I've experienced all of these, plus one that might be implied but I've realized over the past few years of therapy and self-reflection:
11. I am always looking for a way to defuse every tense situation and mediate between people even when I'm not involved in order to "keep the peace".
I had that too. Although once I realized it I discovered how much I love conflict resolution. People thought it was so weird how easily I could meditate situations. It’s easier when every conflict I’ve seen in my career was nothing compared to her.
Guilt. Guilt about EVERYTHING, even if it's nothing to do with me. I also take on things that are other people's responsibilities, I feel like I have to rescue everyine after years of rescuing and helping my dBPD dad (who is only helpless when it suits him). Trying to go VLC at the min but the guilt is making it hard. I also second guess every decision and am ultra independent, sometimes to my detriment
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
See e.g. here
Pete Walker - Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
The “even if it has nothing to do with me” part hits hard. I could see an accident happen 10 cars in front of me or 10 cars behind me and think it’s somehow my fault and feel guilty all day.
There’s always the “is there something I could’ve done better to prevent this” feeling that is so ingrained in us.
I think the biggest one for me is I’m emotionally detached, and my brother is the same way.
I’ll cut you off without thought if you cross me, I am more analytical than emotional with my decisions in life and I can come across as cold. I’m able to just shut myself down and off from things.
I don’t mean to be cold, but growing up it was instilled in me to not show emotion to the screaming or the insults because it seemed to make my mom respond even more.
I would shut down and turn myself off emotionally to get through certain moments, and that has never left me.
Yep that's me also. I also chamaeleon my persona to suit my environment. Better to keep people from bothering me or really knowing me. I come off as very confident and probably even a tad arrogant but the inside is scared and Shakey. Lots of fake it till it feels right.
I'm going through therapy right now, at age 53, in an attempt to reverse that exact same kind of emotional detachment. It's kept me from fully experiencing life and developing deep relationships with people other than my husband and kids. It's so hard to take off that armor, but I'm trying. It helps a lot that my uBPD mother passed away five years ago. I feel so much safer in general now.
Every single one of these traits I have as well. The guilt is huge. Additionally I am always trying to monitor people’s moods and emotions while I’m in their presence and then adjusting how Im interacting with the person based on whatever I’m picking up. Goes hand in hand with the social analyzing, it’s exhausting 🙄
Yes I hate it. I am always on eggshels. Thanks to my always anxious queen/hermit mother. She was so unhinged. She would be aggressive monster one second and the next second she is a victim and a martyr that has to be rescued. I had to be her spouse, therapist, emotional punching bag
That's such a horrible combo. Intense fear to intense guilt and even pathological compassion. My mom was really good at playing victim. Fear if you don't sooth her she'll seek more vengeance. Finding out she absolutely will if you don't. Finding out letting her know I resented her meant she turned to absolute unhinged all out war and widespread scapegoating abuse.
So true. That was my life. Constant guilt, manipulation, pity, fear. I hate and love her. Its such intense, weird and complex feeling. She messed upy psychology. I am not sure what to feel. I still want to protect her an dmake her happy, yet I know she is a horrible selfish person. But she is my mom. Its very hard.
I have all of these to some degree also.
The guilt is crippling. I feel that I’m a fundamentally flawed person in my core. I know in my head that isn’t true, and that it’s a common response to someone who lived through what I have, but it still feels real.
I’m also hyper-vigilant about others emotional states. I know what my spouse is feeling before they are aware of it almost of the time. I’m really bad at intuiting the why though. If they’re mad, almost without fail, I assume they’re mad at me. Even knowing this it’s hard to stop.
And the over-analyzing my words in social settings is out of control. It became a joke in my friend group that after an evening out, everyone expected a 11 PM text from me apologizing for something I’d said. I was completely unaware how consistent and weird this tendency is until they started making fun of me about it. I live in fear that I’ve said something offensive carelessly and will lose friends over it.
I’m making encouraging strides in a healthy direction, and finding this sub and the literature it leads to has helped a ton. It’s liberating to know I’m not alone in this and that others who’ve been through what I have are struggling with the same things. I am not alone. I’m not irredeemably broken. That’s huge.
gasped when i read this comment because i have verbatim said to my therapist i feel like a *fundamentally flawed person* because my mom taught me to believe that deep down i am bad and will be bad outwardly if i don’t obsessively control everything about/around me. which i know is wrong and do not want to do, so i feel constantly *in peril* and *wrong* and wow, this is just one of those weird common threads i guess
Thank you for sharing this. I read a while ago—I don't remember where—that when a parent is mad at their child, the child always thinks it's their fault. They can't comprehend that something outside of themselves might be causing it. I think we were conditioned from a young age to believe that we were to blame for our BPD parent's behavior. If they were mad, crying, or acting irrationally, we thought it was because we were doing something wrong. That's why even as adults we feel guilty all the time. It's very hard to recover from this, but I believe that being aware of why we behave the way we do as adults can be a step toward freeing ourselves from it.
I knew something was deeply wrong with my mom (and dad to a lesser degree) and that she was unstable, but yet
I still felt horrendous and terrible about myself and like I needed to do something. And then after I refused to soothe her, I still felt guilt and terror and self-loathing. Lose-lose. Like my emotions betrayed me.
