Help! My friends are abandoning me!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve cried this phrase out so many times, and amidst the tears of frustration, hurt and loneliness, you genuinely don’t understand why your friends keep trying to distance themselves from you. You ask questions like: “What did I do wrong?” or “Why don’t they like me anymore?”. People may say to you, “It’s them, not you…” but the truth of the matter is that it’s probably a little of both.

If you have been diagnosed with (or feel you may have traits of) Borderline Personality Disorder, you will know how real the struggle is to maintain friendships and relationships. You honestly try so hard to do all the right things, but despite trying, your friends never seem to stick around, and that reinforces the cycle of abandonment and rejection in your minds. It’s heart-wrenching. I know!

You can’t change other people, but you can change yourself and I want to look at ways you can make small changes in your own patterns of behaviour to help you maintain healthy relationships. For some of you this post may be very difficult to read. If you are super sensitive and not ready to look at your own behaviours, habits and attitudes, you might struggle. It’s okay to skip reading this and come back to it another day. I won’t judge! Honestly, it’s taken me a long time to get to this point so I completely understand. But if you are desperately ready to try to understand why your friends appear to be abandoning you and you want to try to fix it, stick around, but steel your heart because some of what I’m going to say will be tough to digest.

Before I begin, I want you to know that I am not judging you. I’m not accusing you. I’m not saying you’re a bad person. If you have B.P.D. your feelings matter. Your thoughts and feelings are real and valid. YOU are valid. And I know you are trying so hard to get it right and I commend you for that. But I completely understand the frustration of not having a clue why your friends won’t talk to you; why they block you; why they won’t respond to your messages straight away. And I am now at a stage in my own journey to understand why they do that. I want to share what I’ve learned in the hopes that it will help you to understand and make the necessary changes to strengthen and maintain solid relationships.

You see, people who have B.P.D. are very high maintenance. It’s not a criticism. It’s an observation. And remember, I have B.P.D. and I know I am high maintenance. We are needy and can come across as demanding. We don’t mean to! But that’s how it is perceived by others. We are pretty full on and I think if you take a long hard look at yourself, you will probably agree. We can be intense and very focused. We form attachments very quickly and struggle to let go. We are highly emotional and sensitive. And none of these traits are necessarily bad, but they can be over-used and a bit too much for some people to cope with.

Try, for a moment, to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who has a busy life with work, spouse, kids etc. That person may have their own mental health struggles; maybe not as severe as B.P.D or D.I.D, but perhaps a touch of anxiety or depression. Maybe they have some health issues. Now imagine a high needs person who has severe mental health issues like B.P.D has befriended you, which you’re absolutely fine with, but over the course of time, this friend is constantly texting you, emailing you, phoning you and, without meaning to, demanding more and more of your time. This person tells you every single little detail of their lives… all the time. I think it’s safe to say you would start to feel drained pretty quickly. You love that person dearly but recognise the need to put up some boundaries to protect your time, your mental health, your family etc. So you try to ask your friend to maybe not text so often, but your friend gets upset and thinks you’re abandoning them, so instead of backing off, they double their efforts to try to keep you, which wears you out so much that your own mental and physical health is starting to deteriorate. So, knowing that it will hurt your friend, you put up your walls. You know it’ll hurt them but you also know you won’t be any good to them if you collapse from stress. You have a right to protect yourself in every way. Your own mental health, physical health, family, time… is so important to protect. But your friend doesn’t understand and wails that they don’t know what they did wrong and accuses you of abandoning them. In your mind, you’re not abandoning them; you’re protecting your health. But in their mind… it’s rejection, abandonment and the deepest hurt.

Can you picture that scenario? Can you put yourself in their shoes and see what it might be like for them? If you can then you will start to understand the problem. So how do you fix it? After all, you also have a right to be heard, understood, loved and not abandoned. What do you do?

The first thing I believe is so very important, and it’s probably one of the hardest things for a person with B.P.D. is to acknowledge that you need to make some changes to the way you interact with people. Acknowledging your part in a relationship breakdown is half the battle won.

Next, you need to cultivate more than one or two friendships. Your burdens (and I don’t mean that in a negative way because we all have burdens we carry) are too much for one person alone to deal with on top of their own burdens. Honestly, it is! I know how hard it is to make friends, and if you’ve been hurt before, you will be reluctant to make friends. But it’s so important. Start off with two or three and slowly expand.

