Half of a Soul – Life with BPD

A recent post on anger by the extremely insightful Life in a Bind really got me thinking about the topic this week.

Have you ever caught yourself feeling, as Life in a Bind put it (quoting another blogger), angry enough to die? Has it been over things that you know are crazy yet you can’t help but feel, well, crazy?

Anger is a huge motivator. It’s the ‘get up and go’ of our primal emotions. Its healthy role is to take something wrong and make it right. Unlike fear, anger should never make us freeze or shut down.

But until relatively recently in my life, that was exactly what anger made me do. Freezing cold fury is how I would describe it. Beneath my stony mask I felt angry enough to break shit, scream, hurt people, hurt myself – I’d find my mind flying through violent revenge scenarios, scenarios that involved me hurting the person who had ‘wronged’ me in any way that I could – often by killing myself, in these fantasies.

Let’s just pause for a minute and consider that statement.

Angry enough (at someone else) to kill myself.

Huh?

Somewhere along the line, many (most) borderlines participate in a bizarre kind of alchemy: they take anger – often extremely legitimate anger – and turn it into self-violence. They take the pain of being hurt and they hurt themselves. Does it make any sense at all? Well yes and no. No, it doesn’t make sense to the healthy brain, the one that puts the anger where it belongs – outside of self. But yes, it makes perfect sense to the borderline brain (particularly the introverted borderline brain, which avoids acting out at all costs).

I’m not going to go into the why’s and wherefore’s of self-harm here (as the topic deserves a much more extensive and expert treatment than I could offer) but undoubtedly, to hurt anything – including yourself – takes a tremendous amount of anger. However, for years I wouldn’t have even known enough to call what I was feeling ‘anger.’ I was so cut off from my anger, so suffocated by my fear of getting angry or communicating that anger, that I convinced myself I was simply insane rather than hurt or angry.

This week in therapy, Karen told me to focus on processing the anger of key past wrongs. I must admit I find it really hard to even know exactly what that means. There’s a big part of me that still believes “I deserve this” about many of those wrongs, when I know the answer Karen’s looking for is “I don’t fucking deserve this!” And I find anger a difficult emotion to re-capture outside of the moment. What am I supposed to do, just sit and be angry? I’m not really sure. But I do know that learning to externalize rather than internalize anger is one of the keys to my mental health and recovery.

Example: last week as I ate a piece of pie (yum), my otherwise intuitive, sensitive, wonderful boyfriend jokingly made a remark along the lines of “whoa, slow down, I don’t date fat chicks.” (Yes, even wonderful people can say incredibly idiotic, horrible things, it’s part of my new, non-black-and-white, non-borderline thinking to realize this).

I felt the familiar sensation of turning to stone and immediately visualized all the various hurtful things I would say to him for saying such a fucking stupid thing. What did I do/say? Nothing. My face registered nothing. My mouth said nothing (it said pie, in fact). I sat in silence until it became so obvious something was wrong that he asked what was wrong. “Nothing.” Argh. And so it continued until I really really rallied myself enough to say even a fraction of what I was actually feeling: “Why the FUCK would you say something like that?” etc. The wall was broken, and even though it sucked to have that conversation at all, we had it. I didn’t beat myself up for being too fat, too sensitive, too whatever. Instead I put the anger exactly where it belonged: not on me for enjoying pie, but on him for being an insensitive ass. Did he apologize for being tactless (understatement of the year) in his attempt at a joke? Yes. Was I able to forgive him – actually forgive him – without unresolved anger eating my insides? Yes, because I’d gotten it out.

This is obviously not a manual for how to deal with anger, and I’m not saying that everyone is going to handle hearing their faults/mistakes as well as my (occasionally clueless) boyfriend handled it. But I have a hard time believing anything can be worse than corrosive, self-directed and unexpressed rage.

xxxx

As far as I understand it, almost every path towards BPD starts with an initial “trauma” that is, from the perspective of the victim, ignored, unnoticed or otherwise disregarded. I say “trauma” because as I’ve learned, the trauma can be anything – it doesn’t have to be something that anyone else would call traumatic. It can be coming home from school every day to an empty home, sick with loneliness. It can be a misinterpreted remark or gesture. It can even be something on television.

I grew up with the conviction that I had no right to my (seemingly inexplicable) feelings. I had no right to be angry, upset, depressed or emotional. I can still hear my teenage inner voice, berating myself for daring to feel these ways when elsewhere in the world people were facing what I considered real problems – disability, starvation, rape, torture, incarceration. I was severely fucked up and simultaneously certain that I had absolutely no right to be, making my various methods of self-injury doubly deserved in my opinion.

Unfortunately, my critical inner voice was only one among thousands (millions?) who believe that pain and suffering must be justified before they can be felt at all. The chronic cultural attitude we have towards emotional pain is just about the ideal breeding ground for serious mental illness – as is clearly being demonstrated at an alarming rate.

