Do We Hurt More Than Most Others??

So my BPD was in remission for a while, but my relationship with a sociopath almost immediately brought it back. Now I'm experiencing the intolerable rage, depression, self-esteem so low it's in the negatives, and self-mutilation that had all calmed down a lot. He's been much nicer to me lately, much more understanding and sensitive, but he'll say one benign thing that hits a chord with me, and it's like someone is stabbing a knife into my stomach and twisting it. I suddenly want to die, I want to cut myself, and I'll start screaming at him like I've only screamed at my mother as a teenager.

I genuinely feel like I feel things more deeply than the majority of people, but every time that thought comes up I try to convince myself that it's just my self-centeredness, desire to be unique, or false identity as the victim and outsider. I can't convince myself, though. Throughout my life - I'm 25 now - I've gathered, through talking with others, that most people can't comprehend how badly I hurt sometimes. But I don't know if I'm just being a baby. What are your experiences with and opinions on this? I'd really like to know. Also, I sent my bf this passage from the book "Wasted" the other day, and he said it really helped him understand me more:

“I didn’t want it to be me underneath. I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realise you hate yourself so much, when you realise that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts of life, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death. Without being entirely aware of it, I had settled on starvation as my torture of choice. When people think about killing themselves, they usually think about killing themselves with the least amount of pain, the briefest period of suffering. This is different.”

dancegirl16 wrote:So my BPD was in remission for a while, but my relationship with a sociopath almost immediately brought it back. Now I'm experiencing the intolerable rage, depression, self-esteem so low it's in the negatives, and self-mutilation that had all calmed down a lot. He's been much nicer to me lately, much more understanding and sensitive, but he'll say one benign thing that hits a chord with me, and it's like someone is stabbing a knife into my stomach and twisting it. I suddenly want to die, I want to cut myself, and I'll start screaming at him like I've only screamed at my mother as a teenager.

That sounded almost identical to my scenario, lol. I understand how terrible it feels. Very consuming, and overwhelming. I hate it. If you don't mind my asking, have you had any therapy? And if so, did you find it to be beneficial in this instance? (Reflecting back on it and using the skills).

dancegirl16 wrote:I genuinely feel like I feel things more deeply than the majority of people, but every time that thought comes up I try to convince myself that it's just my self-centeredness, desire to be unique, or false identity as the victim and outsider. I can't convince myself, though. Throughout my life - I'm 25 now - I've gathered, through talking with others, that most people can't comprehend how badly I hurt sometimes. But I don't know if I'm just being a baby. What are your experiences with and opinions on this? I'd really like to know. Also, I sent my bf this passage from the book "Wasted" the other day, and he said it really helped him understand me more:

I think I have to agree with you, in regards to feeling more deeply than most people. I definitely feel that I feel things a lot more intensely. And usually in a very negative way unfortunately. Since being diagnosed I have been able to realize when it is happening, but it doesn't make it any easier IMO.

Someone told me there's no way to know whether different people looking at the color green are actually seeing the same color. In other words, whether what you see is the same as what I see when I look.

I'm reluctant to pass judgement on what goes on in someone else's mind. (Is that, itself, one of the signs of a personality disorder?)

In other words: I don't know. I wish I did. Knowing the answer would help me know how much slack to expect from others, and how much to give.

I think it's more like most people are capable of the same intensity of emotions, but people who were emotionally traumatized throughout their childhood are naturally going to experience higher intensity levels and also experience them more frequently, whether it's a conscious experience or a dissociative experience, or a combination.

I'm pretty sure that if we took any given child and made them believe that their parent hated them and was throwing them away, that child would have a full-on psychological crisis. Just because children will grow up to be adults doesn't mean they were never children first.

So it's like the potential is there for the vast majority of people, even if they never happened to experience it.

I guess I think the answer is yes, we do hurt more than other people.

Whether that justifies or mitigates some of the crap we pull is, of course, another question.

If high suicide rates are an indicator, then I'll say, yes, we do hurt more than most others.

I think any human being placed in our shoes would feel the way we do. Like someone else pointed out, they are also capable of feeling as intensely. It's just for us, we instinctively believe hate us and assume victim-mentality...and just the fear is overwhelming enough we give in completely. If "nons" were assuming that others don't really care about them and don't give a crap if they are in pain or even dead - they would freak out too. We kind of walk around assuming we are worthless to others.

You guys make really good/interesting points, thanks for your insight. Would love to hear more people's perceptions/ideas about it, too!

From having BPD my whole life and knowing that I felt things way stronger than most people I knew - and from all of the books I have read about BPD - yes we feel emotions far more strongly than other people - of course negatively - seeing as we are the only ones who seem to feel such emptiness and self-loathing - but

I also think we feel all of the positive emotions more too - such as falling in love, looking forward to events - shopping and buying new things, using all 5 of our senses. I think having BPD is both a curse and gift. Now that I am middle-aged and at a calm place in my life, I realize I feel great most of the time, not to say that when I hit a low, it sure feels #######5 being in the pit of despair, but I know that these feelings will pass eventually and that the good will come again!

It's an interesting one. I haven't actually been diagnosed with BPD, but I'm being sent for an assessment to check for PDs, Aspergers and ADD etc. I think I probably do have at least traits of BPD and it might turn out that I have it.

I think I feel more anxious than most people and my mind never rests. I do get down on myself too. It's degrees of symptoms though. I had a terrible experience with work recently that made me feel like a massive loser. Generally I do feel that my emotional thermostat is stuck on "Really ######6 anxious" and my mind is like a runaway train constantly obsessing over things. Am I in more pain than most people? I can't say. I have trouble getting joy out of life.