#i think realising i probably have npd has made me a lot more aware of my own ego among other things

[wolfisland]

honestly one of my least favourite things about online spaces centered around cluster b personality disorders is that they almost treat the disorders as an in joke. like its never quite anti recovery rhetoric but a lot of the times it feels like it becomes this thing where something harmful gets spurred on as a personality trait to nurture rather than a symptom to keep an eye on. freaks me the fuck out.

it could be because growing up i was pretty familiar with cluster b spaces and i lost a couple of friendships due to it becoming this whole "i have this disorder now i have to knowingly indulge the more harmful and dangerous symptoms im supposed to be treating to really prove i have this disorder!" thing.

like babes i still believe youre borderline, you dont need to go full tilt maintaining a numbered and ranked list of the people most important to you and assigning a fp role to someone who frankly is not responsible for your stability.

[jaynnie-jane]

Full fucking circle.

I know I started watching crappy childhood fairy a while back and I also know I sent a message to him that was along the lines of "holy shit, apparently I did have a crappy childhood"… But amongst the bullshit I somehow forgot that realisation and fuck me do I feel like a dumb arse.

So, Crappy Childhood Fairy talks a LOT about C-PTSD. All this time I have been caught in this Narcissist pondering and she does this really great video on parallels between NPD and CPTSD. I'm watching it and nodding along and thinking yeah, that makes sense and something she said made me do a quick google search which brought me to this page:

And the following lines made my heart fall "This is the definition of trauma. The failure to integrate a disturbing event into your internal narrative of reality. It doesn’t matter if 99% of that reality is happy and supportive." "It’s cliché, but many people who experience childhood trauma have parents with their own unresolved childhood trauma. And if they’ve made it to adulthood without resolving that trauma, they had to find a way to live with it. One of the most common ways of coping with trauma long-term is denial… and when their children are upset, they teach them that denial."

Not only does that first part explain how I feel about watching the fights in my family it also explains why when Mum and I were filling out a form for me for my queried Autism thingo, that I had ZERO recollection of my behaviour during a repeated (I can't even ADMIT the next word!) traumatic event (like holy hell, with all my knowledge and understanding of psych stuff I can't even say to myself, yes that was traumatic yet if a friend told me about it I would say yes, that would probably be pretty traumatic!). She told me how as an 8 to 16 year old, I would ALWAYS seek out my brother (he's five years older) and console him and make sure he was okay and validate him and just be there for him. According to Mum, this would happen at least once a week. All I remember from those events is their basic format: My brother would do something dumb that dad would get annoyed with and dad would yell, mum would intervene. Then randomly a few days later dad would give my brother an insane task as punishment for the dumb thing. My brother would complete the insane task without complaint and mum would get shitty with dad for giving my brother the insane task. When I think about my childhood my brain tells me that happened maybe every six months and I only have snippets of memory from one of them. Thinking about it now, and witnessing my parents and their relationship over the last few years I KNOW that for two or three days a week I would have been able to -feel- that tension in the house. As a full grown adult with a bit more self awareness (I was going to say much more but apparently that isn't the case), I still feel that tension between my parents at times and it makes my skin crawl.

The second part of that is also devastating to me because I look at my mums childhood and think "holllyyyy heeeck!". She's never 'dealt' with it. I think it's only been the last five years that I have watched her become more aware. It's often only through me biting back when she tries to control the way I dress or the very harmless ways my dad copes with life that SHE has started to shift her mentality. It's been the strangest thing for me to watch my mum wear baggy clothing. I don't know if it's coincidental but I went off at her a while ago when she was being critical of how I was dressed. I said to her very plainly "Just stop. Stop trying to dictate how I should look just because you are so insecure about the way that YOU present to the world".

Even now, as an adult going through the year I have had, through no initial fault of my own, it's almost impossible for me to actually ask for help because every time I do my mum tries to use it as a teaching moment for her type of resilience which is "you gotta be able to do it on your own, don't rely on anyone, you just CAN NOT EVER become dependent on others".

As a result I think I ricochet between the two extremes. I DO become highly dependent on others because I don't seek help before I absolutely have to. Usually by that point, no one CAN help me.

