Irrational desire to "run away"....

I am not a kid (not even close at age 47). And it was not until I turned 47 (maybe it was 46 - I suck at remember time frames) that I was diagnosed with BPD and depression and anxiety and, and, and...

When I read the common issues of BPD (fear of abandonment, difficulty in maintaining a relationship, impulsive/destructive behavior) - I knew that was me.

So now I am about 18 months into "treatment" and nothing is better. I talk to other people online. And if the person is a nice person - I immediately get "feelings" for that person. Like I want to meet her and run away with her and simply start a new life. CRAZY. STUPID.

Yet that feeling is unending, it torments me. I think I simply HATE my life, my brain, my existence.

Anyone else?? Or am I just completely nuts?

I'm sorry you feel like this. :/ I know the feeling of just wanting to run away. I get these wild ideas all the time to just off and move somewhere and do all this research and never do it. I wish I could help you more

I know the feeling. Its long been a fantasy of mine to do just that "run away with her and simply start a new life" - even without a partner, if I had the $ I would just do it by myself. I ain't got sht to lose, then again if I had $ I would probably have a significant other, you know the saying - no money no honey. I'm split, part of me wants to live by myself in the middle of nowhere for all eternity, another part of me wants to live happily ever after with a significant other. I think the rational part of me is the one that wants to live by himself for the rest of his life, because he knows from experience that relationships can only be toxic, hurtful, have never been therapeutic and will always end in devastating catastrophe. The irrational optimist part of me wants to believe that he can find somebody to settle down with that won't drive him completely insane. I'm sure that will happen when pigs fly and hell freezes over.

I know the feeling. We meet someone (either on line or irl) and if we connect we start building these fantasies. I have often thought of running away all by myself. I don't necessarily need someone to go with me. I guess it's okay as long as they are just fantasies. This is the way that I soothe myself sometimes. Therapy is hard and therapy is long. Are you sure that you really aren't ANY better than you were before you started? Can you see No progress at all? If this is truly the case, talk to your T about it. You may need a different kind of therapy. THough I wouldn't expect you to be well in 18 months, I would think that there would be some signs of improvement.

I often have an urge to run away. Live somewhere completely different and start over. I don't have the money. In my case though I don't want to run away with someone, I want to be alone...

I have had such feelings in the past. Some of those occasions, i had felt like running away from family because of minor misunderstanding. There were times i wanted to live my fantasies. I think you should avoid being to excited about love and other things.

I often feel the same way-i just want to be done with all this garbage in my mind, not knowing how i will feel one day from the next i just wish i could be stable. The meds do help, but i think i would like to add abilify if possible, does anyone have a good experience with it? My therapist told me it could help if i switched from risperdal to abilify.

I thank you sincerely for your comment. But within the last 24 hours I had such a strong desire to simply veering my motorcycle under a semi that I know there is no improvement.

And I can not tell any of my Ts (I have four) the truth or they would lock me up in the nut house once again. And I do not have time for that crap. I am out of vacation/sick days.

I often feel the same way. In fact I was about to quit my job and move somewhere remote. Then work in a coal mine where nobody could find. Its almost as if I want to do this to hurt myself or to punish myself. I do this a lot. It makes me feel better when I am irrational and push everyone away and I think I do it to punish myself. Then afterwards, I realize I made a big mistake and try to make it right again. Once I called my health team because I felt abandoned by my previous doctor and to my new health team to take a hike. It made me feel good at the time but later realized I really needed the new health team and then I had to make it right. Thankfully, they did not kick me out.

I am sorry you are feeling this way I am learning this is a common thread in the behavior I am the same way there are s ome posts that make me feel that person and I have so much in common and I start to wonder what are they like we have so much in common... this is a BPD trait I have as well

Yep.
Meet someone, we click.. and unlike the people in my immediate 'real life', i feel a sense of compassion and think - yes.. to run away and start again. Haven't done it though.

Well huge HUGS to you. Nice to know there are others like me, who struggle with this nutty desire to run to someone you do not even know and start a whole new life.

nuts.......

Oh no, you are not crazy. it takes time to work out the BPD. Trust me I feel and do the same thing. I wish I had the answer but I don't.

Obviously your unhappy with your current life, you have an impulsive nature, and the idea of bolting off with someone to greender pastures is appealing to you.

I have felt like that somewhat, indeed I left the country for a while, with the idea I might never come back...

You need to get some good people in your life, I think.

Well that stinks... I think it would have been better if I WAS nuts.

I have spent my entire life running away. I am just now setting boundaries to keep myself from doing it and it's not an easy task, every other day i'm fighting myself internally and sometimes even outwardly talking to myself "Which would make me look nuts to an outsider" lol..

This feeling is a part of BPD and if not controlled can and will control your life. For me I would feel restless and unhappy, I would have this unrelenting feeling to just "run" to go somewhere/anywhere new and exciting just to get that high feeling because things where I was at became complacent and routine. I'd find every excuse I could to validate the impulsiveness. I'd tell myself "well, I don't really have anything here", i'd quit my job so I could say "well, now I don't even have a job here" so what's holding me here?.. I would make my outside world fit my inside world no matter how irrational or impulsive.
I know the feeling and I know it well and I have catered it "a lot"..

