what a ruined mind bpd

I'm hoping, that due to your knowledge, you'll be able to see that you are more strong-minded, more aware than you realize yourself to be?
These are all positive traits to a personality? Do you agree? I hope so.
I've recently stumbled across a couple of your posts in the child abuse forum.
I was reading the posts in there due to my own experiences at home, at school and a work.
I, just like you, have many bad experiences at the hands of others.
I've had to deal with a lot of hurt and a lot of pain.
Things is, I feel it's kinda made me a better person, due to the fact that I am able to empathize and understand people at a much deeper level.
I can sense in you that there is a good person, trapped by barriers of the past.
I feel you are more than capable of breaking down some of those barriers and sticking two fingers up to the people that have hurt you. Their preference may be to see you down, whilst victory would be for you to rise up and show these people that you are a better person than they'll ever be. That you will not be held back by their bad intentions. Much of their behaviour is down to their own deeply ingrained insecurities, and they've, much of the time projected those insecurities onto people who they, at the time, deemed weaker than themselves.
Yes, we can't change the past, it still affects me greatly, but it also leaves me wondering about what kind of person i may have turned out to be if i hadn't have had those experiences. Maybe I'd have ended up being narcissistic, just like many of the people around me. Is that something I would prefer?
to hurt those around me?
Definitely not!
I'm interested to know what you feel there regarding yourself.
Could you, like me, take pride in being a good person rather than be someone who intentionally sets out to hurt those around them?
As for you sharing your homework with others: well, that could well be linked to the unhappiness you were feeling at the time, and you were wanting to be accepted by those around you?
I can see, from reading your posts, that you do struggle immensely with your self-worth.
Have you ever considered getting a sheet of paper and writing down any good qualities you feel you may have?
i, for one, would love to see those if possible, if that's ok with you.
If not, I totally understand.
I wish you well for the rest of the day.

I understand Jaus.
life can feel pretty pointless when you feel so unhappy.
I feel like that a lot myself.
Our past can have such a massive impact on how we turn out as people in later life.
Have you ever stumbled across the psychological experiment about learned helplessness?
Although, it might not help cure you, it may give you a better understanding of what has possibly happened to yourself and your beliefs.
I've posted a link here.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/learne ... sness.html

I spoke to a therapist about my own issues, my own sadness, and explained that even the toughest of creatures can be pushed to a stage in life where they can be broke. ie The big powerful dog beaten with a newspaper. The bears at the circus, etc.
What I'm trying to say is that I empathize with you and realize that as humans, there's only so much we can take, only so many negative experiences we can be left to deal with...before we just give in.
i feel that you've lacked love and compassion throughout life and that it's left you with some awful feelings of worthlessness to deal with? Am i right?
It doesn't have to be this way, jaus.
Do you have any interests or hobbies in life?
Do you read much? There are so many things out there that can potentially bring you a sense of achievement. To make you feel worthy, loved and accepted by those around you. To reach a place in life where you at least, feel some kind of happiness. You deserve this.
You seem like a very pleasant, well-mannered person. This is why i personally believe you have so much to offer. Don't give up Jaus.

