Messages

I just want to say that I have bpd diagnoses and honestly I think it's like this cptsd and bpd are the same thing. I think that's hard to except sense most of us grew up thinking " is it me or is it them ?" And when we have this ah ha moment about bpd and how " omg bpd is what my parent has !" It can feel like a god send! So to think it's been passed down to us the victims!!! That's too much to handle! But what I think is the actual issue is this...

Years ago if you had all of the bpd symptoms which there are 350? Traites that can make up bpd and you only have to have 9 for a diagnosis lol. Anyway years ago if a man walks into the shrink and says I do x y z and it's causing issues, they where labelled either PTSD narrcessist or scociopath. Now if a women says I do x y z and it's causing issues in my life ... Well they where " hysterical " or borderline. Bpd is passed down via two things in my understanding 60% genetics ( I believe the label highly sensitive person constitutes the genetic component personally ) and 40% environment. That means we have this highly sensitive little baby picking up on all of the sensory / emotional stimuli from caregivers and environment and trying to express this to caregivers to mirror them. However caregivers with bpd or npd do not take this as a warning " oh hey my child's acting out I need to validate them " soooooo little child is instead told that there emotional reactions are wrong they are confused and must act look feel the opposite of what they are experancing physically.

So what I'm saying is as hard as it is to fight the urge to " label yourself " and others and patterns and anything you can to gain some sense of control back... Labels don't solve emotional pain or emotional dysregulation. It's a wild goose chase and in the end it is another way to intellectualize the emotional pain that got is here.  I'm not at all saying it's wrong to seek proper diagnosis but the stigma attached to bpd is not there so much anymore! They now recognize it as learned coping vrs. " your a crazy borderline " many poor traumatized people where retraumatized by the treatment they received in getting that diagnosis! It's not that way now due to the " bio psychosocial " theory's of development vrs all that shamefull Freudian stuff... I believe the key in good help is addressing dissociation first! Master grounding during disregulation and avoid the crazy bpd like acting out or acting in , that way the memory process won't drive you to trance out and do uncharicteristic things for your self.

One more thing : the in acting / quiet bpd or waif is so similler to cptsd I so no real distinction at all.
Hard to not label ourselves but I really think the behaviors are what needs addressing not the names. Like others have said in this thread. Really hard for me sense I was labelled horrible untrue things in childhood, of course I don't want a bpd label society has told me that's conformation I'm defective! But it's not, it's 3 letters vrs. 5cptsd. Now that I found a dissociative specialist I don't care what letters they call me as long as I got help staying right here and not living in the flashback past that hurts me so much. If memories do surface I now get them validated and that makes them go back to where they where meant to be stored in my brain not my amagdyla which has tasks to do today and should not be holding memories of dissociated states in my past.

flashbacks contribute forsure and I have to laugh at the persons ex who would ask " why " questions. for me, any demand creates either pressure, good pressure or shut down. If the anxiety of the demand is too great I dissocate witch causes my attention to shift to exstitential " why do people do this " or " do you think I do this because... etc. " I shift to neurotic obsession with my own exsistance and the way I or other people relate to each other. I believe this is due to the fact that all of my senses are dulled due to the dissocation steming from the panic and anxiety caused by the emotional flashback of the original trauma of intermitant random abuse at any time for anything but as a child trying to find reasons as to " why " it was happening.... this becomes a rumination based avoidance coping style and a symptom of depersonalization and derealization which are dissocaeative states caused by anxiety.

My question is I sometimes get unconsciously passive aggressive, I do not always catch ,yself until its too late! but to give example I will be late right when its most important not to be! or forget important things when I promised I would do them. I think for me its a mix sometimes I do this due to not being able to access anger but sometimes its just because my memory sucks and flashbacks, and aviodence... lol its a lot, so to say its always aggression is not the case... but I do believe sometimes ....heck yes it is, but I never consciously choose this.... and being female lol....it runs with a cycle if you know what I mean lol any thoughts? I also seem to unconsciously self sabatoge! and self harm! I am an " accident prone " person.... but that needs a whole other thread....

