How do you find perspective and know what's appropriate?

When you come to see that you have a deep fear of abandonment and a baseline feeling of being excluded, how do you gain perspective? I trust my gut instinct (or at least I used to) and when something nagged at me, I listened. Now, I'm doubting my own perception. Now, if the feeling nags at me that I'm in an unfair, dangerous situation, I'm not sure if it's true or if it's the borderline speaking.

All these feelings are coming about in my marriage.

Feelings of betrayal, mistrust, imbalance, and being left out come up regularly. I'm learning how to just talk about them, rather than go off the deep end and come to the immediate conclusion that he and I shouldn't be together. The feelings linger, though.

I don't get the sense, from several things that have happened, that he and I are a unit, making a life together, making our decisions together. I feel used as I support us and he does his own thing autonomously. It doesn't feel right. Maybe my expectations are too high? Maybe he's keeping some of his own thoughts to himself because he doesn't feel secure in our relationship after I tried to break up with him so many times? Maybe we need time to trust each other and sink in? He's not talking about "us" the way he used to. I don't feel included.

How do I gain perspective?

I've talked to him and each time I do, he tells me his perspective and clarifies. He does want it to be us and gives very reasonable reasons why he does things the way he does. Why do I have this persistent feeling that I'm not truly valued as the primary woman in his life? This has been an issue the whole time we've been married.

How do I gain perspective and see what's really going on?

I'm glad you brought this up, and wrote it in the way you did.

I'm struggling with similar thoughts. I'm not in a relationship, but I think about how I act/react and if it's reasonable or if it's part of the BPD.

I know I push people away, cause fights, if they get too close. That's part of the BPD too. But what else am I doing that I don't even know I'm doing?

It sounds like your husband knows you. And is patient enough to explain his thoughts. That's a good sign that your feelings are more about your disorder than what's really happening. It doesn't help that these feelings can overwhelm and feel like the "truth" -- you'll have to find some way of countering those feelings and expressing them to your husband in a way that will help him understand, so that he doesn't get as injured when you go into the "push away" cycle. Based on what little you've said, it does sound like he's trying. That's worth something. (Big in my world).

Your post resonates with me on so many levels, I've been married 25 years and I still thinks he's going to wake up and realise his life would be so much easier if I wasnt in it.

This is something I'm working hard on, I have a good MHN, who has clearly explained that my own thoughts are not reasonable and that I have to stop listening to my gut which is always on the fight/flight mode and as such I always respond to things in an emotionally negative way.

For example my husband had just started work after being a stay at home dad for 19 years, he really supported me building my career and now I'm jealous that he's mixing with some of my old work colleagues who flirt harmlessly with him, his conversations now include other women and going out with his mates and not me, I started thinking he was doing it to meet someone new.

So I did what I do best, started an arguement, pushed him away, threatened to leave, everything to make him stay and only think about me.
I told my MHN when I started to realise there was something wrong with my behaviour, (I've been diagnosed 4weeks now and things make a bit more sense)
D. Told me to think about our life, how my husband tells me every day how much he loves me, and who am I to disbelieve him. He is a grown man with his own identity why should I think he'd lie about wanting to be with me.

In other words stop listening to my gut that is steering me wrong in relation to people close to me, take what they say at face value. Do you think you could do try it even if you only start with your husband. Instead of thinking the worst try he says he wants to be with me and I'm going to believe that. It takes a lot of practice but once you feel comfortable with that one try it with a different person or situation

Moving away from my husband in a work situation I often feel like I'm excluded from some decisions about what I teach, this last semester I decided to invite myself to the course evaluation, when I got there the first thing the module leader said was it was great to see me, they'd missed my input at the meetings, what I didn't realise as I'm new in that post was it was just assumed that you knew to cone to module evaluation meetings where I'm used to being invited to attend them. But my gut kept telling me they didn't invite me because they realised I was no good at my job and it was just a polite way of telling me to get lost.

Same principle, I spoke with D about it and he told me to try going. I'm just getting to the point where I trust my gut when it's not close people related, like going out in the dark and keeping safe, but when it relates to people I step back and sometimes still write it out. What makes me sure I'm right and what could the alternatives be if I was wrong.
Hope you find some answers that can help you
Take care
Poppy

Thank you for your response.

Yes, definitely, he's trying. I said, as I was going to sleep last night, "How am I going to do this?". His reply was, among other things like therapy and self-responsibility, "with the support and love of your husband". That's when I truly got it. He's not stuck in this relationship with me. He wants to be here and he wants to stand by me because he knows I'm doing the work I need to do in order to recover. And he loves me. He's not trying to hurt me. He makes mistakes as we all do. But, his intention is never to hurt me.

I guess therapy and time will help me start to see clearly. It's a strange feeling to have. The trust and certainty you had only an hour ago, suddenly gets overshadowed by a panicked feeling that you are being threatened and it's immediately imperative to protect yourself.

If one were actually in that kind of situation, reacting strongly would be appropriate. The key is to know the difference.

dilnarc wrote:His reply was, among other things like therapy and self-responsibility, "with the support and love of your husband". That's when I truly got it. He's not stuck in this relationship with me. He wants to be here

This actually gave me goosebumps. I'm smiling like you wouldn't believe.

You've just given me hope

It sounds like you have someone in your life who would rather die than hurt you. That's a marvellous thing. So it would make sense that of all the awful people out there in the world, he'd be the last to intentionally hurt you. And knowing who he is as a person is your clue to knowing the difference. So all those feelings? The disorder.

If it helps any, when I have extreme bouts of anxiety, I've found running up and down the stairs a dozen times helps me counter it. If I'm too busy focusing on not falling, I find the bad feelings are at least pushed away for a short time. Plus double bonus, my legs are getting nice

Great topic.

I love the replies so far.

What I try to do is remind myself that I tend to assume the worst. So when I start jumping to conclusions about something, I try to tell myself I'm probably wrong, and then just try to self-soothe a bit and consider a better alternative. It takes effort, I guess, to change the natural progression of our thoughts, which tend to want to jump to the worst possible conclusion. Maybe after awhile it becomes more natural?

I also used to use my therapist as a reality check. I would tell her about something that was bothering me, and she would point out to me how my thinking was twisted and how I was probably seeing it worse than it actually was, and she would suggest an alternative possibility.