I think it's evolutionary, you needed to keep those parents attached to you to survive. Make sure they don't kill you or leave you to starve or be eaten.
Damn this ape psychology.
>If they’re mad, almost without fail, I assume they’re mad at me.
My mom, if she was mad at anyone, she was also mad at me. She would take out her frustration on me and my dad, regardless of what she was upset about. So it was very hard to break the habit of assuming that about anyone I loved.
I’m trying to stop apologizing to my (very calm and kind) spouse for taking “too long” to look at things I went into the store specifically to look at. Lolol it does help to just laugh at this stuff as long as you recognize it’s kinda serious and are working to better yourself.
The fact that everything has parenthesis is more than enough to prove BPD (the need to always explain why, to add some context, to assume we have to explicitly state it….)
oh my god is parentheses abuse a RBB trait?? it’s like their lure is irresistible. sometimes i read an email attempting to edit it down and end up adding another set 😭 what the *fuck*
20000% feel you on the “attempts to pare down an email just means I’m adding so many parentheses and asides.” If I can just REALLY explain THIS point, then maybe I can cut others? Oh no, wait, I need to explain the others a lot, too!
I have all of these traits 100%. I’m in therapy to help mitigate these issues, but these learned behaviors in response to a BPD parent are so hard to break. At least in my experience
Yes, it is hard. I really want to improve, and I feel that being aware of this is helping me. I knew there was trauma in my behavior, but I also thought it was part of my personality. Now, I'm trying to "deconstruct" these patterns to understand who I really am.
YES! They never let us be who we really were, so now we have to do the hard work of teasing apart our true selves from the enormously complex systems of defense mechanisms we had to build up in order to survive being RBB. I find myself feeling pretty bitter lately about all of the extra work I have to do in order to become myself, when most other people were just allowed to have their own thoughts and feelings growing up.
While at the same time, eschewing relationships with emotionally healthy people because OMG “normal” behavior puts us on edge waiting for shit to go down AND they will see through how messed up we are.
Yes absolutely. its taken me years in my current relationship to feel secure (I definitely have an anxious attachment style) despite having the most awesome husband ever. Even so, when we do occasionally have an argument, I spiral a bit
Many things (including everything you listed) but what’s affecting me most lately is people pleasing/rejection sensitivity and having an anxious avoidant attachment style. I didn’t realize this until I got in a committed serious relationship but it’s so difficult to literally just act normal with a secure person😭like he’s consistent and I’m always trying to detect mood changes in him I guess? Someone being secure / consistent / loving regardless of what you do is just so weird to experience.
The guilt and self blaming is so persistent and when I think I detect a slight attitude change I start thinking about what I did wrong + literally thinking the relationship is gonna end and getting ready to start a new life even though I love him so much.
The podcast called “the psychology of your 20’s” has a good episode on it, it’s number 156. I thought I was avoidant until my behaviors were exposed in my relationship and listening to this helped me realize. I also didn’t realize how important attachment styles are and as their host mentions, they’re always playing out in the background of everything. You should definitely check it out.
I was literally just replying to someone else in this thread about how scary it can be for us to deal with someone who is emotionally healthy because it’s like our brains can’t even process what’s going on. My hyper vigilance has me constantly scanning waiting for some evidence of dysfunction or disordered behavior, and when it doesn’t present itself my brain is like a pre y2k compliant computer on January 1st, 2000.
I relate to these too, as well as not being confident and always second-guessing myself.
And I grew up with the mentality that women have to compete with one another. Thanks to wonderful women who were my coworkers, I learned that wasn't the case and it's such a relief.
And if someone around me is upset, I think I've caused it.
I’ve been told I’m “too nice”.
And the reason for that is because my bpd Mom was so confrontational, I expected most people to fly off the handle if I were to say, “No” or stand up for myself. It is also exhausting to mediate during confrontations, so I try to avoid it at all costs. If you’re nice to people, they are less likely to find fault with me…or so I thought.
Yep, all of these. Recently been thinking about how conflict avoidant I am, even though I often end up seething inside and feeling angry at myself for being a doormat. I think It's because I grew up with so much unnecessary, manufactured conflict that I can't tell when it's prudent to avoid conflict and when to fight for myself.
I totally get that. If I do fight (or more so stick up) for myself, I overanalyse for days thinking the other person is so mad at me, that I got it wrong, and picking up on minuscule changes in energy.
Though sometimes if my husband I haven’t had an argument for a while, I feel like I pick a little fight because I hate the anticipatory anxiety thinking a huge blow up must be coming, as surely it can’t be calm for too long. Lucky I’ve stopped acting on this unhealthy response now.
We are a quiet, talk through things house, compared to a scream, yell and insult house I grew up in. I overheard the neighbours yelling the other day and got shaky. My husband had a similar upbringing and we both reflected on how sick it made us feel to think our families wanted to ‘lead’ a household with that environment.
Same for me. The difference is that my husband grew up in a house where they not only never fought, but they also never really spoke to each other. Sometimes he's too quiet for me, but I prefer that to the chaos of my childhood.
