Trigger warning: symptoms of childhood neglect.

I’m really interested in knowing what other sufferers of BPD/ EUPD experience in terms of symptoms and if anyone else suffers from talking to themselves/dissociating. From what I’ve read the symptoms are vast.

I have a variety of symptoms but I’d say the one that literally keeps me from wanting to leave the house or meet new people is my dissociation and talking to myself. I first started to dissociate and talk to myself as a kid, I was lonely, bullied by my peers and ignored by my family. I spent so much time alone that I started to fantasise about other worlds where I was happy and loved and had friends and did things outside of the house. These other worlds were such a comfort to me and took me away from my sad reality.

As I got older I would go to these worlds all the time and when I was forced into reality by having to talk to people I would be eager to go home so I could sit in my room and drift into my own personal world of joy. Now as a woman in my 30s my dissociation scares me, I lose time, I don’t know how I got home, I can’t recall a conversation that just happened or if I paid for the food I just left the supermarket with. I dissociate whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed or distressed, it just so happens that I am overwhelmed and distressed at simply leaving the house and being in social settings. I talk to myself and “act out” whatever I am playing out in my mind. When I come out of it, the people around me are shocked and look unnerved as you would if someone you were with started talking to themselves with their eyes glazed over. I have no control over it.

I desperately want to be able to build healthy friendships and intimate relationships but this behaviour has people running for the hills. The friends I do have currently, will never discuss this issue with me, no matter how much I try to explain that I don’t have any awareness of what I’m actually doing. I’ve only caught myself making the weird faces or talking to myself on a few occasions, usually I’m present then I’m not then I’m present again and thinking what the f*** just happened.

I don’t know why my current friends aren’t able to tell me what I’m doing or snap me out of it, I can only assume that it is so disturbing to them that it is easier for them to just see it as a thing that I do sometimes and that it’s better to not raise it as an issue to save my feelings. However, this does scare me even more. I feel like I’d at least have awareness of exactly whats going on when I do dissociate so that I can feel more control or at least be able to better explain to new people when I do meet them.

I always have a way of ruining precious moments with my loved one. One second, it is smiles and heartfelt kisses. The next - I am voice raised, knee deep into an argument that has no direction or purpose.

Is this me pushing away? Because deep down, I ... We ... do not actually want to push. Maybe it is seeing red, maybe it is subconscious.

I am still trying to figure it all out.

Sincerely,