Rough EMDR Session

Trigger Warning: animal neglect, effects of abuse, bpd mother’s suicide ideation and threats

Last Wednesday, in therapy, we did more EMDR work. It was intense and really really hard. I got stuck for a while.

Started out because my dad said stuff to me, asking what I’m going to do about my cats. I explained I’m taking them to a shelter, because I can’t take them with me, and if I let my mom have them she’d eventually dump them in the woods. He made some comment about how he’d do it too, and that’s what happened with the cats we had when I was young before my parents divorced.

He’s ALWAYS saying these awful, cruel things about my cats, because he hates cats. I HATE it.

He then went on about how I didn’t take care of them so we got rid of them. I was like, “I was FIVE YEARS OLD.” And he just rolled his eyes and was like, “So? They were your responsibility.’

It still makes me angry. It’s complete bullshit to expect a 5 year old to be completely and solely responsible for an animal.

While working with EMDR, I quickly saw the connection between being expected to take care of an animal all by myself at 5, and having to take care of my mother. It was like, “I didn’t take care of my cats, and then something bad happened. So if I don’t take care of my mom, something bad WILL happen.”

Fuck it’s so depressing to look back on it now. That I had to fucking have that weight on my shoulders.

I got really really stuck during EMDR, and I was somewhat dissociative. My therapist had to keep reminding me to stay in the present, stay grounded. It felt like a long time where I just couldn’t get past the, “My mom IS going to kill herself. She’s going to do it, something’s going to push her over the edge.”

It was a struggle to call it what it really is. My mom is NOT suicidal, she uses threats of suicide to manipulate and control people around her. She’s never made an actual attempt, she just talks about it until I panic and try to “fix it”.

Something that particularly got through to me, was my therapist was giving me things to focus on in case I got stuck again outside of therapy, and she pointed out that my mom survived before I was born. That kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.

It’s true. It’s completely, and totally true. She survived, she got on with her life, before I was born. She’s not going to shatter if I’m not around to hold the pieces together. I keep reminding myself of that.

God it was so so hard to face that, to pull myself out of the well worn path of thinking. It’s particularly hard because it involves facing and letting go of a role I’ve played so fucking long it’s become my identity. I’ve found myself thinking at times since that session, “Who am I if I’m not my mom’s caretaker and emotional support?”

I’m not sure. I need to figure that out.

Dad brings up moving

So, last Tuesday. Dad finally talked to me about moving. From what I gather, even though my mom was repeatedly all “Dad and I think you should move” it doesn’t seem like my dad had any idea  about this. He only found out this past weekend that BPDm was pushing it.

He asked about it, and made it clear that he’s completely against it. He “doesn’t think I’m ready” and blahblah. He also said something like “at least here you’re safe”.

Uh. No. I’m not, dad. Physically, sure. Emotionally I’m going through utter hell. I’m triggered at least twice a week which causes anxiety and panic attacks, and in the last month, many dissociative episodes. But he doesn’t understand any of that.

Even though he doesn’t approve, he’s not going to stop me. He was pushing me to find out when my flight is, offering to drive me to the airport and stuff.

I was struggling with trying to be vague and not tell him. I explained how I don’t talk to him anymore because he turns around and relays everything to my mom.

Thankfully I had to leave because I needed to go to therapy. I talked through it with my T and she gave me a lot of good advice on how to talk to my dad and how to word things. It’s extremely hard for me to talk to people because I get flustered and my mind goes blank.

Later on in the day I find out mom had called dad and they got in a fight. I guess my dad was refusing to talk about me with her, and she got pissy. So when Dad came back he told me I could take a cab if I want and even gave me money for it. Which is cool. I really didn’t want him taking me to the airport.

So that kind of solves that, I guess.

Another e-mail…

Trigger Warning: effects of abuse, emotional abuse, abusive BPD mother

My flight is not soon enough. It really isn’t.

Why do I do this to myself?

I know I need to stop reading the e-mails. They’re abusive and nasty and triggering.

I set a filter to they wouldn’t go to my inbox, but I kept glancing at the folder they were being sent to instead. I noticed a new message and I read it.

I knew she was splitting me black, but there it was in writing. Splitting, gaslighting, playing victim.

And is seriously disturbs me that she’s using BPD related terminology, supposedly because she’s been reading. It makes me paranoid that she’d reading stuff on the support forums I post on, because some of the terms I’ve only seen on there.

Why did I read it?

I’m stressed out as it is. I’m freaking out over packing, and shipping, and moving, and money. 2 checked bags isn’t nearly as much room as I thought it would be. My carry-on suitcase feels too small. There’s so much stuff and I need to decide what to keep, and what to get rid of, and what to ship out. There’s so much I need to do and I feel like I don’t have enough time to do it.

