Waiting for the "Other Shoe to Drop"

After being in a relationship with a BP for what ever number of years, there may come a time in our healing and recovery when we move on, fall in love again, and face the new challenges of learning to live using healthy patterns and making healthier choices. Or we may find ourselves reacting to new situations with others at home or at work and feeling very uncomfortable.

Living with the chaos that BPD behavior can, and most often does create, leaves us with a set of almost unconscious expectations. We may often react to new situations, expecting that the significant others in our lives will behave the way that our BP did, having a sense of "waiting for the other shoe to drop." We may feel conflicting feelings when the person doesn’t behave as we expect them to, even disappointed when they are nice to us.

Example:

I am a recovering Non, married, most happily to another Non. When I became sick, I found myself feeling uncomfortable with my husband’s gentle care taking. I talked it over with a friend (another Non) and while doing so I made some realizations.

I was home and became quite ill. I was not able to go about my usual activities, ended up spending a lot of time getting medical care and feeling very miserable with various physical symptoms. My husband was wonderful. He got me things that I needed, without asking, and offered to do whatever I needed. He was warm and caring, nurturing and supportive. Wonderful right? I should have been thrilled, right? I was not. I felt very uncomfortable.

I had a difficult time with letting him be nice to me!!!! Upon reflection, I realized that I was "waiting for the other shoe to drop." Y’all know, right? The rages, blaming, shaming, guilt inducing, or worse yet, the cold and utter "you’re not even there, you’re not human" type of interactions that I’d experienced with my BPD ex-husband. Expecting my husband to behave like others in my life had, some of my old patterns came back: feeling anxious, knots in my tummy, feeling guilty that I was not getting all the work done that needed to get done (like laundry, cleaning up, meals and such).

It was very hard to let my husband do nice things… to be nurturing and comforting. Sometimes it was difficult to answer his questions, like what would I like first… a massage or a hot bath? Hard choice to make huh???

After some reflection, I realized that aside from my Grandmother, no one in my life has ever been that way (good to me) when I was ill unless they were paid to be, like nurses in hospitals. As an adult, mostly when I’ve been ill, it’s been while other family members, mostly my kids, were also ill and I had to do the "mom thing"… hold down the fort, watch after everyone else’s health, etc…even though I was sick myself.

So what do we do about this?

Becoming aware of our patterns helps us choose differently. You are invited to try these suggestions and if they work for you, great. If they don’t, please keep looking until you find some that do.

As a first step to more awareness, it is useful to remember that emotions and feelings are not logical, nor are they rational. They exist. Many of us are taught that some feelings are okay and some are "bad", like anger (link to anger management here) for example. Emotions and feelings are value free. They are not good or bad. They just are. They are not based on thinking so much as being. Our choices are where it matters. We begin by choosing to create new resources and choices by becoming aware of patterns in our lives. We can then choose to keep old patterns or create new ones rather than moving through our lives reacting to each new situation with old and unsuccessful behavours. We often think that by repeating something that didn’t work in the past, we can make it work in the future. That old ghost of "if only I do it right it will work".

Since much of your current life may be less involved with BPD, you may find that you are reacting to a situation, rather than a person. I invite you to look at your life from a new perspective. It’s about being curious about your feelings, thoughts and actions, rather than about judging yourself. We are often our own harshest critics. We often have a "meta-feeling" about our first feeling, sort of like an umbrella over our heads. We feel angry, then we feel ashamed of being angry.

Once I got used to the concept of being curious about what I was feeling, rather than reacting to it immediately, I found I had a lot of room to explore new ways to react, feel and relate. It became fun to explore "me"!

Once I became curious, and began to identify patterns in my life, I had to learn to stop judging myself… stop beating myself up all the time. While some level of self criticism is natural, many Nons are so used to accepting the blame for everything and everyone around them that we create many self sabotaging situations, set ourselves up with unrealistic expectations and generally make our lives miserable.

We can learn to identify patterns. I make a list of when I can remember over reacting, or feeling very uncomfortable. Developing a list of what when and where this has occurred in the past helped me understand things better. I developed a list in my journal by writing a little each day.

This list focused on looking for patterns… visual, auditory, feelings… some or all of these. When do they occur, and with whom? How do I experience them? Are they related to anniversaries, voices on the answering machine? What is the pattern for me? Keeping this list as daily log for several months can help get a bigger picture of what they are

Next it is helpful to spend some time making a shorter list that you may ask yourself when the situation occurs. When you find yourself "reacting" to a situation rather than just being in it, begin asking yourself questions. Some useful ones might be: What’s happening? How do I feel? Am I reacting out of context to this situation? Does this person remind me of someone from my past? Does this situation remind me of something in my past? Or is it similar to a BPD related experience?

Then I imagine stepping outside the situation, becoming an observer. I look at my body, where is the tension? Where is the breathing? If needs be, I take a short break, go off somewhere quiet and spend some time sorting out what is going on inside my body and my head.

When you have gathered all the information that is useful to you, step back into yourself. Then spend some time thinking about how you would LIKE to react. Imagine yourself doing so that day, the next day, maybe a week or so in the future… then a month. Imagine how it will feel, look to you and to others. Add lots of details… tastes, smells, what you will be thinking as you achieve more changes.

Patterns in our lives are like anything else. They can help or they can hurt. Finding new coping strategies and new choices helps us heal and grow. Continuing the old ones can keep us stuck in old and unhealthy patterns. The choice is up to each of us! Imagine that… WE, NONS , have control over that! This can be such a new and exciting thought for us!

Good luck on your Journey of Healing.

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Disclaimer: The information on this site (http://www.bpd411.org) is based on personal experiences of the authors and members of our e-mail mailing list. It is NOT meant to replace professional advice or take the place of counseling, therapy or additional personal research.