Just Promise Me, Please

Just promise me, please
You'll stay forever
Cause you're my ever after
I cant explain what you do to me

Just promise me, please
You'll be there for me 
Cause I'm a true disaster without you
I don't want these moments to end

Just promise me, please
You'll love me
Cause the thought of you gone make everything wrong 
I know my heart will break if you're gone

Just promise me, please 
You'll be mine forever 
Cause without you I can't breathe
Just say you'll stay with me 

Just Promise Me, Please

I found an old poem, from back in my high school years. All I can say is wow. If this didn’t scream borderline. I was desperate and in fear that I wrote a poem to my high school boyfriend. It was an attempt to make him stay. At the time of this poem, he wasn’t even thinking about leaving. Yet, I wanted him to know that he was my world. And I know, for most people, that is just a phrase. To a borderline, it means exactly what is says. He WAS my world. I could not picture my life without him. There was no me in the world without him. He gave my life meaning. But he didn’t, not even a little bit. He was just something that gave me attention and made me feel whole. He was nothing more. He caused more damage than anything. He made me feel like I had to do things because that would be the only way he would stay with me. Welcome to my full on borderline thinking.

It was what he wanted or he was leaving me. Welcome a reinforced fear of abandonment. To the point I did anything and EVERYTHING to keep him with me. It didn’t matter what I wanted, or what I wanted to do with my body. I was frantic to keep him, because without him I was nothing.

He didn’t like who I was as a person after a week. Welcome my unclear self-image. I changed my likes, what I wore, how I did my make-up, what I watched, what I listened to and more to fit what he wanted. I wasn’t “me”, although I didn’t figure that out up until 2 years ago. I wanted to be his “ideal” woman so he would want to stay with me even more.

Now, even though I had my borderline before him, he introduced my borderline to what a relationship was. It was so unhealthy. At times, I still question what was I thinking. He belittled me, made me feel worthless and powerless. He made it seem like he was a gift from the heavens and I was oh so lucky to have him. He caused my borderline to find her real light. He showed her her the way to the surface. Let her see that impulsivity can work and any frantic effort to get someone to stay will work for some time. He let her see that self-harm made her feel alive still. He let her see that my mood swings were something that everyone goes through in a relationship. But most of all, he let her see that my anger or the rage, were okay.

Borderline never goes away, but it is manageable. It can become easier. The biggest problem, at least in my life, is her limelight. She loves and craves it. Because is shows her she is needed. But you don’t have to give the borderline their limelight. Know that it is always there, but try not to give it to them. Im not going to lie and say that I have been “sober” from her for 2 years straight. She has caused relapses, but learning to dance with your demons is far easier than trying to kill them.

So in end; just promise me, please

Dance

Today as with every day is a new day

” Today as with every day is a new day.


Be sure to remind yourself that it is okay to be different from yesterday or not quite ready for tomorrow.
Sometimes we take a step back, regress, and other times week grow more in one day than we have in entire year.

Today is a new day


And that is exactly what life is about, balance and change.


For even the moon has its phases, so why can’t we?”


-Becca Lee

Long Time No See

It has been such a long time since I have updated this. First of all, I am sorry. Life got in the way. Im going to be exploring my Shadow and would like to share my journey.

The Shadow Self.

“The ‘shadow’ is the side of your personality that contains all the parts of yourself that you don’t want to admit to having” But how do you find it?

This is something that I have wondered for a long time. I bought the work books, googled, found books and asked about. Still, it remain something that I was so unsure about. After my accident, I think I found her.

She is full of rage. She is full of haunting flashbacks and horrible nightmares. She is with an empty space inside her chest, craving anything and everything that fills that void even if it is for a second. She loves to push people to their limits and then freak out and do everything in her power to make them come back. She flips her moods like a light-switch. She has no constant. She is my borderlining, PSTDing, depressed and anxiety ridden self. She is me.

The best way to identify your shadow is to pay attention to your emotional reactions toward other people and man, was my emotions on a high. With my accident, I now have a TBI or a traumatic brain injury. TBI, as explained to me, cause the brain to have no filter and cause pre-existing mental issues to basically go full blown. Having to relearn how to manage my mental issues, I have realized that instead of working to silence her and hide her away from the world in fear of how she acts, I am going to work with her. She is apart of me, and no matter the way I look at it, she was how I survived. I need my shadow in my life.

Now off the shadow train, Im going to try to update every week at least! Thank you all!

Gaslighting sounds like…

My Borderline

Dear Diary,

 

Reading the Buddha and The Borderline, struck me with some many emotions. As I was reading the second chapter, I got to thinking about my own experiences with BPD. I looked back at the symptoms and decided to answer the questions.