I do understand Jaus.
I, too, was bullied and ridiculed a lot at school, at home and at work.
I'm actually diagnosed with Body dysmorphia due to the trauma being singled out for abuse did to me.
I don't hate these people for what they did to me. Much of the time, they were children, they weren't aware enough to realize the damage they could do to a vulnerable person.
I'm still friends with one of the people that chose to ridicule me. I won't lie, I see him as a friend, but I do still look at him at times and think that if it wasn't for him and other people, I may not struggle the way I do now.
My father used to ridicule me for my appearance as well. He's recently passed away. As I sat by his bedside, as he was slowly slipping away, I decided that hating him for what he did to me was doing me no favours.
I couldn't hate him for what he did to me. He was very violent, self-medicated with alcohol. but I knew that his behaviour, his insecurities, were down to how his father treated him.
Many of the people who taunted you were very likely struggling with insecurities in their own way. I'm not for one minute justifying what they did to you, but you don't deserve to carry the pain of someone else's insecurities forever.
If you carry on struggling with these thoughts towards others, then they have won.
You can win this battle instead, not them. You can do it.
You obviously have a talent for writing, very possibly a talent for other things?
Seems you've been gifted in aspects of your life. These are big, big positives, for you. A way forward from this anguish and pain.
Consider taking that walk you speak of, look around, write of your experience, try hard to build on what you have. i realize this is so difficult, I struggle with motivation myself, but, I am good at many things, if I don't feel motivated enough to do one thing, I have other options. i like to educate myself, so if i don't feel up to doing much, i will read. I'm preparing myself for a time when freedom may come my way. Freedom could come your way also, but you have to want it, you have to fight really, really hard for it.
Figure out what else you are good at. Look online, try new things that may be of interest to you. Have those "other" options available, just like i have?
If you can, think about planning something that will help lift your spirit. that would help too.
My Saturday night thing is to, have a nice hot soapy bath, put on some clean clothes, have a nice meal, put on a movie, have some sweets, chocolate etc. It doesn't always rid me of that dark cloud, but sometimes it does help. Especially that hot soapy bath. It's like heaven.
Maybe you could plan a "be good to Jaus evening" once a week? You deserve that, you really do.
Think about it?

My 2 cents:

Here is why you lack motivation:

A lot of people talk about processing emotions. They don't talk about what those get processed into. A processing plant does not take something and delete it. It transforms it into something useful. A resource gets turned into a product. Emotions are the resource. Process them to get motivations.

In modern society, we repress emotions to fit in, to conform, to avoid standing out. We repress anger, sadness, laughter, fear, excitement. We repress the $#%^ out of our emotions. So our motivational plant is starving for resources, and so we lack motivation. Why the ###$ should we do anything? Heck, we probably even lack any motivation to kill ourselves. We don't wanna die. We don't really wanna do anything. But we wish we did. We know we are not happy.

This is worse with BPD because BPD makes social chameleons. Like, when our personality is forming, ages 3-5 or so, our personalities are like wet clay. We are super impressionable. And this creates the foundation for our personality, as this clay is shaped and hardened in these years. But it will ot harden if it is being stirred up too much, same as cement won't harden in the spinning back of a cement truck. If you had trauma during these years, then for part of the time, your clay was being stirred up too much to harden. It is still soft clay. But after the hardening window passes, maybe age 6 or so, it's too late. Can't go back. Now you are left with some solid personality and some wet clay.

The plus is that the wet clay is still moldable. You can shift your personality to fit those around you and your setting. Heck, you will be doing this whether you want to or not, it's subconscious, just happens. Non-BPD will think you are phony, because you act one way with them, then later they see you after you have been hanging out with others, re-shaped your soft clay to fit those others, and you seem like different person. Get accused of dishonesty, being fraud, deceptive, etc. But you have no clue why, because you did not even know this was happening, did not notice your personality shift, and just thought everyone kind of was the same way, different masks for different situations.

Well, they are. Everyone has masks like that. But BPD are just the masters at it. We don't just have masks, we are ######6 chameleons, shape-shifters. We do it too well, and without even realizing it.
Well, it's a spectrum. Some might do it a little, some more so.

Ultimately, we cannot really be "ourselves" with others until we know them first. We need to know them, to shape our soft clay to fit them. When we meet strangers, they are in the relaxed parasympathetic state, but we are in the "fight or flight" sympathetic state because new people mean danger until we understand them enough to mold our soft clay the way that is least likely tom have them hurt us. That's what we learned when we were traumatized in ages 3-5.

Thus, for BPD, we have more stress showing emotions because we are often not sure if they fit, if they are appropriate, so better safe than sorry, suppress them. So we are more likely to have a shortage of processed emotions turning into motivations, and we have higher levels of depression.
(Though, as a consolation, the vast majority of people in modern societies are starving of processed emotions because we all are taught to suppress emotions more than is healthy.) When we are starving for processed emotions, we turn to the next best resource: Drives. Sex, drugs, money, power, food. External superficial pleasure will lure us, force us to act to get the external reward.
If the internal carrots are missing, we need external carrots. That is the addictive state. Now we are an addict, because our lack of processed emotions makes our drives turn ravenous for external pleasures, another form of carrot. If I don't have the internal resolve from processed emotions to do my job well, the external enticement of making enough money to score drugs or hookers or a shopping spree will have to do. (Well, this is oversimplified. Men as a general rule, are more drive-fed, women more processed-emotion-fed, but both need both, and all generally have shortages in the processed emotions.)

