This past week and including this morning, I have been in a bad place. Suicidal, despairing, hopeless and angry with everyone and everything including myself. I spent an hour on the phone to my Mother just railing about the past, blaming her for her part in the way I am, and absolutely horribly criticising myself (which really upsets her). It was pretty fucked up and I feel quite guilty about it, for obvious reasons and worse, which I will explain in a moment. 

In my "real life" I have to move house, so I organised a viewing for this evening. I wasn't feeling hopeful but it went really well, I got on with the other tenant really well and there was a cat! I have been living alone for years but it's just not going to be possible for me in the near future due to the cost of living accelerating upwards. Anyways, I got a good feeling from the place and I will be glad to not be on my own any more. So I phone my mother to tell her that I was going to be moving and so on, because she had asked me to. I ask how she is and say that I am sorry for losing my mind on the phone earlier, that it's not her, it's me. She reminds me that it's my step-dad's birthday tomorrow. My step-dad that passed away suddenly 2 years ago. I suddenly realised how fucking awful and insensitive I had been being by phoning up and spilling-out my guts about my stupid shit about how much I hate myself. She was having a difficult enough time of it because of the date and I was not even thinking about it. I felt so guilty and ashamed of myself then. She told me to let it go, but I realise that this is emblematic of my behaviour. Selfish, self-centred, emotional neediness, without worrying about anyone else. It's gross, I get it.

What is weird is that I can understand what you might call a "collapse of mentalisation", taken from MBT. The second time I phone my mother today I felt like a person, whereas the first time I was something else, not much more than a single raw emotion, not a whole person. I had regained my mentalisation and I think it happened because I was being myself in a good place and by that being accepted. I accepted another's positive mentalisation of myself and it totally changed how I was feeling. I don't understand why I can't accept my mother's mentalisation of me, I think it may be to do with the trauma and not accepting her as a safe person early in my life.

I can also see how I could frame what happened in terms of "parts". I have a part that is self-hating, a suicidal part, a despairing part, and above all, these parts are ANGRY. When anger comes up it's because I have a part of me that is leading me. It's not my whole being, it's just a part and it takes over. Today it led me to shamefully disregard my mother's feelings and attack her for her perceived failings in the past.

I can only reflect like this now because things went well. If they hadn't gone well I may have self-harmed or something. What's tough is that I don't know how to fight the collapse of mentalisation, or how to stop a part from taking over. I know it's happening but I get carried away before I can stop it. I have some idea of triggers but my trigger in this case was a basic fact of life, I have to move house. I don't know how I can avoid such basic things as triggers.

So, am I seeing this right?