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Originally Posted by Hooligan
Yeah Becoming, I gathered that this is something that has been going on for many years for you, it's not a reaction that will happen over night, and in your case it's years of being dismissed or put to the side whilst the needs of everyone else in your family have been attended to.
I think that getting a therapist is a great idea. It will help you to begin to unpack what the root cause is and deal and address those issues in particular that have caused you to have this response.
And yes you're right - parents are often in some kind of denial that there is something wrong with their kids - they dismiss it, push it to one side - all of which buries the problem even further - because eventually at some stage, it will errupt with full force.
And it's a shame that in some cases you've had to be THAT desperate before somebody in your family opened their eyes and said to themselves woah I think you're going through a difficult time here! It didn't have to reach that stage, they should have known a lot sooner.
I can write a whole novel on society and stigma - ughhh I think that I hate it as much as you do.
As for family?
At the best of times they may mean well, maybe, but they really can do more harm than good to our overall mental health, really they can.
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Yeah, it's going to be tough but it has to be done. It's not a good way to live at all.
Today though was slightly better cause I reminded myself I guess. I was talking with my mom expressing things about my brother. She seemed cranky so I said "what's up with you?" She said "I just don't want stressful conversations right now." That was somewhat upsetting, but what made the difference is that she said something about it instead of just ignoring me or walking away. She did end up waking away but she excused herself. Had she not said anything or excused herself, I would have been crazy upset. I just want to get to the point where maybe she doesn't need to say it and if she's ganna insist on walking away I won't freak out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CopperStar
Nobody is born with a personality disorder, though. If a person has borderline personality disorder, the roots of it will without fail be found in their childhood and how they were treated. What I also see in what the OP has written is the her mother is not being anymore rational than the OP is, which is a dead giveaway right off the bat. If I had a child and my child was threatening self-harm or suicide, I would have them committed, involuntarily if need be. It would not be a game, it would not matter if my child raged at me. However the OP's mother prefers to play a passive-aggressive game, prefers to invalidate her child by completely ignoring her child as punishment when the child says something unpleasant. I guarantee you that while the particular incident described above gives the mother at least some plausible deniability, that this pattern of invalidating the OP to the point that the OP flips out is not something that cropped out recently and out of the blue. What makes a situation like this extremely challenging for the person with BPD attempting to recover, is that they are still in the viper pit if they are still living with their caregiver(s). Focusing on and moving towards independence with sheer determination is the best bet for survival at this point, in my opinion.
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Bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorder are different though. Nonetheless, it's been suggested to me a few times that I might have BPD or at least traits from that as well. I have been meaning to look into that. A lot of what you said makes sense too. I have felt invalidated for years for 99.9% of the time. You have the 0.1% where I can actually sit down and talk to my mother and feel validated (at least mostly validated).
I once had to walk toward her with tears streaming down my face and say "I need to talk to you and I need to talk to you now!" Her first reaction was to sigh and say "I was just about to relax!" I turned around and said "forget it." Then I ended up going back and saying "I am serious!" And she looked at me and didn't say anything. Finally I just started talking about all the triggers at home and how sometimes I feel suicidal and that nobody takes me seriously. Finally she took me seriously. Good? Yes. BUT it should never have to come to the point where I'm screaming at her to have a conversation, be shrugged off anyway, and then have to come back. Maybe she just had an "oh ****" moment after all that. The 0.1% of the time where I feel somewhat/mostly validated is always like this. I have to fight for her attention. Why? She's always too busy watching TV or drinking wine or reading a book or browsing the web. All those things always seem to come first and she never wants to admit that. I'm sorry if this sounds selfish, but shouldn't family ALWAYS come first (in this case me)?!
So anyway I guess that relates to what you said and all that has-for me- some characteristics of BPD. The Bipolar part I guess is the quick shift of emotion that can happen. One moment I'm feeling fine and the next minute something bad happens and I'm suicidal. Or one moment I'm feeling fine and the next minute something annoys me and I'm pissed off. All this even though I am on meds.
I really don't like to focus on all that is wrong with me, but I have to sometimes. I was running away from it for a while cause a therapist told me that I was focusing on it too much. So I guess I kinda stopped completely and buried myself in video games. Truth is there's still a lot wrong with me that I need to fix....or at least manage. I don't like to look at myself as broken but part of me is because that's the nature of mental illness.
I could go on even longer but I think I wrote too much already. Just wanted to share and say I can relate to a lot of what was said.
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