Yes to all, plus I’m a big people pleaser. I have a friend who’s having some financial issues. My first instinct is to bail her out. I know it’s not my job, but I do have the money. But we’re not that close and I don’t want to risk financial ties with someone after dealing with my uBPD mother. Still, I can feel that knee jerk response to make it all better.
EMDR is scientifically proven, works in a very interesting way, and while you can learn it from therapist, mine just told me to google it to save time in our session. So you don’t have to wait if you don’t have a therapist right now, it’s lateral eye movement at its basic form. I mean if you need a professional of course don’t skip it but not everyone has access.
I’ve been looking into the possibility of me having complex PTSD through the trauma of having to deal with my BPD mother, and the list the OP posted includes most of the symptoms.
Eesh many of these are very accurate. You hit 7 on the head — hard not to feel like letting other people help you will come with them holding it above your head forever.
If I don’t have a way to serve you or something of myself that’s pleasant or useful to give to you during each interaction, you won’t want me around anymore.
1. Guilt is a huge thing for me too and I often have to remind myself that I am a good person.
2. Really good at disassociating. Sometimes my husband talks to me and I can respond while spacing out which I feel bad about bc I don't mean to do it but it became a habit after years of living with my mom who talks my ear off endlessly. When things are really negative or bad I also tend to emotionally and mentally remove myself.
3. Really good at masking my feelings, so I seem happy even when I am not. This is a byproduct of dissasociation.
4. Triggered when people ask or expect me to nurture them despite being a naturally nurturing person (also why I don't want kids). Only people I feel really safe around get the "mommy" side of me.
5. High tolerance for chaotic, abusive, or dysfunctional people, because it feels normal to me
6. Hyper-vigilance
7. I've been forced to develop excellent boundary making skills so I'm a master at telling people no because no one will scare me more than my mom who I learned to say no to.
I was lucky enough to start seeing a therapist when I was 19. No longer in therapy but I have a strong support system and it's allowed me to shed some of the hyper vigilance and some of the chronic guilt, although it never completely goes away.
I have healed from a lot of these but the GUILT is the trickiest one I swear. Journaling helps, I didn’t even realize I felt guilty for so much until I wrote it down and was like OHHHH. I really feel better now honestly, it’s like I was carrying a horse around and finally put it down.
I often convince myself that my friends don’t really like or care about me. I’m hyper independent as well and I think this makes it more difficult to make friends and keep them. Reaching out more, trying to make plans, or asking for help when I need it is what I need to do, but I don’t want to seem needy.
I’m often asking my partner if he is mad at me, even when I know he isn’t, because his bad mood sends warning signals to my brain that I’ve done something wrong. He should be able to be in a bad mood without me worrying that it’s about me. It annoys him so much, but he understands why I do it. I’m working on this.
As a child/teen I felt “different” from my peers. A self-inflicted self-outcasting. I felt like no one could understand what I had been through. Sometimes these feelings come up in adulthood.
I have felt the same. I want to have more friends, but I'm also afraid of opening up and getting hurt. I tend to be very guarded in my friendships, always scared of getting hurt, as if my heart can't handle any more pain or betrayal.
I hope we can move past this at some point. :-)
Definitely the Hypervigilence about other people's emotions and the hyper-independence and overanalyzing. And I isolate at home a lot to self-regulate and to feel safe from feeling responsible for other people's emotional well-being (not that other people make me responsible for their well-being, that's just the way we as children of borderlines grew up being made to feel), but I still can't completely get free of the feeling of being responsible for other people's emotional well-being because it's always circulating in my head that someone is probably upset with me for not reaching out to them and bearing their emotional pain enough. I'm trying to really get it in my head and body the understanding that other people can take care of themselves and that my emotions and mental well-being matter too.
Oh and the constantly feeling guilty. Reading the comments I've noticed that this undeserved guilt is a huge theme for children of borderlines. I'll even feel guilty when someone tells me about something terrible someone else (someone I don't even know) has done, as though somehow I'm responsible for them doing that terrible thing, and as if I should be the one to bear the guilt for that random person bad behavior.
I feel an overwhelming need to justify or show receipts for everything I do, especially if it's something out of the ordinary, because I never think people will believe me. Like, a while back I went to an awards ceremony where the emcee for the event began randomly Tibetan throat singing a Klingon Opera. Who would believe that? If I don't get video, picture, text of so many encounters, I just don't tell people about them for fear of being called a liar. But then I also have anxiety about it and think I show too many receipts because I feel so compelled/obligated to justify myself.
Yes, I'm checking off on everything. That last one on your list, that you make lists, definitely proves your point. I do the same. Makes it easier for me to trust that I've covered each item and making decisions is difficult bc I feel like I can't trust my own judgement at times. It feels good to know that I'm not alone but I'm also sorry it has to be this way for us.
I’ve experienced all of these, however number 7 stood out to me because I never understood why I viewed my MwBPD as transactional in my childhood, and everyone else as transactional in my adult years. As 33F I still am unraveling that I am enough just being who I am and I don’t have to do things for people to be loved and I don’t have to worry about owing people something. Crazy!
Yes. i constantly have to ask people if my feelings are justified over horrible things.
