They say that HPDs have "Shallow rapidly shifting emotions" . How I hate that phrase. It makes us seem unfeeling, shallow and ....well, not very nice. I decided to write this blog because something has happened in my personal life that would make most people cry until their eyes were dry. I want to cry about it, I really do, because it would help me to heal. This event, which I won't go into, has been a bit of a catalyst for a lot of other things, things that have happened in the past, things that are really personal, things that would cause most people a great deal of pain that they would be able to express. Not me. I can feel a lot of pain now as I'm writing these words, and the pain seems to be located in my chest area. I am feeling it physically. That's something else histrionics do. We have all kinds of somatic complaints because we can't process our emotional pain. The pain has to go somewhere so we feel it in our chests or our headaches or other parts of our bodies. We're not hypochondriacs, the illnesses are very real. It's just that we seem to get them more often because it's the only way we can really process our internal emotional pain. My somatic complaints are just as rapidly shifting as my emotions seem to be. It's as if I don't want to acknowledge them either. Feeling happy and upbeat is the only thing I'm comfortable with.

I don't want to feel this way anymore. I have had enough of it. I want to feel things normally, process things normally, cry, get angry, feel sad sometimes, feel p@@@@d off sometimes just like everyone else. Right now it's as if all the emotions are there, just below the surface. I can feel a jittery anxious sort of feeling, but it's not very strong. I can feel a sort of pain in my chest. Well, not a pain exactly, more of a sensation. I can feel a sort of background headache which will come out in full force tomorrow as a migraine. I don't want to talk about the event that made me feel this way, as I value my privacy and don't think it's fair as it concerns another person. What I do want to talk about is my reaction, or non reaction to it. It's not really normal.

I've come a long way in recovery. I can see the triggers from the past,and identify their impact upon me in the present. I can empathise, really empathise with other people. I can cry for them. I can cry with them. I would go the extra mile for them. I love people. I think human beings are beautiful creatures. I can feel for them. I can identify with them. I wouldn't knowingly harm anyone in any way. I think I act in ways that are near normal. I don't engage in attention seeking behaviour. I don't throw myself at random strangers in a seductive manner. I don't dress seductively. I take a pride in my appearance, but am happy to let people see me in tatty old pyjamas with no make up on. I can talk in depth about my experiences. I don't view relationships as being more intimate than they really are. I like to be entertaining, but am happy for others to be entertaining too and take the limelight. I don't speak "globally with very little detail". I have impressionistic speech, but don't think it's a majorly life damaging symptom. I am 80% there.

What I do still struggle with is emotions. I so want to feel them properly. I want to feel the whole range of them. The events of today really hit me and knocked me for six and I did have a little cry, but as always it was short lived. Most normal people would be feeling pretty bad, and they'd cry, and they'd go through a whole range of healthy emotions and then finally recover. By doing so, they'd be emotionally healthy. They would be able to deal with their feelings, and process them in a normal manner. The feelings would be unpleasant, but normal, and they'd be able to grieve and mourn and finally come to a place of acceptance. A theme of my life has been a lot of bereavements. I lost my grandparents, my parents, my two brothers, my baby, friends have died and people I have loved and been close to. I have had relationships fall apart and these have been bereavements too. I have also had other forms of loss. There are seven stages of grief, and in each of these cases I have become stuck in the numb phase, and maybe the denial phase, not so much as in denial for the bereavements themselves, but as in denial for the grief. The abuse was also like a bereavement. Ir was a bereavement for the parents I should have had and for the childhood I should have had. I can't even feel a sense of grief for that. I'm stuck at the numb stage and the denial stage.

