Re: When you are in the moment with the bpd what is your self-talk?

[Guest guest]

This is something I fall into often. I understand your upset with yourself but I

think we often are too hard on ourselves. These people are so unhealthy and they

are also our family members they know how to pull us in because they have been

doing so for so long. I think it works best for me to try and stay somewhat

detached. I have to remind myself to not take their comments personally and

remember they project all the time and this is not about me but about them.

Sometimes I have to just stop being around them for a while or have low contact.

I also try to say to them, " That might be your perspective but mine is..... " The

thing that has helped me the most is to not expect myself to be 100% successful

when I'm around them and to just try and focus on growth being a process over

time. I try to remember the areas I did establish better boundaries and then

look at the ways I didn't as a way to continue growing. I hope this helps.

Kelley

To: WTOAdultChildren1@...: mayalisa728@...: Mon, 14

Apr 2008 15:30:35 +0000Subject: When you are in the moment

with the bpd what is your self-talk?

In order to keep calm and respond instead of react? Things are very stressful

right now. My sister delivered her baby on Saturday and she, the baby, has a

birth syndrome that will require her to spend weeks in the NICU. Everyone is

tense, because she is at risk of hypoxia all the time. It's a sad and

frightening situation. Dad is agitated, mom is for some reason veering into more

narcissism right now, which is the worst possible moment. The SIL who just had a

healthy, perfect infant, despite smoking through her entire pregnancy, seems

determined to say the exact wrong thing as often as possible, when her very

presence because of the above circumstance would be hard to take if she was

completely silent...she's showing narcissism too; in particular she seems to be

flaunting her 'closeness' to my sister, at my expense (really my sister is not

fond of her but in her typical fashion she keeps her cards close to her chest

and the SIL has no idea how annoying my sister finds her). It's so strange to me

how these situations bring out *more* narcissism in people than less; I guess

it's the nature of the beast. For people who have come through successful

interactions with bpd/npd-types, where you didn't allow your buttons to be

pushed, what do you tell yourself in those moments when you are being triggered?

I can see this going on for a while and I don't want to add to the stress or

make it worse. Right now I am saying 'imagine you were a really dignified

person' (.i.e., someone else) 'how would you react to this?' when things come

up, I just wish I handled it better every time. I feel I create so much of the

problem, or make it worse, because I feel like I always have to respond. My

mouth works faster than my brain. Can anyone share any *positive* self-talk that

works for them?

is

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[Guest guest]

I often feel like I make the problem worse when I argue or try to rationalize

with the people

around me. I try to say to myself " I can't think straight with these people

around " and remove

myself from the situation for at least a few minutes to cool down via some deep

breathing

and fresh air, etc. It drives the family nuts, especially the BP's because they

want you to screw

up, they relish in you coming down to their level. They say I'm uncommunicative,

blah, blah

blah. But I figure " if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all " ,

and besides, why

should I indulge their drama?

A therapist once told me to count to ten before responding to anything that

agitates me.

Maybe that would help for you.

Sending positive thoughts to you and your new niece.

--Sid

> To: WTOAdultChildren1@...: mayalisa728@...: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:30:35

+0000Subject:

When you are in the moment with the bpd what is your

self-talk?

> In order to keep calm and respond instead of react?

[Guest guest]

that is great advice, thank you. I wasn't even thinking in terms of

being too perfectionistic about it. Everyone is so tense now that it

seems like *everyone* is triggering/being triggered. You are right, it

is silly to expect just to snap my fingers and suddenly be immune to

this stuff after a lifetime of being used as their dumping ground.

[Guest guest]

I love this:

It drives the family nuts, especially the BP's because they

want you to screw

up, they relish in you coming down to their level.

that is so true. They do try to drive you 'off course' at every

opportunity. It's like they hone in on the fact that you are trying

to be decent and upright and then, since they themselves can't

attain any kind of real psychological maturity they do their

damnedest to remove whatever self-respect you have. I think this is

going to be a very long, tense time until the little one is released

from NICU and even then it could be anywhere from 9 months to a year

and a half before the worst problem is fixed and the hypoxia danger

is elminated. My heart is broken for my sister because she will be

stressed out and tense until that time, the baby will have trouble

eating, sleeping, and sometimes breathing and will have probably ear

infections too, in addition to speech problems. We went from one

reality straight into another one in less than a day. I really have

had to squelch the impulse to tell my SIL to please shut the hell up

the times I've been around her. I don't think that my interfering or

correcting her would do any good. My sister and I are not close but

hearing someone be callous about this, when I know what my sister

has gone through to conceive, and how badly she wanted this child,

is almost too much.

