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Current relationship makes me hate myself


JB_Stuart

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Hello everyone, you've always helped me here so I want to thank you in advance for any replies or advice. :)

 

So as it turns out I'm a pretty fu*ked up person. I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and after my last breakup (about 8 months ago) I tried to kill myself. Since I used prescription medication, it resulted in me getting kicked out of my school dormitory for intoxication. That meant I had to immediately find job and a place to stay so I had to quit school.

(None of that is the point, just wanted to give you an idea about my situation)

 

As you could probably tell by my previous posts, my BPD caused me to be extremely anxious and attached in every previous relationship.

Three months ago, I got into another relationship with a girl who I used to sleep with and since our mutual feelings were growing stronger, we thought we might just as well give it a try.

The thing is none of the usual anxiety, panic attacks or attachement is present. I mean none of it. It's just gone. It might seem like a good thing but I can't tell whether it's because my BPD just got better or because I simply don't love her.

 

Lately we've been mostly just fighting and arguing, nothing seem to work for us, at least one of us is always upset, no one is happy and I don't really know why are we still together.

 

The point here is, that I really hate myself and I don't want to hurt people since every single girlfriend I've ever been with ended up blaming it all on me and hating me, which only makes me hate myself more.

In order to stay functional (keep my flat, my job and some some close friends) I need to manage these feelings and I don't know how would I take yet another person hating me.

 

Again - don't get me wrong - I really like her, but I don't think I love her and I'm not happy with her. She's been through a lot as well and is a good person. I just feel like she deserves someone better, I can tell she's not happy with me either, but just like me, she's too afraid of her own feelings to let it go.

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Ruby Slippers

I agree that counseling can help you figure out whether a romantic relationship is a positive or negative for you, given your mental health issues.

 

You might be able to find free or low-cost counseling if you look for it.

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It seems to me that you already know what to do. Sometimes, as difficult as it can be, we have to severe unhealthy relationships. Also, have you considered seeing a counselor for you BPD?

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I really like her and I am glad she's part of my life... but at the same time I wanna tell her to f*ck off and never even call me again... the worst thing is I DON'T KNOW WHY...! [Your 8/12/16 post.]
JB, I'm glad to see that -- about 18 months later -- you now know the answer to the question you posed back in 2016. You state above that "My BPD caused me to be extremely anxious and attached in every previous relationship."

 

The reason for the frequent fighting in your previous relationships is the position of your two great fears -- abandonment and engulfment -- at the opposite ends of the very same spectrum. This means you are always in a lose/lose situation because, as you back away from one fear to avoid triggering it, you will start triggering your fear at the other end of that same spectrum.

 

Hence, as you move close to your partner to receive affection and love, you will start triggering your engulfment fear, making you feel like you're being suffocated and controlled by her. You may even experience that engulfment as a frighting feeling of disappearing into thin air, losing your self identity in her strong personality.

 

Yet, as you back away to get breathing space, you will find that you've started triggering your abandonment fear. Sadly, there is no midpoints solution (between "too close" and "too far away") where you can safely stand to avoid triggering your two fears. Until you learn how to better regulate your own emotions, that Goldilocks position simply does not exist.

 

In order to stay functional (keep my flat, my job and some some close friends) I need to manage these feelings.
JB, the vast majority of full-blown BPDers -- statistics suggest 2/3 to 3/4 of them -- are "high functioning." This means that they typically hold jobs and generally get along fine with coworkers, clients, casual friends, and total strangers.

 

None of those people is able to trigger the BPDer's fears of abandonment and engulfment. There is no close relationship that can be abandoned and no intimacy to trigger the suffocating feeling of engulfment.

 

Hence, with the vast majority of BPDers, the strong BPD symptoms usually appear only when someone (e.g., a casual friend) makes the mistake of drawing close to the BPDer. This is why it is common for high functioning BPDers to excel in very difficult jobs such as being a social worker, teacher, surgeon, professional actor, psychologist, or salesman. And this is why most BPDers can be considerate and friendly all day long to complete strangers -- but will go home at night to abuse the very people who love them.

 

This is not to say, however, that you won't ever slip into a low functioning state when under great stress, as occurred 8 months ago when your suffering was so severe that you attempted suicide. Usually, a BPDer turns his anger outward onto a partner or another loved one. Similarly, he usually turns his self hatred outward -- getting it outside his body -- by subconsciously projecting it onto his partner. In that way, he externalizes much of his pain because, at a conscious level, he is convinced that the cause of the pain really is coming from that partner.

 

When in a low-functioning state, however, a BPDer usually turns his anger and self hatred inward, fully onto himself. When that happens, his anger and hurt become far more self destructive. Ironically, when the anger is turned inward, a BPDer usually is in a less healthy state than when that anger is directed outward. This is why BPDers typically attempt suicide and do arm cutting when they are in a low functioning state.

