by PtheD » Sat May 31, 2008 4:44 pm
This is my first post on this forum and I'm not sure in which camp I sit on the subject of this thread. I have come to this forum as I recognize some of the HPD symptoms in myself as well as in people I have had close relationships with (including my mother, sister and most recent long term girl friend). Having trawled through a great deal of the threads and posts across the forum I am in agreement that many of them are hostile towards people with HPD or those exhibiting HPD symptoms and in many cases I would suggest that these hostile feelings are entirely justified. I have, perhaps uniquely (although I am not trying to aggrandize myself) seen this PD from both sides and feel that this may allow me to provide some level of insight for those who have fallen victim to people with HPD and in the process perhaps help myself to change my own behaviour in the process.
I'm not sure whether anyone will respond to this post so I'm going to ramble on for a bit about my experiences from both ends of the disorder and hopefully this will stimulate some responses and let me feel like I have achieved something in being open and honest about my own situation.
My mother exhibits many signs of HPD, although not in a sexual sense. She needs to feed from her children and now grandchildren. Initially she focussed her needs on my father and placed the demands for love and attention upon him. She grew up as the only girl with five brothers and was herself the 'victim' of a mother who demanded love and emotional reliance from her. In turn I believe she placed emotional demands for love upon her brothers, partly because she was not having her needs met by her parents and partly because she had no emotional paradigm provided by her parents of what true love and acceptance was. I believe that this conditioning from her mother and her relative isolation caused by living in a remote village provided the blueprint for her HPD symptoms. Ultimately when her brothers had left home she transferred the emotional demands for love onto my father. She was at the time a very attractive woman and I know was romantically involved with at least one man. I think initially my father was able to meet the demands that my mother put upon him. However due to the isolation she felt at living in a small remote village and her lack of close and meaningful friendships her demands became greater and greater. Over this period my mother had two daughters and myself and this placed more burden on the relationship. Eventually my father totally withdrew emotional support and love from my mother. This was his coping mechanism with the increasing demands of her HPD. This all occurred in a time when divorce was not seen as an option and in the interests of the children they stayed in a loveless marriage. Of course my mother needed to feed her attention needs and thus the burden was placed upon her children. Throughout my childhood I grew up with my mother constantly trying to get an emotional response and attention from us. This was in the form of exaggerated illnesses, arguments with my father, violence towards us and then providing the nurturing bosom to run to afterwards. Instigating violence against us from my father and then playing the 'good cop' afterwards. It was pretty much standard throughout my childhood. Of course we were 'her' children not my fathers (emotionally not genetically) and therefore my father cut off all demonstrable love and affection for us. This ensured that she was our only source of love, acceptance and support. Looking back this is of course exactly what she wanted (needed). I remember her phrases from my childhood 'I'm just waiting to die now, my job is done, I've had my children and that's all I wanted...' 'I might as well kill myself' and of course the twisting of every conversation to ensure she was the victim
I'm sure that this is a situation a lot of people identify with and I am not trying to paint myself as a victim. I do not blame my mother, she was a product of her upbringing and environment. Unfortunately the environment she created for her growing children was almost identical to her own childhood and that's where I think many of my own HPD symptoms germinated and grew. I do not think that she was at the extreme range of HPD as she was not promiscuous and did not lie to get attention but she did manipulate people and situations subconsciously to feed her need for love, acceptance and reliance. Throughout my childhood I felt I was 'paying' for the love that she gave me and the (not so subtle) things she did and said confirmed this.
My father's removal of affection and support only reinforced my own need for love and acceptance and pushed me further towards reliance on my mother. I could not hazard a guess at the number of times both my mother and father called me an attention seeker in my childhood. Looking back I can see that a child should not have to go looking for attention from his parents. But hey, hindsight is a cruel mistress. This culminated in me trying to kill myself at the age of seven. I threw myself out of an upstairs window. I'm sure now it was another way of getting attention as I am sure i was not conscious at that age of the implications of death. It did not work and my family never found out about this attempt. I have spoken to my mother about it since and she did not express any other sentiment than the expected response of turning it back to herself and claiming I was calling her a bad mother... by this stage the self pitying script she had written for herself was wearing a bit thin.
Anyway coming to the present I identify completely with the feelings expressed by those people on this forum who are 'victims' of people with HPD. The anger at the person's manipulative use of your feelings to achieve their own aims, the exasperation at their ability to twist the conversation to make them appear as the victim and perhaps most importantly their inability to look at themselves and see the damage they have caused to other people creates a huge amount of suffering and misery.
Of course now I am able to see it from the other side as well...
I am not trying to paint a rosy picture of the person with HPD or try and justify any of the anti-social elements that are exhibited by people with this disorder just try and share some of the experiences that led me to this forum. I am not an expert in any way, shape or form and although I exhibit certain facets in my character that are found within the disorder I do not exhibit them all and those that I do have I am addressing every day in an attempt to lead a normal life. Of course I am a master of covering up the truth about my character and people who know me would not recognise me from this post and would probably suggest that I do not have HPD. They may be right, there are certain elements of my personality that sit far better with narcissism. Whatever the case is I hope that any insight I can give receives some understanding.
I am not promiscuous and do not engage in predatory sexual activities. I do however flirt inordinately with people, both men and women in an attempt to get their attention and feed my need for acceptance and love (whatever that is taken to mean in this context). People talk about their need to fill the hole they feel inside, I don't agree with this entirely. From personal experience I see it more as living vicariously, never being able to 'touch' or experience reality without another person providing value to something (including myself). I know this sounds odd but it's almost as if the intrinsic value of a thing or a person is not really there unless someone else has made it real by seeing it with you (or for you). The example I would use is of the difference between reading a shakespeare play on your own and rationally understanding it and appreciating its structure and then seeing it on stage surrounded by people who experience the the structure and beauty and provide it with value. The difference between thinking and feeling. cont...