[Guest guest]

This is a GREAT question. I self-talk whenever I'm in a situation

with my parents -- I calm myself by mentally reminding myself that

it's not always up to me to jump in and fill awkward silences, I'll

pick a mantra and say it over and over in my head -- " stay calm,

stay calm " ..... " you're doing fine " ..... " remain peaceful and calm " ,

etc., etc.

Self talk is soooooo helpful when in the presence of a manipulative

or potentially volatile or emotionally unstable BPD. Definitely

should be in a KO's " toolbox " .

-Kyla

>

> In order to keep calm and respond instead of react? Things are

very

> stressful right now. My sister delivered her baby on Saturday and

> she, the baby, has a birth syndrome that will require her to spend

> weeks in the NICU. Everyone is tense, because she is at risk of

> hypoxia all the time. It's a sad and frightening situation. Dad is

> agitated, mom is for some reason veering into more narcissism

right

> now, which is the worst possible moment. The SIL who just had a

> healthy, perfect infant, despite smoking through her entire

> pregnancy, seems determined to say the exact wrong thing as often

as

> possible, when her very presence because of the above circumstance

> would be hard to take if she was completely silent...she's showing

> narcissism too; in particular she seems to be flaunting

> her 'closeness' to my sister, at my expense (really my sister is

not

> fond of her but in her typical fashion she keeps her cards close

to

> her chest and the SIL has no idea how annoying my sister finds

her).

> It's so strange to me how these situations bring out *more*

> narcissism in people than less; I guess it's the nature of the

> beast. For people who have come through successful interactions

with

> bpd/npd-types, where you didn't allow your buttons to be pushed,

> what do you tell yourself in those moments when you are being

> triggered? I can see this going on for a while and I don't want to

> add to the stress or make it worse. Right now I am saying 'imagine

> you were a really dignified person' (.i.e., someone else) 'how

would

> you react to this?' when things come up, I just wish I handled it

> better every time. I feel I create so much of the problem, or make

> it worse, because I feel like I always have to respond. My mouth

> works faster than my brain. Can anyone share any *positive* self-

> talk that works for them?

>

[Guest guest]

so, the nada/fada just had a big explosion.

It's interesting because when my sis told us about this I looked up

the syndrome on the internet and I got very emotional (I mean, I

cried). I recognize immediately what this meant for my sister in

terms of her plans: she won't be able go back to work at least until

the child has surgery at 9 months to a year and a half, which will

leave her and hubby extremely strapped financially, she will

constantly have to be stressed out about the child's

breathing/eating, etc, it just sounds like a very tense and

overwhelming situation. I have two semesters of medical terminology

in addition to having sat through a 5 credit hour anatomy class last

semester so I understand the fam may not have understood the words

they were reading or what they meant initially, but I did. Since

then any time we've talked all I hear is " be positive " , " think

positive " etc. I realize this is how things are handled in my

family, no one ever deals with the emotions of anything until it

just explodes, then my father rages, my mother cries, they never

talk about it, time passes, and every one pretends it didn't happen.

Boy did he just rage, too, he called my mother a 'crazy effing

b*tch " . They kill me. I am staying way out of range because in the

past she'd come to me and dump it on me; and I would empathize.

There is NO WAY in hades I am going to empathize with her, ever

again, over this stuff, because he could turn around and say the

same thing to me ten minutes later and if I complained she would

defend HIM. I just happened to walk in the room and they both

started telling me their 'side'...so I grabbed the one of our cats

that happened to be in there and we left.

I know they are both devastated for my sister, and I know they are

putting on this religious 'not dealing with legitimate emotions'

facade, and this is the result. Sigh...I think it is only going to

get worse with time because this is going to be an ordeal, which I

knew the minute I read the information on the internet.

And of course they won't listen to me or seek any help understanding

it from me, my schooling (I'm certified in medical transcription) be

damned. This is really keying on the " our family is cursed "

and " nothing ever works out for us " thing that my parents have

always believed as well, too. Sorry to use this for a dumping

ground but I am really trying not to get sucked into this; I grieved

about it legitimately for two days while they were keeping their

heads in the sand, and now they can't stuff the emotions anymore.

[Guest guest]

Don't apologize for dumping here, we all do it. That's what it's for, right?

Stay out of range. Keep your cats out of range. Keep your loved ones out of

range to the

extent that you can. Has everyone been in the same proximity for the past couple

of days?