Because it’s not just trauma that destroys people – we all undergo traumas, of various definitions. Some seem beyond human endurance. But as Viktor Frankl notes in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

When pain becomes an opportunity for healing, strength and connection with other human beings, it gains inherent meaning. It becomes bearable. When it goes ignored, dismissed, belittled or hidden, it exists in an echoing emptiness. The brain struggles to contextualize the experience and comes up blank – withdrawn, vacant, void of feeling. We know what we’re feeling but we also know we aren’t supposed to feel it – a combination that leaves the mind and body torn in warring pieces.

Even though part of me still resists it, even though I hate delving into it in therapy, even though I still have yet to really cry about it, I know that even just feeling the pain of traumas that I blocked for so long is going to be a major step towards treating my BPD. In that respect, having this new relationship in my life has been extremely helpful. I can’t get over how lucky I am to have found someone who knows it’s okay to feel, someone that takes the time to say, amidst my jabbering, “You’re allowed to be upset.” Developing the ability to express pain has been a steep learning curve for me (what with two decades of ingrained BPD behaviours), but so rewarding – I genuinely hadn’t figured out that people can’t dry your tears if you refuse to cry.

And on that note, another favourite quote from Man’s Search for Meaning: 

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

Do you have the courage to suffer?

Cat xxxx

Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: nothing prevents blogging more than actually being happy with one’s life.

Even now I’m cautious to describe myself that way. I mean life isn’t perfect and obviously I’m not jumping-up-and-down full-on happy but I am edging towards a kind of content participation in life… which is a massive change from a year or even 6 months ago.

Which is to say: apologies for the long absence!

One thing I have been struggling with lately, is how to keep my BPD at the forefront of my mind – that is, acknowledged and dealt with – rather than divorcing it from myself completely (suppression) or falling in head first (depression). Once things start to get even a little bit better, I find the freedom from BPD to be an all-too-pleasant experience. I know it’s not really gone – I know it could come back and sometimes it feels frighteningly close. But I now realize that it’s important to actually stay connected to those really miserable parts of myself, even when I’m not necessarily miserable. This is a crucial part of working them into my whole self, my normal life and my improved outlook that involves all parts of myself working together.

So how do you deal with feelings of sadness, depression, grief, rage and fear when you’d be more than happy to just lock them away in the closet like you always did in the past?

Unfortunately, I’m really not sure.

I’m doing the best I can with the following strategies that do seem to help though:

1) Allow and acknowledge as many emotions as you can, without judgment. Notice when you’re sad. Notice when you’re inexplicably angry or frustrated. Notice when you’re depressed. Better yet, say it out loud if at all possible – maybe even to someone else. Part of fighting BPD is avoiding the “bury everything and explode” cycle that dominates the disorder. Acknowledging feelings relieves the pressure and simultaneously shows your BPD parts that you CAN handle emotions in a non-self-harmful way.

2) Keep up with therapy and meds. This is a tough one for me. My every instinct is to toss out the pills and immediately call up my therapist and tell her thanks, I’m cured, no more painful sessions to sit through, hooray! I find myself talking about stupid things that don’t really matter just so we don’t have to delve into something that I know will bring down my mood or even ruin my day. But I know deep down that the treatment is still a work in progress and to stop now would be supremely premature. Particularly with regards to the medication – I flippantly skipped a couple weeks of my Wellbutrin/Abilify combo and suddenly found myself wondering why I felt touchy, weepy, frustrated and generally low. Go figure. Don’t underestimate what chemical assistance is still doing for you.

3) Don’t let the words “I’m okay” or “It’s nothing” or “Everything is fine” come out of your mouth ever again (unless you really mean it). Even for little things. If you’re anything like me, chances are you have rarely, if ever, meant those words in your entire life but you’ve said them a LOT. And guess what? Saying them over and over and over has crushed your soul with your very own hands. I used to tell myself so many things about how the right person would understand, the right person would know I didn’t mean it, the right person would see the real me and how much I was actually hurting. All bullshit. All a waste of time. No – worse than a waste of a time: a recipe for borderline personality disorder. Treating yourself like your opinions and emotions and thoughts should be hidden behind a mask means you’ll never believe that anyone else thinks differently. I realize this one is absolutely terrifying and means exposing your raw emotions to the possibility of rejection. But remember that even if you do encounter some insensitive ass who reacts badly, it doesn’t mean better people aren’t out there and that you will not meet them someday.

4) Schedule time to reflect on your inner journey – ideally daily. This is so easy when I’m depressed (it’s virtually all I can do – in a bad way) and so hard when I’m “up.” But like acknowledging all emotions, doing this a bit at a time means I’m not going to crash and dwell on the things I’ve rejected for months.

So that’s what I’ve been focusing on. What have you found helpful in keeping a balance between your BPD/non-BPD parts?

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