One thing therapy has taught me is an awareness of myself and an insight into myself, and that's good. It means I can explain where and how these feelings began. My Dad used to invalidate any emotion that I expressed that wasn't positive. I learnt that because feeling upbeat and happy felt good and made people like me I could hide behind these feelings. They were a bandage for the other more painful emotions that I wasn't allowed to express. It's not that I didn't feel them. Of course I did. When you are nine or ten and your father gaslights you, twists things that you say, phsyically punishes you for things that you didn't do or didn't mean to do, shouts at you, belittles you, undermines you in front of other people, screams at and attacks your mother in front of you, and then puts on a pseudo respectable, polite, gentle and genteel face in front of other people, then you're going to experience some powerful and painful emotions. When those emotions are invalidated and you are taught that you are wrong, bad, hysterical, unbalanced, crazy and dramatic for expressing them, then you learn to bury them. You learn not to experience them on a conscious level. You learn not to confront them, because to do so causes feelings of guilt and an acknowledgement that you have been abused. You feel that because your father treated you in that way and didn't really love you, then you are bad. You begin to associate deep emotions with feelings of badness. You learn to split. You learn to be conflicted. You learn to become histrionic. As you grow, and also try to put yourself in the passive, feminine role that has been created for you, and you bury your naturally assertive, independent and resourceful personality in order to please your father (because then he may love you) you meet various partners and the same dance and performance begins again. You realise that there is a huge chasm between the person that you naturally are and the person these people expect you to be. You try to please, then at some point you rebel and assert yourself, much to the confusion of your partner who suddenly sees a different person emerge. Your deeply buried emotions come out in short and powerful blasts that seem to be hysterical and dramatic. You get no validation for this, so just as quickly the emotions are buried again, and you revert back to being pleasant, happy, appeasing because this is the only way you know how to be.

I have noticed that I have substituted the word "I" for "you" in the above paragraph. Maybe it's because I recognise myself there, but still can't own any of it. My Dad had a lot to answer for. Perhaps the worst thing that he did to me was to invalidate my emotions. I have decided today that the dance is over. It stops here. The fact that I couldn't really properly cry and express appropriate emotion made me angry. Angry with myself. Angry with my Dad. Angry with HPD. I don't want it any more. This disorder is like a dirty garment to me, that I just don't want to wear any more. It isn't me. The real me is feisty, independent, caring, says it like it is, definately not a square- nailed girly girl. Heaven forbid. The real me is very much an individual, funny and humorous but with a real and serious side, and I now feel comfortable in my skin, but there are still some layers that need to be healed. As you can see from my last few blogs the mask is slipping. Masq's Mask is coming off. I am becoming more open on here, because I want people to see all of me, not just the masks. I want to be real. I want to cry, make mistakes, get things wrong sometimes and know it's okay, be real, natural and human. I never had anyone to share my tears. Ever. I don't have the sort of friends in 3D who I can confide in and talk about how I feel. Now I need to share it all. I need to have my tears heard. I need to share my pain openly, not just the happy things. This isn't because I want anyone's sympathy or attention. God no. I never sought attention for feeling bad or negative. I don't know how to. Maybe it's because I never had any when I was a child. I can't even talk to people for any length of time about it, the pain I mean. I go right back to being lighthearted and cheerful again. It's a kind of coping mechanism.

I had a little cry earlier today when I shared with the other mods how I was feeling, but it was short lived. Tonight I am so going to cry. Big style. I am going to move beyond the numb and denial stage of all the bereavements, and feel the pain in all of its rawness. I'm going to welcome it, because it'll be another stage of healing. It might not last for long. It probably won't, but it'll be a start. I'm going to get in touch with my emotions, write in a diary, watch weepy movies and buy a box of tissues. I'm going to acknowledge all the pain. It wasn't only my father who invalidated my emotions. I invalidated them too. I'm going to book an appointment with a counsellor again, not my old therapist, but a bereavement counsellor. I'm well on the way to beating this cursed HPD and I will beat it. Masq's Mask is slipping.

Just beautiful.

Wow. I see myself in your post--the 'I can take care of anything' person who was never allowed to share her own pain and now blocks it. My mother owned all of the feelings in our house. She decided if we were happy or sad. Only she was allowed feelings; my feelings were not valid or worthy of note. Should I feel the next to express them, I might be called a 'little snot' and soundly slapped. Explains why I now have so many excuses for why I can't share, and just slap on a happy 'normal' face. Thank you for sharing.

This post has effectively worded my emotions I could never put words to for years. Thank you.