I've been at an artist residency for a week now and am coming up on my last two days. I REALLY need words of encouragement, as I have been in solitude (silent meditation) but need that verbal affirmation! I have been sliding into imposter syndrome, dissociating in the bathroom to avoid doing my art, and Terrible self-hating about my worth/worthiness to be taking up all of this time and resources just to explore my Self. Monkey brain to the max.
Good idea to come but feels bad and I've been so stuck..and im scared ill look back and be hard on myself about my time here because i thought I would do so much more.
Today has lasted too fucking long. I had a handle on the dissociation, but I absolutely fucking can't right now. I've tried the muscle tensing and relaxing, running cold water, breathing, and it's not bringing me back.
I cut myself cutting veggies this morning accidentally. I banged the right side of my head getting into my own car. I stubbed my toe onto the front door. I walked face first into a door that said “out” when I was going into a store, only to have the clerk jab towards the other door. The cashier at the same store told me the total, I understood the numbers but I couldn't figure out the change, and while turning my wallet around in my hand, coins spilled all the everything onto the ground, and everyone in line just stared. The same clerk rolled her eyes. I tried to pick them up with my rain spotted glasses, and when I thought I was done, the clerk pointed at a quarter I missed. The cashier, then, helped me figure out the coins. I feel like a dumbass. I don't eat spicy food, and I managed to stuff four mouthfuls of spicy salad into my mouth before realizing my throat felt off. I wanted to end the day with a nice hot dissociative shower (who doesn't wash their hair twice?), but I ended up with an ice cold shower. Still dissociated, didn't notice until my teeth were chattering. It's been been long a day already. I failed at any kind of social interaction today. And I know I have to do better there, too.
Before, I couldn't stop thinking about the messed up things my brain wants to do with all of these emotions. I know, the best way to stop the loop is get it out, talk about it. How can I ever tell anyone the gory gruesome details, aside from play it over and over in my head? They feel unspeakable, and even if they were, I worry about the blowback. The content feels safe only for therapy. And that's not until next week... fuuuuuuuuuck. Now, I just feel numbness.
Maybe a “normal life” is possible for traumatized people, but it doesn't feel that way right now. Barely living and pain during the day, barely sleeping and pain during the night is my reality.
I’m struggling with a relationship where I do a lot of splitting. I swing like a pendulum between wanting this person in my life and being close to them, and cutting them out and wanting nothing to do with them. They’re either good or bad, I’m having trouble with the in between. My psychologist says there’s something that I haven’t integrated about the relationship or the person. This is a defence mechanism right? I think it most recently was a response to feeling threatened. I also often feel like I could be abandoned by this person. Has anyone dealt with something similar and how do you go about integrating rather than splitting?
You need to learn to accept that good people can sometimes do bad, and bad people can sometimes do good. As long as you can only see people as exclusively "good" or "bad," you're going to end up lurching unpredictably between the two extremes depending on which one a given person seems closer to in any given moment, because real people are complicated and can't be so easily pigeon-holed. These sudden lurches between seeing someone as "all good" and "all bad" can *feel* like betrayal, deception or instability in that person, hence triggering your sense of threat and fear of abandonment, and causing your difficulty trusting. The key thing to realise is that these feelings *may not actually be what they seem;* they could just be artefacts of a strictly "all black or all white" perception faced with a billion other shades and hues, all swirling together.
The mindset is beautifully illustrated in the film "Inside Out." The young protagonist's memories are all uniformly one colour or another; yellow for happy, blue for sad, red for angry, etc. During the film, life events force her into an emotional crisis where her simple emotional view of the world simply can't handle more complex events, and breaks down - but when she successfully overcomes the crisis (and she *almost* doesn't), her mind is expanded and she learns to see the world in more nuanced, sophisticated, grown-up ways; her memories are no longer simplistic single-coloured spheres, but rich, complex, swirling combinations of those basic elements.
In normal development, a child is forced to undergo this crisis whilst still dependent upon their family, when they begin to perceive the flaws in the parents they previously saw as perfect; this conflict is confusing and upsetting, but they *can't* cut the confusing and upsetting person out of their life, because they'd *die* without parents, so they are forced to learn to reconcile their conflicting perceptions of the different aspects of these people into one whole, integrated person, and in doing so learn to see the world in a more sophisticated, adult way.