And I’m scared. I’m scared of moving. I’m scared of making my best friend hate me. I’m scared of failing. I’m scared of things going wrong. I’m scared of how hard things will be. I’m scared of not being good enough.

I wish I could stay somewhere else until I leave.

Awesome. I’m feeling dissociative. I’m just going to end this here because I can’t focus on writing anymore.

Painted Black

Dad came back home today. BPDm gave him a ride back, and she hung around for a bit. I stayed shut in my room.

I was sitting here on my computer when I started to hear mom YELLING. And she had that TONE in her voice. She kept yelling to my dad that she was leaving.

Stupidly I step out of my room to see what’s going on. She looks over at me and is all, “Have a nice life.” With this ugly look.

My throat closes up and I feel like I can’t breathe. I duck back into my room and try not to feel awful.

I can tell, she’s splitting me black. But I think she’s splitting my dad too. Dunno what’s up with them.

Just a few more weeks. I just need to hang on for a few more weeks.

On the Run

I felt the need to make a coherent post summarizing the past couple days.

So, Monday, BPDm showed up with my brother. I had no idea they were coming over, because my dad’s doesn’t tell me anymore. He didn’t tell me he took the week off or that they were coming over, even though he knows I don’t want contact with my mom.

On a shocking note, BPDm actually brought me the jewelry I’ve been asking for for months. I’d given up on it as a lost cause- the only reason I wanted it back anyway was as emergency funds I could sell it for the gold if I needed.

I try to act pleasant and not like I’m triggered as fuck. Unfortunately, for me, it’s easier to just play the game when mom shows up. I try to keep things light, and I try not to give any information. It’s tricky and I’m not always very good at it. I know that, in some way, yeah, I’m still trying to “spare her feelings” so she won’t get upset, but this is for my own protection. It’s better for me to placate her because I can’t handle when she’s upset- and when she’s upset she tries to trap me and keep me from leaving. So I play the game until I can grab my purse and car keys and make up an excuse to get the fuck out of the house.

So, I left. Not that I had anywhere to go. I sat in my car a while, texting my best friend and my therapist.

I went to the craft store, since there was some tools I needed to get. I wandered around the store for 3 hours, texting and browsing, then got something to eat before going home and locking myself in my room.

I slept like shit. Even though I took melatonin, so at least I fell asleep faster, but I still felt like I didn’t sleep good.

I got up at 6:30 am, showered and left the house. Like I always do, because I would rather spend my time elsewhere than be around her. I got a bagel for breakfast. I felt sick to my stomach so bad. I knew it was probably the anxiety and stress. (Fuck, it’s depressing that she makes me feel violently sick to my stomach like this…) But since it was Tuesday, I went to yoga. I hadn’t been in weeks. My instructor is so nice and understanding. I’m going to miss her. She was always there to listen to me vent and would empathize. She was excited and proud that I’m getting out of here, and insisted on giving me her e-mail so we could keep in touch. Class was great and I felt a bit better afterwords.

After, I got lunch and coffee. Thankfully, for once, I had somewhere to go, somewhere I could hide out. On other days I’ve ended up sitting in my car in parking lots with my car idling for like 4-6 hours, being triggered every time I see a car the same style and color as my mom’s. It’s pathetic and sad.

In the afternoon, my dad called and left a message that he was going to stay with my mom and wouldn’t be back until Friday or Saturday. I wasn’t sure if he was lying or not- because he destroyed my trust and I never ever believe anything that comes out of his mouth. So I still hung out for a few more hours before trying to go home.

I get home and find out that yeah, they actually left. Of course, whenever my dad comes back they’ll be with him, because he didn’t take his car, so they’ll have to give him a ride back.

But at least I have a couple of days to myself, a couple of days of peace.

Fuck you fuck all of you

My dad has the week off and didn’t tell me.

BPDm just showed up at our house, with my brother.

She’s spending the night.

I can’t fucking breathe.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me

Trigger Warning.

But my mood is really low. Like, really really low. I haven’t been depressed in a while, but I am now.

I’m not exactly sure why…

I had therapy today and it’s tough. My therapist finally brought up that maybe I should consider not reading my mom’s e-mails for a few days.

My best friend and people online have been telling me that for weeks, and I keep making excuses.

Part of it was the illusion of control, of trying to feel safe. I thought, if she e-mails me crazy shit, then I know she’s in crazy mood at the moment… and I thought that if I KNOW then I can be more prepared to protect myself. But my therapist had me question if it’s really helping or if it’s just hurting me.

