I feel a bit wrung out this afternoon. I had yet more struggles with my bank yesterday, they froze my account again when I tried to take out too much cash, they want to know what the cash is for, they fear I am being scammed again, its making me want to tear my hair out and go a bit demented. I then met with a family friend this afternoon and she pointed the finger at me saying the reason why people may not invite me to things or open up to me is because I blow up and they don’t know how to cope. I sat there calmly and patiently and wearily as she pointed her finger at me. I then gently closed my hand over hers and said to her, please don’t point your finger at me. She smiled a strange smile and folded up her finger.
I asked her was it not possible for her to see the heartbreak and longing for connection underneath the pain? I shared with her some of the abuse I suffered from my mother and sister back before my head injury and her whole attitude to me changed, things had gone down she never saw she only listened to my mother’s point of view and she was not aware of the times my sister spoke mean and untrue things behind my back to one of my older sister’s nephews. It really really hurt to go through all of this and be labelled as a pain in the arse. My chest is burning right now. I came home after our trip to the café in tears and Jasper just sat quietly looking at me with that doggie concerned expression they get that hits you deep in your soul looking like he was wondering what the hell had gone down while I was out.
I see that I have always been led to believe I am ‘too much’. But NOT BY EVERYONE. I remember exploding with some friends a few years back and then the grief underneath came out and several of my friends understood why I had reacted to a trigger the way I had. They did not try to shame and blame me for my reaction. They showed empathy.
The lack of empathy shown to responses of those with BPD is problematic. There is a reason so many of us with damaged psychic skin react powerfully and intensely to present triggers. We are not just ‘being difficult” (something my sister tried to tell an ex partner of mine.) We are not just ‘seeking attention’ in an ego driven way, we are trying to call attention to a shit load of psychic pain and receive care and love but most and foremost that need to come from our inner adult towards our abused, neglected or emotionally abandoned inner child of the past. The sad truth is that when we react like this we will be often be misunderstood, sidelined or excluded rather than emotionally validated.
I managed to keep my cool in the bank yesterday afternoon. I was holed up in the bank office for an hour on the phone while having questions fired at me ABOUT MY OWN FUCKING MONEY WHICH THEY WILL NOT RELEASE TO ME. I managed to argue my point and finally the girl told me my money would be released but they would be watching me like a hawk to see if I took too much out. I left the bank and I am glad I had not exploded. I held it together, but its breaking my heart that they can exert power over resources that are actually mine and that I need to help others.
I am in the middle of writing a post on anxious attachment and emotional attunement at the moment. I won’t be able to post if for a while, but the point is when we get blocked, thwarted, frustrated, told we are too much of this or that, that is INVALIDATION ABUSE. We react the way we do for a reason. That said when we are reacting from the emotional brain or amygdala we need to find ways to move back into the rational brain or neo cortex if we want to not alienate others and find more effective ways to get our point across. No one is going to know the full truth of our trauma history, of how much we struggled just to be accepted and loved for our true self, how much of ourselves we lost or, or had to bury or lost the way to in an attempt to ‘get along’ and be loved, approved of or accepted.
But most important of all is that we have to know how and why we are reacting as we do otherwise we end up cutting off valid parts of our assertive energy that fights for the true self. This is the truth of where many emotional abandonment survivors end up. Shamed or exiled for feeling anger or grief by an invalidating world we learn to shut it down or feel there is something wrong with us for feeling this way. But the truth is the extremity of our abandonment experiences leaves an intense charge within that need to be answered with our own love and care and self soothing. I told my friend today I am trying to learn better ways to react but that doesn’t change the lack of empathy shown.
Complex PTSD expert Pete Walker writes a lot about this in his book on healing trauma. There is a time for us to get really angry about what happened and very sad for the way we can be treated. However getting angry at our abusers may often only give them more ammunition to take us down, leaving us with egg on our face or a feeling of ‘worst in the world’ or ‘bad’ rather than realising we are just a person with wounds who is struggling to be real and connect in a world that is often emotionally disconnected, lacking in deeper empathy and complex emotional understanding of trauma’s impact. There are times the intensity of our feelings may be too much for others to understand or cope with but at least we can validate the full truth of them to ourselves, whether or not others empathise or fully understand.
Emerging From The Dark Night 