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@therapythoughtstogether
Update on my situation - I'm safe now!
Pinning this because kind strangers who come across some of my older posts are still concerned about me 🥺
This gif represents me hugging (if that's ok) each of you who has showed me support in the distance, who has prayed for me, sent good vibes, positive thoughts, sent asks helping me not to give up, etc.
I have you all in my heart and in my thoughts and I wish that life treats you kindly. The world is a better place because of you all 💫.
I go through periods of feeling like an absolute invincible divinity who can do anything and everything they set their mind to and also feeling like the most incapable, helpless being who struggles to even set foot outside or keep on existing.
I feel so guilty about this...
I've been called "lazy" and a "waste of talent", and someone who has "degraded" by someone I loved more than anything at that point (and by others as well).
In reality I was struggling and crying for help.
Anxiety and OCD challenges
I left my phone at the Pilates place and I choose to stay several days without a phone rather than going back there looking "stupid" and "bothering people".
I do use the web version of the messengers I have, so it's not that I was fully disconnected from the world. But this really shows how bad my social anxiety and other issues can be at times. How debilitating and really getting in the way of normal life...
At least starting Pilates in person again was huge. It was a huge step anxiety wise, body dysmorphia wise (omg, I kept on comparing myself to all those gorgeous fit women over there, even though I got compliments on my performance and looks, but my disordered brain couldn't help it) but also OCD speaking...I could "see" germs everywhere tbh...but I'm just being very diligent hygiene wise and really pushing through.
Your last post has been really helpful for me. I too find comfort and guidance in the aesthetic even though it's harmful. But your examples have inspired me to be more alert to the negative qualities and to take the harmless elements and use them to help myself. Also to just take baby steps. I have no confidence. I used to love dresses etc but feel caged in by my own inner voice and the idea of perception from other people. I don't have long hair anymore which gave me confidence. But I feel inspired to thrift one dress that I like thanks to you. Just one small step. Also I sorted out my underwear and got fitted properly it's helped my posture and self confidence a lot. I don't know if this would help you too as a starting point
This message made my day!!!
I left my phone at the Pilates place and I was honestly too shy to go back between classes (I felt "stupid" and I did't want to "bother people" 😭) so coming back to such a lovely message really brightened my day.
You are so brave for taking those steps to take care of yourself again 🥺💜
I've been experimenting with clothes too! Mostly hand-me-down dresses and other styles that I wouldn't have bought myself but I'm very thankful for and has helped me to discover new things that I happen to like! It made me really want to start thrifting again, and it's huge because of my OCD (the germ phobia is the part I currently struggle the most with, sometimes it's debilitating).
Oh, and I got new scented candles today.
Wishing you all the best!!
Watching triggering content...again...
TW ED talk, mentions of trauma and PTSD
This blog has helped me to stay alive ✨
I just wanted to send love to everyone who has ever kept me in their thoughts and has believed in me, helping me not to give up in the darkest times.
I know I will always struggle mentally to some extent. I will never be "normal". But as I have decided to stay, my goal is not to be tortured by my own mind 24/7, stop allowing others to hurt me, stop hurting myself and experience beautiful things, even if I go through darkness.
I hope you are all safe and have the necessary environment, resources, energy and all that you need to heal and be the best you can be, as ok as you can be. And I hope you feel loved.
I regularly binge but then I get out of the cycle through just sheer disgust with the food now. Like I binged on crisps so much I now can't stand them. Now it's one less thing to binge. I try breaking the cycle if I can by swapping a binge meal for a healthy one for a limited time then swap in a second one etc. I go slow though like maybe a couple of weeks at a time. I can't go cold turkey. It's also totally hard. If I go slow and just gradually introduce a filling healthy meal instead of a binge into my routine then it's easier to fall into a healthy eating period eventually. I also try and practise mindfulness by grounding myself (you can Google tips) because the binging is fueled by a feeling of being out of control, like I'm airborne. I can't describe it. It's like I'm on the edge of a cliff and I have to slowly crawl back by grounding myself and taking baby steps to establish a routine. If you're recovering from trauma I think makes it so hard to try and pick yourself up again. I feel like I'm failing putting myself back together.
I cannot even express how thankful I am for you sharing your experience! I understand exactly what you mean, you don't have to explain further. It's like we have the same shared collective experience.
I remember being absolutely disgusted by creamed corn when I was just about 10 years old...it hurts to even type it out. I binged on it hard just before going to school and I was curled up in a ball crying on the kitchen floor because my stomach hurt so much. I haven't had creamed corn ever since.
