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Old May 13, 2015, 01:47 PM
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Open Eyes Open Eyes is offline
Legendary Wise Elder
 
Member Since: Mar 2011
Location: Northeast USA
Posts: 23,288
Often when someone has what is called Borderline Personality Disorder, they have a history of being told it is "wrong" to feel or struggle with emotions. Often they had a parent that was uncomfortable when they expressed "normal" emotional needs and they began to learn that when they had emotional needs they may be treated badly somehow.

Well, you are at a point where you have a desire to finally understand what to do with your emotions and you have been so used to guarding them that to express them is extremely confusing to you, as well as you feel very vulnerable if you do express them.

While I don't have BPD, I do suffer from PTSD and unfortunately, I have also been actually dismissed or punished for struggling emotionally, sadly even by professionals.
I have always been "there" for others in my life, however, when "I" needed, often my own needs were dismissed, not completly but enough where these individuals that are dismissive and often rudely so really stand out now that I struggle with PTSD.

I have been seeing a therapist that always allows me to feel, and he never really interupted me either. One day I was talking and crying at the same time, in a way I was rushing through the emotions as I was talking, not realizing that I had been expecting some kind if negative response to my emotional challenge. My therapist gently told me to just stop and sit with the emotion I was feeling, and I cried and got very quiet. He gave me permission to stop and "just be sad and cry", that is when I realized how much I had needed that kind of permission for someone ANYONE, just to sit with me and LET ME FEEL and THAT IT WAS OK.

I think that what challenges you is not having emotions, but finding a way to be ok with actually "feeling them" and that it is ok to actually BE HUMAN and feel human emotions.

When we are children we begin to feel emotions and that is when we need to have a presence to sit with us, allow us to feel, talk about what that emotion means, so we can gradually learn what emotions mean and not to be afraid of them.