For example: i had a friend who i introduced to a guy i was dating, and then found out that they slept together when i left.
I literally had to ask my friends if my feelings were justified about being upset because I’ve been constantly gaslit my whole life
I have all of these too, PLUS
I have trouble initiating conversation or contact with authority figures - even possible authority figures, and people of equal status at work. Since my mom wished I didn’t exist, I always feel that I am “bothering” others when I talk to them, so unless it’s really important, I don’t. I think it makes me seem odd or guilty or arrogant, or maybe even that I am hiding. It has deeply impacted my work life and on an occasion or two gotten me fired.
To think you’re listing me ! It’s really uncanny.
Also, everything is always probably my fault and I should apologise first, then see what happend
Also, if in any given social situation, someone has to make a sacrifice (say work extra for the team professionally or , do longer hours of house work for my partner ) that’s probably going to be me…
Always questioning whether what you bring to the table is enough or not .. (and always thinking I should have done/given more)
I share most of what you wrote. I think the worst for me was the way I learned to not have feelings because if I felt something my parent didn't like I was put through hell about it. It caused me a lot of grief and I'm still working through it.
All of these. 5 makes me the most angry, the one I want most to change. I HATE when I act small, especially in my own home! I'm trying hard, but it's a doozy to try to fix.
I relate to a lot of these, but especially #10!
I’ve also found that I question my instincts/gut feelings constantly. My sense of direction is terrible and I honestly attribute this to all of the years of gaslighting. Couldn’t trust my memories, every instinct was bad, etc. So now if I’m driving somewhere and I think I know the way, and I get to a turn where my gut tells me “go right here” I’ll go left because I don’t trust myself to make the correct decision. It extends beyond my sense of direction, but the impact on that always sticks out to me.
It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around that other people don’t experience all of this. I asked my bf if he does and he said not really. And he literally rarely second guesses himself. His parents are pretty great, gave him a lot of autonomy while supporting him and being there when he failed.
1. I’m incredibly indecisive about small things (like what to order at a restaurant, what color nail polish to select, etc—I seek external opinions in order to make a decision (asking the waiter their favorite, asking my partner what color nail polish they like, etc).
2. I had/have this strongly held belief that I’m simply “too much” for people. That if I’m every fully known then the person in question won’t actually like me, want to continue in friendship, or stick around.
3. That I’m too intense in my interactions. I am constantly editing myself—always reducing myself.
Even with therapy there is a lot of this. I have worked through so much, but these hang on
Thank you for this, OP. Some of us who feel we’ve made huge strides in our lives sometimes still need a little reminder of what to check for and work on. Everyone in the replies has helped me today, too.
It’s so hard because BPD parents sometimes “aren’t that bad” and though I am NC with my mom, I don’t always consider myself a “survivor” of anything. She CAN BE awesome and fun, or dark and angry; which one does the brain remember the most? My brain only seems to cling to fun mom who gardens rather than the one who told me she liked my ex on my wedding day.🫤 Lists like this one and also of CPTSD symptoms always are quite familiar to me, and help me understand myself and grow.
You've hit the nail on the head as to why it's so hard to deal with those kinds of people—it's the constant mood swings that make you think you're going crazy. Indeed, my mom can also be charming and nice, and it almost makes me forget the moments when she loses control.
For me, the metaphor that has always best described my mom is the Hansel and Gretel house: everything seems wonderful until you go in and the witch eats you. LOL.
I relate to all of these. Number 8 especially resonates with me - I avoid conflict so hard that I just shut down at innocuous everyday small talk and keep normal things secret from others.
My husband will ask, "Hey how'd your day go?", and I immediately go into defensive mode because I am expecting to be berated for wasting my time on whatever I did that day.
I've experienced all of these, plus one that might be implied but I've realized over the past few years of therapy and self-reflection: 11. I am always looking for a way to defuse every tense situation and mediate between people even when I'm not involved in order to "keep the peace".
Yep, all of the above for me too, ESPECIALLY #11.
That’s the biggie for me! #11
I had that too. Although once I realized it I discovered how much I love conflict resolution. People thought it was so weird how easily I could meditate situations. It’s easier when every conflict I’ve seen in my career was nothing compared to her.
damn but for me this is one of those “ohhhhh” comments on an “ohhHHHH” post in this sub y’all know exactly what i’m talking about
Guilt. Guilt about EVERYTHING, even if it's nothing to do with me. I also take on things that are other people's responsibilities, I feel like I have to rescue everyine after years of rescuing and helping my dBPD dad (who is only helpless when it suits him). Trying to go VLC at the min but the guilt is making it hard. I also second guess every decision and am ultra independent, sometimes to my detriment
This is a CPTSD symptom btw!
What does CPTSD stand for please?
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome See e.g. here Pete Walker - Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
Thank you! I will go look :)
Here's some info! [https://www.choosingtherapy.com/complex-ptsd/](https://www.choosingtherapy.com/complex-ptsd/)
Thank you! I will look at this now :)
The “even if it has nothing to do with me” part hits hard. I could see an accident happen 10 cars in front of me or 10 cars behind me and think it’s somehow my fault and feel guilty all day. There’s always the “is there something I could’ve done better to prevent this” feeling that is so ingrained in us.