See if you can get the parents to leave for a little bit. Tell them you'll stay

with sis while

she has a little quiet time. She probably needs you to hold her.... and some

silence.

>

> so, the nada/fada just had a big explosion.

>

> It's interesting because when my sis told us about this I looked up

> the syndrome on the internet and I got very emotional (I mean, I

> cried). I recognize immediately what this meant for my sister in

> terms of her plans: she won't be able go back to work at least until

> the child has surgery at 9 months to a year and a half, which will

> leave her and hubby extremely strapped financially, she will

> constantly have to be stressed out about the child's

> breathing/eating, etc, it just sounds like a very tense and

> overwhelming situation. I have two semesters of medical terminology

> in addition to having sat through a 5 credit hour anatomy class last

> semester so I understand the fam may not have understood the words

> they were reading or what they meant initially, but I did. Since

> then any time we've talked all I hear is " be positive " , " think

> positive " etc. I realize this is how things are handled in my

> family, no one ever deals with the emotions of anything until it

> just explodes, then my father rages, my mother cries, they never

> talk about it, time passes, and every one pretends it didn't happen.

> Boy did he just rage, too, he called my mother a 'crazy effing

> b*tch " . They kill me. I am staying way out of range because in the

> past she'd come to me and dump it on me; and I would empathize.

> There is NO WAY in hades I am going to empathize with her, ever

> again, over this stuff, because he could turn around and say the

> same thing to me ten minutes later and if I complained she would

> defend HIM. I just happened to walk in the room and they both

> started telling me their 'side'...so I grabbed the one of our cats

> that happened to be in there and we left.

>

> I know they are both devastated for my sister, and I know they are

> putting on this religious 'not dealing with legitimate emotions'

> facade, and this is the result. Sigh...I think it is only going to

> get worse with time because this is going to be an ordeal, which I

> knew the minute I read the information on the internet.

>

> And of course they won't listen to me or seek any help understanding

> it from me, my schooling (I'm certified in medical transcription) be

> damned. This is really keying on the " our family is cursed "

> and " nothing ever works out for us " thing that my parents have

> always believed as well, too. Sorry to use this for a dumping

> ground but I am really trying not to get sucked into this; I grieved

> about it legitimately for two days while they were keeping their

> heads in the sand, and now they can't stuff the emotions anymore.

>

[Guest guest]

Thanks so much. My sister is still in the hospital. I have to hand

it to her, she has set some firm boundaries around this . She

finally allowed my parents to go see her last night (I had to work

or I'd have gone as well); they were her first visitors...she went

from thinking she was going to have a natural childbirth to having

an emergency c-section, and that was even before the problem with

the baby was realized.

I can understand, almost, my father's explosion. My mother has been

completely unbearable for about the last two or three weeks. I've

been noticing a tendency in her, which is brand new, to pretend to

favor the SIL over me, as a way of seemingly trying to hurt my

feelings. But mom doesn't really like the SIL either, though she is

crazy about her grandchild. And the SIL has been completely

abandoned by her raging narcissistic mother since SIL's and my

brother's baby was born in December (think Shirley MacClaine in

Terms of Endearment, definitely) and shows no interest whatever in

getting to know her grandchild, or even seeing him, so I know SIL is

looking for a surrogate and so she is playing into this dynamic as

well. I know my mother has been making these 'I' and 'me' statements

constantly and it has been driving me nuts, that plus her nit-

picking and complaining about every freaking thing, so I can

understand it wearing thin on my dad. But I probably don't need to

even be thinking about the cause of their argument. If my mother

tries to confide in me I will tell her what she told me about some

criticism I'd received from my brother; to keep that between her and

her husband, that it is none of my business.

[Guest guest]

Thanks, I'm asking people to pray and/or light a candle, send white

light, whatever they believe. Thanks be to the Gods my sister is well-

insured, but they just weren't prepared for this and I want her to be

able to enjoy her newborn and not be in constant stress. Secretly I

was almost hoping they would go ahead and maybe do a tracheostomy and

feeding tube for the little one rather than go by trial and error but

that is probably selfish of me; it's just that the most painful aspect

of this is thinking of her being in fear and worry if they try to feed

her normally and let her breathe on her own. My sister has just tried

so hard and waited so long to have her child, it seems so unfair. I am

trying to process the emotions as they come up, and just sit with

them, anger, grief, resentment, all the uglies are popping up. And of

course the 'why God's' as well. I don't want to be the focus but

anyone who wants to pray for my sister and her baby and send positive

energy please feel free, and thanks for thinking of her.