Newly Diagnosed, Could Use Some Advice

I recently learned that my mother spent two weeks in the hospital away from me when I was 1½ years old. This was a result of two tragic events that happened in her life: 1.) My father had just recently left her for another woman; 2.) My mother's aunt whom she was very close with (and even lived with for a few years) had just committed suicide and left five children behind. These events were too much for my mother to process, so she was admitted to a psych ward for two weeks to recover from the losses. However, I spent two weeks with a caregiver who was a stranger to me. I am convinced that this was the trauma that caused me to have a perpetual sense of loss and sadness lingering within my mind during all waking hours that my mind is not focusing on something else.

The feeling of that abandonment embedded itself into my emotions and it is still there today. I'm 45 years old now and I have found that my childhood issues seem to bother me more as I get older. When I was younger I didn't even think about them, but I was driven and tormented by the emptiness and grief inside of me. Because of this I have become a huge self-help junkie, although I find that part of me doesn't want to grow up and take responsibility for my own recovery. I buy books and I don't finish them... I have hundreds of them.

I joined a pentecostal charismatic church in 1986, and met my wife there and got married in 1988. We left the church 12 years later in 1998 when it started showing signs of becoming a cult. The loss of my church family/support system brought back the chronic empty feeling in me with a vengeance. I felt like my heart and soul had been ripped out of my body and handed back to me with the perpetrator saying, "Figure out what to do with this now, loser." I had no idea what to do with it. After we tried out several new churches without feeling comfortable in any of them, all of the structure in my life started to become flimsy.

After a year away from the church I started smoking marijuana again to try to fill the emptiness that was eating away at me. Eventually I started drinking, and even gambling for a few years (I am currently not dealing with any addiction problems other than mild marijuana use). We never reconnected with a new church, and both my family and my wife's family were unable to provide any type of support system for us.

All my life I have been driven to get the approval of others. I play guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums in an effort to gain acceptance with people. I started a business that has provided a very good income for my family. But when I started making good money I just blew it. I started gambling, and then in 2006 I lost motivation and the business has been slowing down ever since. It got to the point in early 2007 that I noticed I had become emotionally crippled and very unproductive. It has been that way ever since, but I have been forcing myself to work lately.

I know what happened. I had spent 44 years trying to earn my approval and acceptance, and one day I just got burned out and gave up the hopeless fight. Even though I have a million dollar business in my lap, I can hardly get motivated to pursue it anymore. I cannot hire any employees because I will treat them too nice and sell myself to them, causing them to become codependent and unproductive.

I can’t believe my wife has stayed with me for 21 years now. I work hard not to lose her. If I lost her I would probably be ready to end it all. But I have two daughters who would have to rely on me 100% since we have no other family outside out home to turn to, and that is so scary. I feel like we are “us four and no more.” We have owned a 5,500 sq. ft. house since 203 and I can count the number of people we have had visit us on one hand.

I have not started recovery yet. I am looking into DBT but I cannot find a local therapist who specializes in it. If you have any recommendations please share them. I could go on and on, but I will stop here for now. Glad to be among people who can understand what I am dealing with.

I found the two videos below, and they seem to tell my life story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t6biA9kaMM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf0K_e-NKE8

I look forward to listening and sharing more here. Thanks for listening!

Wanderer, welcome to the BPD forum! Thanks for sharing with us such a rich and detailed description of very personal aspects of your life. Very impressive way to begin your posts on this forum. And thanks, also, for the two links to YouTube videos on BPD. I listened to both and found them interesting. I noticed that, in the first video, the therapist clearly warns BPDs against using alcohol or marijuana, which addresses your question in your second post about whether marijuana is helpful by having a calming effect. The therapist says that such drugs are triggers that should be avoided. Moreover, he advises BPDs to not suspend all judgements and bad feelings toward a spouse when on drugs.