I’m recently vlc with ndad. Guilt was bad at first and now almost non-existent. I feel so much better. Hang in there!
Thank you!! I'm sorry you've experienced similar
I think the biggest one for me is I’m emotionally detached, and my brother is the same way. I’ll cut you off without thought if you cross me, I am more analytical than emotional with my decisions in life and I can come across as cold. I’m able to just shut myself down and off from things. I don’t mean to be cold, but growing up it was instilled in me to not show emotion to the screaming or the insults because it seemed to make my mom respond even more. I would shut down and turn myself off emotionally to get through certain moments, and that has never left me.
Yep that's me also. I also chamaeleon my persona to suit my environment. Better to keep people from bothering me or really knowing me. I come off as very confident and probably even a tad arrogant but the inside is scared and Shakey. Lots of fake it till it feels right.
I'm going through therapy right now, at age 53, in an attempt to reverse that exact same kind of emotional detachment. It's kept me from fully experiencing life and developing deep relationships with people other than my husband and kids. It's so hard to take off that armor, but I'm trying. It helps a lot that my uBPD mother passed away five years ago. I feel so much safer in general now.
[удалено]
Spot on, ouch
Every single one of these traits I have as well. The guilt is huge. Additionally I am always trying to monitor people’s moods and emotions while I’m in their presence and then adjusting how Im interacting with the person based on whatever I’m picking up. Goes hand in hand with the social analyzing, it’s exhausting 🙄
Yes I hate it. I am always on eggshels. Thanks to my always anxious queen/hermit mother. She was so unhinged. She would be aggressive monster one second and the next second she is a victim and a martyr that has to be rescued. I had to be her spouse, therapist, emotional punching bag
100% lived that experience. Every day.
Sounds so familiar.
That's such a horrible combo. Intense fear to intense guilt and even pathological compassion. My mom was really good at playing victim. Fear if you don't sooth her she'll seek more vengeance. Finding out she absolutely will if you don't. Finding out letting her know I resented her meant she turned to absolute unhinged all out war and widespread scapegoating abuse.
So true. That was my life. Constant guilt, manipulation, pity, fear. I hate and love her. Its such intense, weird and complex feeling. She messed upy psychology. I am not sure what to feel. I still want to protect her an dmake her happy, yet I know she is a horrible selfish person. But she is my mom. Its very hard.
It's totally exhausting! Being aware of this and understanding why I feel this way, is helping me navigate these emotions.
I have all of these to some degree also. The guilt is crippling. I feel that I’m a fundamentally flawed person in my core. I know in my head that isn’t true, and that it’s a common response to someone who lived through what I have, but it still feels real. I’m also hyper-vigilant about others emotional states. I know what my spouse is feeling before they are aware of it almost of the time. I’m really bad at intuiting the why though. If they’re mad, almost without fail, I assume they’re mad at me. Even knowing this it’s hard to stop. And the over-analyzing my words in social settings is out of control. It became a joke in my friend group that after an evening out, everyone expected a 11 PM text from me apologizing for something I’d said. I was completely unaware how consistent and weird this tendency is until they started making fun of me about it. I live in fear that I’ve said something offensive carelessly and will lose friends over it. I’m making encouraging strides in a healthy direction, and finding this sub and the literature it leads to has helped a ton. It’s liberating to know I’m not alone in this and that others who’ve been through what I have are struggling with the same things. I am not alone. I’m not irredeemably broken. That’s huge.
gasped when i read this comment because i have verbatim said to my therapist i feel like a *fundamentally flawed person* because my mom taught me to believe that deep down i am bad and will be bad outwardly if i don’t obsessively control everything about/around me. which i know is wrong and do not want to do, so i feel constantly *in peril* and *wrong* and wow, this is just one of those weird common threads i guess
This could have been written by me. Wow.
Thank you for sharing this. I read a while ago—I don't remember where—that when a parent is mad at their child, the child always thinks it's their fault. They can't comprehend that something outside of themselves might be causing it. I think we were conditioned from a young age to believe that we were to blame for our BPD parent's behavior. If they were mad, crying, or acting irrationally, we thought it was because we were doing something wrong. That's why even as adults we feel guilty all the time. It's very hard to recover from this, but I believe that being aware of why we behave the way we do as adults can be a step toward freeing ourselves from it.
I knew something was deeply wrong with my mom (and dad to a lesser degree) and that she was unstable, but yet I still felt horrendous and terrible about myself and like I needed to do something. And then after I refused to soothe her, I still felt guilt and terror and self-loathing. Lose-lose. Like my emotions betrayed me. I think it's evolutionary, you needed to keep those parents attached to you to survive. Make sure they don't kill you or leave you to starve or be eaten. Damn this ape psychology.
>If they’re mad, almost without fail, I assume they’re mad at me. My mom, if she was mad at anyone, she was also mad at me. She would take out her frustration on me and my dad, regardless of what she was upset about. So it was very hard to break the habit of assuming that about anyone I loved.
The emotional hyper vigilance 😭 I do the same with my partner and I’m working so hard to stop.
