Knowing Who I am - the Crux of the Matter

One of the aspects of a diagnosis of Personality Disorder, particularly that of Emotionally Sensitive (ESPD) or Borderline PD, which causes controversy, is the idea that someone's personality can be fundamentally flawed or 'disordered'. There is also currently much discussion around the issues of diagnosis in general, not to mention the perenniel problems of labelling. Whatever it is called, or whatever diagnosis clinicians and practitioners seek to use in order to identify shared symptoms among those who suffer from PD, the diagnosis, for me, remains simply a signpost indicating areas in which my experience of the world may differ from that of others and help them to provide me with guidance as to the best possible therapies or approaches available to help me overcome my difficulties.

The fact that one cluster of BPD symptoms centres around issues of identity and, therefore human relationships, means that even the most basic understanding of myself and my place in the world, ie who I am, is problematic for me. My understanding has grown around this area as I have learned to observe my own functioning especially in the area of inter-personal relationships.

One of the key consequences of the invalidating childhood environment is to make me doubt entirely my expectations and understanding of the world as I experience it. In essence, the very fact that my emotional responses to pain, or neglect were, ignored, ridiculed or contradicted by my main care givers means that I cannot trust my emotional responses to the world. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that those of us with the symptoms associated with ESPD or BPD experience emotions at a much higher intensity than the average person. Fear, anger and anxiety are primary emotions in terms of helping us survive, particularly when we are at risk of physical harm. However, once again even these most primal of emotional responses have been distorted by the messages we received when growing up, particularly if we have survived childhood abuse, whether sexual, physical, or emotional. For many the intense emotions lead to hyper-vigilance, hypersensitivity and therefore, often result in what appears to the casual observer as inexplicably extreme reactions to everyday situations.

How I feel about the world informs how the world reflects messages about who I am, or who they think I am, back to me. If my emotional messages to the world come through a distorting prism, then the messages I receive back about who I am and how I relate to the world around me, comes back to me as a distortion - sometimes it jars with me, sometimes it confirms my deepest fears. So, I find it difficult to believe I am a likeable person, because even my parents had no time for me. If friends try to give me the message that I am likeable, this feels alien to me and I manage my discomfort with this by imagining reasons for them saying they like me - If I never check out my assumptions my ability to trust others will always be on shaky ground and I will not be able to learn new ways of seeing myself. In other words, I will constantly prevent myself from seeing me as others see me. Unless I am able to counteract the internal distortions by beginning to learn about myself as I am now, then I will continue to find myself in cycles of intense relationships where I try to mould myself to how I think I should be, followed by ongoing rejections which reinforce the distorted views of myself as unlikeable.

I have always struggled with statements which begin 'I am...', yet being able to complete these statements is an important first step in helping me to look at myself in a mirror which is not twisted by my internal emotional responses. I found this sheet from a website for teachers looking for ice breakers for the start of term. As I read through it and applied it to myself I found that I am able to fill in more of the statements about how I view myself, than a year ago. It is good for me to complete this exercise on my own and remind myself that the more clear I am about the 'I am' statements is a reflection of the progress I have been able to make in becoming more secure in my identity. This also reflects the stability in my current close relationships and friendships. It is so positive to be able to say I can measure some friendships in decades now, I've also never lived so long in one place since I left home at the age of 18. I am growing more secure in who I am and my place in the world.

Ya Get Me?

I love the English language. I toy with it, play with it, take words and mess with them, a bit like a trick footballer playing with a ball. Sometimes it's a bit random - especially when a word enters my head and I need to hear what it sounds like out loud. I especially love it when I discover some new 'in' word or phrase.

Recently I've been fascinated by people saying, 'ya get me?' after almost everything they say. I guess it is a way of making sure that your listeners are, in fact, listening. On another level though, it's also a way of checking out you are being understood. That started me thinking, maybe I need to start using it especially when talking about my mental health.

For most people with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) there is a sense of unease, a lack of belonging that is all pervasive. I had grown up with a sense of not being able to connect with the world and, more especially, with the people around me. I had a sense of otherness, of being an alien in a world that failed to notice how much I was struggling to belong. My nickname as a child was 'Moonman'- says it all really. I also did not communicate with adults, seeking to communicate through one childhood friend in particular, until the school in their wisdom removed him from me and forced me to try to speak to teachers and others at school. I was six before I was really able to do that.

This sense of alienation is a hallmark of BPD, a condition which creates a gulf between me and those around me, and which no one, but me is aware of. The only way I found to describe it when trying to help GPs and others understand, before my diagnosis, was a sense that I was 'locked inside my own heading screaming'. When I was most distressed I kept repeating 'I am not made for this world. The problem for me was that in my day to day life no one could see my distress, or if they did, they didn't understand its causes.

Lack of stable identity, caused by an inability to make emotional sense of the world around me is a symptom of BPD which goes to the core of the social theories of its causes. If we learn about our place in the world through the responses from those around us, then the invalidating home and family environment becomes a twisted mirror in which a distorted image of the self is formed. So, paradoxically the relationships which are most problematic to me are those which value me - they just clash with the internalised invalidated image and so are often rejected as untrustworthy. If the internal monologue of self criticism and self hatred meets with evidence to the contrary the resulting dissonance can be unbearable.

