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Greenleaves said:
Pdoc1 is working with me on insight right now. She made me realize one thing. When I make threats and stuff, what I really want is for people to care about me. The more threats I make, the more I want people to give me hugs and stuff. I'm doing things the wrong way. It's going to a tough habit to break because my mind automatically thinks those horrible bad thoughts.

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LOL! Sorry to laugh at that, but you know what? That's why some of us do care about you -- because it's so clear that your explosions and threats are your way of trying to get attention, and that you don't know any other way. That's terrible, it must feel very scary to you, and you'll have to work hard in order to learn more adaptive coping strategies.

Here's a clue for you, though: most people here will offer you support and attention WITHOUT the hysterics. In fact, throughout your life, MOST PEOPLE will offer that attention more freely and more willingly if you DO NOT ask for it through hysterics and threats. So, if you do work hard, and you do learn to ask for attention more appropriately, you're likely to get much more of what you want, and it will feel better. There's only good that will come of doing the work.

I read something very comforting that Marsha Linehan wrote about borderlines. She said that what happens to a lot of people with BPD is that their parents ignored them until they got hysterical, and then focussed all their attention on them once they did. In effect, that trains a child that the only way to get attention is to get hysterical, to have a tantrum. (Kinda the opposite of what I do, lol, with trying so hard to hide any emotion or reaction to anything) If the parents had responded appropriately at a lesser stage, then the child wouldn't have learned to overstate, and overreact.

At this point, what you're doing isn't so much an overreaction, as your natural, learned reaction. So, now you have to learn a whole new way to react. You'll have to learn to ask for that attention well before you hit full-on hysterics. Just as I have to try to learn to experience emotions, and to express them, and even to ask for help or comfort when I need it, rather than trying so very hard never to need it. We all have our own problems, you know, we all have things we need to learn. You're not alone in all this.

Good luck, and I do hope that you get the help you need to learn all these new things.