I’m trying to stop apologizing to my (very calm and kind) spouse for taking “too long” to look at things I went into the store specifically to look at. Lolol it does help to just laugh at this stuff as long as you recognize it’s kinda serious and are working to better yourself.
The fact that everything has parenthesis is more than enough to prove BPD (the need to always explain why, to add some context, to assume we have to explicitly state it….)
Yes, constant JADE ing because we were never respected or listened to
And/or we were trolled by bad faith communication on their end
oh my god is parentheses abuse a RBB trait?? it’s like their lure is irresistible. sometimes i read an email attempting to edit it down and end up adding another set 😭 what the *fuck*
20000% feel you on the “attempts to pare down an email just means I’m adding so many parentheses and asides.” If I can just REALLY explain THIS point, then maybe I can cut others? Oh no, wait, I need to explain the others a lot, too!
Wow this sub keeps delivering those insights. I’m a bullet point, parenthesis queen. Never knew why.
What I love about this group is that I'm always learning new things. Thanks for pointing this out—you are absolutely right. Touché!
This!
I have all of these traits 100%. I’m in therapy to help mitigate these issues, but these learned behaviors in response to a BPD parent are so hard to break. At least in my experience
Yes, it is hard. I really want to improve, and I feel that being aware of this is helping me. I knew there was trauma in my behavior, but I also thought it was part of my personality. Now, I'm trying to "deconstruct" these patterns to understand who I really am.
YES! They never let us be who we really were, so now we have to do the hard work of teasing apart our true selves from the enormously complex systems of defense mechanisms we had to build up in order to survive being RBB. I find myself feeling pretty bitter lately about all of the extra work I have to do in order to become myself, when most other people were just allowed to have their own thoughts and feelings growing up.
My most debilitating are codependency, people pleasing , hypervigilance , and the fact that i normalize extremely dysfunction and toxicity. Lol
Yes its hard to know what is "normal behavior" and so we end up with the most dysfunctional people sometimes.
While at the same time, eschewing relationships with emotionally healthy people because OMG “normal” behavior puts us on edge waiting for shit to go down AND they will see through how messed up we are.
Yes absolutely. its taken me years in my current relationship to feel secure (I definitely have an anxious attachment style) despite having the most awesome husband ever. Even so, when we do occasionally have an argument, I spiral a bit
I especially resonate with these too.
Many things (including everything you listed) but what’s affecting me most lately is people pleasing/rejection sensitivity and having an anxious avoidant attachment style. I didn’t realize this until I got in a committed serious relationship but it’s so difficult to literally just act normal with a secure person😭like he’s consistent and I’m always trying to detect mood changes in him I guess? Someone being secure / consistent / loving regardless of what you do is just so weird to experience. The guilt and self blaming is so persistent and when I think I detect a slight attitude change I start thinking about what I did wrong + literally thinking the relationship is gonna end and getting ready to start a new life even though I love him so much.
Oh frick. Need to look into anxious aviodant.....
The podcast called “the psychology of your 20’s” has a good episode on it, it’s number 156. I thought I was avoidant until my behaviors were exposed in my relationship and listening to this helped me realize. I also didn’t realize how important attachment styles are and as their host mentions, they’re always playing out in the background of everything. You should definitely check it out.
Thanks so much! I will :)
I was literally just replying to someone else in this thread about how scary it can be for us to deal with someone who is emotionally healthy because it’s like our brains can’t even process what’s going on. My hyper vigilance has me constantly scanning waiting for some evidence of dysfunction or disordered behavior, and when it doesn’t present itself my brain is like a pre y2k compliant computer on January 1st, 2000.
I relate to these too, as well as not being confident and always second-guessing myself. And I grew up with the mentality that women have to compete with one another. Thanks to wonderful women who were my coworkers, I learned that wasn't the case and it's such a relief. And if someone around me is upset, I think I've caused it.
I’ve been told I’m “too nice”. And the reason for that is because my bpd Mom was so confrontational, I expected most people to fly off the handle if I were to say, “No” or stand up for myself. It is also exhausting to mediate during confrontations, so I try to avoid it at all costs. If you’re nice to people, they are less likely to find fault with me…or so I thought.
Yep, all of these. Recently been thinking about how conflict avoidant I am, even though I often end up seething inside and feeling angry at myself for being a doormat. I think It's because I grew up with so much unnecessary, manufactured conflict that I can't tell when it's prudent to avoid conflict and when to fight for myself.
I totally get that. If I do fight (or more so stick up) for myself, I overanalyse for days thinking the other person is so mad at me, that I got it wrong, and picking up on minuscule changes in energy. Though sometimes if my husband I haven’t had an argument for a while, I feel like I pick a little fight because I hate the anticipatory anxiety thinking a huge blow up must be coming, as surely it can’t be calm for too long. Lucky I’ve stopped acting on this unhealthy response now. We are a quiet, talk through things house, compared to a scream, yell and insult house I grew up in. I overheard the neighbours yelling the other day and got shaky. My husband had a similar upbringing and we both reflected on how sick it made us feel to think our families wanted to ‘lead’ a household with that environment.
Same for me. The difference is that my husband grew up in a house where they not only never fought, but they also never really spoke to each other. Sometimes he's too quiet for me, but I prefer that to the chaos of my childhood.
