[life journey thread]Tales from the WorldTree

Thank you for the support and suggestions. We're working on managing the emotions with exercises from "Coping with trauma related dissociation" and similar self-help ressources, while focusing on keeping the everyday life on tracks. Trying to find the proper balance between "allowing ourselves to feel the feels" and "distracting ourselves from the feels to avoid being overwhelmed".

Another layer is being added to the pile: we are more and more grounded with each passing hour, allowing us to become aware that our worsening dissociation of the last weeks was mirroring our ex-partner's dissociation (and the other way around). Dunno who started it and I don't care we're not here to point fingers. It was a tough period for both of us and shirt hit the fan. Unfortunately I was the one displaying the most symptoms in front of our mutual friends therefore it was logical I was the only one asked to get a grip. Which explains why I was dissociating even more when my ex-partner's triggered parts were the ones asking me to get a grip and stop dissociating for our relationship's sake. It felt like trying to fill in a hole that somebody else kept digging and I did not know why and now I know and it's too late. It's a tough grieving process.

I/we will manage but gosh, it hurts.

Back from a T appointment. We got in touch with the fragment/s responsible for the whole mess and started the work on their issues. I became aware of my responsibilities in the situation and how my behavior was triggering for the people around me. I feel stupid now that I can see and understand the problem.

It's going to be long, painful, rough, but it's going to be. It's the perfect opportunity to focus on myself and who I am when I am alone. (Silver lining...)

And in a couple years, who knows? Maybe the relationship can start again anew. It's broken but, given enough time and space, who knows what might happen?

Since the breakup, things have been worse and worse. The whole friends group, ex-partner included, is either giving me the silent treatment or dogpiling on me every time I say something they disagree with. If I react annoyed at the dogpiling, they accuse me of being an abuser and if I do not react, I am accused of being a gaslighter.

Some of them tried to use my worse insecurities and triggers to make me react while yelling at me for reacting otherwise than "Please stop, thank you ". Yes, they asked me to say the please, the thank you and the wink emoji - otherwise it means I'm a gaslighting abuser with BPD.

That's the kind of persons I lost my partner to. That's the kind of person's behavior my ex-partner is now mimicking. And all of that because a sociopath (the person in question is proud to label themself a sociopath and to have sociopathic behaviors and says that it's very healthy and adapted to be a sociopath) decided my transition surgery was the issue, not the emotions and reactions it triggered in others.

I've never been so angry and disgusted in my whole life. Feels like I lost years of my life partnering and working on myself for a person who was ready to throw the relationship to the trash when the problem needed some effort on THEIR part instead of mine.

Nothing I can do can solve a problem that's not mine to fix. I'm tired of being told I'm the one needing fixing as soon as my existence activates other people's triggers.

Sorry to hear of your break up and it seems often the case that friends of a couple will end up ’taking sides’..though we just looked up ‘dogpiling’ as had never heard the term! ... and it seems to be like online bullying of one person by a group of people which is unacceptable you have every right to be angry about that!

ArbreMonde wrote:It's the perfect opportunity to focus on myself and who I am when I am alone. (Silver lining...)

And in a couple years, who knows? Maybe the relationship can start again anew. It's broken but, given enough time and space, who knows what might happen?

I think when life needed more ’social hosts’ (to cope with work, social interaction etc daily) and the ’secret selves’ that only came out home alone barely ever got chance to be themself we had a weaker 'self-identity’ - the host was generally whoever other people wanted/expected us to be.

so it was perhaps no surprise that when we suddenly got significantly more time alone (due to severity of disability and then the covid lockdown) the previous hosts ‘Kit’ and ‘Bobby’ quickly became the most dominant as they did have a strong sense of self (as an autistic person) but they just rarely got opportunity to practice it and that image was often ridiculed and gaslit by the outside world who would only interact with us when we were acting within NT guidelines of what they saw as ’normal’…which in our case was usually what we considered one of our ’social mask alters’ ..and ’not us at all’

There is a saying that people are in your life for either a ‘reason, season or a lifetime’ (or something like that) ..so maybe your partner was needed for this part of your life to help you reach a point you could make further progress from? You may in a few more years feel you have outgrown the relationship?

Thank you for the support.

I really thought this partner was a "lifetime" kind of person. It's so sad to realize he was a "season" kind of person.

Sorry about what you're going through. You've put a lot of effort into owning your behavior in relationships and trying to change unhealthy patterns. It's hard when those around you won't do the same, or won't even acknowledge their part in things.

I hope you can make newer, healthier friends and leave these ones behind, as painful as it is to have to do that.

Oh and they stalk me on PF and sent me pages and pages of nasty things on Discord through personnal messages, too, because I dared talk about the situation on PF. So I have to quit PF I guess, since they stalk me here.

I think you can block anyone on here that you don't want to hear from. You don't have to see any posts you don't want to see, and I'm sure you can block them from sending you private messages. If you get support from here and it helps you to talk about it, why deprive yourself of that? And you know you don't have to read anything they send you, right?

A short update. I'm doing a lot of therapy lately, with more frequent T apps. Spending time doing crafts, too. Walking. Reading. Vet check-ups for my cat. The usual.

Good to hear from you, ArbreMonde. Glad things are stable, and that you're doing lots of self-care.