That Most Brutal of Teachers

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn." - C.S. Lewis

Heard this quote a few weeks back watching reruns of Criminal Minds. And my heart heard it today.

Had a great therapy session this afternoon - talked about so much I literally came out shaking and was ready to try tears of relief and victory. We discussed splitting and anger and yesterday's episode of disassociation and whether or not my BPD will ever go away. ) I hope it will...)

But to me, the most important thing we discussed was something that happened a few days ago - someone laughed at me, said something rude and insensitive, and hurt me terribly. Today was the first time I talked about it; I even avoided calling a friend this weekend just because I knew it would come up and I didn't want to deal with it. I wanted to push it out because each time I thought about it, it made me hurt (aside thought: is this why radical acceptance is so important - so we can accept the bad things that have happened to us without hurting each time they pop up in our memory??)

But after spending yesterday in a state of derealization, I began reading the next chapter in my DBT book on interpersonal relationships. And it began by comparing a passive and an aggressive approach to your interactions with others. I checked off about an equal number of things on each list. In some relationships I am overly aggressive when I have to deal with a problem, and I lash out and hurt others and ruin things. In others, I bottle up my frustrations and hurt myself.

My most recent hurt let me see this concept in real life: In this most recent incident, I tried to calmly stand up for myself, and when that didn't work, I shrugged the person off and just walked away. Then I let my anger subside, told myself a coping though and worked out my feelings a few days later talking to my therapist. I could have made a scene, or I could have bottled the anger up inside and ignored it, letting it fester. But I didn't. And I learned that, though I have to work a lot on striking a balance between being too passive and too aggressive in my relationships with others, I am growing.

Hurts like that are brutal, the most brutal of teachers.

But we learn. My God, do we learn.

Love in Black and White

Last night I had a bad dream, and it reminded me of who I am.

::begin dream sequence::
I was in the store where I used to work, cleaning up and putting things away as it was closing down. This guy came in talking to me, and it was clear in the dream that we were dating. After work, I drove to my dad's old house, where I was going to also to box things up and put them away (I watched the show Hoarders before bed, so I can see where this came from).

When I got to the house, this guy was in his car in the driveway with another girl, so I drove away feeling very hurt that he had chosen her over me. I came back to the house sometime later - his car was gone so I went inside and went to work. Soon, he came storming into the house with a bouquet of flowers he had picked and told me he was wrong to ever be with her, that I was the one he wanted. The next few scenes were a blur, but it was obvious to dream-me that we were engaged and we were fixing up this house for us to live in.

And all I felt was sadness. I was sad, because I knew I was not in love with this man, and did not want to settle down and get married. But I continued to work on the house, because I knew he was a good man and he loved me. He was so good I could not even tell him that the bunch of flowers he picked for me were lavender - the plant I am most highly allergic to. I woke up with an overwhelming sense of sadness at this dream.

Besides feeling sad when I woke up, I couldn't help but realize how much the dream paralleled who I really am. Like many borderlines, love and relationships for me are chaotic and fueled by my emotions. When I meet someone, if there is a spark I fall madly in love. If there is no spark, there is very little chance that I will ever be able to feel anything for the person. I haven't dated in three years because I've only felt for one person during that time, and even if he had felt the same way towards me I knew it would have been an unhealthy relationship to pursue. And as much as I would love to find someone to share my time with, I know that unless it just happens to be one of the rare fish in the sea that I fall in love with, I am afraid that I am doomed to feel as I felt in my dream - stuck in a relationship where I am not in love.

Like many relationships in the BPD world, love is black and white for me - all or nothing. And I don't know how to cope with that, or if I will ever learn how.

The Face of BPD (part 2 of 9)

Part 2 of my nine part series of what the diagnostic criteria (symptoms) of BPD look like in my own life.

Diagnostic Criteria #2: a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.

This one of the most recognizable aspects of BPD. It involves others who in turn notice the problem, and it is also such a chaotic and detremental part of one's life that it is hard to overlook.

In my own exploration and eventual diagnosis, the symptoms of chaotic relationship and "splitting" were impossible to miss. I could write on specific situations for hours, but will limit this post to a few key examples. Most of the following deal with romantic relationships, because I tend to have more unstable interactions with men than with other women, whether it be a boyfriend or just a guy friend (I will touch on this later in this post)

One of the first problems I noticed is a tendency to get attached to a person very quickly and be unable to detach from them. Many people with BPD report that they fall in love easily and quickly. This is true for me. I am extremely picky when it comes to dating, but when I do find myself having even a slight attraction to somebody, it spirals quickly into love and slight obsession. I used to see this at just being a romantic and believing in "love at first sight" but I know now that it is a part of my BPD.