 

 

  • Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, such as rapidly initiating intimate (physical or emotional) relationships or cutting off communication with someone in anticipation of being abandoned
    • Yes, the minute there is even a hint of possible abandonment, my brain goes into the hyper drive. Why are they going to leave? What are they leaving for? What did I do? I deserve this? I wasn’t good enough. They don’t think I’m good enough. Why do they not like me anymore? They hate me, no I hate them. I need them to leave. I need to get them to leave me before they can walk out. I have to prepare…
    • After the fight that follows these thoughts, I beg and beg and explain that they can’t leave me. I can’t live without them, they are my everything. I have even cut during one of these fights just to get him to stay. I have locked doors, blocked doors and stolen keys just so they couldn’t leave. I have went to extremes to make someone stay and then to change their mind.
  • A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
    • Relationship’s never last more than two years romantically and friendships are barely a year
  • Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self
    • I change who I am depended on who I am around. My musical taste changes, what movies Im into, how I dress, how I spend my time. I don’t know who I am. I change so much. The only things I know is I like science, cars and painting, but then again when I really think about it, I only like science because my dad told me too and it was the only time I could bond with him, I like car because once again my dad pushed me into it, and with painting I wanted to connect with my mom in someway when I was growing up. When people ask me what I like to do or what Im into, I say anything. I say that because I am into anything, it just depends on when.
  • Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating. Please note:If these behaviors occur primarily during a period of elevated mood or energy, they may be signs of a mood disorder—not borderline personality disorder
    • I get into these impulse where all I do is spend, until I have no more money, I engage in sexual activities with anyone that takes me on a date, or I drive like my life doesn’t matter. Honestly the reckless driving is my go-to impulse. I just get the urge and I take off in my car. There was a time when substance abuse was just as bad my driving urge, but I am sober finally.
  • Self-harming behavior, such as cutting
    • I’ve cut my fingers because I knew no one would question Band-Aids on my fingers. I could also say that they were paper cuts ofr something like that
  • Recurring thoughts of suicidal behaviors or threats
    • I have threaten needing to go back into the psych ward because I didn’t trust my thoughts
  • Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
    • I have horrible mood swings. I go from hyper happy to crying within minutes and then there’s the rage. It is exhausting.
  • Chronic feelings of emptiness
    • I just feel like I need something more all the time. I never feel like I have enough, or am complete.
  • Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
    • I see what is referred to as “the red”, the tunnel vision. Nothing else matters but the anger and why I’m angry. The rage last for maybe a couple of hours and then like a switch, Im okay again or within another extreme of an emotion. And I get so mad at little things. Things that one shouldn’t get mad at.
  • Difficulty trusting, which is sometimes accompanied by irrational fear of other people’s intentions
    • I am always second guessing why people are around me, even my own family. I don’t understand why anyone would stick around me. It just doesn’t make sense.
  • Feelings of dissociation, such as feeling cut off from oneself, seeing oneself from outside one’s body, or feelings of unreality
    • When I get really stressed out, I feel out of myself, like Im not really there. There has to me a lot of stress to make this reaction happen, but it happens. When it does, Im a zombie to reality. My mom has noticed this and even asked if I was still there.

 

Things That Still Bug Me

Dear Diary,

 

 

I was thinking about A and how much shit I put up with. Our first moment talking, I was the one who asked him out. He later told me that the only reason he swiped right (yes we meet on Tinder) was because of my ferrets. Then out first date he was over two hours late, I had to ask him to kiss me, and he was planning to just take me back to his house. On my birthday, he was dancing with other women. I had to make him start looking at me as more than someone to sleep with. He would ignore me on purpose, and as a punishment even though he know how it would drive me crazy. He made a lot of comments about other women, like how he could please any women. He was disgusting. And in the time that I needed him most, he couldn’t man up. My dad even said this.

 

Dear Diary,

This past weekend was really nice. I needed to get away and get out of my head. A helped take care of my sister over the weekend when she got dunk. It was interesting to see this on the outside. I am normally the one that is that drunk and needs to be taken care up. It is scary to see, but also I learned. But on the way to home, A bragged about how his hand could please any women…

 

Dear Diary,

This past weekend, A and I went camping up by Glenwood Springs. On the way back we were talking about the traffic. Country Jam was going on. He made the comment that they were fake county girls and were easy and he would have to remember that for next year.

