I don't want to be with her forever, I eventually wanna move out and get a partner to live with.
It's all complicated, I am mainly painting my mom out to be a monster when she is to a degree, I feel she cares a little bit but not enough. She just needs mental help but can't even see she is so severely ill. When she praises me, it's only for my appearance and maybe a couple other things so It's very confusing.
@Dreamy89
"I can't help but think everyone is secretly mad at me but won't tell me the way my parents pretend to be not be offended by me until they burst"
Yeah, I could see how that would be scary this idea of "anybody who isn't actively angry at me is just politely pretending and slowly building up a deep resentment toward me that will eventually burst out".
And makes sense that that fear/feeling would be there if there have been lots of prior experiences where that appraisal turned out to be realistic/accurate when dealing with your parents.
***
"Why are you telling your kid this?"
Ah, for real...
Mother: I wish you didn't exist, my life would've been so much better
You: Um... thanks, makes me feel really loved/appreciated 🤦♂️
Also it's not like it's specific/actionable feedback. It's not "hey, when you do this thing, that bothers me and I feel pretty upset. Would it be possible to tweak that and that would make my life feel a little bit better?" It's just this sort of sweeping, permanent, existential "you as a person are bad and make me feel miserable, for reasons that are outside of your control". Oops, should've thought of that before you became a mom. 🙏 (Matches your comment from before that maybe some people shouldn't be allowed to become parents.)
***
"It is a danger to express my emotions, that's what people don't understand"
Yeah, that's really important. There are so many ways that things can go wrong.
Side-thought: it's possibly made more difficult by the fact that there's a build-up and the emotions that have accumulated are pretty strong/intense? When the stuff you have to express is different or beyond what it feels like most people are able to handle, it makes it more challenging.
"I just want to scream, yell, fight"
I guess there's this growing inner violence/dissatisfaction that wants somewhere to go and resents being pushed down. It would be cool if there were ways to connect with that anger/distress and give it room to exist without it hurting anyone.
Wonder if you've done any journaling/creative activities where you're able to connect with that anger in a 'safe' way? (But could also see there being some reasons for maybe not wanting to do that.)
"or be accused of being rude because my tone will obviously be lower when I'm in a bad mood"
But letting that part having some room to express itself feels dangerous.
***
"She wants me to live with her forever, but I don't want to be with her forever, I eventually wanna move out and get a partner to live with"
I didn't miss the juxtaposition of:
1) You make me miserable
2) Please don't go I need you
"She just needs mental help but can't even see she is so severely ill"
Agree it sounds like she's struggling from her side with something
***
"I am mainly painting my mom out to be a monster when she is to a degree"
Sure, she's not 100% a monster. Like you mentioned that she tries to offer care in physical ways. But then she also misses the mark repeatedly on the emotional side of things and that matters.