Now I have kind of a aversion to most really sweet desserts because I used to binge on them so hard. I was binging on crisps hard-core for the past two weeks, and even tough I didn't develop an aversion to them (looks like my love for potatoes and savoury snacks wins) I just don't crave them at the moment (I know that won't last though) and I do feel disgusted by greasy food in general. So I'm trying to reduce the oil and fat in my cooking.
The feeling of being out of control...I feel like I am "possessed". Like I'm on the passenger's seat and someone or "something" took over the wheel. It's like witnessing my own self destruction and not being able to do anything about it.
I'm back at starting my days with a glass of water, a cup matcha, the light of a a scented candle and journaling. When I'm able to get a mat I'll go back to gentle stretches and build up to doing yoga again. It helps me ground myself more like in a preventive way. In hopes that I can prevent future binges or at least reduce the frequency and intensity of them.
When I'm in the middle of a binge it's almost impossible for me to stop. Even though I have managed not to binge for the whole day lately. Like I've had binges in the morning and managed to remind myself that my whole day isn't "ruined" even if I exceeded the amount of calories I had planed to consume for the day.
I'm also trying to allow myself to have what I crave in moderation, but with someone with my history of eating disorders, moderation is extremely hard. It seems impossible sometimes. It's all or nothing for me...but I'm trying.
~Sending you hugs and love, I hope you heal, and thanks so much again for sharing 💜💜💜 You made me feel less alone, and I'm sure other people who come across this may feel the same way.
TW BED talk
Hoping to hear other people's experiences and ways to cope 💜
Struggling badly with my EDs
As the title suggests, TW for ED (Binge-Restrict) and weight gain discussion
You're still healing be patient and kind to yourself
🫂🫂🫂
I needed to hear this today 🥺😭
Thank you for your kindness, that helps me to be kinder to myself.
Sending hugs and love your way ✨
bpd feels like you’re constantly begging for affection because normal amounts of affection doesn’t feel like enough
So relatable 😭
I've cried multiple times yesterday, because the flashbacks kept on coming.
And my phone decided to show me the most painful photo memories. I deleted a bunch of photos. Seeing one of my trigger people/abusers' photos while I'm just trying to go about my day doesn't seem to be great for my healing process...
It seems like nothing and no one can fill the void in my chest, the eternal emptiness I've felt for so long...
I wonder if that will ever change.
Intimacy is not just about sex. It's having heart-to-hearts, staying up all night talking, sharing childhood memories, thoughts, fears, dreams & hopes for the future. It's uncontrollable laughter, direct eye contact and feeling each other without touching - it's exchanging energy
I love all forms of intimacy when it feels safe to open up ✨
how do i deal with crippling jealousy? the type triggered by your fp having a fun time without you.
Jealousy can be a very difficult emotion to deal with even for most people, with or without BPD (though the intensity or duration of that intensity is much more extreme for people who have BPD). In DBT, we’re taught to deal with unwanted emotions in a variety of ways, but the “best way” in the eyes of many therapists (and many patients who have mastered the skill I’m about to talk about) is through an Emotion Regulation Skill called Opposite Action.
1. What is Opposite Action?
Opposite Action, at its core, is pretty much just what it sounds like. You use the Opposite Action Skill when your emotions do not fit the facts (see Check the Facts post, and well as Method 1 and Method 2 to help determine if your emotion–or its intensity or duration–fits the facts). You also use Opposite Action when your emotion does fit the facts but it would be ineffective to act on it.
By acting opposite of what your emotions are urging you to do, you are able to change your emotional reactions and possibly your emotional state in the process.
You usually use Opposite Action after first using Check the Facts, a skill that helps you determine whether your problem emotion is justified or not. If your jealousy isn’t warranted or is ineffective (which is what it sounds like in your ask) then you would use the Opposite Action Skill. If your jealous is warranted, then you would use the Problem Solving Skill (link coming soon).
Opposite Action is a fairly straightforward skill but most DBT therapists consider it to be the most difficult skill to master because it requires you to do the exact opposite of what your feelings or thoughts are telling you to do, which often feels unnatural, not genuine/dishonest, or uncomfortable. It’s not always easy, so sometimes it’s best to start small.
2. When does Jealousy “Fit the Facts”?
So, just to let everyone know, the Manual says that Jealousy “fits the facts” of a situation when:
Someone is threatening to take away a very important and desired relationship or object away from you.
