I've always been told by members of my family that I am too emotional. "drama queen" is perhaps my least favorite label that they have bestowed upon me in the past, with "over sensitive" being a runner up. And they won't say that I'm lazy, but I "don't like to work."
These judgments may seem miniscule to them, but goddamn do they hurt. I've had quite a few jobs that I've loved, that I've bent over backwards for. Intense periods of depression and anxiety aren't exactly a walk in the park. Every time I'm confronted with a task in the workplace, I get really nervous. I star over analyzing my performance as I go along; Am I working within the time parameters set for me? If there are no set parameters, do I feel like I'm working quickly enough? Probably not. But if I speed up, I risk not performing the task to the best of my ability. It's a constant struggle with my brain, my need to please people is overwhelming and the equally as overwhelming self doubt that constantly plagues me sometimes leaves me so frustrated that I just want to break down and cry.
Today, I logged into my facebook to find that my Aunt had liked two of my statuses and commented on them both. I was pleased, thought maybe that she was offering me some positive words of wisdom, as older folks sometimes do. Instead, what I found were two different personal attacks on me, one about my 'dreadful' hair (which I suppose was meant as a joke, since my hair is dreadlocked) and the other was about my ear gauges, which I'd recently upped a size, and about how I "keep wrecking my natural symmetry."
Now, I get that my aunt is part of the older generation, and she doesn't quite understand things like dreadlocks and piercings, but how can she not understand how hurtful her words are? I called her out on it, told her that she was being kind of mean and essentially that she needed to back off, and am still waiting for a response. I'm betting it will be something about how it was a joke and that I shouldn't be so sensitive. That's the catch, though, my borderline personality disorder makes me sensitive to things like rejection, and for her to reject my physical appearance and preferences in body modification, it feels like she's rejecting ME. It feels like, as I am, I'm never enough for my family. They're always going to want me to brush out my dreadlocks, stop getting tattoos and piercings, and lead a 'normal' life. The more they berate me over my decisions, over the things that increase my overall happiness, the worse I feel about myself. Sometimes I wonder if they think hurting me like this will make me 'fix' what I have 'ruined' about myself in their eyes.
Family isn't supposed to make you feel like this. Family is supposed to lift you up, support your decisions unless you're doing some really fucked up stuff. Family isn't supposed to help you hate yourself. I'm so disappointed in the people I share blood with right now....
Showing posts with label borderline personality disorder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label borderline personality disorder. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Monday, September 22, 2014
Is Impulsive Behavior Really A Bad Thing?
Lately, I've been struggling severely with something that a lot of borderline folks deal with in one way or another- impulsive behavior. Ever since my diagnosis I have been doing a lot of reading about my disorder, and have been trying to recall instances in which it affected my life. That's when I realized... most of my life is built around the consequences of my impulses for self-sabotage and short-term solutions to my problems. This is not to say that my life is necessarily a bad one. I've got a roof over my head, a fairly steady source of employment, food, two cats whom I love with all of my heart, all of the things necessary to be content in life. I certainly could have made it easier for myself along the way, though, and I'm definitely nowhere near where I want to be in life.
I've made a lot of impulsive decisions in my past, though, and to this day I'm still making them. The thing is, while most things that I've read say that impulsive decision making is a TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD THING, I'm not quite convinced that broad-spectrum analysis is true. If it weren't for some of my more impulsive moments, I would have never met quite a few of my friends. I wouldn't have slept with people who I later entered into relationships with, would never have learned valuable lessons about the nature of love and friendship from any of these people. Not to say that impulses don't lead to awful things on occasion, but sometimes if you emerge stronger for the experience, it's ultimately worthwhile.
My current foray into giving into impulse is currently helping me, it's improving my mindset, knowing that people who aren't the ex boyfriend I live with can be attracted to me. (more about him later, he doesn't want me blogging about him so I need to come up with a suitable name to use for him on here.). I've been doing some harmless flirting with a former fling of mine, who knows where it could lead? I'm just happy it's building my confidence up a bit.