 

Well It’s Over Now( written in June)

* This post is a little scrambled. I was written in a Daily Thought Recorder. How it works;

  1. You describe the Event is detail
  2. What was the Impact of the Event
  3. What was the Intensity of the Emotions
  4. What were your Initial Responses
  5. Thought Fallacies (finding and labeling the distortions of the thinking)
  6. Reasonable Responses (talk back and change the distortions to more reasonable thoughts) With this you use the Common Thinking Errors, this was in my *Thinking* post.

With all that being said, here is how the break-up started.*

Day 1 and 2:

Event: A got a part time job at a bar that he starts this Friday and he will work Friday, Saturday and Sundays. He didn’t tell me he applied, we had plans like a wedding to go to soon. We never talked about him getting this job, or the fact he was low on money. I then got really mad and started a horrible fight. I attacked him with words. He was hurt, and wanted to leave me alone. I started cutting myself, trying to get him to pay attention and start fighting again. It didn’t work. I cried myself to sleep with him laying right by me. He then went to work and didn’t say goodbye. He then came over, attacked me with words, called me names and left. Before he left, I gave him the book Stop Walking On Eggshells.

Impact of Event: rage, sadness, abandonment, no understanding

Intensity of Emotions: 10, 10, 10, 10

Initial Responses:

  • Maybe he just is setting me up to break-up with me (Emotional Reasoning and Catastophizing)
  • He’s just like them all (Dismissing the positive and All or Nothing)
  • He is standing me up like every other guy (Dismissing the positive)
  • Why am I like this (Labeling)
  • He wants to sleep in his house because when I’m like this I am mean and hurtful. (Labeling)
  • I hate being in my head ( Emotional Reasoning)
  • I want to stop thinking and feeling (Emotional Reasoning)
  • He wants to leave (Emotional Reasoning)
  • He can’t stand to be around me (Emotional Reasoning, Flaw)
  • He made me waste my make-up (Blaming)
  • He got want he wants, he will never takes me out (Assuming, All-or-Nothing)
  • It’s good that I know he didn’t like to dance, it makes sense why he found a way out of being with me (Blaming, Emotional, Assuming)
  • I wish I’d never meet him
  • He’s going to leave me and be happier (Assuming)

Reasoning:

  • He is only doing this so he can be more comfortable
  • He still wanted to try and work on us (as of last night)
  • He stayed last night

 

Day 3:

He ignored me all day and then said that he didn’t know if he wanted to be with me.

Day 4, 5, 6, and 7:

No contact. This drove me crazy. I was crying, and doing a lot of self destructive things. Being ignored triggers me to become my worse. I was Borderlining.

I couldn’t eat, sleep, do anything productive. I feel behind on my summer classes to the point I wasn’t sure if I was going to pass them. I was a horrible time. All I could think is how worthless I was, how I deserved this and that he was better off. I want to call him and beg him to come back. I wanted to beg him, because I knew it had worked once before. But this was different. I had never been ignored for this long. I couldn’t figure out how to talk to anyone, I was locked inside my own head.

Day 8:

He finally decided to talk to me. He was done I begged him for another chance. I told him that I would do anything that he wanted me to do. I told him that to at least notice that I didn’t go crazy when he ignored me. This (to me) was proof I could get better and that I was. He didn’t care, but somehow I got him talk into talking with my therapist.

My normal therapist was out of town that week, but my IOP therapist said she would talk to him.

He said that he was scared of what I would do to any children we had, he didn’t think I was mentally ready for a serious relationship, he was scared of me in a way. Even though he wanted to talk with her without me, I listened in. There was no way I was going to be able to not listen. My mind was going too many places to not listen in. Looking back, I wish I would not have, those words sometimes haunt me and they have taken a every long time to recover from.

After they were done talking, he was still ready to leave me. I used mindfulness and some DBT skills to handle him coming over to get his things. I even gave the jerk a  hug. I was using my distress tolerance skills, regulating my emotions, and using interpersonal effectiveness. I had to use a observe breathing technique, use my self-soothe kit, and I continued to catch myself starting to act instead of just feeling. I thought I was doing really good showing him how much I changed within the last week. Looking back, I think I did learn how to better handle “extreme” moments, but I was really just acting like I had changed a lot. I know it was going to take longer than a week to really implant these skills, but I had to show him I was different. I had to prove to him I was worth his time. It didn’t work. I even gave him my Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotional Regulation, and my Distress Tolerance worksheets, mind you they were all filled out to catered what he might want to read and not what would actually help me.

Before he left, he told me “maybe in 5 years we could try again.” I held on to this for months. That was until I remembered I had told him this is what I told me crazy ex when I finally broke up with him. I was now the crazy ex and he drove away.