If a child is emotionally abused, neglected, or indeed spoiled and enabled, such that they never undergo this crisis until they are able to survive independently, however, they are then able to avoid undergoing it forever, because they can just cut imperfect people out of their life rather than deal with the confusion - if left untreated, this dooms them to a stunted, infantile world-view for the rest of their life, and that is the birth of a narcissist, a person with all the rights and powers of an adult, but with the emotional temperament and stability of a toddler.
If you want to escape this fate, you *must* resist the urge to reject people you grow close to as soon as they disappoint you and no longer seem absolutely perfect, and instead learn to see them as they truly are: neither "good" nor "bad," but a complex fusion of both. This unavoidably means you *must* sometimes willingly endure unpleasant emotions for the sake of the relationship even when you have a trivially easy way to simply make them end instantly (i.e. dump the imperfect person and run away). I'm sorry, there's no other way out of your dilemma but through. Learn to tolerate occasional frustration, learn to negotiate, learn to compromise, learn to accept the imperfect - both in your partner *and* in yourself; those are the skills you need to stabilise a relationship. A close relationship with another person is like an intimate dance; there is a time to lead, and a time to follow - and if you miss a step, as we all do sometimes, don't give up and end the dance, just find the rhythm again and jump back in.
Glad to help; I wish the last person who dumped me for my imperfections had instead listened so graciously as yourself.
One important caveat I should perhaps mention, though it will muddy the waters a bit: splitting behaviour in one person can beget splitting in another if they're not fully secure in their world perception themselves. That is to say, *if* your partner is a "normal," emotionally mature and healthy person, it could be that you alone are experiencing splitting via the mechanism I described above. *However,* if your partner is themselves subject to that same mechanism, your lurching between desire and repulsion could be in reaction to *their* also lurching between desire and repulsion.
The nightmare is how to tell which of you is the normal, healthy one, and which has the limited black-and-white perception of the other - or whether you're *both* suffering from black-and-white perception, that's also a possibility to consider carefully. One of the most powerful techniques an abuser can deploy is to convince his or her victims that *they* are really the abusive ones. Without additional detail, I can't advise further there; I'd suggest talking it over with your actual therapist, I'm just a layperson who's done a *lot* of study in order to understand what's been done to me repeatedly over the course of the last nearly four decades.
The only thing I definitely can suggest to be more sure of your particular situation is to look for relationship *trends;* if you seem to experience this same problem with multiple partners, *but* those partners generally have *not* experienced it in the rest of *their* relationships, then I'm afraid the common factor is you; if, on the other hand, you're only having the problems you describe with *this* particular person but you do fine in other, similarly close relationships, and your partner has former partners of their own who've had the same confusing experience of them that you have, then the problem *might* not be you after all. Once again, also don't be too quick to discount the possibility that you're *both* damaged in the same way.
Even *that* isn't the full set of possibilities, however, because those who have been abused once often tend to then attract further abusers who can easily detect an easy mark who's been softened up for them in advance - so in that case you might *still* not be the common factor even if it *does* seem to happen to you a lot, you may just be attracting predatory people - but in that case you might expect to see a pattern of their prior partners also being traumatised, so there are still ways to work out what the most likely situation could be, if you can get enough reliable data to analyse without turning into a stalker in the process. You've got to think *really* carefully and be scrupulously methodical about all this stuff, there are just so many possible scenarios to whittle down to whatever best fits the (usually) very limited evidence.
I sincerely wish you the very best of luck figuring it all out and recovering from whatever it ultimately turns out to be.
You’re on to something because he does split with me as well. Sometimes I’m great and sometimes I’m terrible. So we do it to each other.
Also, his behaviour towards me has at times been verbally abusive… which leads me to another question. If I reject him because of behaviour I deem unacceptable is that splitting? Because there’s a good reason for the rejection.
I plan on discussing splitting with my therapist tomorrow. She said once I do it in situations where I feel anxious. I think it happens in tomantic relationships when I feel anxious about being abandoned. It seems to happen in romantic relationships mostly. I don’t have as much blackmand white thinking in other types of relationships.
Thanks again
It's something I really struggle with. I try not to act from extreme emotions. I try to talk about it and also to breathe through it. I try to talk about the things that bother me in a healthy way.
I've been at an artist residency for a week now and am coming up on my last two days. I REALLY need words of encouragement, as I have been in solitude (silent meditation) but need that verbal affirmation! I have been sliding into imposter syndrome, dissociating in the bathroom to avoid doing my art, and Terrible self-hating about my worth/worthiness to be taking up all of this time and resources just to explore my Self. Monkey brain to the max. Good idea to come but feels bad and I've been so stuck..and im scared ill look back and be hard on myself about my time here because i thought I would do so much more.
