How to be consistent

Everyone lives in their own box. We are all more alike than we are different. To some degree that's always going to be true for all of us, and again this is very hard to explain, but I do think it's possible to feel less alone. When two people open up to each other, allow each other to see more of what's in their boxes, if they feel less alone that's better than feeling utterly alone (well better if that's what they both want, not everyone does).

Nyahhh Idk babe. This one is hard for me..... I get a little tired of the "everybody goes through this" thing or variants of it. Mostly bc I hear it from my boyfriend all day and it always feels dismissive. It feels like the kind of optimism that I could never muster anyway. If everybody goes through this then why am I struggling more than almost anybody? Yes I truly believe that I am. I'm not saying I'm underprivileged, the fact is I'm just not happy and I forget what it's like to be. I truly believe it's not this hard for the great majority of people. Normal people don't act like me, think like me, live like me. I mean, I'm different. Some people are legitimately different. I've always struggled with that. I have accepted that as a fundamental reality because I don't want my box to be way up high, I want it to be right in the middle of everyone else's but it just. doesn't. fit.

The more I see of other people's boxes, the more I really, truly feel alone. Mine is smeared in my own blood and worn down from too many layers of scratch marks. I'm sorry. I sound ridiculous and pathetic but I am ridiculous so, yeah. I just feel like a mistake. ;-;

It's been a repeated surprise to me to increasingly learn, I don't need to 'decorate', or fix what's in my box. For two reasons, the first being I have to live in my own skin and if I'm not enjoying it the only one who is losing out is me, but also because... and another hard part... many people are not moved by what's in another person's box, they are moved by the willingness to share it. There will always be those who aren't too, but, and using the wording you wrote, at best they'd be drifter acquaintances in my life anyway. It's the other people who want to share their box with someone else that are ready to connect, and while they may not feel the same things to the same extremes, they want the same thing, to share what's in their box with someone else.

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I'm seriously really happy that you had these epiphanies. seriously... I guess that just wasn't the case for me. Every epiphany I have points to that I'm going to die in here, alone and numb. I've had a lot of people light up to things I said and exclaim that they know exactly how it feels, then we talk and I realize they don't feel the same at all. I was pretty good at trying to share and thinking everyone was like me before, just as time went on I saw that that was very wrong. Maybe other people actually feel this way and they just can't find the words or the actions to let people know. Maybe they just vanish and nobody ever figures it out. That's what I feel like I'm going to do, so I guess at least I can imagine those people like me, but it's lonely to imagine something you've never encountered as if it's real. It's not even that people have to be the same, I mean, they don't. But ultimately what I'm looking for is a reason to believe there's something more than this emptiness and I can't find it. Again, I feel really guilty for acting like this when you're just trying to help... so, it's fine if you just ignore me....

I mean, I would just try to put all this stuff out of my head, but it's become this weight on me. Like a black cloud that's taking over my vision, you know? It's just always there. Every day, every action, thought, word, movement, there's just this heaviness and I don't even know why I'm fighting it. I really think life is just a miserable thing the more deeply entrenched you get in it. You're not supposed to be this conscious of yourself, otherwise you realize how lonely being a thing really is. Yeah it's probably essentially lonely for everybody, just most people manage to forget......

vertices wrote:Nyahhh Idk babe. This one is hard for me..... I get a little tired of the "everybody goes through this" thing or variants of it. Mostly bc I hear it from my boyfriend all day and it always feels dismissive. It feels like the kind of optimism that I could never muster anyway. If everybody goes through this then why am I struggling more than almost anybody? Yes I truly believe that I am. I'm not saying I'm underprivileged, the fact is I'm just not happy and I forget what it's like to be. I truly believe it's not this hard for the great majority of people. Normal people don't act like me, think like me, live like me. I mean, I'm different. Some people are legitimately different. I've always struggled with that. I have accepted that as a fundamental reality because I don't want my box to be way up high, I want it to be right in the middle of everyone else's but it just. doesn't. fit.