And now I am just so heavily filled with regret over my relationship. We both asked impossible things of each other, hell I didn't even ask. I don't know if I didn't ask because I was afraid of being told no or to just "suck it up" or if it's because I, like my mother pride myself on fucking STRUGGLING with my mental health alone because no one has been able to help me. I have known for MONTHS that if Josh and I broke up I would regret it. I KNOW I am capable of so much more. I KNOW that with the right support and environment I could be unstoppable. I knew, in my gut that who he was asking me to be, for the most part is who I think I want to be any way. But every second spent in a relationship where what my partner needed, I was incapabale of providing; was destroying us both. I knew I was failing him again and again and I was so terrified I couldn't be what he wanted, the only thing I could focus on was that and trying to make that feeling of hopeless worthlessness go away. Because I was holding onto this all consuming panic and anxiety over not being good enough for my partner, I didn't have space to take on the anxiety and panic that I experience around work.

And I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. You were not stonewalling, you were just exhausted. You were not dismissing me you were just flooded. And both of our crappy coping skills that we have both tried so hard to unlearn kicked in. Neither of us could risk asking for what we truly needed because we knew the answer was some version of "I can't give you that".

I wish we had found a therapist 8 months ago. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Regret, despair, shame, grief, embarrassed, foolish, disconnected, heartbroken, self contempt and self betrayal.

[inanawesomewave]