I've got another male friend who is... interested in me... but I respect his friendship too much to start anything that could ruin the bonds we've built over the past while we've known each other. I've learned the hard way that starting things with people you really care about can lead to trouble, especially with my attachment issues and insecurities, and recognize fully that maybe I'm not emotionally stable enough at this moment in time to have a real relationship. So, a fling in the meantime might not be the worst idea in the world.
Unfortunately, this fling comes with some slight complications, like small towns and overlapping circles of friends. Neither I nor the other party involved wants certain people knowing about anything that goes on between us, and this may be a challenge.
All I'm saying, and I guess the main point of this blog post, is that sometimes our impulses can lead to good things, adventures, as long as you try to utilize a small amount of common sense alongside them.
Love and light, bitches.
XOXO
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Mother's Week, Part 2
So for those of you who haven't read the previous posts, this blog is essentially a journal that I'm using to record my progress dealing with my Borderline Personality Disorder, and also a way for me to obtain a deeper understanding of it. The last post, and this post, focus on my mother. This is because BPD forms roots when a child is developing, and my mother had custody of me for about the first eight years of my life. I also have a theory that she could have been or may be Borderline, as Borderline parents often pass on certain aspects of the disorder to their children. (I phrase my thoughts about her in both the past and present tense sometimes, as I have not heard from her in fourteen years and have no way to confirm that she is in fact alive or dead.)
In trying to understand my BPD, I've been trying to remember things from my childhood more clearly. I didn't necessarily have a horrible childhood- my parents never abused me or anything like that- but it wasn't exactly the easiest. My mom started drinking heavily when I was about four years old, in 1994. I don't remember a lot about that, to be honest, but there are a lot of theories that my dad's family has sort of come up with as to why she decided to search for peace at the bottom of a bottle.
Roughly around the time that she started drinking, maybe a little bit earlier, I remember my mother showing me a photograph. I don't really remember much about this photograph, other than it was a Polaroid of a man in a room, and Elmo from Sesame Street was somehow involved so I got really excited. I think the room either had a bunch of Elmo dolls in it, or the guy was holding an Elmo doll. I remember my mother telling me that the man in the photograph was a friend of hers from Korea. She told me that he'd sent the photograph to her for me, because she'd told him that I really liked Elmo.
When I was older, maybe about seventeen or eighteen, I was informed by a family member- either my dad or my aunt- that my mom had dated a Korean guy in high school, and according to whoever told me this story, she had even gone overseas for a while.
A few years after that, my aunt ran a theory by me that she'd had for a while. She thought that perhaps my mother had been having an affair with someone while my dad was away, as he'd been in the Army when I was small and hadn't been around a whole lot. She continued to theorize that perhaps the affair had fallen through somehow, and my mother had turned to alcohol for consolation.
Putting the pieces together in my head, I reasoned that, if my aunt was correct, perhaps my mother had attempted to get back together with her ex boyfriend, and when he hadn't returned her affection in the ways that she had hoped, gotten severely depressed.
Now, at first glance this is a fairly solid theory, and it also goes along nicely with my theory that perhaps my mother was Borderline. HOWEVER, I also learned from my grandmother that my mother had a nasty habit of lying about herself. She told my grandmother that she'd had a sister who died, and also told me that she'd been raised with several siblings. My grandmother informed me that she found a wedding invitation in the trash with the name of the woman my mother claimed was her dead sister. Later on, I discovered through a brief instance of contact with some of my mother's family in Elko, Nevada, that my mother had only had one brother, and had never had any sisters.
Add to that information, then, that my mother's brother had actually come to visit her when I was a baby, because he wanted to know his niece and see his sister, and my mother had turned him away. My dad spoke with him and never really understood why my mother kept him away from us. Apparently, he was just as confused.
