Re: crying

August 8, 2007

I am learning how to, and although it felt a little awkward in the

beginning, I actually find it extremely therapeutic. Making a

conscious effort to hold " Li'l " and comfort her and validate

these feelings for myself has felt good, as have the full-body sobs.

Honestly, I don't think I'm done yet. Things hit me here and there and

I just have to grieve for a while. It doesn't usually suck up my whole

day, but here and there it's still necessary. Some days are worse than

others. Given that I only began to give myself permission to wrap my

head around all this (and the BPD diagnosis in May helped greatly), I

think the grieving process will go on for a while.

Our traumatic childhoods weren't created overnight, and I imagine

healing from it will also be a drawn-out process.

Anyone else?

>

> Who all here has cried for their child self (I mean REALLY cried)?

For all the horrible and undeserved sh*t, who here has really mourned?

>

August 8, 2007

I dove head first into crying around May. I thought therapy was

going so well for me since I was using all these positive thinking

self-help books.

Then a situation arose where it was clear I still had a lot of

transference issues and unresolved feelings. I was surprised at the

pain that had arisen from my " subconscious " world. At this point, I

decided to abandon my positive thinking and dive head first into all

the pain I was avoiding. And boy was there a lot!

I ran across this description about grieving from The Year of Magical

Thinking by Joan Didion:

Lindemann, who was chief or psychiatry at MGH in the 1940s and

interviewed many family members of those killed in the 1942 Cocoanut

Grove fire, defined the phenomenon with absolute specificity in a

famous 1944 study: " sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves

lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of

tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for

sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power,

and an intense subjective distress described as tension or mental

pain. "

That prety much covers it!

I try to do anything possible to summon these feelings. I write

letters back of forth between my nada and me (I posted this exercise

earlier under the heading The Feeling Better exercise), I do lots of

visualization exercises of myself as a child at different ages

engaging with my parents telling them now what I couldn't tell them

then (ie Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing your inner child by

Bradshaw), I go through baby albums and talk to myself, and I

did a Method Acting Class, which was incredibly helpful at pushing me

to have the courage to access these feelings in front of people,

which ultimately just gave me the plain courage to " go there " even

when people weren't around.

I am exhausted afterwards (pretty much for the rest of the day), so

it is a time consuming process, but I must admit, I feel so so so so

much better since I took this approach to healing. I once read a

quote early on in my therapy that said, " The only way out of grief is

through " . I don't think I really took this to heart until I began

this journey of all out crying. For me, it really has become true.

Like peeling an onion, I keep finding another situation of grief.

It's as if I must grieve every moment over the past 25 years where my

parents really missed out on loving, caring etc. It's a lot of work,

but as I go through it, I see how the foundation of my self is built

and becomes something that is more secure and relaxed.

Sometimes I wonder when and if this grieving will end? I have hope

for the future because one person wrote on the forum that these

descriptions of BP parents now feel like " a sad dream of yesterday " .

I know this pain will fade with time (and already is in some ways).

One positive aspect is that I have to feel these bad feelings once,

but someone with BPD feels them forever.

Let me know if anyone can relate.

Genevieve.

> >

> > Who all here has cried for their child self (I mean REALLY

cried)?

> For all the horrible and undeserved sh*t, who here has really

mourned?

> >

August 10, 2007

Hi

I can relate. I have been in T for a while, and it seems whenever I think, I

am getting better, I'll have a memory or remember something in a new light, and

have to feel that pain. My T says that I am grieving. I am grieving the

childhood I thought I had, but that wasn't so happy and fun. I am also

grieving and feeling the pain that I could not feel back then, because nada and

the FOO did not want me to have any emotions because I was not a human being

then.

My T says it's a wound inside of you, and it's infected with pus, and

sometimes we have to cut open the wound and let the pus drain, so that the wound

can heal. That image helps me when I am doubled over (always in private) with

grief because I tell myself, I just have to let this out, and then it will be

over, and I will move on to a better place. This is what I tell myself.

