Thanksgiving???

So I think I need to take a breath before I put what I'm feeling down in writing.

inhale.....exhale....inhale...exhale....(this is a DBT skill) :)

OK

I reluctantly went to my mother's (non-biological) house for Thanksgiving dinner tonight. I never enjoy attending these functions because they usually end up badly. Come to think of it, any event where my family gets together usually ends up with me running away in tears, pledging to myself that I will never, ever talk to any of them again.

I realize that I have irrational thoughts. Sometimes I realize that when I'm thinking them.

But that doesn't stop me from believing they are factual.

The slightest thing can trigger my emotions to go "off the wall". Once I'm there, there is no turning back. I say and do things that I will later regret and then have to suffer through the shame and self hate.

Tonight my family accused me of "looking for things to fight about". I NEVER search for a fight because it feels so awful to have those emotions. If they would only try to understand what is really going on in my head then maybe, just maybe things could be different.

Sometimes I resent them because I believe that I have BPD because of them. Is that even right? With all that I have read, it seems to me that there are many factors involved in someone becoming Borderline. Patients are born already overly sensitive. Then the environmental factors come in to play and determine how good or bad it's going to turn out.

Me? I'm a classic case. I was born in 1976 to my young married parents. Within about a year they were divorced. My father, being a very powerful person gained custody of me and quickly whisked me away from Canada to Scotland to live with my Grandparents. That was it I think. The first strike. I had lost my mother and father. I was too young to understand that at least my Dad would come back but by the time he did, my Granny tells me that I didn't remember him anymore. He took me away, back to Canada and there it was again, already before the age of two. My Grandparents whom I had come to be very attached to, were gone too. It's not that I never saw them again. I did see them about once a year when I was small. But they, in that short time had become my parents. When we got back he had a new woman to take my birth mother's place. They eventually got married and she adopted me. She raised me to the age of 14. I'll get into what happens after that another time.

Over the years my father became increasingly abusive both verbally and sometimes physically. While all of that was going on, I was being relentlessly teased in school. We moved almost every year as my father was a pilot trying to gain momentum in his career. I was always the new kid and I was always disliked. It got to the point where I did not have a "safe" place to go to. Both home and school were a bad place to be. The kids would follow me home from school, teasing me about this and that and then I would arrive home to be picked on some more. I think this is why I began to dissociate from the world.

I have only just discovered the world of blogging and at the moment I am using it as a form of therapy. It calms me (DBT says to distract yourself from the emotion) when I write. Whether or not I am good at it is a different story. I will perfect it as I go along. I logged on today, pleased to see that I had my first follower! And from the UK to boot! The place I love because I have the best memories there. Thank you for following me and for your comments:) It means a lot.

20 minutes ago I was considering the worst things imaginable. I now feel like I'm in a safer place where I can manage this safely. I do feel shame though. Everyone is upset with me and I left my son with my mother because I felt that he took her side.

I'm sure tomorrow everything will be back to the way it always is. Just pretend it never happened and "get on with it" as my Granddaddy always said.

"this too, shall pass"

xoxo Granddaddy, I miss you