The more I see of other people's boxes, the more I really, truly feel alone. Mine is smeared in my own blood and worn down from too many layers of scratch marks. I'm sorry. I sound ridiculous and pathetic but I am ridiculous so, yeah. I just feel like a mistake. ;-;

I'm seriously really happy that you had these epiphanies. seriously... I guess that just wasn't the case for me. Every epiphany I have points to that I'm going to die in here, alone and numb. I've had a lot of people light up to things I said and exclaim that they know exactly how it feels, then we talk and I realize they don't feel the same at all. I was pretty good at trying to share and thinking everyone was like me before, just as time went on I saw that that was very wrong. Maybe other people actually feel this way and they just can't find the words or the actions to let people know. Maybe they just vanish and nobody ever figures it out. That's what I feel like I'm going to do, so I guess at least I can imagine those people like me, but it's lonely to imagine something you've never encountered as if it's real. It's not even that people have to be the same, I mean, they don't. But ultimately what I'm looking for is a reason to believe there's something more than this emptiness and I can't find it. Again, I feel really guilty for acting like this when you're just trying to help... so, it's fine if you just ignore me....

I mean, I would just try to put all this stuff out of my head, but it's become this weight on me. Like a black cloud that's taking over my vision, you know? It's just always there. Every day, every action, thought, word, movement, there's just this heaviness and I don't even know why I'm fighting it. I really think life is just a miserable thing the more deeply entrenched you get in it. You're not supposed to be this conscious of yourself, otherwise you realize how lonely being a thing really is. Yeah it's probably essentially lonely for everybody, just most people manage to forget......

Ugh I had written out a long reply, and it got lost due to the page timing out.

I guess the key thing I was trying to write is that you are right. Most people aren't so self conscious, nor do they have that sense of being alone to such a degree, because they weren't alone growing up.

Again I really have no answers that will work for everyone. There are still days where I spiral down and on those days I skip work, skip the internet, but I don't find any new answers. I generally feel best on the days when I'm focused on something other than myself (mostly this means work), but on the days that I do spiral down, rather than trying to lift my spirits I'll put some music on that I feel can relate to how I'm feeling. Maybe it's just fantasy in my head (and if so I'm fine with the fantasy), but I like to believe that if an artist can express their own sense of being alone in music, it reminds me that I'm really not alone in feeling that way. So rather than trying to shut those feelings off, embracing it works for me, but only up to a point. Too much time focused on myself and all I learn is what I already know, my core sense of self is damaged, and maybe always be to a degree. It means I'm never going to entirely be like many people, but it's okay. For me I value depth of relationship over quantity of people in my life. As long as some people can relate, even if not to the same degree, that's good enough.

xdude wrote:Ugh I had written out a long reply, and it got lost due to the page timing out.

I guess the key thing I was trying to write is that you are right. Most people aren't so self conscious, nor do they have that sense of being alone to such a degree, because they weren't alone growing up.

Again I really have no answers that will work for everyone. There are still days where I spiral down and on those days I skip work, skip the internet, but I don't find any new answers. I generally feel best on the days when I'm focused on something other than myself (mostly this means work), but on the days that I do spiral down, rather than trying to lift my spirits I'll put some music on that I feel can relate to how I'm feeling. Maybe it's just fantasy in my head (and if so I'm fine with the fantasy), but I like to believe that if an artist can express their own sense of being alone in music, it reminds me that I'm really not alone in feeling that way. So rather than trying to shut those feelings off, embracing it works for me, but only up to a point. Too much time focused on myself and all I learn is what I already know, my core sense of self is damaged, and maybe always be to a degree. It means I'm never going to entirely be like many people, but it's okay. For me I value depth of relationship over quantity of people in my life. As long as some people can relate, even if not to the same degree, that's good enough.