It is really hard to grieve something so big ALONE. A friend of mine at work

was on a business trip and her aunt died. She said her family didn't tell her

at first, until she came back from the trip, because they didn't want her to be

in another country grieving by herself. I didn't say this to her, but you can

probably imagine I felt like saying " what about me!!?? I grieve by myself all of

the time!! "

This is the type of grief you can't expect someone else to understnad. If a

family member dies, everyone is really nice to you. I lied one time, I was

somewhere where people didn't know me, and I said something like " My father

died about 6 months ago " . I felt really bad for lying, but it was a way that I

could talk about my grief and get sympathy without everyone judging me or not

understanding.

How does our gried of ending the relationships with the FOO compare to the

death of a family member? Is it comparable? Or is it completely different

grief?

Walking to_happiness

---------------------------------

Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on,

when.

August 10, 2007

I talk about how the grief is worse for us because of the exact

reasons that you highlighted: nobody else can see it, understand it,

and offer the support that is given with physical death.

I often wish I could tell people that my family was dead too. I

would tell them that my family died in a plane crash in the Andes.

I also read somewhere that you know your grieving is healing tears

because you feel better after crying healing tears. I think this is

a good point because sometimes I just feel depressed, so I know I'm

not moving in the right direction. Now, for the most part I feel a

cathartic release when I really cry at night. I also find I'm able

to access my memories more clearly at nighttime.

I was intrigued how you wrote " because I was not a human being

then " . I curious to know more about what you mean and how you came

to this thought. I often think about how my parents didn't have

empathy and really had me more as a pet. Connecting these ideas

results in the very concrete idea (which hadn't occurred to me until

I read your post) that they couldn't view me as a human being. That

is really interesting way and blunt way to describe the experience.

It helps me understand their incessant abusive behavior more.

g.

>

> Hi

>

> I can relate. I have been in T for a while, and it seems

whenever I think, I am getting better, I'll have a memory or remember

something in a new light, and have to feel that pain. My T says that

I am grieving. I am grieving the childhood I thought I had, but that

wasn't so happy and fun. I am also grieving and feeling the pain

that I could not feel back then, because nada and the FOO did not

want me to have any emotions because I was not a human being then.

>

> My T says it's a wound inside of you, and it's infected with pus,

and sometimes we have to cut open the wound and let the pus drain, so

that the wound can heal. That image helps me when I am doubled over

(always in private) with grief because I tell myself, I just have to

let this out, and then it will be over, and I will move on to a

better place. This is what I tell myself.

>

> It is really hard to grieve something so big ALONE. A friend of

mine at work was on a business trip and her aunt died. She said her

family didn't tell her at first, until she came back from the trip,

because they didn't want her to be in another country grieving by

herself. I didn't say this to her, but you can probably imagine I

felt like saying " what about me!!?? I grieve by myself all of the

time!! "

>

> This is the type of grief you can't expect someone else to

understnad. If a family member dies, everyone is really nice to

you. I lied one time, I was somewhere where people didn't know me,

and I said something like " My father died about 6 months ago " . I

felt really bad for lying, but it was a way that I could talk about

my grief and get sympathy without everyone judging me or not

understanding.

>

> How does our gried of ending the relationships with the FOO

compare to the death of a family member? Is it comparable? Or is it

completely different grief?

>

> Walking to_happiness

>

> ---------------------------------

> Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see

what's on, when.

>

August 11, 2007

I think, too, that it's important to remember we go through a grieving process -

sometimes repeatedly - once we begin to acknowledge, understand, and deal with

the BPD influence in our lives. All the stages of grief are there because we do

go through a death - of hope, of dreams, of fantasy - but (regardless of my

occasional pity-party <grin>), there is healing possible on the other side. I

do believe, however, that until the grief is acknowledged and worked through,

the healing will not come. Let the tears flow. You've earned them. Smiles and

laughter will follow after awhile. -Leslye

genevieveheller wrote: I talk about how the

grief is worse for us because of the exact