  

I would be so thankful if people can comment on this and/or refer me to reading material. I want to understand more about this. This is really hard to describe, and I have been googling for years trying to find an article or a blog / forum post about it... But so far I haven't found anything. Hopefully here people will know what I'm talking about.

I won't bother you with too many details, but not too long ago I went to a BPD specialist for two years. He didn't work with me with a specific diagnosis (he saw me more as a PTSD patient, but everything is so related!), instead he provided me with a "toolkit" to understand and work through my problems: even though I "score" high in items like emotional dysregulation and crippling fear of abandonment, there is a lot of maladaptive daydreaming, attention problems, and PTSD that maybe I think I have under control when it is controlling me. There was violence AND love in my childhood. I guess that is why I still mix the two of them, which makes it very confusing to this day to understand and receive love without letting the Fear monster wreak havoc in every aspect of my life. I hide like a mole and live an entertaining "healthy" and lonely life... let's call it functional. I am a writer, I write novels (it doesn't show in English, not my native language). People admire me, they think I am very talented and intelligent. Funny. Sometimes I get together with friends, sometimes I dive into binge watching a show. I cook, I record songs... until I happen to meet someone that makes my whole world crash down, someone who reminds me of what a hideous creature I am, and then I want to kill myself and I scare all my friends talking about "going back to my planet" (metaphor) and then I think I lost them because having mental issues is disgusting (I should know, nothing makes me not want to pursue a second date in my life as much as presenting like a sad little puppy). Nobody likes negative energy. When I go to hell, it happens just like that, but you might be familiar so I won't bother you with details. I guess we all have a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but the big part of me that sits comfortably within the BPD criteria is definitely a "quiet" BPD. It wasn't always like this. I have been noisy and I have written horrible emails, but the rejection and pain I experienced when I was younger and acted out forced me to keep my tantrums under control, which feels like one of them chestbusters from Alien trying to pop out (not a metaphor). The pain is too much. Racing thoughts. All the rejection and abandonment of my life, as if it was a big snowball. Crushing me. I don't hurt myself nor have addictions. I have hurt myself in the past, and I had my cocaine year at 22. Eventually I came out of it. Self harm and drugs just disappoint me like everything else.

Whenever I get desperate, I feel like when I was child. I cry and another part of myself keeps telling me how horrible I am, disgusting, good for nothing, etc. There is another level in adulthood in which the voice looks at me having mental issues and insults me for it. "Look at you cowering in fear at 36 because your new crush got a glimpse of your mental issues and will now back away from you. You're pathetic. You’re a little girl in a hairy man’s body". 

I connect to a lot of dark themes when I'm there. I call it teleportation, because it feels like that, it feels like it is an actual place, which has its own rules and its own continuity (so that means that wherever I was in my prior breakdown, when I have another one, I am back there again... like a recurring dream). I used to call that place "The Outlands", and it looks like the surface of mars.

While in the Outlands, there are a lot of things that are familiar and consistent. My memory is incredibly obsessive. I remember a lot about my life and pain. I recall exact years, everything. Each year has a color and every memory is colored in its respective shade. There is also a cry that dwells in the Outlands. It is my own cry for a protector. I don't believe in God... so I spent my whole life looking for Him or Her. At this age I know that people are people and what I want is a Chimera. While in the Outlands I also want people to see my pain. I want that desperately. If someone actually sees this –I tell myself–, it will lift the veil. And sometimes while I’m there I write in a notebook or record my voice. Sometimes I even send emails or call people. Because somehow they will forgive all my shortcomings if they see all the pain that is bottled up inside me.

That’s why I never liked the term “Emotional Dysregulation”. The Outlands feel VERY regulated, in terms of their inner consistency.

But then I go to sleep (the Outlands happen mostly in the night time), and the next day I don't recognize the things I said or wrote. Or I don't want to recognize them. I remember, but it’s very foggy. It’s like I have the key to open the door, but I don’t wanna open it. I don't want to acknowledge any of it. I feel regret. I dissociate to distract myself. I reject it all. It was a mistake. It makes me ashamed and embarrassed. I don't see anything positive or useful about it. That was "my other self", taking control of me (if you can call that "control"). I am not that person, and it will only cause damage to be perceived as such. It feels completely alien. Sometimes I would even destroy any evidence or any messages I left for myself or others.

What I have just described happens each and every single time. There is no reconciliation between the one writing this right now, and the one having breakdowns at night. It’s not a different identity, but I know I’m not being it at this very moment. That became a real problem in therapy. I would go during the day being my normal self, and wouldn’t want to talk about the darkness. I was my funniest, my most adorable and seducing self. My therapist fell for it. Not in a sexual way, but there was a lot of love, big hugs, kisses on the cheek (where I’m from it’s not weird between two males)… I know it sounds creepy and unethical, but I don’t think it was. It was a human mistake. He tried a lot, though. But it wouldn’t work. He tried to take me back to my trauma, he said that I should call him at 3am when the other one was in control, I even opened a blog just for those moments. It didn’t work. And we just grew closer and closer. I realized that I had to quit because I was beginning to love him “like a brother”, and I did. I fell in my own trap. I mourned him like crazy, but eventually we got to the point of messaging one another every now and then.

Until a couple of weeks ago when all the doors to be finally happy in a literary fantasy sort of way opened themselves to me and I realized that I was doomed, because no matter the opportunities, the darkness is always going to be INSIDE ME. It will always punish me and make me want to kill myself whenever something beautiful happens to me. Then I went back to my “episodes”, talked to my former therapist again and begged him to refer me to someone who can really help me, which he did.

That’s what I’m trying now.

But I still have to deal with these two “people” that I am. I don’t think it’s Dissociative Identity Disorder. I even went to that reddit and found it to be a rather strange subculture. I don’t relate to that talk of alters and personalities with names and ages. I’m skeptical about that. This is just me saying that I’m really scared about not being able to overcome the darkness because my personality is split in two halves that don’t really want to hang out with each other, and the one going to therapy is the adult, controlled one. But the two of them are still me! Does this make sense??? Help!

I started seeing a new therapist last week, upon my previous therapist recommendation. She’s very tough and disciplines me very strictly. I loved that. She makes me shut up when I ramble, keeps me from filling the room with words and even told me that she’s aware of how seductive I can be when keeping the conversation going about everything but the dark monster. Maybe she’ll be able to crack it. I hope so.

I hope it wasn’t too long.

If this feels familiar and/or you know of a way to integrate those two halves (or to exorcise the demon), please tell me! I would love to know!

I hope we can grow and stop being hostages of these tyrannical feelings. I want us all to be free. Free to feel what we want.

\-----

TL;DR: BPD-like symptoms make me feel like someone else when I have a breakdown and then my normal self does not want to (and will simply not) get in touch with that in therapy. Former therapist tried for years and I wouldn’t budge.