 

I really hate myself and I don't want to hurt people.

 

Nearly all major cities offer excellent treatment programs (e.g., DBT and CBT) that can teach you the emotional skills you never had an opportunity to learn in childhood. I hope you have such a program available there in Czechia. If so, it can teach you how to trust, how to do self calming, and how to intellectually challenge intense feelings instead of accepting them as self-evident "facts."

 

These programs also will teach you how to better regulate your emotions and to stay "mindful" of your current feelings, i.e., remaining aware of your present feelings instead of escaping through daydreams into the past and future. Absent those skills, you must continue to rely on the primitive ego defenses used by young children: projection, denial, temper tantrums, magical thinking, and black-white thinking.

 

Fortunately, your chances of doing well in therapy are dramatically improved by your remarkable level of self awareness. The main reason that BPD treatment has such a dismal success rate among high functioning BPDers is that it is rare for them to have sufficient self awareness to take advantage of the excellent treatment programs.

 

Nearly all of them refuse to attend therapy. A HF BPDer typically is filled with so much self loathing that the last thing he wants to find is one more item to add to the long list of things he hates about himself. Further, even when these BPDers attend therapy at the insistence of a spouse, they typically will play mind games with the therapists (as my exW did with six different psychologists in weekly visits for 15 years).

 

It therefore is very very encouraging that you have already overcome what is the biggest impediment to a successful treatment. You are not out of the woods yet, however. In addition to the self awareness, you also must have the ego strength required to be willing to work hard in therapy for several years of weekly training sessions.

 

If you have strong BPD traits, it is important to find a therapist who is very experienced in teaching you how to feel safe while replacing your primitive ego defenses with the mature defenses used by adults. That is, you must acquire the missing emotional skills.

 

Three months ago, I got into another relationship with a girl... none of the usual anxiety, panic attacks or attachment is present.... It might seem like a good thing but I can't tell whether it's because my BPD just got better or because I simply don't love her.
Perhaps one of those explanations is correct. Please keep in mind, however, that -- because you are a high functioning BPDer -- your BPD behaviors likely will disappear entirely around casual friends, business associates, and total strangers -- as I noted above.

 

Your BPD behaviors also are likely to disappear -- usually for 4 to 6 months -- whenever one of those casual friends draws close in a romantic relationship. During this courtship period, your infatuation will convince you that this is the nearly perfect woman who has arrived to save you from unhappiness. In this way, the infatuation will hold your two fears (abandonment and engulfment) at bay.

 

It therefore is not surprising that, at only 3 months into your new relationship, you are not yet encountering the two fears. But, sadly, they will return as soon as the infatuation starts evaporating and your new GF starts triggering both fears.

 

This is why -- as the other respondents have already advised -- it is important to get in a good therapy program that teaches you the emotional-regulation skills you had no opportunity to learn in childhood. If you are interested in reading a book, JB, I would recommend Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: An Essential Guide for Understanding and Living with BPD.

Edited by Downtown
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  • 4 weeks later...
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Thank you so much for taking time and effort to give me such a complex reply Downtown.

 

There is actually another thing I'd like to add to this post:

There was a gap between the time I took my last Zoloft and getting another prescription, meaning I was about 2 weeks without Zoloft. During this time I started thinking about my ex again. Thinking about how she'll never know that all I ever wanted for her is to be happy, she'll never know that I truly loved her with all my heart and she'll never know that I never intended to hurt her and most of my abusive behaviour and unhealthy attachment was caused by my BPD. I think about all that and just feel hopeless. Like every single one of my past, current and future relationships were somehow destined to fail miserably.

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I think about all that and just feel hopeless. Like every single one of my past, current and future relationships were somehow destined to fail miserably.
JB, yes, that is an intense and painful feeling that you must learn to manage. But it is only a feeling, not a fact. That's why it is so important that you seek a treatment program that will teach you the missing emotional skills I mentioned above.

 

One of the first skills you will learn is how to intellectually challenge those intense feelings, recognizing that they are ONLY feelings and do not reflect reality. Until you acquire those skills, you are at the mercy of whatever intense feeling happens to be flooding your mind.

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mortensorchid

I'm glad that you admit you have BPD. There are plenty of BPD people I know who go through life going through people like Kleenex, screwing things up and then blame others for it. That being said, get into therapy if you can in order to work out whatever it is that needs working out, get on meds, and have a better life with them. There are deeper things at work and it will get better once you have this. As for the state of your relationship now? You could explain to her if you haven't already that you have this problem and that you need to work things out. Otherwise maybe you should just cut bait for the sake of being better for the both of you.

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