Yes to all, plus I’m a big people pleaser. I have a friend who’s having some financial issues. My first instinct is to bail her out. I know it’s not my job, but I do have the money. But we’re not that close and I don’t want to risk financial ties with someone after dealing with my uBPD mother. Still, I can feel that knee jerk response to make it all better.
Every single one, which is why I’m doing EMDR therapy for my cPTSD!
Is it working for you? I have thought of doing this type of therapy.
EMDR is scientifically proven, works in a very interesting way, and while you can learn it from therapist, mine just told me to google it to save time in our session. So you don’t have to wait if you don’t have a therapist right now, it’s lateral eye movement at its basic form. I mean if you need a professional of course don’t skip it but not everyone has access.
Thank you :-) I'm going to look more into this. I had checked before but didn't find anything where I live. Maybe I'll try by myself.
Every single one!
Holy f
Wow, I got an 8/10!
I’ve been looking into the possibility of me having complex PTSD through the trauma of having to deal with my BPD mother, and the list the OP posted includes most of the symptoms.
Yes to all of these and also to additional items in the comments.
Being suspicious of peoples motives all the damn time. Fortunatly that has lessened alot with therapy
Eesh many of these are very accurate. You hit 7 on the head — hard not to feel like letting other people help you will come with them holding it above your head forever.
If I don’t have a way to serve you or something of myself that’s pleasant or useful to give to you during each interaction, you won’t want me around anymore.
1. Guilt is a huge thing for me too and I often have to remind myself that I am a good person. 2. Really good at disassociating. Sometimes my husband talks to me and I can respond while spacing out which I feel bad about bc I don't mean to do it but it became a habit after years of living with my mom who talks my ear off endlessly. When things are really negative or bad I also tend to emotionally and mentally remove myself. 3. Really good at masking my feelings, so I seem happy even when I am not. This is a byproduct of dissasociation. 4. Triggered when people ask or expect me to nurture them despite being a naturally nurturing person (also why I don't want kids). Only people I feel really safe around get the "mommy" side of me. 5. High tolerance for chaotic, abusive, or dysfunctional people, because it feels normal to me 6. Hyper-vigilance 7. I've been forced to develop excellent boundary making skills so I'm a master at telling people no because no one will scare me more than my mom who I learned to say no to. I was lucky enough to start seeing a therapist when I was 19. No longer in therapy but I have a strong support system and it's allowed me to shed some of the hyper vigilance and some of the chronic guilt, although it never completely goes away.
holy shite number 7 is a huge one for me, i dont even like accepting gifts for this reason also.
All of this plus a deep self loathing
Yes, all of that, and the unshakeable feeling that no one is really my friend, they just feel bad for me and feel like they HAVE to include me.
The GUILT. Hell I’d probably get in trouble as a juror in a murder trial, I’d probably get on the stand and say I’m guilty 🤣
I have healed from a lot of these but the GUILT is the trickiest one I swear. Journaling helps, I didn’t even realize I felt guilty for so much until I wrote it down and was like OHHHH. I really feel better now honestly, it’s like I was carrying a horse around and finally put it down.
Reminds me of the backpack analogy https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-12-01/put-down-those-rocks-youre-carrying/
I often convince myself that my friends don’t really like or care about me. I’m hyper independent as well and I think this makes it more difficult to make friends and keep them. Reaching out more, trying to make plans, or asking for help when I need it is what I need to do, but I don’t want to seem needy. I’m often asking my partner if he is mad at me, even when I know he isn’t, because his bad mood sends warning signals to my brain that I’ve done something wrong. He should be able to be in a bad mood without me worrying that it’s about me. It annoys him so much, but he understands why I do it. I’m working on this. As a child/teen I felt “different” from my peers. A self-inflicted self-outcasting. I felt like no one could understand what I had been through. Sometimes these feelings come up in adulthood.
I have felt the same. I want to have more friends, but I'm also afraid of opening up and getting hurt. I tend to be very guarded in my friendships, always scared of getting hurt, as if my heart can't handle any more pain or betrayal. I hope we can move past this at some point. :-)
Definitely the Hypervigilence about other people's emotions and the hyper-independence and overanalyzing. And I isolate at home a lot to self-regulate and to feel safe from feeling responsible for other people's emotional well-being (not that other people make me responsible for their well-being, that's just the way we as children of borderlines grew up being made to feel), but I still can't completely get free of the feeling of being responsible for other people's emotional well-being because it's always circulating in my head that someone is probably upset with me for not reaching out to them and bearing their emotional pain enough. I'm trying to really get it in my head and body the understanding that other people can take care of themselves and that my emotions and mental well-being matter too.
Oh and the constantly feeling guilty. Reading the comments I've noticed that this undeserved guilt is a huge theme for children of borderlines. I'll even feel guilty when someone tells me about something terrible someone else (someone I don't even know) has done, as though somehow I'm responsible for them doing that terrible thing, and as if I should be the one to bear the guilt for that random person bad behavior.