An important and desired relationship is in danger of being damaged or lost
(Honestly there are a lot more legitimate feelings for jealousy, but these are the ones DBT focuses on.)
If feelings of jealousy are not justified by the facts or are not effective, you would then use Opposite Action.
3. Opposite Actions for Jealousy
Opposite Actions for Jealousy can include (but are not limited to) the following:
Do the opposite of your jealous action urges (usually specific to the situation causing your jealousy)
Let go of feeling the need to control others’ actions (such as wanting to control who your FP has fun with)
Share the things and people you have in your life.
Distract yourself from your jealousy by doing something you enjoy (even with other people) and allow yourself to have fun without your FP as well, hopefully teaching yourself that you both can have fun without needing to be together for that fun to be positive. Remember, don’t do this to make your FP jealous in response. This involves letting go of pettiness or vengeful feelings.
4. Opposite Action “All the Way”
There’s another “level” of sorts when it comes to Opposite Action (you can look at it like “leveling up”). The following kinds of Opposite Action are called “All The Way Opposite Action”:
Suppress your need to ask your FP (or whoever is the subject of your jealousy) where they were, who they were with, if they like those people better than they like you, etc. That kind of behaviour can get controlling very quickly, so completely resist the urge to do so. (Remember, this applies ONLY IF YOUR JEALOUSY DOES NOT FIT THE FACTS! If you have a valid reason to be jealous, it makes sense to ask these sorts of questions because you’re accurately assessing a threat.)
No avoiding. If you’re with the people who make you feel jealous, rather than withdrawing, you should engage while keeping your eyes open and be Mindfully Observing while Participating in the moment. Observing will help you hopefully see the interaction Non-Judgmentally rather than viewing things with jealousy-tinted lenses.
Change your posture. Jealousy can make us feel very tense and sometimes nervous and sometimes aggressive so to the following things to change your posture: a) Unclench your hands and adopt a Willing Hands posture, b) Relax chest and stomach muscles through Progressive Muscle Relaxation, c) Unclench teeth, d) Relax facial muscles and adopt a Half-Smile
Change your body chemistry by using TIP, especially the Tempterature part to bring down emotional intensity and the Paced Breathing part, to control your breathing and feel calmer and less threatened.
5. Jealousy Vs. Envy
Now, Jealousy and Envy are often confused, so while it sounds to me like you’re experiencing jealousy, it might be beneficial for other followers to give a short breakdown of what Envy is:
Envy fits the facts when another person or group has what you want or need but don’t have.
The Opposite Actions for Envy is based around on “counting your blessings” and doing things to stop you from feeling resentful or bitter towards people who have what you want or need, as well as Checking the Facts to see if they really have so much more than you. (They might. There are lots of cases where certain people might have much more than you and that’s part of living in an inherently unequal society.)
6. What to do When Opposite Action Takes Too Many Spoons or Doesn’t Work for You
Back, to Jealousy, if Opposite Action is takes up too many spoons, or you’re just not in the right psychological place to try working against your jealousy, or the examples of Opposite Action for jealousy don’t really help you (which is totally possible, I feel that way about most of the Opposite Action pages of the DBT Manual), then I have one more skill I can suggest:
Radical Acceptance/Reality Acknowledgement
Reality Acknowledgement, as I like to call it, is a Distress Tolerance Skill that you use when you cannot change your feeling/situation/consequences/etc yet fighting against that reality is ineffective and may just cause you more suffering.
This is especially useful when you’re dealing with overwhelming jealousy and the situation you’re jealous about is not one that you can change. Ultimately, if Opposite Action doesn’t work, you’ll have to learn how to live with your jealousy–which is not an easy thing. Learning to live with an emotion that you don’t like but you have no ability to make it go away is very tough, but Radical Acceptance/Reality Acknowledgement can help you come to terms with these emotions that might be inspiring feelings of self-depreciation or self-hatred inside you for feeling them at all.
Here are some links of posts I’ve previously written about Reality Acknowledgement:
What is Radical Acceptance/Reality Acknowledgement?
How to Practice Reality Acknowledgement
Turning the Mind
It also helps to be Mindful when practicing Reality Acknowledgement. Use your Wise Mind: is it Effective to feel jealous over this? Is this jealousy helping you in any way? You can use Mindfulness Skills to help you to Observe and Describe the situation in a Non-Judgmental way, thereby hopefully removing a lot of the assumptions and/or judgements you might be making about the situation or people who are making you jealous. Try to focus on the present moment that you’re in, rather than get sucked into “What if” thinking that focuses on the future or on events that you don’t have any first-hand knowledge of.