Thanks xdude, I'll just take this and your other posts and shut up about it now, grr I'm sorry I'm so difficult. Thank you soooo much for putting up with me this whole time. It's really sweet of you that you would extent that amount of time and energy to help. (:

You are welcome, though I benefit too from writing out my thoughts

vertices wrote:I mean, I would just try to put all this stuff out of my head, but it's become this weight on me. Like a black cloud that's taking over my vision, you know? It's just always there. Every day, every action, thought, word, movement, there's just this heaviness and I don't even know why I'm fighting it. I really think life is just a miserable thing the more deeply entrenched you get in it. You're not supposed to be this conscious of yourself, otherwise you realize how lonely being a thing really is. Yeah it's probably essentially lonely for everybody, just most people manage to forget......

I've been following this thread and I just wanted to say it's inspiring to me to see an HPD with awareness. I wish my ex-wife could reach the milestones you have. I wish she could see that I loved her with everything I had, and if I had only known how much pain she was keeping inside maybe just maybe I could have done more to help. Even though it felt (to me) like our bond was very strong, I suddenly became the new scapegoat for all the pain she's felt in her life. If that's what I have to be for her to believe she's healthy, so she will try to be the best mother she can be for our children, then I think that's all I can do for now. Anyway, not trying to hijack your thread. I just wanted to say from the perspective of someone who has seen first-hand the raw devastation this disorder is capable of, I think it's absolutely beautiful that you have the ability to self-reflect and reach out for help. I sometimes wonder if my life would be easier if I was just ignorant of all the pain in this world. Dumb and happy.... But I know that just can't last forever. At least we have a foothold on the wall we're trying to climb to better ourselves.

ridingthewtfbus wrote:I've been following this thread and I just wanted to say it's inspiring to me to see an HPD with awareness. I wish my ex-wife could reach the milestones you have. I wish she could see that I loved her with everything I had, and if I had only known how much pain she was keeping inside maybe just maybe I could have done more to help. Even though it felt (to me) like our bond was very strong, I suddenly became the new scapegoat for all the pain she's felt in her life. If that's what I have to be for her to believe she's healthy, so she will try to be the best mother she can be for our children, then I think that's all I can do for now. Anyway, not trying to hijack your thread. I just wanted to say from the perspective of someone who has seen first-hand the raw devastation this disorder is capable of, I think it's absolutely beautiful that you have the ability to self-reflect and reach out for help. I sometimes wonder if my life would be easier if I was just ignorant of all the pain in this world. Dumb and happy.... But I know that just can't last forever. At least we have a foothold on the wall we're trying to climb to better ourselves.

Well riding, I have to be honest. I don't want you to get too excited, at least not over me. I think--well, I know, that pwHPD are highly intelligent. Very capable, more than they would ever let on to someone. It's not an issue of self-awareness, it's an issue of frames of awareness. They don't add up. They just replace each other. I'm self-aware when I'm browsing psychforums, because this is a place where you talk about your inner experience. It's not much of a social platform, except indirectly. It just... I mean, everyone comes here because they need something. Personally I come here because I need someone to validate that I'm not flawed for being stuck in my life, because being stuck, I have nobody to validate me. That it's not my fault, even if it's just people to hear me out and say that they did. In a word, it's selfish, no matter how I seem. And it's not my first or best alternative, but again, I'm stuck.

I mean, read a non's posts. They're self-aware but they also have, mostly, balance and consistency, at least on some fundamental level. Obviously a non comes here or anywhere for something too, but that need is tempered by deep sets of probably mostly unconscious beliefs about who they are and what they feel about things. But I don't have that. The only self-awareness I can offer is born and lost in this moment. It's not the self-awareness of another day, another thread, or any number of experiences of daily life.

Yesterday, Monday, my boyfriend took me out for breakfast. I was happy about until we left, then we drove around this boring town and I started getting very lonely. I didn't like what I was seeing at all... honestly I hate this town. I hate it so much. It was the kind of place I never wanted to be, full of people living these slow lives in their own little worlds and nowhere in any of that is there truly a place for what someone like me is.

