Quote:
Originally Posted by crosstobear
I was, for some reason (perhaps a mixed sleeping schedule, or impending anxiety about the new school year) motivated to make amends to two people that I treated terribly during my unmedicated phases. During undergraduate, I had a friend who was also Bipolar and had some PD features. Her and I had on/off feelings for each other and prior to DBT and medication I would take everything personally. She was going through stuff too, but I took it personally that she wasn't there for me when I was at my lowest and I ended my friendship with her in a very spiteful way. I have a tendency to make apparent all of a person's weaknesses and throw it back at them and it's very traumatizing.
I also was in a brief relationship with another person back in college that I treated terribly. I was immature and unmedicated then. So I sent e-mails making amends to both of them. The former accepted my apology and reiterated that she still cared for me and didn't know how she hurt me so much. I told her it was more about me as a person than what she may have done. The latter person didn't even bother responding.
There's serenity to making amends but it also makes you truly realize what a POS you were and it makes me afraid of whether or not I will ever change. I still have moments, though it's not like before. I usually put up with a lot of crap from people now and being afraid to speak up and draw lines, I eventually blow up on them for their behavior and tell them off in a very earth-shattering and hurtful way, often reopening all their wounds in the process. And a lot of it is my fault because I don't talk about it early on to people who's behavior bothers me. They assume I'm alright with it.
Gosh. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?
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I can relate. I can especially relate to the part you wrote about not saying anything early on when things are bothering you and the, later at some point, exploding on others and ripping them apart... at least verbally. I'm also seeing, through therapy, that my parents were both verbally abusive and weren't consistent with emotional closeness. What I mean is that when I did what they wanted me to do, they were very emotionally supportive. When I didn't they were emotionally distant and extremely verbally critical. It isn't so much that I was clueless they did this, because I definitely wasn't. It's more an issue of splitting and I told myself how loving my parents always were because, hey, they never beat me, so I didn't grow up in an abusive home, right?
I was sexually abused, as a youngster and teenager, by my step grandfather, and, for some reason, it was easier to admit that he abused me than to admit to myself that what my parents did was also abusive.
Sorry for the verbal diarrhea but I felt I needed to say that to explain where I'm coming from. I'm learning that a lot of my current behaviors (i.e. withholding my true thoughts and feelings and then using those same feelings as weapons against others when I feel mistreated as well as my verbal abuse of others when I DO explode in a fit of rage) stem from both the way I learned to treat others from the way I was raised and the fact that I learned, when I was a teenager, to be a chameleon and then, when I was hurting, to push people away. I also learned how to wound others badly so they'd leave me alone and , as cold as it sounds, it was a defense mechanism I learned and it used to work. It is sadistic, in ways, but it also comes from that abused, scared little girl inside who never quite emotionally matured and is still trying to grow up. Now, I have years of emotional baggage to work through and the tendency is to bring all that baggage with me wherever I go and includes in arguments.
Again, this is just my experience and my "cross to bear", if you will. Lol. I'm getting better at it, though. I still make amends and not everyone forgives me, but they have that right. They don't have to. I make amends for myself, really, to feel less guilt over being a POS in my past. I did, however, gain my dad's support, which I honestly thought would never happen. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and OCD a few years back. I think his realizing he, too, is MI has gone a long way for us burying the hatchet and patching up our relationship.
If you've read this far, thank you for your patience, but I really just wanted to say I can relate.