identity conflict *TW*

@nmind

Exactly. I feel worthless. I feel damaged. I feel like I'm a bad person and that everyone is wrong when they say I'm a good person, because I'm not. That's what I think when I feel bad and depressed. I feel like I'm never good enough. I feel like I don't deserve to be loved or praised. I don't think it was my parents undermining my value. It was me. The conflict has beej there since adolescence, actually. That's when BPD symptoms started to manifest.

The fact is...I can't control my thoughts or emotions. I have a really hard time with that, especially when they are so intense and self-destructive.

^ ^ I seem to relate to you and AD the most here. I relate to everything you said above, except for parents. My mother was very abusive in childhood.

Like you though my symptoms began to manifest in adolescence, though there is no doubt in my mind that sh*t before that helped to lay the groundwork. I'd say by 14 or 15 at the latest I was very symptomatic.

Lucky me.

This is how I look at it.

I'm a human being, I have insecurities just like everyone else and sometimes I act on them and project blame instead of dealing with the problem properly because I don't want to face it. That's fear, but fear is something natural that everyone has to some extent. Beating myself up for it accomplishes nothing; it just adds to my misery.

Learn from my mistakes and try my best to avoid making them again. If I slip up, keep on going and be more careful.

could this reflect the diversity of opinions about us - and our features, capabilities, etc - we are exposed to on a daily basis?

I suppose the solution is to try to block all that out and just take into consideration what people who you care about and who care about you say

it is NOT easy though. I don't have anyone really like that...so i do measure myself by the world's standards, versus certain people's only.

-- Fri Aug 15, 2014 5:40 am --

Lassitude wrote:This is how I look at it.

I'm a human being, I have insecurities just like everyone else and sometimes I act on them and project blame instead of dealing with the problem properly because I don't want to face it. That's fear, but fear is something natural that everyone has to some extent. Beating myself up for it accomplishes nothing; it just adds to my misery.

Learn from my mistakes and try my best to avoid making them again. If I slip up, keep on going and be more careful.

This is good advice and is like the definition of a healthy self-image.

Yes. This is exactly how I feel all the time. I always feel like I'm really good at doing a lot of things. But then I'm really crappy at any kind of relationship with people.

I'll go do something and I think I did a really good job, but then someone will one up it or do better and it will make me think that I'm just a piece of ****. Or when I mess up something I will feel like everyone is watching me.

Sometimes I'm helping everyone with everything and be the nicest guy out there but then within hours or an instant I'll shut the whole world off from me and I'll be an ass to anyone that tries to approach me.

Everyone around me pretty much knows I'm the guy that can be friendly and show a good smile but then suddenly be snappy or dissociative and distance myself.

ElKahn wrote:@nmind

Exactly. I feel worthless. I feel damaged. I feel like I'm a bad person and that everyone is wrong when they say I'm a good person, because I'm not. That's what I think when I feel bad and depressed. I feel like I'm never good enough. I feel like I don't deserve to be loved or praised. I don't think it was my parents undermining my value. It was me. The conflict has beej there since adolescence, actually. That's when BPD symptoms started to manifest.

The fact is...I can't control my thoughts or emotions. I have a really hard time with that, especially when they are so intense and self-destructive.

I understand your difficulty with controlling thoughts or emotions. I once had that same difficulty but I overcame them. You can overcome it as well. You are not running up against an uncontrollable machine inside your mind that produces random negative thoughts day in and day out. Rather you have specific negative thoughts that resurface because you never dealt with them in a healthy manner. If you learn how to navigate your thoughts you can knock them out little by little. That's the good news about it. It's not an endless current of negative thoughts. Instead they are a specific list of thoughts that can be checked off once you handle them in healthy ways. This is all based on psychology and healthy self-management.

Anybody can learn to control/navigate their thoughts. The first step is believing you can do it. Do you?