About 20 minutes later I was having fantasies of just outright destroying myself. I thought, if I couldn't die ASAP, I'd absolutely have to call a cab and be taken away, leave everything behind and start over somewhere. I wouldn't take anything... I felt almost nothing for my boyfriend. He was a demon who wouldn't ever do a thing for me. I thought that I definitely could not take this life for a minute longer, something had just changed, it was so infuriating that this had happened to me. The only thing I could do on my own was to just walk out the front door and just keep walking until, god knows where, that's the thing, there's nowhere to go in this town. I went back.. I've silently put up with living like a house cat in this town for two years, I shouldn't have moved here, I shouldn't have accepted any of this, and I don't know why and it's eating the entirety of my being, and occasionally I remember that. I spent the day waiting for those feelings to die down, pretty much waiting for me to accept my fate again, Stockholm syndrome or something. It took hours and I was just so intensely restless. I thought I was literally going to die just from the tension of my feelings and this raw impulse that had no outlet. Several hours later I finally managed to fall asleep, after deeply wounding my boyfriend's self esteem, scaring our cats, throwing $#%^ around, hurting myself, finishing a bottle of vodka, and it took so much self control to leave it at that.

Today I woke up, went shopping, talked to people, all smiles, all fun, didn't have a single lucid thought about yesterday or the state of my life or if it mattered at all, or why I behave the way I do. I didn't need a reason to be alive. If I did that every day, I never would, I'd never have any reason to tell anybody this stuff or come here at all, I just can't do that every day.

Okay, yeah, it's not his fault. None of this, not exactly. He just went with it. He just fell in love with me and I was too wounded, impressionable and short-sighted to not just let it happen without any real conviction. I got attention for being lovable and loving. So I let it happen. I fell into so much $#%^, I can't even tell you right now how deep it runs, and how much I've changed, but I don't feel the change because again, all I see is this little frame of reference. Again, some days I'm out and happy and have no reason to remember that I ever felt wrong. All I see are the things I need for the next hit of attention from the best supplier, and yeah, round here it is more frustration and less fun. That's why I make these ridiculous posts. It won't catch everyone, no, but it will catch someone. It has caught someone, but it's just another thing where if I let it happen it could, or would, and it would never be what I wanted it to but at least it would be something. I still want to give him what he wants because I still don't believe I have what anyone wants.

And, I mean, it's the same thing. I'm writing this post cuz I have every reason to believe it will affect you, make you feel something, make you think about me and what I said, maybe catch an edge of transference. Maybe I'm wrong, I definitely could be, but it doesn't matter, what I mean is that's where my intellectual resources go, not exactly to self-awareness, not exactly to something that will lead to me getting better. I know that his is how I waste everyone's time, even while I can seem to not be doing that, especially in a purely cerebral place like the internet, and admittedly it's so much easier in real life when 90% of the work is just showing up and looking pretty. I'm wasting that advantage just because in real life, I'm stuck in this stupid ass town, and every day I get closer to giving up and just making myself unstuck even when my life can't really bear the strain, or simply hitting up some different guy to do it for me. When I really take inventory, I've already planted those seeds without ever thinking about it. Y'know, those guys that never forget me and say there's something special about me they can't put their finger on, then I stopped talking to them b/c that was good enough. Yeah, that is the tragedy of it. Cuz what do I want if I'm not behaving like this? Nothing. I don't want anything. I don't know if I'll ever change but I can tell yah right now that if I don't have the chance of being thought about more, loved more, (in the right way) hated more, or whatever, I would happily die. I don't live my life for me, so what's the point of self-awareness? All the self-awareness in the world doesn't make me stop needing this. It's pathological, you know? And besides, truly self-aware people are self aware of their own morals, principles, connections to people and script *along with* understanding their thought process. Those kinds of people were the quiet, bookish kids, always on the straight path, even if it was lonely. That wasn't me. I was always an obnoxious existence in one way or another. I always found a way to be invasive, yet sometimes titillating. I'm just ruined like that. Sometimes I like to challenge people who gave me their honest efforts by telling them they wasted their time and I'm a horrible person, and doing my best to prove I know what I'm saying. Maybe that's the fragile, martyred voice of real self-awareness trying to spare people the ultimate misery of dealing with me. If you respect me I'll always get you in the end. It's a losing game. If you ignore me it'll hurt me, actually a lot. but I deserve to be hurt.