Anyway, if you want to crack this nut, here's the first step: Get a few hours or, preferably, days, to spare. Go home, to your bedroom. Lie down, fetal maybe with a pillow between your needs. Does not really matter. Now, try to think of every painful memory, those you LEAST want to think about. If you feel pain from any memory, any negativity, it means you have suppressed, unprocessed emotions linked to it. Once you process emotions from a memory, it ceases to cause pain. Processing a lifetime of suppressed, painful emotions might take a day or less. It is not that long. If you were molested for a year as a child, and suppressed the grief, anger, etc., might take an hour or less to process all of that. Is it fun? Is vomiting fun? No, but is vomiting a relief? Yes. When you are nauseous and vomiting, do you want to stop? Hell no! You WANT to purge that $#%^ out of you because it will stop you feeling nauseas. A few moments of vomiting vs. hours or days of ache & nausea? Vomit, of course. A few hours of painful memories, or decades of having an aching, corrupting pus of suppressed emotions inside, tainting all your thoughts, dreams and decisions? Easy choice.

Anyway, if any memory causes you pain, stop avoiding it. Dive into it. Exact same as when you have a sore tooth and you probe your teeth with tongue to find it. Probe your memories to find the painful ones, then dive into them and FEEL. Anger, grief, embarrassment, etc. Let it flow. Purge it. Don't let your thoughts try to interrupted, logic your way out of it. This is not a thought process, it is pure feeling. As you feel, you might find words coming out, accusing, confessing, bemoaning, whatever, that's fine, just don't get all cerebral. Keep doing this, from painful memory to painful memory, till you cannot find any more.

Now, you still have BPD, but you are no longer a depressed, repressed, frozen-hearted sack of $#%^. BPD is not so bad. You are a one-size-fits-all friend/lover. Just, since your personality morphs to fit the company you keep, try to be very selective in who you spend a lot of time with, associate with, etc. You can somewhat decide what personality you want to embrace by choosing who you associate with.

Oh, what you have done someone is to clear blockages in the emotional channels that carry emotions through, so now you will find yourself being much more emotionally sensitive to everything, crying at anything sad, maybe laughing out loud instead of just a slight chuckle if that, getting really angry at things. Just remember, the psychological muscles that help you suppress emotions are not gone. They are not even weak. Holding back those emotions made them very strong. You are still very good at suppressing emotions. But like anytime a valve has been stuck open too long, you may need to open and close it a few times, flex those muscles, to get it back to normal responsiveness. Do that, and then you can suppress your emotions so you don't make a scene. However, I recommend you suppress as little as possible. And if you do, I recommend you set a daily or weekly time to then release any emotions you suppressed during the day, so they don't pile up again.

Well, this seemed to help me as well as a friend of mine with BPD. YMMV. Also, often when you have a room with a huge gross stain on the floor, and you clean the stain away, thinking the room will now be very clean, you instead see that with the stain gone, there are a lot of dirty tissues in the corner, and a trail of ants on one wall, and a crack in a window. Basically, the most glaring mess distracted you from the other, less obvious ones. But with it gone, the others are now standing out. That's fine. You are not cured, not perfect. Just a bit better. Which is the goal. A little better every day.

FYI: I'm not a licensed therapist, I'm just relating anecdotally what seemed to help me and my friend, and how we visualized our issues and solutions, not saying this is LITERAL truth, but useful visualization of the problem. Don't think this is medical advice, just lay talk.

Interested read aspie lawer.
I think, much of what you said is centred around carrying so much emotional baggage, and with all bags that are completely full, you can never know what's's in that bag that is making it so heavy, unless you look into that bag, remove what is heavy, thus, lightening the load?
We can only carry these things around in our unconscious mind for so long before we become seriously weakened? These repressed memories can control our behaviour more than we realize.
Would I be right in saying, that your process, if not approached cautiously, could possibly contribute to a form of re-victimisation? Therefore, I feel this approach to treatment is something that should be discussed with a trained professional first, because, as you are very likely aware, one form of treatment may be extremely beneficial to one person, but could have a very different effect on someone else?
Revisiting such awful memories could push a person already struggling that little bit too far?
I mean, they were originally repressed to avoid further trauma as a coping mechanism.
I'm sorry if me simplifying this is offensive in any way, because I'm not personally diagnosed with BPD. My main for resisting this forum was to try and help people the best I can.

barry h wrote:...
Revisiting such awful memories could push a person already struggling that little bit too far?
I mean, they were originally repressed to avoid further trauma as a coping mechanism.