As a nonBPD, I don't know if he is correct. I do know, however, that my experimentation during college days left my mind a bit crippled for at least two weeks. I know it took the edge of my intellectual ability to do math and other high level thinking. So I stopped using it for that reason, i.e., it had a dumbing-down effect that was fun for a few hours but still lingered, at a much reduced level, for two weeks.

In your third post you talk about putting on the brakes in front of rude truck drivers. When I was younger, I did that once too when I was angry with the offending truck driver. To this day I get chills thinking about how foolish and stupid my action was. To me, the most offensive thing about it is that, even when I was doing it, I knew it was stupid and reckless -- and I did it anyway! After watching the two videos you mention, I watched a third wherein the therapist (Mr. Lewis) states that one BPD trait is impulsive, rash behavior that is life threatening. And he observes that nonBPDs (like me) also exhibit such traits, albeit less frequently and less intensely.

In such angry moments, it is of course our inner child who is in control of our behavior. Perhaps the best thing that the "adult you" can do, then, is to quickly visualize your two daughters who are still dependent on you. I can't think of a better way to distract your inner child than to try neutralizing one intense feeling (anger) with another (love).

DowntownDC wrote:In such angry moments, it is of course our inner child who is in control of our behavior. Perhaps the best thing that the "adult you" can do, then, is to quickly visualize your two daughters who are still dependent on you. I can't think of a better way to distract your inner child than to try neutralizing one intense feeling (anger) with another (love).

I am just now learning about BPD and I do not have a therapist. The ways I use to cope didn't come from anywhere but me. I have not even begun on the road to recovery, but I find my mind devouring every bit of information on BPD that I can find.

You see, I've obviously had BPD all my life and didn't know it. I've just learned to cope in unhealthy ways. I need to learn healthy ways and I haven't even started yet. Since you are a non-BPD it may be hard to understand the inner torment and self-loathing that drives us. I read your advice, but it's hard to embrace it when it comes across in a shaming way as if I am some child who needs a scolding for breaking the law. Maybe that's not what you wrote but that is what how I read it. I don't yet know anything about calming my inner child. I hope I can get on that pathway. All I know is that I get overwhelmed with shame when I get crtiticized and it can make me do whatever it takes to get away from it or stop it. That is why I isolate a lot.

DowntownDC wrote:In your third post you talk about putting on the brakes in front of rude truck drivers. When I was younger, I did that once too when I was angry with the offending truck driver. To this day I get chills thinking about how foolish and stupid my action was.

Is that supposed to help me? Is that the kind of shaming advice I can expect from this forum? If so, then I am definitely in the wrong place... or maybe you are. One of us definitely is. Someone let me know.

Is that supposed to help me? Is that the kind of shaming advice I can expect from this forum? If so, then I am definitely in the wrong place... or maybe you are. One of us definitely is.

No, we are both in the right place. Thanks for asking me this question. I appreciate that, instead of attacking me, you chose to ask a question, giving me an opportunity to clarify what I meant. That is what this forum is all about -- communication.

My intent was not to give shaming advice but, rather, to answer a question you raised in a separate thread. I probably should have addressed it there. I did so in this thread only because your question was partly answered in a YouTube video which I was watching thanks to the links you provided above. Anyway, your question was whether anyone else had put his foot on the brakes right in front of a rude truck driver. There never was any issue as to whether this action is foolish and stupid. You clearly recognized that it is. Indeed, you state that it is dangerous and is a behavior you want to stop. Your question, then, is simply to ask whether anyone on this forum has done the same thing when triggered by a rude truck driver.

My response was to acknowledge that, yes, I had done it too. I was trying to be supportive by observing that BPD traits are not restricted to BPD sufferers. I noted that nonBPDs like myself sometimes exhibit those traits, including impulsive behavior that is life threatening. And, in several other threads here, I explain how it is commonplace for all adult human beings to occassionally experience splitting and dissociation, as well as the other BPD traits.