Thank you Rain, encouraging as always I am working with someone but started DBT soon. I went that route because the flooding had not yet began lol up until recently ive had a few actual flashbacks of memories but more so just dreams and then flashes of old dreams. My assumption is that as I repeat certain patterns the new dreams are processing that and the old ones are being brought up instead of memories due to having almost complete childhood amnesia. My guess is I was dissocated most of childhood heck most of my life. I retain very little from one day to the next as it is... although some of that could be due to some very poor choices in coping methods in my teens and early twenties. But its deff been cycling, I depersonalize for a time then derealize ( which is way scary and never feels easy ) then or during the process I will flash a certain series of dreams over and over until a real memory emerges. Im not looking forward to what might be around the corner since this last time it was totally new material and dealing with sexual abuse Im almost certain. anyway, good to be back. I think my memories and symptoms had hit almost a mania so I just hibernated for a while lol have a great day! im hoping others can detail the process I have gathered this follows a pattern for most people from reading on myptsd.org

some folks discount sudden dream memories but in this case theres no way I would have been able to just randomly pick this person out of past and have the context of this dream and past dreams keep flashing so ripidly! easp. with an actual humen trigger! plus the little bit of real life memory I have had accompy dream imagery has already been validated. whew...scary stuff. I gave anyone a pat on the back for having to hold a job and raise a family or just go to the grocery store even with these flashbacks and things going on. can make you feel like a kid in an adult suit! or in my case " unreal " or like im "acting " anyway... hoping for others to share!!!

I have started having visual flashes of nightmares from child hood and new ones. A new one will almost always bring flashes of a certain old one. except I ran into an extended relative at a Christmas party and that night had a serious nightmare. upon waking I had about a day and a half of serious visual flashes non stop of all kinds of nightmares mixed with blips of faint memories. I was aware of emotional and some physical abuse from my mother but now im pretty sure that I was abused in other ways by my other side of the family. this biggest nightmare I had was so cryptic but I woke up knowing who it was and much of old dreams made so much more sense. Ive been feeling insane for months and having goosbumps along with intense emotions and depersonalization. any of this sound famillier?

I'm on adderall for adhd but I deff think I'd like to add a temporary med. to the mix for anxiety basically when I get anxious I dissociate so I'm trying to relieve this. At first adderall helped but now I'm wondering if it's making any difference

One more thing I have learned that all my self diagnosis was making me worse! Nothing beats professional help! I work in mental health in a small capacity and have learned that once your in an OCD state you really must question your perception of things... Emotional abusers do things like " gas lighting " that slowly wear you down... The OCD response is your minds way of blocking out extream pain. If I had been able to preform my own psychological assessment is have a the entire DSM behind my name! Soooo I got help actually I've gotten a bunch of therapy over the years. Only recently did I learn the two most important words to look for when finding a shrink!

" TRAUMA INFORMED" = " it's not what's wrong with you , it's what happened to you?" Please have the same compassion for yourself as you do for your significant other, everyone deserves to be seen heard and validated. Look on the founding site of this one OOTF at the 100 traits of a pd! YouTube gas lighting examples! You've found your way here and that might be half your battle!

Just to clairify I have now been officially diagnosed with some things which greatly helped. OCD of your mental health is no fun and can convince you that you are as insane as anything you read in google haha so check out all of my " bunny eared " terms!

