Your worry feels like agony to me.

Today at my Listening Circle facilitators' meeting, we did our obligatory check-in.  Everyone went around.  I think I had something planned to say, but what came out was the story about how about three weeks ago, I picked up a razor blade for the first time in six years, and cut myself 45 times before I realized that it wasn't going to make things any better.  When I got done, to punish myself for cutting, I washed the cuts out with salt water.  That was closer to the pain I needed, but still, neither gave me the relief I needed.

Before this happened, I'd spent the two days before uncontrollably sobbing any time I was alone.  My situation was agonizing, and there was no end in sight.  I needed it to stop, and none of my techniques were working.  Maybe I forgot how to do them after so long, or I wasn't doing them with the right intent...I just don't know.  It was horrible.

I had to tell someone in the group who offered support that I just wasn't good at reaching out.  There's two reasons.  One is that I Do Not Trust people to be around me when I'm that vulnerable.  I love my friends, I trust them with a lot of things, but there have been too many people in my past who have proved to me that when I'm vulnerable around them, all I'm doing is giving them something to use against me later.

The more important reason is that the worry that kind of honesty generates is exhausting.  It's bad enough carrying around the worry I feel for myself when that happens.  It's oppressive.  But when I tell someone else, they get this look, their tone changes to something I hear as concern or pity, and then it's like the weight of that worry comes crashing down.  Now not only do I have to worry about me, I have to worry about them worrying about me.  I feel terrible.  I feel like I then have to spend months proving that I'm really okay.  I can't stand the tone and the look.  I worry enough that I'm breaking, but when someone else seems concerned like that, I get this sense that it's worse than I thought.  I'm broken, and they're worrying I'm going to do something else, something worse.  I don't want to have to prove that I'm okay to anyone.  I know I'll make it through this.  I don't need that doubt weighing on me.  I don't need pity.  I'm not weak, but I feel that way when I tell people.

I did reach out to one person, so that I knew I wasn't going to hide away and never deal with it.  He handled it exactly perfectly.  He's the first person I've ever talked to about it, other than my therapist, who didn't just make me feel worse for telling.

I know people mean well.  I'm not heartless...but I also know how it makes me feel, so I don't speak.  I don't speak so I don't have to worry about you, and myself.  I don't speak so I don't have to worry that I'm worse than I imagined.  I don't speak so that I don't have to be angry about feeling burdened with someone else's worry.

I wish there was a way to make this easier for everyone.

Aside:  Yes, I will be fine.  I've reached out to my therapist.  No, my son is in no danger.  I'll voluntarily commit myself if I have to to protect him.  He's my biggest priority, and I put him and his mental health above my own.

Thanks for your input, now shut up.

Everyone has their 2¢ about how it is you should raise your child.  If you have/adopt a child, suddenly a million people will spring out of the woodwork to tell you what you're doing wrong, and most of them don't bother to leave their own box to give you advice.

I have a hard time explaining my son to other people.  He's not fragile, but he's an emotionally delicate kid.  He is easily angered and upset.  Sometimes getting his clothes on will end in a screaming, hysterical melt down.  But he's loving, funny, and really smart.  Seriously, the kid learned the alphabet by 17 months, and has been reading since he was 3.5.  He's got a ridiculously good memory.  And, damn, the kid is just funny.

Given his...unusually volatile temperament, I'm pretty sure I've heard about a million times from friends, family, and random strangers that I'm just too gentle with my son.  I need to let him just scream himself out when things go wrong for him.  I need to spank.   I need to force him to figure things out on his own.  I need to give him time outs.  I need to stop interfering when he melts down.  I need to threaten more.  I do exactly none of those things 99% of the time.  Instead, I assume my son needs help figuring out how to do what's so frustrating to him.  Him having a screaming meltdown does not absolve him of working through the situation.  It doesn't mean he never has to say sorry.  It doesn't mean he gets away with murder.  I talk him through it, we work out a solution, and he learns something.  Sometimes this takes endless repetition, but he's 5 years old.

Yes, I absolutely could let him scream.  I could mock him, or insult him, or call him a whiny baby/brat.  I could tell him that no one likes a whiner.  But as someone who's had adult meltdowns because she couldn't control her feelings, I know how shitty that is.  It took me until I was thirty years old to learn how to deal with things properly.  I couldn't "work myself down" at all.  Letting me have a panic attack about whatever it was going on at the time taught me exactly nothing except how ridiculously powerless I was.  I learned to cope.  Panic attacks could easily be dealt with by a pair of nail scissors, a box cutter, or my nails if I was desperate.  Sometimes it took one cut, sometimes it took a hundred (and I'm not exaggerating about that.)  No one taught me how to handle myself in a thoughtful, reasoned way.  I just knew how to survive the moment.

I want better than that for my son.  I sometimes see him hit and scratch himself when he gets upset.  While this may not be conscious self-mutilating behavior, I know that endorphin high can be habit forming.  When he has a meltdown, we try deep breathing first.  I'm firm about it, because he's out of control, and needs to be guided.  If that doesn't work, I find differently textured things for him to touch, and we discuss that, because it distracts his brain.  Then, once he's calm, we snuggle up and talk.  Yes, I could be stern momma, but I need him to know that although I may not love his behavior one bit, I love him.  Some days, this takes every last ounce of patience I have.  But when I hear him tell me that he knows even if he's bad that I'll love him, I know I've made the right choice.