(Such as “What if my FP is having so much fun without me because my FP is venting about how terrible I am and they’re having fun laughing at me.” That’s an example of catastrophic thinking–not saying this is something you personally are thinking–and the reason it’s catastrophic thinking is because you have no proof that anything like that is happening at all, but it’s a thought that would absolutely make you feel worse if you were thinking it.)
While being Mindful and accessing your Wise Mind, you can experience the emotion of jealousy like a wave, a wave that comes over you, peaks, and then recedes. (This is called “Mindfulness of Current Emotions” and is a component of Emotion Regulation.) Experience the jealousy you feel as an undeniable part of the present moment, but not a permanent one, and not an emotion you need to push away. Just allow yourself to experience it and let the emotion run its course without clinging to it or pushing it away–because not allowing your emotions to run their natural course often makes them worse.
7. When all Else Fails:
a) Communicate. Communicate with your FP that you feel jealous and why. All healthy relationships are founded on solid and honest communication. Just be honest, not with any intention of coercing them to change their behaviour or stop doing what’s making you jealous, but be honest with the hope of having a conversation where both of you can clarify how you feel and result in reassurance or even a compromise. It’s always important to be open with special people in our lives about our emotional states–this helps mitigate splitting and withdrawal/isolation and fear of abandonment.
b) The other thing you can do after opening up about feeling jealous and after working to accept that your FP’s actions are their own choices that you can’t control, you can look into Distress Tolerance Skills. Jealousy can be an awful emotion to feel. It can also use up a lot of spoons, which you may not have had a lot of in the first place. To replenish spoons as well as mitigate the effects the worst of your jealousy, Distress Tolerance Skills are the best skills for this. Some DBT Distress Tolerance Skills that might be relevant are:
STOP: Stop, Take a step back, Observe, Proceed Mindfully
TIP: Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing/Paired Muscle Relaxation/Progressive Muscle Relaxation (used to change your level of distress quickly)
Distract using Wise Mind ACCEPTS: Distract yourself with Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Pushing away, Thoughts, Sensations
Self-Soothe: Use the senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch) to soothe your physical self in order to make your emotions less painful. (Big List of Self-Soothe Ideas here)
IMPROVE the Moment: Improve the moment with Imagery, Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing in the moment, Vacations, Encouragement
Radical Acceptance/Reality Acknowledgement: Acknowledge what is, let go of fighting or denying reality. Use TURNING THE MIND to commit to acknowledgement over and over again.
Further Reading: You might be interested in looking at our resources that address the “fear of abandonment” symptom that might be an underlying factor of your jealousy, which there are many links in the FAQ on that subject. You can also read all our previous posts pertaining to jealousy here. You might find that reassurance from your FP might help ease your jealousy (or perhaps your potentially underlying fear of abandonment) so here is a post about how to ask for reassurance.
TL;DR: Jealousy, like all emotions, may or may not fit the facts of a situation. If jealousy doesn’t fit the facts of a situation or it would be ineffective to act on the urges associated with the feelings of jealousy. When jealousy does not fit the facts or is ineffective, use the DBT Skill Opposite Action. Opposite Action is a skill you use for a situation like this, where you act in the opposite way than your emotion wants you to. Doing this can change your body chemistry and thus your emotional state.
If Opposite Action doesn’t work, try Reality Acknowledgement, be Mindful, and use Distress Tolerance Skills to diminish the intensity of your jealousy. And, fundamental to any relationship, have an open conversation about your feelings without any intent to control the outcome.
-Pandora
I feel so many of us can benefit from reading this.
Sending love!
no one should force you to:
switch.
tell them who is fronting.
give them your alter count.
tell them what trauma caused your CDD.
go to therapy if you are not ready yet.
list your alters' names, ages or roles.
change the language you prefer to use for your experiences (unless that language is genuinely harmful).
assign/have a host alter.
go searching for your trauma if you do not remember it.
forgive those who hurt you if you do not want to.
disclose an introject alter's source.
be open about your system/alters.
hide your system/alters.
use PK or SP.
use plural language when you prefer to be treated as one.
use singular language when you prefer to be treated as multiple.
if someone expects you to do something, you do not have to do it just because some other pwCDDs are fine with it. you deserve autonomy & the ability to choose what you will/won't reveal or do. no one should take that from you. 🤍
I'm not a system but I think this is so important and just wanted to spread awareness about it 🫶🏼
