DAE struggle with showing appreciation or struggle being perceived as not being grateful for a gift? My whole life I’ve been told that I’m selfish and unappreciative and uncaring of others. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this at one point or another. Since accepting my diagnosis (maybe 5 years ago now), I’ve really taken it upon myself to really make major changes. I practice mindfulness almost every day, I’m on the right meds now and I have felt that my “awareness” of people’s actions and emotions have gotten so much better. I thought I was doing pretty well now. 

So it was really disheartening for my fiancé to go on a rant about how he does all these things for me to make me happy and it’s never enough. I don’t understand because I’ve never raised any issue on how he doesn’t do enough or anything like that. It came out of left field, in my opinion. There are constant misunderstands because of my BPD, and I’m just trying to figure out what I can do better to show appreciation or to make those around me feel good.

Things I do already are obviously saying thank you, hugs, smiles, tell them how much I love it. I’d say it was maybe just him and his own negative perception, but I’ve heard this same thing from a couple of previous relationships... although those relationships were when I had untreated BPD.

Has anyone else been called out on this often? How can you know if it’s something you need to work on yourself or if it’s something they need to work on? I’ve tried talking to my partner about this, but he can’t really explain or I’m not understanding him. I just don’t know what more I can do or should do.