I am more comfortable with the feelings of failure and disconnection with the relationships around me, than I am with affirming, loving relationships. If my fundamental belief about myself is that I not worthy of life affirming love, then it is hardly surprising that I allow myself to become involved with destructive and abusive relationships. They are where I believe I belong.

As I work on my recovery I am trying to learn to find validation in small things at first. However, one of the ways that I still struggle to make people 'get me' is that I do probably need more affirmation in work and social situations than most people. The twisted mirror image of myself is still in the process of being untwisted. Slowly, I am trusting myself to develop new relationships. Trust takes time.

Being an alien, in a strange planet it is often easier to spend most of my time alone. This was one of my major coping mechanisms in the past. I deliberately retreated from intimate relationships because I just couldn't make sense of them, nor could my boyfriends make sense of the contradictions in me. On the one hand I craved affection, but on the other I behaved constantly in ways which would drive a wedge between us. The role of alien was so much more comfortable to me, then, than the sense of belonging to and with someone. There were times when I could happily go for weeks on end without any meaningful contact with anyone. It was safe, unchallenging and didn't cause any jarring or contradiction to my internalised view of myself. What I didn't realise for years, was that this was reinforcing the sense of isolation I was trying to combat.

Where am I today? I am trying to find new ways of connecting with the world around me. I am having to learn that patterns of invalidation established from early childhood will take time to change. I am trying out new ways of relating to friends, without retreating into becoming a recluse in order to protect myself from kindness and affection. The structure offered by the DBT Inter Personal Effectiveness Module helps me to find my place in most relationship situations. In the past I would swing wildly between shutting myself off and exposing myself too early in relationships usually sharing way too much about my struggles and my past history. I am consciously holding back when I need to in order to build trust on both sides of relationships.

So do 'ya get me?' The reality is that there are many times when I don't get myself. I am working on rebuilding my sense of self, without the overlaid turmoil of out of control emotions and moods, and the non stop internal self condemnatory commentary. All of which is a new experience for me, not all of it comfortable or pleasant. Slowly, but surely I am untwisting the mirror image.

Return to the Forbidding Planet: Going back to the Invalidating Home

TRIGGER WARNING: Some discussion of childhood sexual, emotional and physical abuse

I am an adult child - my parents are elderly and infirm. As a family we face the same issues as all adult children with elderly parents, but for me I also face battles with caring for the people who created the environment which conspired with my biological disposition to create the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) I have struggled with all my life. To all intents and purposes I am a fully fledged adult with my own home and responsibilities. I no longer have to maintain relationships which damage me emotionally,

I am now in a position where I can choose where to invest my resources, both physical and emotional. Which begs the question, why go on holiday with the people who continue to invalidate my value as a human being? And in the response to that question lies the paradox at the heart of the relationship between the adult child and invalidating parents.

I have survived a week with my family. Before I started the week, I felt safe doing so, after all I had more than survived my childhood. I have learned to accept that the approval I have always sought from my parents will never be forthcoming. There is no point in me waiting for some miraculous change or realisation in them. After all, no amount of success or achievement in my life ever evoked any level of validation, or at least none that I could assimilate. Instead, the medals I won in my swimming competitions were dumped by me in one of my drawers at home. Even my winning the Ulster Championships and appearing on the back page of the newspaper failed to evoke any level of praise or approval that I could detect as a child. There was no showing them with pride to friends and family, no display cases full of our achievements as children. To all intents and purposes myself and my siblings were a separate entity from my parents, little people who lived under their roof, and who required 'firm discipline'.

Our emotional needs didn't enter into their reckoning of the parental 'contract', after all, we were fed, we were clothed and we had a roof over our heads. The only emotional contact I had with my Dad growing up was when he was angry. And when he was angry he was out of control. The level of physical abuse we suffered would result in our being subject to 'safeguarding procedures' today. However, my parents were good at sidestepping any outside scrutiny of our treatment - for me, it was all I knew. On one occasion, aged 6, I walked to school with a huge red hand mark visible on my bare leg. I thought I had done wrong when the teacher asked me to wait in the cloakroom. I waited until I was taken to the Headmaster's office to find my Mum waiting for me with a face like thunder. I don't remember the conversation with the Head, but I do know I was 'walked' home where I was beaten with the wooden spoon. I had no idea what I had done wrong, I hadn't said a word to my teacher, I didn't know that anything was amiss. As a family we have laughed since about the fact that Mum beat me so hard one time that she broke the wooden spoon on my legs. Then, she replaced it with a Tupperware spoon, which I attested was stronger - oh how we laughed about that one! No wonder that my BPD means that I am confused about appropriate emotional responses in numerous situations.

The conundrum for me as an adult is how I have managed to understand the complexities and deficits in my upbringing, but still I crave the approval of my parents. At times in the past week, my brother and I reverted to competing for our parents' attention. It hurt that no one asked about my recent health issues, or about the exciting opportunities offered to me in church to help use my experiences to help others. I was once again relegated to my familiar role of observer and silent child in the family.