So please, when you decide to tell me, unsolicited, that my parenting choices are crap, maybe you might want to ask me exactly why it is I do what I do.  Also, nothing personal, but go fuck yourself.  Just a little.

Back to the beginning.

Since I neglected to explain exactly what Borderline was in my first post, I'll go back and explain.

This is the diagnosis from the DSM IV.

BPD is manifested by a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in (5).
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. This is called "splitting."
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in (5).
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior. 
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). 
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. 
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights). 
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

I spent probably 15-20 years of my life consistently nailing 7-9 of these symptoms.  From my best guess, I was exhibiting signs of major depression as early as 8, and possibly Borderline as well.  Some people think you can't diagnose personality disorders in kids, but by 8 I'm pretty sure I was getting about five of these consistently.

I know I was self-mutilating by about 10, and maybe earlier.  It was the only way I could keep myself in check emotionally.  It's funny, thinking back, I never knew that I was wrong, or different.

By high school, I'd figured out that there was something wrong with me.  I couldn't survive without peer approval; it was how I managed to feel good about myself.  Not that every single day of my life was a pit of misery, but the bad days significantly outnumbered the good.  I started asking for help around 15, I think.  I was told that "real people don't go to therapists."  Think of the message this sends to your child.  I knew I needed help.  I'd downed a large chunk of a bottle of Tylenol at about 17, but me needing help for that meant that I was a lesser person.

I didn't get any sort of help until I was in college.  I was probably 19 before I had the courage to go to a therapist.  However, because I was an undiagnosed Borderline, I wasn't getting the help I needed.  I made a game out of seeing how I could manipulate my therapists.  Not because I really wanted to, but because I needed to test my boundaries and see how much I could get away with.  Did the therapist really care?  Sure, usually they did, but they never saw through my crap.  

In the same year, I had dropped down to eating about a snack a day, and I was sleeping 12+ hours a night.  It was all I did other than going to class and work.  Not that I never went out, but given the choice, I picked sleeping it off.  I talked to my therapist at the time (we'd had one whopping session) and she informed me that my lack of eating and constant sleeping was because I hadn't found Jesus.  She refused to give me a referral to a psychiatrist.  Luckily, I had one hell of a dermatologist, who I told about everything, and she immediately gave me a referral to a psychiatrist.  I'd spend the next few years being drugged out of my gourd to theoretically keep me functional.  Let me tell you how much I fucking hate Lithium.  Hate.  I was taking 14 pills in the morning, three at lunch, and two at night.  I'd started on sleeping pills by then, because all the drugs were totally destroying my inability to sleep.

I was still a mess.  I dropped out of a prestigious Landscape Architecture program.  I'd been picked 8th out of pool of probably 60 people.  Only 20 were selected at all.  My teacher encouraged me not to quit, but I couldn't handle not doing well at it, and let's be honest...I fucked up everything else I touched, so this failure was coming.

At 22, I made one suicide attempt in March, and in November was remanded to the loving custody of a Texas state mental health facility by court order for downing a bottle of Xanax and apparently being rude to a police officer who wanted to send me home from the ER.  I don't remember any of the second incident.  It happened less than a month after my wedding.

This went on and on.  Finally at 29, I pretty much lost it.  I stopped eating for three days before I checked myself in to a mental health hospital in Georgia.  My psychiatrist at the hospital gave me a number for a therapist.  I called her.  On my initial visit, I remember her asking me if I'd do anything to stop being who I was.  I cried.  That session, I got my actual diagnosis of Borderline Personality disorder.  Ten years of therapy, and this woman nailed it in less than 10 minutes.  She recommended a therapy program for me.  For 6 months, I spent $390 out of pocket per week going to individual and group.  Six months, and I was a whole new person.  I could actually cope with things.  It was amazing.  I felt cold, sometimes, and like I felt nothing, but simple life events no longer caused me unspeakable agony.  I could actually go to social events without having to sneak off to the bathroom and cry and cut myself to handle the people. 

And that was really the problem.  I didn't have any sort of gradation on the emotional pain scale.  Someone hurt my feelings?  Felt like someone I loved had died.  Got embarrassed?  Same level of agony.  Everything hurt.  Marsha Linehan, the founder of the therapy I did, Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, says that being Borderline is like having second degree burns all over your body.  Everything, even the slightest touch causes uncontrollable agony.  To control it, Borderlines do whatever we have to.  We binge eat, we self-starve.  We overspend.  We cut, burn, scratch, and injure ourselves however we can.  We manipulate everyone we meet.  We're quick to judge, and our love can turn to scathing hatred in a second.  We always know people too well, so that when we're afraid we're going to get hurt, we can strike first, with deadly accuracy to totally cripple the person.  But 2 hours later, we love you so much, and never want you to leave us.

I haven't hit more than 1-2 symptoms at a time, and in very short duration since I graduated from Minal and Stephanie's class.  It's been tough sometimes, but I no longer stare at the future and want to die.  Lately, it's the hardest it's been since I graduated, but it's still a million times better than it was.

So there, have some back story.