The lying may or may not be a Borderline trait, I'm really unsure because I don't remember compulsive lying being in any descriptions of the disorder that I've read, but I could be wrong there. Either way, my mother's past is a mystery to me, and what little family I'd managed to contact in Elko told me that they hadn't heard from her or either of her parents in years. Nobody clued me in as to why, but I'm determined to get to the bottom of it somehow.
I've found random snippets of her family, and am fairly certain I've stumbled upon a business that they own. All I really know is that I've got this need to know WHY. I've got so many questions that need answers, and I don't really know where to begin.
I'm going to keep looking, though, and I'll post things here as I uncover them. Hopefully this investigation sheds some light on things, and helps me understand why my mother made the decisions that she did, and how I can keep from repeating her patterns.
Love and light, bitches,
Gwen Rose
In trying to understand my BPD, I've been trying to remember things from my childhood more clearly. I didn't necessarily have a horrible childhood- my parents never abused me or anything like that- but it wasn't exactly the easiest. My mom started drinking heavily when I was about four years old, in 1994. I don't remember a lot about that, to be honest, but there are a lot of theories that my dad's family has sort of come up with as to why she decided to search for peace at the bottom of a bottle.
Roughly around the time that she started drinking, maybe a little bit earlier, I remember my mother showing me a photograph. I don't really remember much about this photograph, other than it was a Polaroid of a man in a room, and Elmo from Sesame Street was somehow involved so I got really excited. I think the room either had a bunch of Elmo dolls in it, or the guy was holding an Elmo doll. I remember my mother telling me that the man in the photograph was a friend of hers from Korea. She told me that he'd sent the photograph to her for me, because she'd told him that I really liked Elmo.
When I was older, maybe about seventeen or eighteen, I was informed by a family member- either my dad or my aunt- that my mom had dated a Korean guy in high school, and according to whoever told me this story, she had even gone overseas for a while.
A few years after that, my aunt ran a theory by me that she'd had for a while. She thought that perhaps my mother had been having an affair with someone while my dad was away, as he'd been in the Army when I was small and hadn't been around a whole lot. She continued to theorize that perhaps the affair had fallen through somehow, and my mother had turned to alcohol for consolation.
Putting the pieces together in my head, I reasoned that, if my aunt was correct, perhaps my mother had attempted to get back together with her ex boyfriend, and when he hadn't returned her affection in the ways that she had hoped, gotten severely depressed.
Now, at first glance this is a fairly solid theory, and it also goes along nicely with my theory that perhaps my mother was Borderline. HOWEVER, I also learned from my grandmother that my mother had a nasty habit of lying about herself. She told my grandmother that she'd had a sister who died, and also told me that she'd been raised with several siblings. My grandmother informed me that she found a wedding invitation in the trash with the name of the woman my mother claimed was her dead sister. Later on, I discovered through a brief instance of contact with some of my mother's family in Elko, Nevada, that my mother had only had one brother, and had never had any sisters.
Add to that information, then, that my mother's brother had actually come to visit her when I was a baby, because he wanted to know his niece and see his sister, and my mother had turned him away. My dad spoke with him and never really understood why my mother kept him away from us. Apparently, he was just as confused.
The lying may or may not be a Borderline trait, I'm really unsure because I don't remember compulsive lying being in any descriptions of the disorder that I've read, but I could be wrong there. Either way, my mother's past is a mystery to me, and what little family I'd managed to contact in Elko told me that they hadn't heard from her or either of her parents in years. Nobody clued me in as to why, but I'm determined to get to the bottom of it somehow.
I've found random snippets of her family, and am fairly certain I've stumbled upon a business that they own. All I really know is that I've got this need to know WHY. I've got so many questions that need answers, and I don't really know where to begin.
I'm going to keep looking, though, and I'll post things here as I uncover them. Hopefully this investigation sheds some light on things, and helps me understand why my mother made the decisions that she did, and how I can keep from repeating her patterns.
Love and light, bitches,
Gwen Rose
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