Thank you it feels great to be related too! What I have come to believe is that I suffer from something's called depersonalization disorder. It's the feeling like your in a fog or unreal, your environment just looks different like for me more 3D then normal or blurry. I have been in some kind of diagnosis mania for months due to this. I google things around 3 hours a day at the least ... Symptoms of mental illness to " check " myself. It's gotten out of hand! Via grounding I came " out of the fog " haha ( bada bum pshh) recently and felt sheer joy for about 2 hours! Vision clear thoughts clear! But it took no time to start obessing and have a panic attack followed by dysphoria ( angry foggy feeling ). I think my symptoms are so many things but mainly REPRESSED ANGER! That's why I do what I do to keep the " unacceptable feelings away " . Check into " pure o " and " depersonalization/de realization" I believe it's mostly the mechinism behing " learned helplessness " . Also take an attachment style test. If you get anxious preoccupied like me or fearful Aviodent it's deff related to dissociation and cptsd in adulthood. It stems from needing to develope a "fantasy bond" with an emotionally neglectful or freighting caregiver in childhood. Basically it's passed down generationally via eye gaze from mother to child soooooo if your mom was in a trance often when you where a baby or maybe yelling one minute then crying another , perhaps even just absent when you cryed you will have this! What comes from it is in adult hood when you fall in love and " attach " to a guy or girl in my case.... Your attachment style is activated and you will automatically fall into a trance or have chronic panic attacks that result in dissociating and seeing only the good things! This is due to you learning to do this in infancy with your very first serious attachment figure!

The key here is this anxious attachment is a fancy way of saying your parent had this little baby, the little baby like all babies cried and unlike most babies was responded to in a way that makes a baby " I know I need this scary person to survive yet I feel I need to protect myself from them" sooooo when we fall in love the " fight or flight response " is automatically activated and we dissociate just like in childhood!

Now, I'd like to tell you it's ok to love your abusive partner it's NORMAL to feel like you can't leave. There is nothing wrong with you for loving him? And wanting to stay ... However there is help if you would like to go. Women's shelters can and will provide all that you need to restart life food, clothes, help with applying for schooling benifits etc. the thing that our emotionally abusive family's didn't tell is was it's ok to love someone but need to be away from them all at the same time. Just a thought! I work someplace that help women and I can tell you that you are not alone and worthy of love and respect even if you stay. Just check into dissociation dp/OCD it truly might be clouding your judgment. Because the kicker is in adulthood chances are if someone activates your attachment style they are more then likely very similler to your care giver in infancy unless you've had therapy.

My mother has BPD and I might as well due to it being passed down both genetically or through attachment style, plus through having to dissociate through abuse and neglect. I now have dated 3 women with hpd/bpd! That's how I found out all of this! My current gf is diagnosed as cptsd and now they thing bpd is a form of that. So once her and I got together I went from very strict diet excersize routine very goal driven very fun loving person to an OCD wreck that barley leaves the house that can't retain anything new and has blurry vision! Lol however, she is seeking treatment as am I. We both know about triggers and when to give space or at least we are learning. That is why I decked is to stay. If any of this is relevant great!!!

Pps. Keep posting here! Rain and some others are very validating and this site gives me hope on my foggiest darkest days. Finding this site and Pete walker also john Bradshaw and judeth hermin have helped so much! Check out " healing the toxic shame that binds you" such a helpful book! Remember you have support here but nothing beats a good support system! Reach out to your local shelter like rain said! 

Thank you for that. I feel sad confused and scared all of the time. I know I need help and I'm calling my insurance company today. I was seeing someone so awesome but she's really expensive and I think I need once a week help for now lol I'm starting to understand that I've just got lots of stuff happening and my main priority needs to be getting back to a level of grounding enough just to pay bills and work while at work. My head is foggy and racing all the time lately. I'm nervous to be alone at home but relieved when I am because then no one can see me like this. My gf says I look totally gone most of the time and that's how I feel too... Worried I've been my whole life same with over anylitical but this feels like a whole other level.

I appreciate your response, ppl try to help and say " calm down it's all ok " or " you don't have to feel ashaimed " stuff like that but that doesn't help because if I could " just stop thinking so much " I would have! I know my thinking is not fixing it but I don't feel like it's a choice. I read I'm supposed to be feeling my feelings yet some people in my life basically tell me I'm only allowed to feel good feelings and that the " bad " ones are somehow my fault that it's my issue for " allowing " them. It's just a bad time. Hoping I can get some affordable yet trauma informed help. I'm honestly considering anxiety medication for now because I can't keep going like this.

Could an emotional flashback almost look like and feel like you have a different personality?