Because the e-mails are abusive. My therapist outright said it, and I’ve known that, but I think maybe I was denying it or the way it effects me.

Is it really better to read her e-mails, and know she’s cycling through moods every few hours, which ends up making me sick with anxiety, and terrified of being at home? Is it better to be so anxious and scared that she’s going to show up at the house, that I spend entire days sitting in my car in the back of a parking lot, because I have no where else to go?

I told myself it was my warning system… but it’s failed in epic proportions… because my mom is severely mentally ill, and you just can’t predict what a person like that is going to do. I think I need to face the facts here:

When has my mom actually shown up out of the blue?

When I’ve been completely unprepared and not expecting her cause I haven’t heard from her in weeks.

And, so, when she starts flaring up, and raging and manipulating, and harassing me and attacking me via e-mail? What happens then? Does she show up, like I keep expecting her to?

No.

She didn’t show up, she didn’t make the effort to come out here to try to attack me in person.

So what the fuck good is it to read her e-mails, get all triggered and anxious and dissociative, get upset and scared that she’s going to come over? How many times did I get up at 5 in the morning, and take off, park somewhere hidden, and try to sleep in my car for a few hours, and not go home til at 6pm at least, often times closer to 9pm. Only to find out that she never came to the house.

What the fuck good is it doing me?

Yet it’s so HARD. I feel like I need to know what’s going on.

And part of it is the fear that something awful is going to happen.

I even SAID it outright in therapy, that I felt like if I didn’t ‘allow’ her to e-mail me, she’d get worse.

I had to face the fact today that I still haven’t let go of having to be my mom’s caretaker.

I had to face the fact that this is what keeps going through my mind: If I don’t ‘allow’ her to e-mail me, if I don’t give her that outlet then she’s going to end up killing herself (and possibly my brother).

I just… don’t know when or if I’ll ever let go and detach.

And I guess I’m kind of depressed because I realized moving isn’t going to be a magical solution. I’m not going to instantly be better and healthy and okay. I kept telling myself, “once I move, I’ll be able to go NC. I’ll feel safe enough to do it. I’ll change my number and my e-mail and everything.”

Yet that’s bullshit. If anything I’m going to be more anxious and terrified for a while. I’m going to be obsessively checking my e-mail more than I already do, because I’ll feel like I “need to know” what’s going on with her. Because I finally left, and it’s going to trigger the abandonment in my mom and she’s going to dysregulate and get depressed and- and- … and right here, my mind keeps saying ‘and she’s going to end up killing herself and it’s my fault because I left instead of fixing it’. Even though I CAN’T FIX IT. NOTHING I DO WILL FIX IT. Even though it’s not my job to take care of her.

But I’m still stuck, and in some ways I’m still enmeshed.

And I guess maybe that’s why I feel shitty. Because I feel like I’ve taken several steps backwards. *sighs* I know healing isn’t easy, I know there’s going to be set-backs but it still makes me feel like shit.

I need to focus on the positive.

I need to focus on the fact I’m not giving up.

I need to focus on the fact that I’m moving, I’m going somewhere where I WILL eventually feel be a much happier and better person, where I have a support system and people who love me unconditionally.

It gets better.

It has to.

It may take years, but I’ll get better.

Triggery e-mail form bpdm

Trigger Warning: bpd headwrecking, belittling and invalidation

I got another e-mail from BPDm. Yeah, I know I should block her e-mails. I’m really pretty sure this is ramping up to another rage/extinction burst. I noticed a pattern in the timing of her cycling. Anyway, there was something in particular that kind of pissed me off.

I know I did bad things to you.  I understand the spitting thing.  But don’t you think

that what you are doing now with me is you are splitting me black? because you are so angry with me.  I read somewhere that you as the non bdp person need to go through the grieving proccess, but you cannot allow yourself to get stuck in the anger phase for too long.  You can’t play the victim roll forever you need to move from victim to survivor.  You need to think of yourselfas “(Defy) HAS ptsd and Panic Disorder” and not as “(Defy) IS ptsd and panic disorder”   (Defy) does not equal ptsd. (Defy)=(Defy) has ptsd.  I hope you understand this.  How you see yourself determines if you are still being the victim or moving on to becoming a survivor.

My first reaction was fuck you.

I’m not PLAYING the victim role. That’s YOUR favorite thing to do.

And I’m not a god damned victim. Not once have I ever said I’m a victim. I’m a survivor god damnit. Do I get triggered sometimes? Yes. But being triggered is not PLAYING VICTIM. I can’t fucking control it when I’m triggered, all I can do is use my coping skills and what I’ve learned in therapy in order to get through it. But it doesn’t make me a victim.