Yeah... I'm really sorry... :/

Actually, I'm reallllly sorry :c that last post was just me being really emotional, I didn't mean exactly what I said but it's kind of triggering to be called self-aware as if it's some great thing ;A; therapists have done it, other messed up people have done it, yah, nons do it. You don't understand. It's just like, the point is that I'm still suffering, you know? People don't understand what this feels like. From what I have read about it, it's not just me, a central part of HPD is repressing new insight and stuff. It's not useful, I can't make it useful. If you stuck them alone for a long time, they'd probably get in this same angsty, anxious, borderliney state. So any awareness just feels painful more than anything. It's bad for me to be alone, really bad, again that's why I resent that I ended up so cut off just to escape my family.
And the weirdest and worse part is that I'll hardly even remember my own suffering, even a day after it's gone, so why am I suffering through this? This whole thing is just ridic. It's not self-awareness, all the pain gets washed away, but so does the joy, so does the insight and so do the connections to people. Some days I would give anything to be in touch with, to be able to keep whoever or whatever I really am. Like I go to therapy searching for some help and then I spend the week in and out of catastrophes, but I plop down on that couch and I hardly have anything to talk about, I feel fine, I look like I feel fine, if I don't invent something new to feel not fine about people will wonder why I'm even there. It's frustrating that I can't communicate what happened all week. One of the main reasons this struggle is so miserable is because no matter where I get myself in life I can always go back to this empty place. And people grow to resent me for that. Even if I'm just trying my hardest with no idea where my life is going or when or why or who for.... nobody hears the real struggle going on because they're so caught up in what it looks like on the surface.

Yes I agree it sounds very frustrating. And no need to apologize. Thank you for replying. I apologize if my post triggered you. I promise that was not my intent and I hope you know that.

However, I could relate to some of what you wrote. When I'm sitting in my therapist's office and she asks me how things are going, many times I find myself wondering why I'm there. I seem to forget the fact that once a week I'm crying my eyes out over missing my children and not getting to see them very often, and wondering what kind of affect it will have on them, which of course I'll never know because I won't be able to compare the outcome of an alternate reality.

Again, I wish I knew how much my ex was struggling before she nuked our marriage. I think she felt stuck, too, and lonely, and then demonized me and blamed me as the cause of it all. What absolutely boggled my mind though is how she could do this to our children. She didn't move away from me for them, she did it for herself. She wanted to be closer to her mom and dad, and actually lived there for about a year until my guess is they encouraged her to move out. Obviously the out-of-town move screwed over my chances at getting 50/50 time with my children. And her smear campaign against me far outweighed my attempts to get full custody. As far as I know everyone up there believes her, just like the family court did, that moving away with my children and potentially damaging my relationship with them was better for the children. Problem is, it's just not true. Everyone who really knows me knows how much I love my kids, and how happy we are together. My girlfriend tells me that I'm the best father she's ever seen, and it's obvious that the kids absolutely love me. So, now we're the ones who are stuck, and she is living a dream! Seems like my only options are to accept the hell she unleashed on our family, and just love my kids as much as I can even though I don't get to see them very often. I don't have the money to fight back anymore. And I feel like it would be a total waste if I tried. I hope my children eventually understand that someday.

So, the real question is how much longer she can pretend that the problems in our relationship didn't just follow her right out the door of my house when she left? She's played the victim card with every relationship she's ever had. Her smear campaign against me was just a cover to justify doing what she wanted to do which was skip town, hurt me in the process, and maximize her support payments by screwing me over on parenting time. And it worked. She got exactly what she wanted. Except for any remorse she felt or still feels (?) about how badly I was and am still being treated in the process (I don't know if remorse is even possible for her). I was vilified like all the rest of her past relationships. Unless she reaches some level of awareness and gets help, her new supply will get devalued just like everyone else in her life, and she'll dump them before they get a chance to dump her. When that happens I wish I could ask her family (who have all ex-communicated me), "It couldn't possibly be her, huh?"

