Mood Swings™

She convinced me love was stifled sobs and chest pains

As sufferers of bpd, the fear of abandonment is a very prominent aspect in our lives, even when irrational. Sufferers of bpd will go to great lengths to prevent perceived abandonment. So how do you cope when the fear turns into a reality?

Natural Coping Mechanisms:

Splitting - Very common in cluster b personality disorders. This is when you go from idealizing something to completely devaluing it. It is particularly common in bpd when abandonment is perceived because devaluing the person leaving you causes you less pain. It doesn’t hurt so much if you hate them.

Detachment - Dissociation, although inconvenient, is a coping mechanism. If you experience an intense enough emotion, you will probably disconnect from your feelings. This protects you from the full intensity of how you feel, but probably won’t last forever.

Regression - You may go into what is known as child mode. This involves going into the mindstate of another age.

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms:

Begging them to take you back - DO NOT! This is the worst thing to do! if they left you, they do not care about you and are not worth your time. No matter how much you want to go back to them and you miss them and ‘need’ them, don’t go back to them. They’re not worth it!

Stalking - This will just hurt you more. They are not worth your time and effort and you will probably see them being happy without you and this will cause further obsession and harmful feelings. It will only hurt you. Also, it’s kinda creepy.

Risky behaviour - A very common coping mechanism for those with bpd is putting themselves in dangerous situations. This is not worth it and can result very badly. This involves self-harm, suicide attempts, drinking, random sex, etc. It’s not worth it. Please talk to a friend or seek help if you feel the urge to do this.

Avoidance - It may seem like an appealing idea to avoid everyone in order to not be abandoned again, but you will essentially be abandoning the entire world. It will be lonely and hard and is not worth it. There are people out there who will really care about you and be good for you. Those people are worth it.

Dwelling on them - The more you think about them, the more likely you are to feel sad and build them up in your mind into someone they’re not. It’s better to cut contact for a while and remove reminders of them from your surroundings. It hurts less until you’re ready to face it.

Self-blame - You may blame yourself for them leaving. You may think it’s because you’re not good enough, you’re too much, not enough, etc. Don’t listen to those thoughts as they are untrue. They left of their own decision. If they had a valid reason for leaving (e.g. they were getting drained, they’re not in love with you anymore) then look at the reason, assess whether or not it’s true. You can get friends or family to help you decide. And then start your thoughts process. Either better yourself, or don’t. But don’t blame yourself or start self-hate.

Healthy Coping Mechanisms:

Giving yourself time - The most important thing is to let yourself be sad and grieve for a while. It will hurt for a long time, even if you split or detach, the emotions will crash on you eventually. So, remember not to be too hard on yourself and to let yourself be sad.

Venting - Use any support systems available and talk to someone about how you feel, whether it’s a crisis line, therapist, a trusted tumblr blog, or a friend. Just get your feelings out and share the pain. You are not burdening people, you are not being annoying. Your feelings are valid and deserve to be recognised.

Look at things that will help you get through -  Write down a list of all your personal strengths, attributes, and character traits that will get you through being abandoned. Write down a list of people and outside resources that you can turn to. Then turn to them

Focusing on bettering current relationships - Strong support systems are a vital foundation to make you feel better and friends and family make pretty good distractions (or new favorite people). Try and strengthen communication, go out with a friend, or whatever.

Focusing on bettering and taking care of yourself - Take up a new hobby, go out, meet people, get a pet! Do whatever it takes to fill the void and distract yourself! Also focus on your current needs and try your best not to fall into a pit of self-loathing and depression. It will be especially hard for the first few weeks/months to get back on your feet and ready to care for yourself, but if staying in bed and crying helps you to feel better, then that’s fine. Just don’t fall into bad habits. 

Self-fulfillment - often people use relationships to fulfill what they can’t do for themselves. They can use them to feel special, wanted, useful, valid, etc. A useful thing in life is to be able to serve your own needs and become as independent as possible. Do things to make yourself feel special, take yourself out to dinner, tell yourself nice things even if you don’t believe them. 

Remove reminders of them - being confronted with reminders of someone you love can be painful and hard. Remove all reminders of your ex favorite person and ask your friends not to talk about them. Or to remind you of all their negative aspects.

Yes, these seem like a lot of the ‘neurotypical rubbish’ we often see, but sometimes that shit works.