I've been thinking about the way I've changed since therapy, and I can only liken it to wearing a new coat that doesn't quite fit. Well, it fits, but it feels strange. It doesn't fasten like my old coat. It doesn't "sit" like my old coat. It doesn't feel familiar. It's all new and unblemished. I've changed in so many ways, into the person I should have been, would have been, if my abuse hadn't happened, and I'm still changing.

I don't acknowledge the abuse to my family members who are still alive. We all pretend that our family is functional, happy and normal. We don't do hugs much, even in greeting. We talk about pleasantries, make jokes and it's all very ...........polite, and it reminds me of how I learnt to use politeness as a mask to hide behind all of my life. To be polite is not to say how I really feel. To be polite is to allow others to impose themselves upon me. To be polite is to pretend that there is no unpleasantness or resentment or anger. To be polite is to not communicate. Hardly surprising I developed the appeasing type of HPD. I developed a persona who was funny, charming, friendly, sociable, always saying the right things, always being pleasing, always being pleasing to the eye, always concentrating on what was on the surface, and not which lay below. For someone who was so "nice", I hid inner resentments, insecurities, unhappiness and uncertainty. There was so much I wasn't allowed to express, and it all became suppressed, erupting sometimes in short bursts of intense emotion. Because my emotions were never validated as a child, or acknowledged, I felt that I didn't have a right to have them or to own them, and so when they erupted they would disappear as soon as they came, which made them look fake. I suppose that is what is meant by rapidly shifting shallow emotions. But they're not shallow at all. They run deep, very deep, but they're not allowed expression. I've just noticed that I'm now writing this in the present tense, and maybe this is because they're still an issue for me, as I still find it difficult to express them to people. I have cyclothmia as well as HPD and when I go into a depression, usually in the winter, I don't tell anyone. I simply hide away. My friends, who only see the happy me, don't question it. They simply assume that I'm occupied with something. It's a lonely place to be, but I find it hard to even acknowledge the loneliness, and I brush the emotion away.

Yes, I've come a long way in therapy. I have a deep self awareness, I care about people and have something of an over active conscience. I've become more empathic and discerning about friendships and relationships. I've become much more focused and mature as a person and scored normal on a personality disorder inventory. That's not to say I'm cured. I did the inventory on a good day. On a bad day the old feelings and attitudes will resurface, but I've learnt to become aware of them through CBT and to challenge them when they arise. Stress or illnesses can become major triggers.

I have issues about being ignored. If a friend forgets to call or if I feel excluded in a conversation, I will really take it to heart, and feel rejected, abandoned, unworthy, unwanted and unhappy. I will try to compensate by pushing my way into the conversation, almost competing for attention, and have to stop, tell myself to be rational and not take it to heart so much. It's improved a great deal since I've been working on my self esteem, and looking inside for validation and not from outside. I know exactly when these feelings began. They came from childhood, when I was ignored, passed by, invalidated, not taken seriously. I got attention if I made people laugh, and so I became a comedian, always joking or doing silly things and I still do this today. It's almost a subconscious mechanism, and I don't really know any other way to be. I can also be serious, though, thanks to therapy, and now find that when I'm talking about a serious topic that people do listen and take me seriously. That really means a lot to me, because it proves that there is much more to me than the fluffy, dizzy exterior I'd learnt to hide behind for most of my life. I've learnt that I have an intellect, and can now express myself verbally and in the written word. For so many years my father downplayed my intellect, with sexist assumptions about the things that girls and women
"couldn't" do. He made me afraid to try to do anything at all and so I set myself up for failure and sabautaged myself throughout my life. Now I realise that I don't have to live according to his wrong assumptions, that I can be anyone I want to be, and that I can be happy with myself whether I fail or succeed.

I feel as if this blog is a bit disjointed. I hadn't planned on what to write, but just let the words form freely as the thoughts occurred. It's difficult for me to go into detail when I write about personal things, another symptom of HPD. Maybe the inability to express myself in detail stems from all the suppression of pain that I've learnt, and from being discouraged from any form of self expression. I find that I can express myself easily through my art work, and visually through my appearance, and in the way I decorate my home. Appearance is a statement for me. I find it difficult to express myself in any other way. Sometimes I find it easier to use words to help and encourage others, and say just the right thing at just the right time to help someone. I mean those words and know the power of words. Words are permanent, especially written words. They are here forever, even after we die. These words written on the internet will probably be here for hundreds of years. Such is the power of words. They can harm or heal. I will never knowingly say anything that will hurt another human being because I know the devastation and harm they can cause. Maybe the reason I can't easily express my own feelings in words, or could never give myself positive self-talk is because of the words that remain with me from my childhood from my father. Words such as "You're no good". Words to discourage. Words of criticism. Words of anger. Words of venom. Words that hurt. He only ever told me that he loved me on his death bed. Yes, there were times when he was pleasant and funny, and he was generous to a fault, but I can't remember him ever saying anything that encouraged me.

I tried so many times to re write the script by having negative and toxic relationships in which I was either verbally abused or I was the abuser. When these relationships failed, I would cheat with other partners, or they would cheat on me. The only thing that I felt good about was the way I looked, and so convinced myself I was happy if I had new clothes, or looked attractive. If men looked at me, this gave me a sense of worth, and it was easy to mistake the intimacy of sex for love. I can't count the casual relationships I have had, but I started out with each one of them with a deep desire to be loved. I mistook attention for love, and if the attention faded, I would feel worthless again. I take things literally one day at a time with the man I love today. This is the first time I believe that I can be a part of something that is actually working. It's not all sweetness and light, and we live separately, but since my therapy I've come to realise that the perfect ideal doesn't exist and if I spend a life time searching for it, I could let real love slip by unnoticed. This is the nearest thing I've ever had to real love, and it's REAL, and not perfect. It's good enough, and I'm good enough. My therapist has helped me to see that "good enough" is okay, and that is all any one of us can or should aspire towards.

I've learnt to live JUST FOR TODAY, to control my symptoms, just for today. I'm into Reiki and am now a Reiki Master. The Reiki Principles are:

1) Just for today I will not anger
2) Just for today I will not worry
3) Just for today I will be grateful
4) Just for today I will do my work honestly
5) Just for today I will be kind to every living thing

I say them like a mantra the moment I wake up. I'm also into Buddhism, spirituality and meditation, and having something to believe in really helps me to find serenity, no matter what is happening in my world. I'm not fanatic about it, and wouldn't force my beliefs onto anyone, but they work for me.

I've learnt a lot from my past. I can't change it. I have to accept it. I can't deny that my parents did not love me in the way I needed to be loved, but I can forgive them. I can't excuse them, but I can understand that they knew no different, that they were the products of their own upbringings. All I can do to ensure that the patterns don't repeat themselves is to work on myself, be a role model for my children and allow them to be themselves, even make their own mistakes. I can either accept the legacy of disordered thinking that my parents taught me, or reinvent it, and grow in self awareness and self love. I choose to grow in self love.