Does your awareness help you?

Though this is in a form of a question, I am just wanting to be understood or validated by someone.

Because of my BPD, I had avoided to make any close relationships for years. However, I has made closer relationships with people in a place this year. As a result of deeper communication with them, I had experienced more difficulty to control my emotion, and soon I lost a shell around my distorted mind. By that time, my relationships with them had become close enough that my rage, splitting, mood swing, etc. caused problems there. After I lost my shell, all of my negative thoughts come out directly from my mind. A very small sign of rejection hurts me with a huge pain, and causes a too strong anger. I try to put them aside, but they do not go anywhere. I feel as I am suppressed by them. When I could not have coped the pain by myself, I offended others to be distracted from the pain. My behaviors have been sometimes manipulative. Several times, I could not have suppressed my impulsive rage triggered by trivial things, and acted out baddly. Things I did during the first six months of this year were much enough that at least one of them noticed I had a BPD.

He and another person are the two that I have trusted the most, and they offered me supports. Instead of offending others, I told my feelings to them when I felt it was too much to cope. It seemed to work well and I deeply appreciate for their supports, but, my demands on them are escalating. I am wanting them for being a buffer against my all negative thoughts and feelings. I am wanting them for more attention. I am wanting them for taking care of me instead of me. I am wanting them for being a father. Because of these inappropriate demands, I feel I have no value to them, and I am afraid to be rejected by them. I am also afraid that my aggression goes toword them someday. I decided not to ask them for any help, but "do not ask" is harder than "can not ask". Now, I am wanting to tell them never to care for me anymore, even though they are consistently supportive and still willing to give me some help.

I am aware of my distorted way to recognize things. I know losing supportive people is stupind. Even when I am in impulsive rage and lose a control over me, I know what I am doing, how I am offending others, and what I am losing. The awareness does not help me, but just gives me more pain. I want to lose my awareness.

I think that the awareness of it all is a really weird thing. For instance, sometimes I can stop myself from doing or saying something stupid that I would have otherwise done before i knew about my BPD. It's almost like, emotionally, I'm on a very precise balance, and that tipping too far one way (triggering) will bring out all the things I try so hard to suppress. All the awareness seems to do is move that tipping point just a little further away, allowing me to keep my sanity for just a little bit longer before I lose it. But, eventually, with relationships, I will lose it.

It's really hard when we're doing and saying things that we KNOW are damaging, and it's like there's nothing we can do to stop it. it just makes so much sense at the time to do it, emotionally. but rationally, it's eating us up that we know we'll have to pay for it later.

the whole concept of the shell you brought up is really interesting though. I never really thought of it this way, but the shell almost makes us seem more normal, at the expense of shyness. Then, with me at least, there is a "fairytale period" where everything seems great...i'm coming out of my shell, and having a normal relationship (im talking about friends, not romantic, but the idea's the same). Then with increased comfort around the person, my real self comes out more and more, and I slip down the slope of "things you wish you didn't say/do/ignore". and it happens everytime. The phases of: [shyness/shell>comfort/me and that person really click!>full on BPD coming out/screw him/her] is all too familiar to me, and maybe to you too. UGH

Sometimes, I can recognize what I'm doing. However, like watching a horror movie rerun, no matter how much I scream at the television for the girl not to go into the abandoned farmhouse where the serial killer is hiding, she still goes in anyway, every time. All it does is serve to let me know just how bad I'm feeling.

The big exception to this is rage. When I get pissed off, I feel like a shark. My eyes roll back and I don't see what I'm doing. Once it's over, I can sit back and realize what just happened, but when I'm in the process of raging, only my target exists; all else falls by the wayside.

ApplesAndBanoonoos & JohnnyBlaze, thank you for your replies. I feel very alone and am strongly wanting to communicate with someone, so gettin replies from you made me happy.

Since I was very young, I have felt a lack of some abilities to communicate with others, strong emptiness, and worthlessness. I have been ashamed of it, and have wanted to be normal. I collected phrases as much as possible for situations that I could have predicted. It worked ok. I greeted everyone, I gave appropliate answers when asked. Though they thought I was not very social, they did not think I had a problem on communication. I needed to be trained to coommunicate with others during my school life, but I did not like to communicate with others in that way. I avoided communication as much as possible by reading books. My parents and teachers did not pay attention to my mild avoidance of communication. However, I felt loneliness. I built my shell to protect me from feeling the loneliness.

In my childhood, I had no serious problem in my family, at school, or other places. I had no difficulty to deal with my emotions and feelings such as emptiness, worthlessness, and loneliness. When I left my hometown to go to college, my most symptoms appeared at once. There, nobody cared for me, unless I tried to communicate with them by myself. The lack of communication skills became a big problem. I felt strong stresses which I did not know how to deal with, and that broke my shell around my mind. I found I could not have controled my emotions and my mind was full of negative thoughts. People who I caused troubles with were the people who I had communicated with somehow and might have been able to give me some help. I don't know how I did, but I built my shell again to suppress those negative emotions and thoughts, and also to protect my mind from self-blaming and detecting signs of rejection.

Since then the shell worked well, untill it was broken again. The differences from the last time are I know the name of BPD, and there are people who are willing to support me. I guess they have enough knowledge and consistensy to deal with my unstable status, but depending on them makes me feel vulnerable and worthless strongly. Having someone who I can trust and be comfortable with makes me worry to lose them. I am wanting to rebuild my shell, but I don't know how I can.

No it makes me feel crazier. And god I feel so lonely right now.

Ah yes, the shell. My *issue* for 10 years was my addiction to video games. They all thought I was obsessed with video games. They thought that once I broke free of them at certain points in my life, I was okay. They were wrong. That's when I was using other means to fill that void. Other means to avoid any real issues. Anything that I could obsess over, whether it was drinking, drugs, or sex. I broke out of that shell not too long ago.

The awareness helps me to KNOW what I'm doing. It doesn't exactly affect me directly. I just understand my actions and feelings a bit more. I know the direction I can help point them in so that they serve a positive purpose. I'm aware of almost every little feeling I have now. Basically, I can't stop myself from feeling the way I feel, but I'm learning to direct those feelings towards something. I don't have the ability to control much of it now, but maybe, at some point in future, I will.

I have no Dx at all. I'm not looking for a label anymore. I have no real answers or guidance. I'm just doing what I can to survive until I can incorporate some new coping skills into my routine.