I think with BPD it's not necessarily about the feeling or the desire to do it but rather your behavior as a result of that feeling or desire. I sit with it "uncomfortably I might add" but I don't act on it because I know i'm not in a mindset to make that decision as a responsible, mature, healthy thinking individual, so I choose to not take any action towards any of my thoughts or feelings "at the moment".. I'm not sure where you are in therapy or how far you've come with this but I just want you to know you're not crazy, I've been where you are hundreds of times in my life and what works for me is not acting on those thoughts until I can better process it without impulsiveness or destruction.

Sounds like me . . . . all my life I think I've run, tried to or wanted to and that was when I didn't feel angry. I kept blaming everything and everyone else for my unfulfilled need for love. Now I realize it is ME, my discontented inner being, the one that doesn't measure up to her own expectations, the one who is her own worst critic, the one who disappoints herself when others still love me and I can't seem to see it or feel it. At 48, I get very angry and still want to leave though I have nowhere to go. I am determined at that time to find a better life elsewhere, one that will make me feel like real me again. I have packed my suitcase countless times in my irrational state, had my car started because I am sure I'm leaving. I have actually left a couple of times, but come back shortly thereafter cuz I can't handle the separation anxiety, or get ticked cuz that is what I feel my b/f wants (for me to leave). One part of me says "F" yea, I'm gone, the other is aware that it is not so simply a mindful escape of my own emotional prison I feel stuck within. I think, fantasize, quite often about meeting someone who will meet my screwed up expectations and that I will actually be feeling really loved and happy again. But I know that would last for a short time and the process would begin all over again. One would think they'd learn not to go there anymore ~ I am really tired of packing and unpacking

I'm only 22, but I've been through something similar. I used to have a huge problem with people pleasing behavior. and even though I flunked out of DBT 8 months in, that is the one area where I really made progress.
I let a lot of people in the real world take advantage of me because I wanted to be liked and validated. Friends and partners alike. It was stupid.
Recently I'm starting to realize that an online friend I care very much about was probably using me too. At the time I thought he was someone who truly cared about me, and understood what I was going through. I ignored warnings from others that he was using me, and that he wasn't who I thought he was. Even though we didn't always get along, I thought he was one of my best friends and he meant a lot to me. Still does. but now with a sober mind I realize they who tried to warn me were probably right. I was a means to an end for him, and that hurts me really bad. I didn't wanna run away with him, but it's similar in that my BPD blinded me to what he was really all about and left me vulnerable. I'm still dealing with the hurt but time is making it easier.
Remember that you are not alone, and that you owe it to yourself to really get to know what someone is all about before emotionally investing in them, whether it's as a friend or more.

I do the same things. You aren't alone at all. I even had a "relationship" online with a guy from Canada for years (we never met). We were going to be together and I was going to go live in Nova Scotia (with my young kids!) with him. I tortured him for years with push/pull. I idealized him, was repulsed by him, loved him, then hated his guts, on and on. It wasn't good. Deep breaths.

PS. Anybody else have trouble picking "my mood" in the upper right hand corner? I usually have NO idea what my mood is. Generally I am just surviving or upset.

all the time...what I want is never there

That's a dilemma. Considering you're balancing whether to tell the truth and potentially get help regardless of the method or risking actually hurting yourself possibly fatally. I'm not trying to be harsh just honest. Thing is you gotta get to a point where you realize that getting better is going to first start with being honest and facing the problem itself.

It's crazy, but it's also bpd and idealizing her, the situation, and a better life which is easy to do because we're looking for that connection to someone we didn't get as a child and those emotions of feeling liked/loved. When we find someone that we connect with it's a great feeling and that's when our dysfunctional cycle begins. We place too much value in them, too soon, and if you're like me at some point it will come crashing down and then the heartache begins until you find someone new to repeat the cycle with.

There are no easy answers. You might want to remind yourself when you meet someone new to not get too emotionally invested, and control the idealized thinking. I think this is possible for you because the fact you wrote this thread shows that you're aware of the pattern of your behavior.

The problem with many of us (definitely me) is our emotions much of the time is all or nothing. You meet someone you connect with they're ALL good, if they piss you off you'll be ALL angry, and if they make you sad you'll be ALL sad. Where a "non" has other emotions present to keep the dominant emotion in check.

The problem I have is if I allow myself to have feelings for another person at some point it's going to come crashing down and will be met with heartache which is a pretty ****** feeling. If I can remain mindful and in control of my thoughts and the situation then the person really has no emotional value to me at all which is also a pretty ******. I've just learned another dysfunctional way of coping by putting up walls to protect myself. I've not been able to find a middle ground.

Anyway, you're not alone!

Maybe you are just lonely and want "somebody " to run with. Best wishes

Yes sometimes i feel i want to run away but the only problem is that we take our problems with us so it's not really a solution, it's maybe a temporary relief but nothing more. I beginning to think that the key to real happiness is understanding there is no answers. I think really happy people are the one's that don't question anything too much, they don't question their exsistence or why they are here or what they are here for, they just accept they are don't worry about it. Maybe that is the path to true happiness. Personally most of the people that i have known that seemed really content with life generally seemed to be people who didn't think too deeply about anything. Only problem with that approach i suppose is that if you are a thinker then you are thinker, it's not like you can just trun your mind off.