Once you have a few friends, it’s then important to spread out your burdens. Don’t pile them all on one friend, even if they are your favourite! Share the load! Be generous with your troubles! In this way, you will have a few supportive friends so that if one is unavailable, someone else might be willing to spend half an hour chatting. If one suddenly has a family emergency, there will be another who is able to go out for coffee with you. Do you see what I mean? You’ll be more likely to cut your friends a little slack when they are unable to be there for you if you have a few close friends who can support you, and you won’t feel so lonely and abandoned if your friend is unable to help you for a while due to whatever is going on in their lives.

And the final gem of wisdom I wish to impart is to spend half the amount of time (at least!) talking about them rather than all of the time talking about yourself. It can be very draining for someone to spend several hours listening to you talk about yourself and your woes, especially if they might have something they wish to discuss too. Save the entire woeful story for your therapist who is paid to sit and listen to all your struggles. Your friends will appreciate you even more if you take an interest in their lives too. So make an effort to ask them how they are going and what’s happening in their lives. Don’t make it all about you. A healthy relationship is always a two-way street. It’s give and take on both sides, and if it’s all take, take, take on your part, it is unbalanced and unsustainable. It will end badly and they will be forced to pull away from you. And we both know you don’t want that to happen!

So, to recap:

1. Acknowledge your behaviours and attitudes might need some tweaking

2. Cultivate more than one friendship. Two or three is a nice start and then expand

3. Share the burdens among all of your friends

4. Spend time asking about their lives and don’t just talk about yours

I hope this has been helpful and not too harsh. I know first-hand how hard this is. I have lost so many friends because I was too needy, too demanding and too high maintenance, and it hurts. A lot! I want to work on building my character into someone who gives more than I take and I know that it’s a long journey and one that I will have to work on every single day, but I would do that to ensure I keep my friends and have healthy relationships. Will you do the same?

Stay safe and be good!

Understanding Persecutors

Persecutor Alters are usually misunderstood. They are perceived as being evil, mean, aggressive, hostile and have nothing better to do than harm the body. They are often hated by everyone. I’ve even heard of Systems locking them up in a “jail” in the Inner World and denying them any good thing at all. Persecutors probably have the hardest time of all the Alters in finding their place within a System that doesn’t want them. I know. I’ve been there! Our System has had some very difficult to manage Persecutors and we have acted badly towards them in our ignorance and lack of understanding of their role.’

I’ve said it once before: There are no evil Alters. There are no redundant Alters. Every Alter has a role to play in keeping the System safe. Even Persecutors. In fact, the Persecutor role is vitally important in a healthy System. That might shock you to read that, and you may be shaking your head and vehemently disagreeing with me. The next part of this blog is going to be written by a former Persecutor in our System. She’s now our strongest Protector, but still has Persecutor traits.

***

Yo. It’s Sophia. Whassup peeps? Yeah so I was a Persecutor. I been around since the body was in teens. I hosted through most of those years much to the frustration of family, heh! I’m the type of person who gets sh*t done. I’m not interested in being anyone’s friend. I tell it like it is, and if you don’t like it, too bad. That’s just me and I tell people to deal with it.

What’s it like being a Persecutor? It sucks. Literally sucks. I didn’t ask to be one. I didn’t choose to be one. I was created this way. I hated being misunderstood, but at the same time I didn’t like anyone enough to be bothered explaining myself or why I did sh*t. My job was to protect the System in ways that none of the other Alters would dare do. If you think about it, there is a logic behind DID and behind how Persecutors act. I was the one who’d get up in someone’s grill if they were having a go at us. Yeah I was also the one to harm the body when things got hard. I didn’t do this one but an example would be if someone told us we were fat; a Persecutor would then limit food intake to try to get skinny so the name-calling would stop. So there’s logic behind it. Maybe YOU don’t see the logic, but us Persecutors do.

We’d provide an outlet for all that pent up frustration and anger and hurt. Yeah, so usually it was against the body cuz we absolutely believed it was our fault that we was abused. Maybe that don’t make sense to you and that’s fine. It makes sense to us. The abuse broke the confidence of the Core Personality, and part of my role was to hold onto a shred of that confidence so that when it was needed, it was there. And yeah, I’m angry most of the time cuz of all the sh*t that’s been done to us by other people. It’s wrong. Why do people gotta be so horrid to one another? It’s all about control innit. The abusers have all the control and they get off on it and they don’t give a damn who they hurt. So if I hurt us more, then their abusive tactics won’t hurt as much. Get it?

But here’s the thing; Persecutors can learn to be better Protectors if they can learn better coping methods. Methods that don’t harm the System or the body. Ain’t gonna lie… it takes time. I’ve put us in hospital many times. Most of the scars on the body are my fault. It’s hard to change, but if I can do it, so can any Persecutor. They just gotta be willing and stop bullsh*tting themselves. They need to grow up, plain and simple. If a person can change, then so can an Alter. I still got Persecutor traits, but I am a much better Protector now, and the System needs me.