Yes, we can call these repressed emotions "emotional baggage," and if you process the emotions, you get rid of that baggage, it disappears.

Yes, I agree there is some danger/risk. The emotions are not harmful to process in a direct way. As you "vomit" out the grief, rage, embarrassment, fear, whatever, it is not pleasant, but it is not actually painful. Again, it is a relief, like vomiting. Unpleasant in some ways, but you actually PREFER it to holding back and keeping the nauseating stuff inside. Purging can ultimately feel kind of ... well, not good, but cathartic, obviously.

The danger/risk comes in from the fact this is a series of partial measures. You unload one piece of baggage, thus putting out one of the beacons of flashing painful light in our memories, it goes dark, and other, slightly less bright flashing lights might suddenly become noticeable, slightly less painful events from around the same time are now visible and call your attention, and are kind of like new hurts. Not really new, but newly discovered. That can cause us to shift our thinking, our interpretation of past events, who we blame for what. Sometimes, shifting blame from another person to ourselves. That could then increase suicidal ideation.

In a perfect world, once you start this process, you would continue till it was ALL out, all purged. Because when you stop half-way, you now have a new, transformed world view that is STILL skewed by the remaining baggage, but to you it will feel like an epiphany, like the blinders finally came off and now you see what was really going on that YOU were really to blame. Or your father. You may then rush off, half-cocked to harm yourself, your relationships, etc.

The fact is, you DID have blinders come off, but not all of them, so the picture you see still is not accurate. Is it more accurate? Maybe in some ways, but not the ways that count the most. Only when they are all off, can you really have a good perspective and judgment.

I made this mistake myself. As I unpacked repressed emotions and traumas, I would then later reframe my world view, my past actions, tell family and friends how I was changed person, what I had realized. Then a week later, have another session, unpack more, and that further changed my view, and I had to backpedal from what I had said before. Happened enough, I burned bridges & lost some trust with people. I do hope to get it back, it was a learning process. It was not so much that my new releases reversed my thinking, but further nuanced my understanding. Like, I was half right. Then a new release, then a new look at things, see the half that was wrong, correct it, but that correction is only half right. A few days later, further release, see the now 1/4 part wrong, correct it, but that correction is only half right. So I keep getting more right, but still imperfect. Till all the stuff is unpacked, and then there is the "best" assessment we can make. We are still human, we can still be wrong, but now we've reached a foundation of understanding that is not going to be dislodged by further internal revelations.

Optimally, I think, there would be, like, a week-long retreat with facilitators to get some one through all this stuff in one go. I think that'd be enough time with good facilitators, based on how long my own stuff took to bring up.

Oh, and just to be clear, I don't think I'm 100% clear. I'm not even sure that is possible. We release as much as we can find, the brightest lights of pain, work our way down to dimmer suppressed pains, but at a certain point there may be stuff down there, too dim/remote for me to see, still subtly skewing me. It would be hubris to suggest I knew for fact I was 100% clear of suppressed baggage. But I do feel vastly improved. And don't fear too much further "settling" of my foundation / view as more comes up, because I expect these are going to be minor tremors, not huge earthshattering quakes (but also know I might have some surprises buried deep, still waiting to be unearthed, who knows?).