I had a " PTSD dream " a while back very simple phone rings I answer I hear a voice it says " hello , I have ODD ( oppositional defiant disorder ) and I really think it would be best if I get outside ?!"

Shortly after that I find myself flipping into a strange very new to me type of space out. I have never had access to the emotion of anger and when I " checked out it always amounted to Pete walkers. " fawn " submissive agreeable foggy. Now suddenly if I where to try an express an emotion a voice starts yelling in my head " shut up your weak I'm done I won't let them do this to you " and I feel suddenly no emotion but a surge of anger and power. My normal thoughts are replaced with very nasty ones and literally I get a mean face. I act in ways I'd never have dreamed! Nothing harmful physically but certainly flippant and insensitive to my family.

I remember it when it done but everyday is foggy so I don't remember much well. I have tried grounding recently and much to my surprise it's been that when successful my vision gets very clear and I feel so happy! Doesn't take long for panic to set in though, in wich case right as I start to cry I will flip into that anger state or an OCD must research mode, or just this " normal state " of foggy vision little memory, not much to say.

Sometimes though when grounded I can hear , see, think so much clearly. Also in the anger state oddly I think I can wax my eyebrows and do certain things better?

I do hear voices in one state and they do converse with each other or about me but it's rare that I'm in that state for long. I'm afraid this is a sign of DID. Thing is I always know I'm me , it's just that certain voices have different needs and they do tend to give different options on things. But I never feel as if one of them take control, except for one which I'm sure is repressed anger. This knew one. It only came after my dream and hard work at greif due to John Bradshaw. Does anyone know what in heck I'm meaning?

Ps. My normal state is I'm very sure derealized, and I'm sure I have OCD. So all of this could be simply be due to panic attacks and dissociating that way. Just looking for any insight!
Considering starting anti depressants. I feel like I can't even talk about it anymore because I have been sure I've had every mental illness in the book for a time then found a knew to " claim " lol it's not that I want to be " sick " I think it's just that my symptoms are so come and go or different depending on what state I'm in. I'm open to being a hypochondriac haha but I just know that's not what's happening. I'm embarrsed  to talk about it but I still find myself needing to! I'll say " don't talk about this new symptom until your sure " but then always wind up asking for reassurance

http://lifecoachplus.net/solutions-for-overcoming-learned-helplessness/

Sense I myself and others here seem to find self talk with all of our " parts " helpful this particular link seemed doable for myself anyway. If you can't get out of bed you can still talk to yourself! Time after time when I ask my pessimist part why I don't get things taken care of I get the response " because you don't deserve a car " I think this may be an old tape the mother within trying to keep me loyal or just simply a lifetime of fear surfacing.

For me I think of we didn't get this way overnight, it has to be slowly undone in the same fashion. I left my books in my car after work last night, so that I would have to look at it today and go outside if I want to read them! I'm a smoker so I'm thinking if I make a bill pile and leave my ciggs on it, I will at least get desensitized to seeing them! Then I can slowly start to open them!

How do you eat an elephant???

I think that is a solid plan, my pup is a pom/ ahpsa lapso so he needs mucho grooming. It's like everyday I wake up and get stuck, I want to take care of things but cannot explain why I'm just too in my head to live my life right now. Praying this therepist can break me lose! I haven't been like this in a few years.

THIS IS MY LIFE!!!

unfortunately I have come to the conclusion that that some of my FOG and learned helplessness behaviors right now are actually possibly stemming from my romantic relationship. It seems as though if I get around a BPD women, I kind of go into fawn and forget who I am. I am at a crux, She is actually on board with seeking treatment but once the reality of what has been happening to me truly hit me... I am now terrified of her! It is sad because she may just have CPTSD like I do , frankly I think bpd is over diagnosed... my mother now she had BPD and was so crazy that pain and abuse really do feel right at home to me, I deff. have internalized the idealize devalue cycle and very much relate to sam varkins " inverted narcessit " type.