I AM moving on. I AM healing. It’s not that god damned easy, I can’t be “fixed” over night. I technically have Complex PTSD, from 22 YEARS of emotional abuse, and headwrecking and crazymaking. I’ve only been in therapy for 1 god damn year. I can’t stand how people act like I should be “fixed” by now.

Not that it matters when it comes to my mom. Every step I take towards healing, is a step away from her, and she is never going to be capable of understanding. To her, me setting boundaries and not putting up with her crazy anymore, means I’m “angry” at her and “hate” her and blahblah. To her and my dad, the fact that I continue to maintain very Low Contact with mom means I’m “not getting better”. They want me to go back to quietly letting her control my life, while at the same time have to take care of her and manage her emotions and talk her down from suicide at least 2-3x a month if not more. I’m not the god damned parent here. I’m her DAUGHTER, HER CHILD, I should never have had to be the one taking care of her. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Also, mom? I’m not god damned angry all the time. I’m not sitting here seething about how much I hate you all the time. FYI, I don’t think about you all the god damned time. When you e-mail me and trigger me, yeah, sure. But the rest of the time? I have better things to do, things that make me happy.

Fuck Nightmares

Trigger warning: nightmares, effects of abuse, entrapment

Clearly, I’m really fucking triggery this week. I was dissociative again yesterday morning. Then, instead of sleeping in and relaxing today, I had nightmares about BPDm.

Basically it was another one of those, where she shows up at our house (with NPDgm) and I’m rushing around trying to get my stuff together so I can leave. But she’s doing everything she can in order to stop me. And she’s raging and yelling at me and treating me like shit.

When I finally get my things and get outside, my car is gone. I go back in and demand to know where my car is, what she did to it. She just keeps going on. Somehow I found my car in the garage, but… it’s… only half my car. I don’t even know wtf. But it was just worse because I found my car and it couldn’t help me escape. And by this point in the dream I’m crying and sobbing, while telling my mom I’m going to call the police. But she just asks all high and mighty about how they won’t care cause the car isn’t mine on paper. Then I point out that she’s not allowing me to leave when I want to leave, and I’m an adult, and that’s entrapment and illegal. And she doesn’t care, she keeps trying to make excuses that they won’t do anything.

That’s when I woke up.

I’m still upset and stressed out and shaky.

Then I get online.

And why am I not surprised that BPDm e-mailed me like 10 minutes before I woke up.

It makes it feel like, somehow she’s so upset and in one of her borderline cycles she was able to send all that fucking negative energy at me anyway.

Grounding

I already posted about therapy, but I wanted to make a separate post about this. One of the first things we addressed was the dissociative episode I had earlier this week. My therapist said there’s things we can do to handle this better so that it hopefully won’t happen again, or if it does, I can come back from it quicker.

For one, in EMDR, we’re going to have the tappers move a bit faster from now on. Just a little bit. My therapist also said we’ll do grounding exercises, stuff I can even do outside of therapy.

One of the ones she suggested is to look around the room and find 3 things you didn’t notice before. As well as focusing on what you can hear, what you are touching, etc.

Hopefully this will help if I have future dissociative episodes.

I’m trying to be less afraid of them.

I really suspect that I dissociated quite a bit in high school and when I was younger. It seems stupid that I’m so scared of it now…

I’m not sure if ‘scared’ is too strong of a word or not. What bothers me about the dissociative episodes I’ve had, is that they feel ‘weird’ to me and ‘not normal’. I find myself asking, “Why isn’t my chest feeling so tight that I can’t breathe? Why isn’t my throat closing up? Why am I not shaking? Why is my head not spinning with panicked thoughts, what if’s, and negative beliefs?”

For probably 5 years anxiety and panic attacks have been so much a part of my life that they’ve become my normal. I’m so used to being in a high state of anxiety, that it feels normal to me.

But the dissociating feels like the exact opposite of how I feel when I’m anxious. So this makes it not feel right. It feels alien, wrong, different.

I think I dissociated more when I was younger, because it was how I coped with living with my mom. I was a kid, I had no choice but to live with her and put up with the crazy. I was powerless. Helpless. The crazy went on almost every day. My mom’s bpd is almost always cycling.

Then I moved out. From what I can remember, the anxiety attacks started getting bad towards the end of high school and through college. I wasn’t living with my mom. I had breaks from the crazy. There was still trauma going on, but it was very different from the experience of living with my mom. When I think about it, it kind of makes sense. The headwrecking wasn’t constant, so I didn’t need to dissociate all the time, but I didn’t know WHEN the headwrecking was going to start up again so I became increasingly anxious.