And that’s me done. Laters.

Sophia

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Check out Ed's educational video here about Persecutors.

Dealing with Grief

Everyone experiences grief at different times in their lives. It’s a normal part of living. Usually, in a mentally stable person, grief will run its course and the person will move on. In the case of a death of a loved one, the grief may resurface at certain times; anniversaries, birthdays etc., and they will process it and keep moving forward. Grief is normal and healthy. But what happens when it is so deep and traumatic that it consumes you? How do you manage overwhelming feelings of deep trauma associated with grief, or deep grief associated with trauma? How do you move on from that? And if you’re already dealing with so much in the way of poor mental and emotional health, what coping skills do you need to learn to keep yourself afloat in the vast ocean of pain and sorrow?

The journey towards healing is not linear. Nor is it a “one-size fits all” process. That’s why it’s called a “journey”. Healing is the journey, not the destination. Health is the destination, but healing is current and ongoing. It’s an everyday commitment. It’s getting up in the morning when you’d rather stay in bed and cry it out. It’s self-care when you’d rather hide away and wallow. It’s facing the day with a brave smile when you’d rather scream at the sky or sob into your pillow. This healing journey is different for everyone. No two people will have the exact same path to tread, and nor should they. We are all unique individuals and to try to cram everyone into the same box is denying our individualism and uniqueness. It’s like saying “my feelings don’t matter.”

So is there a right and wrong way to deal with grief? I believe the answer is yes… and no. In terms of how long a person takes to work through their grief, there is no right or wrong way. You can take as long as you need to and no one has the right to tell you to “get over it” or “Move on”. They can encourage you to keep moving forwards, but it is no one else’s business how long you take to process your emotions. Also, the method in which you decide to take to process your emotions is also yours and yours alone to decide. Everyone has their own way of processing their thoughts and feelings and there’s no ‘one size fits all’. If talking it through with someone is helpful, then find the right person to talk to about it. If you need to talk about it over and over as part of the process, then it’s up to the other person to be willing to show empathy and compassion and not judge you. If they are struggling, they should be able to explain that without you erupting. There is a saying; “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. I’d say this is pretty apt when it comes to finding people to talk to about your emotions. Don’t rely on just one person, especially if you need to be able to talk it over and over until it is clear in your mind. Find a few trusted people to share the load with. That way they won’t get burnt out and you will still feel supported and listened to.

Now to the wrong way of dealing with grief: Bottling it up. Ignoring it. Denying your emotions. While in the short-term, this may be helpful to some people, in the long-term it can be quite damaging. Bottling up those normal emotional responses can lead to, at best, a hard heart that cannot change and at worst, an explosion down the track. Emotional explosions are quite messy and end up hurting people, yourself included. Ignoring the issue is also unhelpful in the long-term. It will always be there, haunting you, until you deal with it. Another potentially damaging way to deal with these emotions is by only telling one person about how you are feeling. I don’t know about you, but I feel things very deeply and unfortunately, my mind goes over and over it. If I talk to only one person all the time about how I’m feeling, that person will start to get burnt out, which leads to them withdrawing in order to preserve their own mental health, which then, in turn, leads to you feeling abandoned by them (especially if you also suffer with Borderline Personality Disorder like I do!). And then you’ll be left with the same emotions as before, plus the new ones of abandonment, and no one to talk to. So like I suggested above, have a few trusted friends or people in your life (therapist, doctor, social worker etc) who you can confide in to even the load.

I am not saying you are a burden, so please don’t read that in the above sentence! But understand that everyone is going through their own journeys too, and sometimes they can’t always be there for you, so to avoid disappointment and hurt, make sure you share wisely. Trust me… this is a lesson I have had to learn the hard way, and am still learning! I am also dealing with the consequences of losing friends for this very reason. It hurts! And I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did!

A thing to remember is that not everyone will know how to help someone who is grieving. Often there are not enough of the right words to tell a grieving person that will make it better for them, so many people just choose not to say anything at all. Unfortunately, this can be hard for the person who is grieving. I think it’s reasonable to say that we don’t necessarily want someone to “fix” us and make us happy (however we might wish it to be so!), but we really want someone to just be there; even if they are silent. A silent but present friend is worth more than a friend who simply abandons us in our time of need, wouldn’t you agree? So my advice to friends, family and professionals who are wanting to help a grieving person is to simple be there for them. You don’t have to say anything. Just be there and show them you care.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful to someone. My own thoughts are very scattered at the moment, so I’m really hoping this has made sense! As always, thanks for reading, stay safe and practice self-care and mindfulness.