Anyway , once I showed my girlfriend the DSM about BPD she was like
" yes that's me " and unlike a lot of people in my life she actually expresses great sorrow over things she has done in the past, I noticed that she dissocates too and actually gets numbness of her body and all kinds of odd pains. Its bizzare we fall into scripts where I get " unreal " feeling like its all fake looking or unreal in some odd way, and she goes into dysphoria and somatic things. We are the war of the roses couple! At first she deff. was emotionally abusing me and slowly just heeping on unrealistic expectations... setting me up to fail, then mu passive aggressive side came out and I would just lie or agree to demands yet actively not do the things I had agreed too. eventually she raged on me, this was the trigger that deff set me back light years. anyway I was so foggy that I just checked out and luckily started writing notes and keeping a calendar to spot and cyclical stuff.

so now its just not good, I am like a war vet, she says that we will be talking and she will ask for me to make even a simple decision and suddenly she sees the scared child take over. its like instead of her being a soldier to the veteran , she is in that moment my mother about to hit me! I will start to cry a little or shake. thing is, we deff are both triggering each other. Im seeing a DBT therapist and she has agreed to get help but oh my its scary. I get scared of her and she thinks " oh no shes about to abandon me " and then shes triggered lol In my mind its like " ok this is a betrayal bond and you know what that means!" however I also believe that the right help can stop the cycle. we have similer things causing different outcomes...

Now I feel paralyzed , I have let my car go not getting it inspected, I let my bills go , my damn dog looks a mess because he needs to go to the groomer.. I have been unable to do any household cleaning and my work proformance is not good lately. She has actively stopped getting angry with me but I can sense her resentment and that makes me feel more fear!...its a bad time....

Anyone have any experience with ACT - Acceptance and Commitment therapy? It seems pretty awesome!

WOW all this stuff is great! I seem to view my parts as the " Karpmen DRama Triangle " I have a victim a persecutor and a rescuer. Sometimes I hear screaming at me and that's my persecutor, If I don't thought stop I will dissociate. The victim part tends to come with freeze or flight, so I only talk with her once I am already dissociated, that's actually how I know its happening. The rescuer my primary role is one I'm working on now, I am into empowerment models and all of these roles can become empowerment roles instead of old scripts. My rescuer is my " fight " and in the past that meant working long hours and fixing people. Now I'm working with turning the rescuer into the "couch " or "self champion " that Robert Bradford talks about. 

My inner child is very afraid and only recently just started to talk, she is quitter to me and is hiding, But I think she is gaining trust in me. I would be leery of me if I where her too because lord knows shes been exposed to some scary things.

For myself I believe that Hyperidrenilization and rumination are deff. things I struggle with. I am now seeing that the OCD stuff is usually with out compulsion for me, as a child I did have compulsions, tapping rythums with my teeth and having to repeat it a certain amount of times with out error or start over. ripping pieces of paper up making them even and symmetrical and counting them. I had and still have intrusive thoughts, losing control , falling down and hitting my head. As a kid I would I would not shower at night due to fear of slipping and falling and hitting my head. Also I would repeat certain words three times... ha ha ha boy I never made a list until now!

Anyway, I view rumination for me as Avoident coping for sure, If im "weighing it out " Im not facing my feelings. ADDers have cycles and if an ADDer goes without sleep our impulse control is GONE for a week really b/c one night of no sleep and the effects trickle. I think this can look a lot like Hypomania. Its interesting though because Pete walkers " flight " does cover that. It lends me to ask if the rumination isn't also simply A way to shut out the "inner critic" or just simply fighting with it.

Hypervigielce is also something that can cause your brain to seek stimulus too... It all seems so connected! I am looking into ACT andDBT I like the work book idea because I do better with hands on stuff. Emotional IQ excersizes are also something that I think can help, learning what emotions feel like in the body! great website called "angriesout" has an excersize getting you to tense your muscles and make angry faces. I am a repressed anger person so this was eye opening for me!It showed me that I make angry faces and tense my jaw and clench my fists when I am angry, I had done these things for years and never identified these as signs of " oh hey im angry " !