Similarly, once I became emotionally attached to a person it is very hard to let them go by either ending the relationship or ceasing to be friends. Because I become attached so very quickly to the person I have overlooked vital flaws or intense differences in our personalities or values, which means I often care very deeply for a person with whom I am incompatible. The relationship is doomed from the beginning, though I fail to see it because I am so lovestruck. Intense disappointment and passionate fighting almost always follow, and the breakup or movement away from the person entitles a very intense grieving process. Hurt, sadness, anger, disappointment, and lack of confidence violently combine when a relationship ends for me, leading to intense periods of depression.

Unfortunately, chaos is a theme in every one of my past romantic relationships. Dramas run the gamut from intense jealously over a the other person's activities to making demands that were impossible to meet. I've often questioned whether I subconsciously create some of the dramas to keep the relationship interesting or make it feel more alive, and I think this is sometimes the case for me. However, I know that most of the turmoil in the relationship comes from the aspect of splitting.

Splitting was a complicated concept for me to understand at first, but most simply defined it is a very quick and often frequent cycle of love (idealization) and hate (devaluation) in a relationship. I see it clearly in my past relationships. For example, I once met and fell very much in love (quickly) with a guy I had met at bible study I was attending. We shared a similar faith and as I grew to like him, I placed him high on a pedestal based on the comments he had made about his beliefs and values. To me, he was good, one of the nicest men I had ever met with no serious flaws. However, once we began dating I saw that, outside of a "religious" setting, he was a very different person. It did not take long for me to drag him off the pedestal and into the realm of my hatred. In my mind, he was an evil person and I began fighting with him based on the issues I took with him. Eventually, we would work out the issues or I would see another part of him that shifted him back into my good graces. That cycle continued many times over the course of both our dating relationship and our friendship, until eventually the whole thing ended with a large fight and I spiraled into a depressive episode that took a lot of effort to overcome.

The psychological basis of splitting involves several theories I don't fully understand, and as I work through the process in therapy I hope to learn why I have developed the tendency to think in the black and white terms of splitting. I have also been exploring the reasons that almost ever example of splitting in my life involves men and not women. Some possible reasons I see for this might involve growing up in an all-female household, damage from seeing and experiencing sexual harassment during my teen years, or a very unhealthy love relationship early in my dating life.

However, regardless of the reasons, being aware that I "split" and knowing the signs of it will be helpful to me. In the future, I can recognize that I fall in love too easily and use my developing skills to control my thoughts and emotions to develop healthier relationships. I can distinguish flaws or personality aspects that I can live with in a relationship to those that make me incompatible with a guy. I can also now recognize the precursors for splitting and try to avoid the quick changeover from love to hate or from good to evil.

full list of BPD criteria here

We Can Mend

I love Grey's Anatomy. Not for the drama, or even for the medicine (although I am a science buff), but for the simple fact that it makes me feel not so alone. Meredith, Izzy, Cristina...they all as neurotic as I am. And watching them gives me company in my chaos and strength to face my own problems.

I recently went through a tumultuous relationship and I had to spend several months in the process of mending. It seemed impossible. I fell worse than Meredith, and I never thought I would feel better again. But as time goes by and I learn how to cope, the pain has lessened. So as I was watching an old episode tonight I saw Bailey say to Derek, after he left Meredith:

"No she's not [ok]. She’s a human traffic accident and everybody is slowing down to look at the wreckage. She’s doing the best she can with what she has left. Look, I know you can’t see this because you’re in it but you can’t help her now. It’ll only make it worse. Walk away. Leave her to mend."

That was me, the human traffic accident. I didn't even know I was mending - at the time I was trying to survive. Getting out of bed just to get something to eat and crawl back into the darkness. Surviving. Knowing those around me knew I was stranded in my loneliness, just feeling the hurt and letting it be real to me. Letting the situation soak in, and learning how to cope so I could deal with it.

I hurt so much after I lost this person, and wanted nothing more than for them to come back into my life, apologize, accept my apology, and make me feel better. That was the fantasy. But the reality was different. We both said and did things that did irreparable damage, and though I would give anything to fix it, the other party did not feel the same way. That was the reality. And by being left, as hard as it was and as long as it took, I could mend. And even though I couldn't "see it" because I was "in it," mending was possible.

In another episode Meredith told Derek:

"I'm all glued back together now. I make no apologies for how I chose to repair what you broke."

She was talking about the relationships she had that helped her get over McDreamy...I, on the other hand, had to make tough decisions to get myself back up. People knew about my struggle but were helpless to lend me a hand. And I even had to heartbreakingly stand up for what I believed in, all alone, when it was the hardest thing in the world and would make me lose all I thought I had. But in time, I got glued back together. I did what I had to do to survive, then fix. That's reality - that's radical acceptance in a nutshell. I make no apologies. Meredith got glued back together. I can to. Mending is possible. We can mend.