More Trap Obsessing (TW)

Sometimes I think I might present weirdly and be especially screwed in the head, because I think it's more like I used to have BPD, I used to fit the criteria almost to a T, and then I really was abandoned by everyone in my life that I knew. I feel like I experienced a certain sort of emotional death at that point and ceased presenting as typical/classic BPD. It seems like I actually started to become a lot more like Schizotypal in some ways, which may be why my current psych professionals are pushing for a schizophrenia diagnosis, but I'm not sure.

What I do know is that as a teenager I was the type to self-harm and let others see it. Eventually I was also the type to try to get people to save me in ways, and trying to invoke genuine concern in people was something I had a bad tendency to do, even when I was fairly functional. It was never going to work out anyway, because nobody was ever going to be able to replace my parents and re-do my entire childhood, but I didn't have that much insight then. I just wanted people to want to save me.

But after that overall experience in my life a few years ago, it's like I became so terrified of being abandoned or rejected that the game changed. It was no longer even safe to do the dance of re-living my childhood by making unrealistic demands for love only to be repeatedly shot down. Instead the game became that I must never under any circumstances seek out anything even remotely resembling love, ever. My paranoia became more withdrawn in nature and I was dissociated/numb much more often than emotional.

It really feels like if I were let down again in that sort of fashion, I would literally die. Of course this is stupid, but it's a very mortal fear that I've only ever felt in life when I thought I might die. It's the exact same type of all-seizing fear where basic primal instinct takes over and I'm not in charge of myself anymore.

Since I'm currently rolling with this plan to starve myself, without realizing what I was doing in the moment, the other day I even told my stepfather that sometimes I fantasize about faking a crisis so that I can get attention in the hospital. It came completely out of nowhere. I later realized that I don't want any of them to be concerned for me if I'm not eating, I want them to think it's just a farce for attention. That way I never have any expectation of any of them trying to help me, I've beat everyone to the punch by invalidating myself and setting myself up to not be taken seriously.

Tomorrow I'm going to see my psychiatrist for a follow up appointment and I can't tell her about any of these thoughts or feelings. There's a chance she might care, which means that if she didn't care, I would die right there in her office. It wouldn't be a physical death but there are deaths worse than a physical death.

I don't actually believe to this day that I really want to die, either, which is why I'm not really all that scared of myself. If I really wanted to die, I would be dead by now. I've had countless opportunities to leave the world in a fairly painless or at least very quick manner.

What really seems to be happening is that my entire life revolves around trying to not die the other type of death, again. In fact it seems to be my instinctive, primal will to live that is driving it, because it's the same type of fear. But this also means that I am no more capable of really trying to seek out help than I am of physically killing myself.

Which means that I'm trapped in limbo until my body naturally taps out, probably from lung cancer because I smoke so many cigarettes. I feel like they got me. I feel like my mother got me. Checkmate.

I think what you're doing is actually quite normal for us. So many of us are so sick and tired of having to go through the lives that we are, that while we may not so much want to die, we figure that anything, even death, must be better than what we're dealing with now. Plus, DBT only helps us control part of our lives; our interactions with the world are partly dependent on the world's actions. Suicide is one of the few (if not the only) time where we have absolute, full control over our lives, even if only for a brief moment. So for those reasons (among any others), it's entirely understandable that you contemplate it.

My biggest concern is that you've already inferred that you expect your psychiatrist to not take you seriously. Did I read that correctly? If so, why do you feel that way with this psychiatrist? Why don't you feel that you can tell her about your plan to starve yourself? Is it based on your first meeting with her, or with previous meetings with other therapists?

She may be the person who will take you seriously, who will work with you to get you the help you need. To find out, though, you need to do two things:

1. First and foremost, you need to give her a chance. Her job is explicitly to help you.
2. You need to be open and honest with her.

I know what it's like to be let down, over and over again. I get why you're skeptical. However, you're planning to see her again tomorrow, so that's a good sign! That means that there IS a glimmer of hope in you that she is the real deal and isn't going to let you down like others have. Go with that glimmer.

As for you changing from wanting to be saved to being withdrawn in order to protect yourself from being hurt, again, I hear ya. I found I've done the same thing. My therapist keeps telling me "but the next one may be different! Everyone isn't the same." The way I reply to her is with one of my favourite analogies. If a dog keeps getting whacked on the nose with the New York Times every day for a month, he's not going to wag his tail just because one day, you walk up to him with a copy of the Boston Globe.