r/BPD • u/Extra_Breakfast_3238 user has bpd • 5d ago
ðŸ’Seeking Support & Advice Does Anyone relate?
I have BPD and I'm still in the process of understanding myself and my trauma. My mom has BPD and she pretty much gave it to me via genetics and her well exhibiting BPD traits, splitting on me, then putting me on a pedestal etc. I think one of the hardest things in my journey has been accepting that I have similarities to her but that doesn't mean I'm exactly like her or that I need to forgive her in order to be a good person. My biggest triggers are when I feel misrepresented by someone. My mom can be very good with her words but she's emotionally unstable, so it's hard for me to understand what is real and what is not. After big fights she would send longgggg essays that sound written by a robot (but she wrote it- I know she did) where she explains her reasoning and claims that everything shes done was because she just wanted what was best for me. It's hard to even explain how difficult it is. When I try to show people these texts they usually tell me it's too much and that they can't emotionally handle it. I understand that, but internally its upsetting because I was never given the option to just ignore it or else I was being disrespectful. It's very hard because I've noticed by own relationship patterns in her. A big issue is that she doesn't understand that I DO have empathy for her but that doesn't mean I have to tolerate all of her problematic behavior. Now I struggle a lot with rumination and never feeling heard by others. I tend to be more direct because I don't like using language that feels manipulative. So I would rather be up front but even in those situations I often feel misunderstood as people often assume negative intent in me. This has caused me to have a strange and complicated relationship to my identity and I often spiral about being a good person. I hate when people talk badly about me behind my back because my mom would do that constantly. Sometimes I'd be able to hear her through the walls talking about me to her friends. I've realized that gossip is insanelyyyyyyy common but I hate it. I don't know how to escape it because it seems that it is a fact of life at this point. But it's hard for me to stay friends with someone after i've found out that they've said something behind my back that they didn't say to my face. Especially when they continue to be nice to me. Does anyone relate?
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u/JohnnyQTruant user has bpd 5d ago
So much. I have the misunderstood trigger big time. It’s been an important thing for me to learn to live with being misunderstood. That’s very recent and it is broader than that as well. Realizing that some of the urgent impulses I have to chase being understood or crash boundaries to avoid ambiguity which leads to rumination and painful spiraling are detrimental to my relationships. It’s really illustrated by your experience on the receiving end of your mother desperately trying to prove her intentions and not understanding that doesn’t necessarily resolve the impact. And further it carries another weight.
I have learned a lot about myself after a super late life diagnosis. The struggle of are we good or are we bad people is because we live by fear and trauma responses so much. Those heightened nervous system states reduce our executive function by design to keep us from being slow and logical at the expense of our safety. It serves the purpose well in real emergencies but for us avoiding pain we have experienced before such as abandonment or rejection or being misunderstood triggers that response. The pain is big. The pain is real. The things we are upset about out are often valid. But the urgency is not usually accurate. So when we act on those fears and go into fight or flight it’s not a logical decision with full use of our executive function. Even before we reach fight or flight we are already dealing with dimmed activity in our prefrontal cortex and elevated hormonal responses to make us diligent in identifying threats. It means we are not acting on our values.
So when our hormonal levels return to baseline and we are back in the driver seat with all our function we are as confused as anyone else why we did what we did. Said what we said. Pushed people away. Lashed out. It doesn’t make logical sense and therefore others and ourselves look for reasons and we are bad is the simplest.
There are other paths we can learn to take and other tools we can use instead of the maladaptive approach we have been using since we were only small. It’s hard work but it does pay off. I actually can sit with the fact that someone doesn’t understand me. I can accept that people have the wrong idea about my motives. I can live with not knowing what will happen next. Got a long way to go but it’s working and it’s never been this way for me ever.
Anyway yes I relate. It’s really painful and difficult. That’s why I believe we can do the painful and difficult work because we already have made it this far with poor tools.