GAME RESENTS GAME

When you have a Cluster B personality disorder, you can spot others of your kind a mile off. Whether it’s something major like their temper and what it’s based around, or if it’s just the way they accidentally forget to smile in the middle of an insincere moment, we see eachother. We know. So what happens when we meet others of our type? I’ve been asked a few times how I think relationships between personality disorders usually go, and I’ve only got a few personal examples, but the examples I do have, have intrinsically and undeniably shaped my life in lots of ways, profoundly and significantly.  ASPD Surprise surprise, I really like other sociopaths. Not at first, mind. My first instinct with another antisocial is, “something’s off about this guy. Who does he think he fucking is? No, I don’t like him. There’s something about him I just don’t like.” I think this is probably because antisocials have such a lack of connection to ourselves and such disdain for ourselves (not to be confused with self-loathing) that to see ourselves mirrored can sometimes be destabilising. But sure enough, usually in barely any time at all, I grow to like that person a lot. They make me laugh, they say things that I can identify with. I am around someone with whom the jokes keep coming, there’s a sense of fluidity to the conversation, and whether I’ve come to know that person extremely well over the course of years, or whether I’ve only known them for a few months, there’s a fluency of shared in-jokes that haven’t been pre-established, and I like that. I can be partners in crime with other sociopaths. I can say things with impunity. There’s a kinship there, a brotherhood. I’ve mentioned him before, but my early adulthood was shaped by the influence of a best friend I will always remember as one of the finest people I have ever known. More of a factor 1 kind of psychopath, I hated him right away. I’d never immediately hated someone before, but he seemed smug, or self-assured, he seemed... I hate to admit it, but the first time I saw him, we were in a room full of people and he looked better than everyone else (including me) and he seemed more interesting than everyone else (including me) and people seemed really interested in him (more so than me) and he looked really sure of himself (just like I like to be). Looking back I felt intimidated by who I immediately identified as being the top of the food chain. He later told me, and made very clear to me, his immediate reaction to me was much the same. Over the course of just a few weeks, we became friends, then best friends, then we had a bond that was like brotherhood, kinship. Our friendship was one of solid loyalty, and whilst we really did piss eachother off quite a lot, there was something of an unspoken understanding that this was it and we were in this. I had more empathy for him than I’d ever had for anyone at that point. When I heard him talk, I felt I could finally talk.  I’ve met other sociopaths over the years, and I feel like I’ve gone into my tribe. I’m not normally a pack animal, but if it’s a wolf pack, I’m in.  BPD What I’m about to say is from personal experience, and is only from intimate relationships I have been in. I don’t rub along well with borderlines, historically. I will tell you why. And this is why I believe a lot of antisocials shouldn’t date borderlines -- it’s not fair on anyone.  I was in a three year relationship with a man with BPD, and it was a fucking nightmare. I’m self-sufficient, and I like my emotions to be my choice, especially where my empathy and compassion is concerned. I will support, love and trust, until I feel it’s being forced out of me, and then I will react, dismiss, disgust. The borderline I dated immediately latched onto every single part of my life, very quickly. It was like he was trying to become me. At first, I was flattered. I even entertained the idea that this was good for me, good for my ego maybe, if narcissistic supply is being told how great you are then antisocial supply is being powerful enough that people try to emulate you. He was very full-on at first, I remember feeling a little stifled by how constantly he needed to be in touch with me, he’d call me after work, during work, after the drinks after work, he’d call me when he was drunk because he thought he was so hilarious I’d die laughing and be grateful of the attention. And maybe that was his way of showing love, but I was not grateful of the attention, and it didn’t take me long to get bored of it. He was everywhere, and he was everyone, and he was nobody, all at once. His lack of identity and need for me to define it for him exhausted me, and angered me. It was like he wanted me to organise his entire life, tell him what to do, where to be, who to meet, what to say, and then once he realised his own codependence he’d become furious and react by, oh, I don’t know, contacting an ex, talking about former sexual partners, inventing an emotional crisis and then being pissed off I didn’t respond to it (once, after an argument: “Ugh, I guess I’m just a little tired today. It’s the two year anniversary of my ex-girlfriend’s father’s death.” ???). I had to always be there for him, no matter what, and his being there for me was insincere. His rage was equal to mine, and I admit that, he was angry all the time and I was angry all the time. Very quickly a battle of wills was established by the both of us, and for two whole years we were both jousting against eachother. But he would always try to win, by creating a crisis: he’d hurt himself in front of me, he’d perform sadness or pain in front of me (and was a bad actor), he’d “go missing” for a few hours then turn up “confused”, he’d pretend, pretend, pretend, and the more he needed my undivided attention and empathy, the more I resented him. And I would try to win by laughing or ignoring, and both of us came off as bad people, because both of us were being bad people. When he, as the DSM would word it, would frantically try to avoid abandonment, after a while, I would abandon as best I could, and with spite.  I think it’s nothing personal, the way antisocials are with borderlines, but I think it’s in our chemistry, or whatever magic it is that makes up Cluster B: antisocials need to be self-sufficient. We are generous and loving, but we covet that generosity and warmth extremely fiercely. We don’t respond to emotional provocation, we do not respect it. And we’re emotionally very cold, closed-off, and unavailable. Borderlines need to feel loved and catered for. They are too generous and loving, but they can’t seem to regulate all too well how that love comes out, what’s appropriate, what’s not. It’s not the fault of the person with BPD that insecurity has left them with a fear of abandonment, but it’s not the fault of the person with ASPD that abandonment is how we cope.  NPD Tough one, because again, I’ve known narcissists I’ve really liked. It’s the ones I’d call “Evolved” narcissists: they know what they’re about, who they are, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and whether they’re trying to change it or not is irrelevant, the self-awareness is enough. But then again, there’s something in narcissism, when it’s malignant and lacks all self-awareness, that I find almost delusional, I begin to wonder just how close to psychosis it really is, if they say that the “borderline” in Borderline Personality Disorder stands for “The borderline between neurosis and psychosis”, then how did narcissists escape that label? When grandiosity is that pervasive and delusional, I don’t understand how it isn’t a genuine psychotic disorder. It’s true that so many Cluster B traits intermingle with eachother, and the reason I don’t get on with narcissists as a rule and they don’t get on with me, is what I mentioned in my first part about ASPD -- a battle of wills is too quickly established. Narcissists are always looking for evidence that their crown is about to be toppled, and antisocials are always looking to attack, and to defy what’s been handed to them. Antisocials have narcissistic tendencies, but whilst a narcissist will always be a hero (or a victim) in every story they tell, the antisocial will be whatever the situation requires, but the antisocial doesn’t buy into their own bullshit. I’ve found in the past that a narcissist will rewrite history, but then curiously, believe their own retelling of the thing that never happened. Antisocials love to eke out insincerity, to either see how the situation unfolds, or to make someone squirm -- but narcissists seem to become so involved in their insincerity, they have no idea they’re no longer being sincere, or telling any kind of truth. I’ve had a few in my life, and maybe I’m biased because of that, but my most recent experience is the boyfriend of someone I used to be very close to. I think it’s the lying, or the fact that their manipulations really are very intricate, I’m not sure. But it’s ultimate control, impotent power, and hard to stick around for. But having said all that, my relationships to narcissists is probably a 30/70 split. For every handful of narcissists I meet that I hate, I meet one that I find truly amazing. After all, that confidence and that self-importance, it’s hard to look away.  HPD I literally have never met anyone with this diagnosis, and I’m not sure I even understand it myself.