Holding on to my sanity

In my world sanity is a fragile concept. I strive daily to maintain some semblance of control and appear sane to the rest of the world. Sensible conversations and interactions go a long way to achieving this and generally speaking I think on the whole i do quite well! 

However, delving deeper someone might uncover the truth, that sanity is balancing precariously on the edge of a thin wire. It takes an enormous amount of energy and effort to appear fully functioning when in reality I am anything but! 

Over the past few weeks I have been discussing some of my experiences as a child with my therapist. I have a huge amount of respect for her and have built a strong, trusting relationship with her. I am slowly feeling more able to tell her things which before terrified me. 

But there’s a consequence to talking about the past and what it can bring to the surface. There are some people who would insist that its a mistake to talk about past trauma. But then there’s the other school of thought which believes that uncovering past experiences can be incredibly helpful in understanding the here and now and why things are as they are. 

With my bpd and the reasons for the diagnosis it’s probably quite important to understand certain aspects of the past in order to enable me to understand things and to find ways of moving forward in a healthier manner. An example of this has been talking about my mother and my earliest memories. From this its become very apparent that i have severe problems with attachment. These problems have followed me throughout my life and continue to dictate how i form relationships with others. It’s also informed my sense of rejection and abandonment and my fear of these. Without delving into the past, i may never have understood and continued on the same destructive path. It’s not a fixed issue but i have more insight and understanding surrounding my reaction to people and can consider if my thoughts and fears are founded on reality or I’m simply mind reading or overreacting. 

Talking so openly about the sexual abuse I endured has been very, very hard to do and it has unsettled me a lot. I feel exposed and vulnerable but I am also unearthing all these other emotions and I’m struggling with knowing what exactly im meant to do with them. My head is awash with so many things right now that my ability to focus and concentrate is fading. My fear of going out has increased and i have those thoughts of self harming and pill popping again. 

I’ve also had some fleeting suicidal thoughts, but have so far managed to put them out of my mind. But I’m scared about how I am feeling and how to manage everything. Im also finding uni really triggering which makes me want to avoid going in. 

I feel huge swathes of anger wash over me frequently. Sometimes its aimed at my parents, sometimes just at my mother. At other times I’m angry at the people who hurt me or at the few people i trusted enough to tell. 

It makes me so angry to know that there were people who knew and believed me yet did nothing to get me away from it or get me the help and support i later needed to deal with it. I feel like i wasnt worth helping. That they underestimated the toll it took on me and the consequences that the lack of action might eventually lead to. 

But i also am full of anger with myself. For being provocative, for not staying a little child for longer, for being needy and wanting to be liked. For liking the attention even if i didnt always like what it meant for me. I feel that i must have done something wrong because it wasn’t just one person. It was several. 

I was stupid and naiive to so much of it and i feel angry that i didn’t just say no. I feel angry at how scared i was, that things continued to happen to me because there was no one i could tell.  No one would believe me. 

I feel such a massive mix of emotions, my head is full of thoughts relating to that time and i just feel overwhelmed by sadness and grief. Im struggling to manage these and feel overpowered by the strength of the emotions and thoughts that race around in my head.