An alternate outcome I think would be better is if she could wake up and at least start addressing the real problem. She knows about HPD, as it was mentioned in the psych report I paid for during the divorce. Not denying it and actually attempting to address it has to be better than constantly having to float this massive web of lies and thereby avoiding any responsibility for her actions, right? Sure, it's obviously worked out great in the short term, but it really seems like she hasn't considered how she's going to feel when the kids move out, the support payments stop, and she's still stuck with that emptiness you and other pwHPD's have described. Maybe she just can't because she denies having HPD. Or even if she accepts that she has it, maybe as you mentioned, it's just not the present frame of awareness so it's just too far off into the future for her to even think about. She's living in the moment as usual, and at least on the surface as far as her circle can tell (besides the high conflict divorce and drama she created to generate massive amounts of supply in the first place), it's going pretty good.

I probably sound like a broken record on this site, but it definitely helps to get my thoughts and feelings out. I hope it's helping you, too.

ridingthewtfbus wrote:An alternate outcome I think would be better is if she could wake up and at least start addressing the real problem. She knows about HPD, as it was mentioned in the psych report I paid for during the divorce.

And as you paid for it the psychiatrist/psychologist had to diagnosed her with something 'bad'.

Now who is being dramatic and manipulative?

Judges listen too much to psych reports. When reports arent mere reports they have zero credibility IMO.

It was the same of what happened on David Chapman trial. All five called by defense said he was schizophrenic or with severe depression and therefore not able to stand trial, while all called by the defense said he only had personality disorder.

@riding, Well, you are right. Maybe she'll learn more about HPD and stuff. Maybe she'll repeat the same pattern w/ another guy. Actually, probably. I mean I don't really know, I don't want to get too damning when I don't know how HPD people end up and don't know your ex. I had a classic HPD friend who's dead now. What happened was she got screwed over because before she could leave the guy she treated like $#%^ and cheated on constantly and openly, he died. That hurt, to be the one that lost. She got tired of the same patterns, and then for once tried to just stop. I mean stop sleeping with every guy in sight. She kinda became a hermit. But subtly it started coming out again. Having crises and needing help from lots of male friends. Basically a new kind of sex, I mean sex, attention, it mostly all feels the same.... but, she could never get over losing that guy and also trying to disconnect from her reckless past. Really she made up for it with crises and booze and drugs and so she died young, tormented by emptiness. I mean, can you fill that emptiness with something real? I don't know, but people live in denial for a reason. I know what's wrong with me and I know why, it's the same exact emptiness that I've seen in other people who weren't even self-aware. I have another friend who wasn't self-aware until she met me and I told her how I was and how obviously she was the same, and now she definitely gets it bc it made so much sense. But I mean, what did/does it change? Not much, if anything knowing made her way crazier.

That's the painful part of this.... repression isn't an obstacle, it's sustenance. I gained all this awareness but, you know what? I do the same $#%^ anyway at best, and at worst I'm totally paralyzed and hollow. In fact I have this yearning for when I wasn't self-aware, when my life was utterly crazy. At best, being self-aware is paralyzing. Cuz I sit there trying to fill that emptiness with something I'm supposed to feel but don't.

Yah, it's possible to be less impulsive and try to behave more effectively but for the big issues... I mean, sorry to make assumptions but even if she was self-aware, I don't think she would have wanted to stay with you in any case. I don't think swHPD, no matter how affected, leaves someone they would otherwise stay with, I think it's the other way around, they stay with someone longer than they otherwise would if they were a non, cuz they get with and stay with people for the wrong reasons to begin with. You probably became a demon because you were a symbol of what she hated in herself. Because simply being with you revealed, at least to the unconscious, how cruel her own existence was. Generally speaking, extroverted PDs don't interact with other people on a genuine level, but a projective one. That's why it's cruel. Again, you can be more conscientious and take less from others, but to do that you do have to rob yourself. It's a serial enmeshment. It's great if you're sitting there wishing these things out of sheer benevolence, but babe, know that it is done. Sounds like you found someone now who can love you back at least. The kids thing sucks....