But, you know, death is not the worst thing in the world. Risk is not the worst thing. In a perfect world, people would do this stuff under proper supervision. But in a perfect world, all licensed mental health professionals would be good and passionate about their job, and frankly I have known a lot that were burned out, just doing it to get paid, phoning it in, and everything was all about "cya" to avoid potential liability or hassles with insurers. Those people are going to kneejerk to tell you NOT to do anything not in their standard, insurance-approved play-book for fear of non-reimbursement or liability. So for a lot of us, maybe most, it may literally be impossible to get a really good, invested therapist to vet you for whether this kind of emotional release process is good or bad for you. They will just say, "don't do anything outside what I authorize" just for cya, not because it is truly contraindicated by a thorough evaluation of your unique psychological situation and the proposed alternative approach. If you can find that kind of evaluation, by all means, do it and hold onto that therapist like your life depended on it. If you cannot, maybe it is worth biting the bullet, taking the risk. Would you risk shark infested waters to get from a hellish land to a paradise island? Is this any different? Not without risk, but not all risks are to be avoided.

But, yeah, if you try this, please be 100% aware that you likely will be emptying out your emotional baggage piecemeal, and any new views, notions you get in midst of process are still skewed by the unpacked stuff still inside, you have NOT realized some objective truth about anything, or even your "true" subjective truth, till it is all unpacked. Don't make my mistake and lose friends/family. Even though I feel it is worth it to finally feel healthy, I could have had the health without making people distrust me if I had realized I had a lot more to unpack each time I had a major release and thought, temporarily, I had figured it all out, released all my stuff. Give yourself a week after each release to keep probing your psyche for sore teeth before you even think about decided, "Yeah, now I got it figured out."

One hint: So long as you blame anyone for anything, you probably don't yet have it all figured out. We are all dominos, always a prior cause for our bad acts. All bad behaviors are equivalent to lion killing gazelle. Yes, ugly and painful and violent, causes sadness to some, brutal. But natural. Just for humans, we are so ######6 complicated and have so much sickness/illness compared to animals, that our "natural" lion killing gazelle can look like a rape, a child molestation, child abuse, cyberbullying, etc. I guess it would be more correct to say that a rabid animal attacking other animals is "natural," right? Natural but sick/corrupted. Because nature also includes diseases. We don't "blame" the rabid animal, even if we have to isolate it and put it down. Human monsters are no different. We don't have to blame, but we do have to protect ourselves from sick / dangerous elements. And if we don't have to blame, then we also don't have to blame God. That is a common problem people have raised to be religious, think "God is good." So if bad stuff happens, God can't be to blame, so either there is a person to blame or we are too blame, being born bad, being messed up, broken in some way inherent to our soul, just rotten and worse then others, our secret shame. I think religion somewhat messes us up in this way, makes us insist on "blaming" a human being somewhere along the line, not accepting the domino / natural world reality. Because we must absolve God of bad stuff, so must find other person to "blame." But when you realize we cannot feel pleasure without feeling pain, that it is all relative, cannot taste sweet unless we can taste bitter, too, then the fact bad $#%^ happens is not anything anyone needs to be "blamed" for, it is a necessary component to being able to experience the wonder that is life. That does not mean we long for pain or misery, we try to avoid it. But we also do not need to ultimately find a person or entity to "blame" for it in some ultimate, objective sense.

Hmm. Interesting thoughts, apsie lawer.
A couple of things I want to touch on here is the subject of blame you speak of.
with BPD, feelings of guilt and shame are very many traits of this condition?
Not blaming others, leads to blaming ourselves?
Is this a helpful approach? I feel this is debatable.
For instance: The evil you speak of. If a person is raped, beaten or bullied, and the way they feel about such awful treatment is down to them, then this could very well be in-line with victim blaming mentality?
If society takes the approach of always blaming the victim, then aggressors have a free rein to do as they please, because no person would have the right to be effected by their morally unacceptable behaviour?
Personally, I can see Jaus is struggling due to the unacceptable treatment imposed on him by society in general. The last thing I personally would like to say to him in this situation is that it is his fault for feeling the way he does.
We can trace victims treatment right back to early childhood. Would we really stand in the face of a crying child, after they were subjected to abuse, and tell them that it is their fault for feeling upset or traumatized by an abusers actions?
Our brains become hard-wired to threats etc We try our best to avoid putting our hands back into the fire and pick up various forms of self-protection,
Jaus's situation is seriously complex. I. personally feel he should consider seeking some advice from a professional.
he is consumed by sadness and i'm concerned that revisiting his sadness without supervision and guidance, could lead to further complications.
What do you think?
What does Jaus think?