Monday, January 30, 2017

Living in the damage path

Well it's been 15 days since Iv'e posted here and I have to be honest with you. Writing about this and reading the many articles and opinions for research has put me in a emotional tail spin so to speak. I have recurring nightmares and my sleep has been quite disturbed to say the least. The difficult part is that in all fairness I have to look at the illness of the sociopath behaviors from all perspectives and I have found that those who abuse us in relationships are really living in hell themselves. That doesn't excuse their behavior and it doesn't make me feel any better that I seem to choose these relationships. I have tied the term narcissism and personality disorders together here and I think it is important to make the distinction here. Narcissism is most often identified as the chief character flaw in Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and most people when referring to a "narcissist" are talking about people with NPD, however narcissism is a character flaw that exists in many personality disorders in the respect that people with these disorders generally act only on behalf of themselves. They are so caught up in their own crap literally everything that they do is for some kind of self aggrandizing outcome. One example is the person who claims to be doing "good deeds" for others.  Some of the borderlines I have dealt with share this in common, even when they appear to be "helping" others they are in fact just pumping up their already overstuffed ego. You will notice people like this only help others where they can get recognized for their efforts. Even so far as only praying for people when it is a public prayer so that people will say "wow what a giving person you are". The heart breaking part of this behavior is knowing that what people are seeing as "selfless giving" is really just a sick scheme to solicit compliments and make people think you are something your not. This "giving person" could give a rats ass about those in need.  

   This is especially prevalent in the Borderline BPD. Borderlines have no sense of self worth and they use people to make them feel worthy, therefore "if people think I am good then I am good" "if people think I am bad then I am bad. For the borderline there is no in between it's black and white, that's why you won't often hear them admit to any wrong doing. The narcissistic ego is so fragile that admitting a mistake shatters the cardboard mask and unrealistic self image. Then comes the self loathing and phrases like "I am a total piece of crap" etc. I spent the better part of 15 years with one of my ex-wives that was clinically diagnosed with BPD and while that information certainly didn't prevent a divorce it certainly shed some light on the crazy hell I was going through. One of the destructive patterns  and certainly a problem was as often as we argued in that marriage I cannot recall ever reaching a resolution. BPD's will do what I call the circle talk. The harder you try to discuss the problem at hand the more they will keep introducing other topics to avoid discussing the actual problem...them. This also serves to convince you that if there is a problem you are the problem not the BPD. 

  The stark reality of these fights is the fact that you are partnered with someone who doesn't care at all about anything except what they need to feel good about themselves. If you are married to a BPD and she or he spent the mortgage money on expensive outings (in our case) or shopping, gambling, booze, drugs, etc. They are not going to feel bad about it or even have a discussion about it. To them your confronting this behavior is that you are calling them a bad person or questioning their character. They can't think beyond that to have a rational discussion that will produce a reasonable plan to get the mortgage back on track. If you work hard enough by yourself to get your finances squared away you will find yourself having the same argument with a few differing parameters sometime in the near future.  The lack of empathy or remorse in these situations is astonishing. The BPD doesn't feel bad because they have neatly avoided taking responsibility for the problems and because you do care about the welfare of your family, you inadvertently end up enabling this behavior by cleaning up the mess. This of course extends beyond financial messes this is just one example.

  I have to admit that those years were really tough on me and I went through the gambit of emotions. The phrase living in the damage path of an emotional tornado is the only way I know how to describe it. People with cluster B personality disorders are drawn to guy's like me just like fly's to honey. The reason being that I am a survivor. I survived growing up with two sociopaths and living in survival mode at times just felt natural to me. I do have empathy for the pain of others and I will not quit when the going gets tough. These are positive qualities that emotionally abusive people use to hide their faults and further enable their agenda. If you are enduring emotional abuse, then that is exactly what you are doing...surviving...not living just getting by until the next tornado hits and leaves you picking up and repairing the damage. 

Thanks for reading,
Hank

No comments:

Post a Comment