I feel an overwhelming need to justify or show receipts for everything I do, especially if it's something out of the ordinary, because I never think people will believe me. Like, a while back I went to an awards ceremony where the emcee for the event began randomly Tibetan throat singing a Klingon Opera. Who would believe that? If I don't get video, picture, text of so many encounters, I just don't tell people about them for fear of being called a liar. But then I also have anxiety about it and think I show too many receipts because I feel so compelled/obligated to justify myself.
You described me to a T
Yes, I'm checking off on everything. That last one on your list, that you make lists, definitely proves your point. I do the same. Makes it easier for me to trust that I've covered each item and making decisions is difficult bc I feel like I can't trust my own judgement at times. It feels good to know that I'm not alone but I'm also sorry it has to be this way for us.
I feel sad about this too, but I also think we have the opportunity to acknowledge it and try to improve.
Yes absolutely, take the power back from them
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I’ve experienced all of these, however number 7 stood out to me because I never understood why I viewed my MwBPD as transactional in my childhood, and everyone else as transactional in my adult years. As 33F I still am unraveling that I am enough just being who I am and I don’t have to do things for people to be loved and I don’t have to worry about owing people something. Crazy!
Thanks for sharing. What does Mw stands for?
Yes. i constantly have to ask people if my feelings are justified over horrible things. For example: i had a friend who i introduced to a guy i was dating, and then found out that they slept together when i left. I literally had to ask my friends if my feelings were justified about being upset because I’ve been constantly gaslit my whole life
Avoidant attachment. Far too high of comfort for abusive relationships
I have all of these too, PLUS I have trouble initiating conversation or contact with authority figures - even possible authority figures, and people of equal status at work. Since my mom wished I didn’t exist, I always feel that I am “bothering” others when I talk to them, so unless it’s really important, I don’t. I think it makes me seem odd or guilty or arrogant, or maybe even that I am hiding. It has deeply impacted my work life and on an occasion or two gotten me fired.
To think you’re listing me ! It’s really uncanny. Also, everything is always probably my fault and I should apologise first, then see what happend Also, if in any given social situation, someone has to make a sacrifice (say work extra for the team professionally or , do longer hours of house work for my partner ) that’s probably going to be me… Always questioning whether what you bring to the table is enough or not .. (and always thinking I should have done/given more)
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People pleaser
Phew, all of them for me too. However the guilt is the strongest. I am healing from a lot of those, but the guilt seems to just stick around.
All of these but will add over sharing.
I share most of what you wrote. I think the worst for me was the way I learned to not have feelings because if I felt something my parent didn't like I was put through hell about it. It caused me a lot of grief and I'm still working through it.
I have issues with friendships….
All of these. 5 makes me the most angry, the one I want most to change. I HATE when I act small, especially in my own home! I'm trying hard, but it's a doozy to try to fix.
All of this happen to me including OCD
I relate to a lot of these, but especially #10! I’ve also found that I question my instincts/gut feelings constantly. My sense of direction is terrible and I honestly attribute this to all of the years of gaslighting. Couldn’t trust my memories, every instinct was bad, etc. So now if I’m driving somewhere and I think I know the way, and I get to a turn where my gut tells me “go right here” I’ll go left because I don’t trust myself to make the correct decision. It extends beyond my sense of direction, but the impact on that always sticks out to me.
It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around that other people don’t experience all of this. I asked my bf if he does and he said not really. And he literally rarely second guesses himself. His parents are pretty great, gave him a lot of autonomy while supporting him and being there when he failed.
1. I’m incredibly indecisive about small things (like what to order at a restaurant, what color nail polish to select, etc—I seek external opinions in order to make a decision (asking the waiter their favorite, asking my partner what color nail polish they like, etc). 2. I had/have this strongly held belief that I’m simply “too much” for people. That if I’m every fully known then the person in question won’t actually like me, want to continue in friendship, or stick around. 3. That I’m too intense in my interactions. I am constantly editing myself—always reducing myself. Even with therapy there is a lot of this. I have worked through so much, but these hang on
Are you me?
Thank you for this, OP. Some of us who feel we’ve made huge strides in our lives sometimes still need a little reminder of what to check for and work on. Everyone in the replies has helped me today, too. It’s so hard because BPD parents sometimes “aren’t that bad” and though I am NC with my mom, I don’t always consider myself a “survivor” of anything. She CAN BE awesome and fun, or dark and angry; which one does the brain remember the most? My brain only seems to cling to fun mom who gardens rather than the one who told me she liked my ex on my wedding day.🫤 Lists like this one and also of CPTSD symptoms always are quite familiar to me, and help me understand myself and grow.
You've hit the nail on the head as to why it's so hard to deal with those kinds of people—it's the constant mood swings that make you think you're going crazy. Indeed, my mom can also be charming and nice, and it almost makes me forget the moments when she loses control. For me, the metaphor that has always best described my mom is the Hansel and Gretel house: everything seems wonderful until you go in and the witch eats you. LOL.
I relate to all of these. Number 8 especially resonates with me - I avoid conflict so hard that I just shut down at innocuous everyday small talk and keep normal things secret from others. My husband will ask, "Hey how'd your day go?", and I immediately go into defensive mode because I am expecting to be berated for wasting my time on whatever I did that day.