In my first two years at school I was already so traumatised by my home life, that I was effectively mute around all adults including my parents. My friend spoke for me for the first year at school, until they removed me from the same class as him. I was traumatised and ended up lashing out at the teacher - I was the five year who kicked the teacher - hard, in the shins.... no Daily Mail shock headlines in those days, though, just ongoing punishment for the reported infringement at home.

When I finished my DBT therapy, my Therapist reminded me that I had begun the process of healing from the 3rd degree emotional burns, which are at the heart of the BPD experience of life. I have probably managed to develop a thin layer of emotional skin over deep, deep wounds. If I needed a reminder of that truth, then time back in the invalidating environment soon reminded me as my thin protective layer was ripped through once again. Little things, like talking over me, ignoring what I'm saying, ridiculing my weight, reminding me that I am indeed 'a nutter', 'weird', often pre-empted by me in an attempt to take the sting out of the teasing, took me right back to my childhood.

I was always the 'highly strung' one, the one who cried at the pain or suffering of small animals, who cried at the Little House on the Prairie. My family enjoyed laughing at me for my 'softness', but the truth was those occasions were the safe places to release my sorrow over the emotional pain I was struggling with at the time. All my life I've been told that I'm making mountains out of molehills, that I'm overreacting, that my emotional responses don't bear any relation to reality. Is it any wonder that, as an adult I have struggled to recognise what I'm feeling in any given situation, or that my reactions are out of proportion to the triggers, especially to the onlooker.

One of the biggest legacies of the invalidating environment is a lack of confidence in my own reading of situations. Aged 10 I told my Mum that my music teacher had been touching me in places on my body which made me feel uncomfortable. Her response was to tell me that this was a 'sign' that I was growing up and that I should expect men to be interested in me in this way as I 'developed'. My problem was I was an 'early starter' I had my first bra and period by the age of 11 (before I left Primary School). My Mum's response to my first attempt to speak up about something that felt so wrong (it wasn't my first experience of sexual abuse) convinced me that my feelings about what he was doing were mistaken. She told me that I was 'growing up' and that I should expect men to become interested in me in that way. She hinted that it was flattering. This caused me to doubt my own misgivings and feelings of discomfort about sexually abusive behaviour.

My Mum's response laid the foundations for me to ignore my misgivings and led to me suffering more serious sexual assaults and violations from that age, right into my adulthood. After all, I had told an adult about something that felt really wrong only to be told that, I needed to 'grow up' and accept it as something that just happens and is some kind of rite of passage. Why would I, as an adult, trust my own feelings of distress and pain when I had been so wrong in the past? Such is the ongoing conflict for me between what I know as an adult and survivor and what I 'feel' I deserve in terms of justice. I have moved on, I have learned to begin to protect myself and to fight back.

May I make a plea on behalf of any of your friends or family who suffer from the effects of BPD? Please never tell them that they are 'overreacting', or that they need to 'just let the past go'. If it was that easy for me to manage the overwhelming emotional responses I am swamped with at times, then I wouldn't have needed 18 months of intensive therapy. I wouldn't have had to learn to manage them and to learn to live in the present moment, without letting the pain of the past or the anxiety about the future drown me in waves of distress. Imagine if you will that you have a severe burn. How long before such a wound stops being sensitive? My own experience of minor burns tells me that even when new layers of skin have grown, sensitivity to pain remains a long time. 3rd degree burns, will always remain sensitive. So it is with me. I am learning to allow myself to heal, to let new layers of emotional skin grow. My new life is one which is helping me to heal. However, the reality is that a return to the invalidating environments and their complex relationships, rips through new growth and healing.

Therapy means that I am equipped to manage my distress better, it does not mean that I stop feeling things deeply. During my time with my family I used a variety of different DBT skills:

- Distraction - my ipod equipped with positive playlists and some Loving Kindness meditations. I played with animals. I kept to my room when I needed to restore my emotional energy.
- I prayed
- Self Validation - I texted supportive friends, I listened to positive Mindfulness exercises
- Opposite Emotion/Opposite Action - Instead of getting embroiled in family rows. I focused on my environment, read an absorbing book, or watched other people in the hotel. I didn't explode, which is easier to do in my family environment than in other settings.
- Mindful Breathing - I constantly refocused on my breathing and posture when starting to feel distressed.

Above all, I returned home to my world, where I am in control of my environment. I am able to manage my time and space. I am able to choose the relationships that are positive and validating for me. The realities of family life, dictate that as I have chosen not to confront my parents with the impact of their behaviour during my childhood, I then have a duty to relate to them as an adult child. I choose to treat them according to my values and beliefs, not according to how they dealt with me. That means I will continue to face times when I need to return to the invalidating planet of home. More and more they are becoming dependent on me and my siblings. My own sense of compassion and humanity tells me that it matters that I care for their needs, as I am able. I have learned in the last week that I can survive that. I have learned that I don't have to remain hurt and locked away because of those experiences. I have learned that I am able to manage my BPD and allow my wounds to heal. One brilliant realisation is that my resilience against my family has developed - I am able to recover from my visits home quicker.