Today was a pretty rough therapy day for me. I went into it feeling crappy and not knowing why. As soon as I started talking – as soon as there was actually a space where I was allowed (forced) to sit down and think about it and say what I was feeling – it was so obvious what was wrong.
It wasn’t the situation at the farm (which has been weird, what with my friend/roommate and I still navigating the world of post-blowout interactions), it wasn’t the situation with my boyfriend (which has been feeling a little scary all around) and it wasn’t any of the other things my head let me believe throughout the week.
It’s the fact that I’ve now lived 30 minutes from my parents/family for almost a solid month and they haven’t visited once. Have barely called or emailed. And never to actually see how I am – just to mention stupid superficial shit.
Do they care that I was suicidal only a few months ago? Do they care that things got so bad that I had to live with them? Do they realize that I couldn’t bring myself to tell them “I want to die” and it took someone else breaking my trust and revealing that information for them to hear it? Do they even remember me blowing up at them for the past 20-odd years of neglect and ignorance? Do they care if I’m dead or alive? Do they hope I give up?
For the first time ever, I came really close to crying in therapy just thinking about it. The actual words would barely come out, my throat was so closed up with years of habitual self-denial. When it comes to expressing my feelings, especially hurt and anger, I feel like I’m back at square one sometimes, totally unable to breathe let alone speak the words: How can you do this to me?
As I sat there trying to choke out some kind of explanation of what was happening, of how perpetually hurt and disappointed and ignored I am by my family members, Karen didn’t bother to try to reconcile me to their behaviour. All she finally said was, “And where has this gotten you?”
The hardest of the DBT skills, hands down, is radical acceptance. Radical acceptance means accepting reality as it truly is, even if you hate every single thing about it. It means acknowledging that even the most abhorrent and disgusting and unjust things simple are. They are horrible and maybe they shouldn’t exist but they do.
Radical acceptance does NOT mean saying, “This is okay” or “I like this.” You can hate something with every fibre of your being and still radically accept it.
If you’re feeling totally confused or in denial about this, you’re not alone. This is all what makes radical acceptance so bloody difficult.
Part of coming to a point of radical acceptance involves realizing what you have been refusing to accept is already there, and you can’t change it.
She left me.
It’s over.
He raped me.
They died.
I need help.
It means realizing what you’ve been fighting so hard against and asking yourself: But where has it gotten me? Because chances are, the answer is a big, fat nowhere.
For me, the core thing I have been fighting against for years – if not my entire life – is the reality that my parents will never give me what I need. They will never be able to love, nurture or care for me the way I need(ed) someone to love, nurture and care for me. I fought it in ways that are probably all too familiar to you, too: But they SHOULD love me, they should have been there, they should never have been parents, someone else should give me that care and love. Yet as Karen pointed out, fighting that reality has gotten me nowhere. Worse than nowhere. It’s gotten me to a place of extreme mental illness, self-harm, anorexia, OCD, mistrust of people and an inability to have normal relationships. It’s gotten me BPD.
This part of radical acceptance sucks. The crushing despair and depression as you begin to give up the fight and realize what you must accept. Because it’s just the way it is.
I could continue to rage and rail and emotionally blackmail and snarl and hurt myself and others. Or I could start to accept that this is the way it is. And then go from there to… where? I’m not sure yet. But it has to be better than here.
Cat xxxx
Half of a Soul - Life with BPD 
Big big hugs Cat 😦 xxxxx I’ve been thinking about you and wondering how things were going at the farm. It’s weird isn’t it, how sometimes we don’t even realise what’s actually bothering us….
I am so so sorry you are feeling so let down and abandoned by your family, and that they are not showing you the extraordinary love, care and compassion that you deserve. I agree that radical acceptance (I didn’t know that’s what it is called!) feels almost impossibly hard, and that even if you think you can do it, how on earth do you know what to do next?
The bit I personally find impossible is not so much accepting that my parents didn’t and can’t give me what I need, but that at this stage in my life, there isn’t anyone else who can either. What I feel I need, simply doesn’t exist. I think I possibly find it easier to accept the parent situation only because of the differences in our family situation that has led to slightly different manifestations of our BPD. As my circumstances arose more from parental clinginess, intrusion and engulfment, I am the one trying to separate myself from them. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t need what I didn’t get – I desperately crave it from someone else. I read a really good blog post a few weeks ago (I wish I could remember where – I will forward it if I find it!) that talked about the fact that we can never make up, now, for what we lost or never had in childhood. The time for experiencing ‘perfect care’ was in childhood- as adults, we have to accept that the option of that experience no longer exists for us. We can’t transplant what should have been a part of childhood development, into the world of adult knowledge and understanding.
Which is not to say that you shouldn’t expect unconditional love and acceptance from your parents, because they _should_ love you in that way, and it’s heartbreaking that you don’t feel that they do. But even if they were giving that to you now, you wouldn’t experience it in the way that a very young child does, when they have not yet fully individuated, and see themselves and their parents, and their worlds, as almost a single entity. And I think it’s the need for _that_ experience that we’re still feeling, in our core, and which was never met. And not having the possibility of that now, is something that I can honestly say I don’t think I am anywhere near accepting yet, and I can very much see how accepting it will involve the crushing despair and depression that you have mentioned.
If this is a period you’re starting to go into now, I’m sending massive amounts of hugs and thoughts your way, and please do reach out and keep in touch and let me know if you want to chat again.. I think it must take a huge amount of courage to actually ‘do’ radical acceptance, and to be able to ‘put down arms’, stop fighting what you feel you need to badly, and just ‘be’ with the situation.
Take care, xxxxxxxx
ps sorry, essay, argh 😦
If there was an ocean of emotions, I would go out and get buckets and buckets of empathy and give them to you.
I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. I’m not a fan of DBT, but I hope it works for you. Hugs!!!
I have to admit that my brain has been racing so much lately and it’s hard to focus. I read the beginning and end of this post. As soon as I reached that intense “OMG I know exactly what you mean!” feeling, I could hardly continue reading because I almost wasn’t prepared to be mingled up with those memories of my own.
I’m only in stage one of DBT; mindfulness…and I can only imagine how difficult this part is for you. I will be there one day, trying to accept the very things you are currently facing. I relate to every single one of your thoughts and feelings. I don’t know you, but I care about you way more than you know just for the simple fact that we share this diagnosis. I know what it is like and know the suffering you go through, to say the least.
Thank you for sharing and I wish I could do more to ease what you are going through inside.
Thanks, Mandi, that means a lot xxxx