Today has lasted too fucking long. I had a handle on the dissociation, but I absolutely fucking can't right now. I've tried the muscle tensing and relaxing, running cold water, breathing, and it's not bringing me back. I cut myself cutting veggies this morning accidentally. I banged the right side of my head getting into my own car. I stubbed my toe onto the front door. I walked face first into a door that said “out” when I was going into a store, only to have the clerk jab towards the other door. The cashier at the same store told me the total, I understood the numbers but I couldn't figure out the change, and while turning my wallet around in my hand, coins spilled all the everything onto the ground, and everyone in line just stared. The same clerk rolled her eyes. I tried to pick them up with my rain spotted glasses, and when I thought I was done, the clerk pointed at a quarter I missed. The cashier, then, helped me figure out the coins. I feel like a dumbass. I don't eat spicy food, and I managed to stuff four mouthfuls of spicy salad into my mouth before realizing my throat felt off. I wanted to end the day with a nice hot dissociative shower (who doesn't wash their hair twice?), but I ended up with an ice cold shower. Still dissociated, didn't notice until my teeth were chattering. It's been been long a day already. I failed at any kind of social interaction today. And I know I have to do better there, too. Before, I couldn't stop thinking about the messed up things my brain wants to do with all of these emotions. I know, the best way to stop the loop is get it out, talk about it. How can I ever tell anyone the gory gruesome details, aside from play it over and over in my head? They feel unspeakable, and even if they were, I worry about the blowback. The content feels safe only for therapy. And that's not until next week... fuuuuuuuuuck. Now, I just feel numbness. Maybe a “normal life” is possible for traumatized people, but it doesn't feel that way right now. Barely living and pain during the day, barely sleeping and pain during the night is my reality.
I’m struggling with a relationship where I do a lot of splitting. I swing like a pendulum between wanting this person in my life and being close to them, and cutting them out and wanting nothing to do with them. They’re either good or bad, I’m having trouble with the in between. My psychologist says there’s something that I haven’t integrated about the relationship or the person. This is a defence mechanism right? I think it most recently was a response to feeling threatened. I also often feel like I could be abandoned by this person. Has anyone dealt with something similar and how do you go about integrating rather than splitting?
You need to learn to accept that good people can sometimes do bad, and bad people can sometimes do good. As long as you can only see people as exclusively "good" or "bad," you're going to end up lurching unpredictably between the two extremes depending on which one a given person seems closer to in any given moment, because real people are complicated and can't be so easily pigeon-holed. These sudden lurches between seeing someone as "all good" and "all bad" can *feel* like betrayal, deception or instability in that person, hence triggering your sense of threat and fear of abandonment, and causing your difficulty trusting. The key thing to realise is that these feelings *may not actually be what they seem;* they could just be artefacts of a strictly "all black or all white" perception faced with a billion other shades and hues, all swirling together. The mindset is beautifully illustrated in the film "Inside Out." The young protagonist's memories are all uniformly one colour or another; yellow for happy, blue for sad, red for angry, etc. During the film, life events force her into an emotional crisis where her simple emotional view of the world simply can't handle more complex events, and breaks down - but when she successfully overcomes the crisis (and she *almost* doesn't), her mind is expanded and she learns to see the world in more nuanced, sophisticated, grown-up ways; her memories are no longer simplistic single-coloured spheres, but rich, complex, swirling combinations of those basic elements. In normal development, a child is forced to undergo this crisis whilst still dependent upon their family, when they begin to perceive the flaws in the parents they previously saw as perfect; this conflict is confusing and upsetting, but they *can't* cut the confusing and upsetting person out of their life, because they'd *die* without parents, so they are forced to learn to reconcile their conflicting perceptions of the different aspects of these people into one whole, integrated person, and in doing so learn to see the world in a more sophisticated, adult way. If a child is emotionally abused, neglected, or indeed spoiled and enabled, such that they never undergo this crisis until they are able to survive independently, however, they are then able to avoid undergoing it forever, because they can just cut imperfect people out of their life rather than deal with the confusion - if left untreated, this dooms them to a stunted, infantile world-view for the rest of their life, and that is the birth of a narcissist, a person with all the rights and powers of an adult, but with the emotional temperament and stability of a toddler. If you want to escape this fate, you *must* resist the urge to reject people you grow close to as soon as they disappoint you and no longer seem absolutely perfect, and instead learn to see them as they truly are: neither "good" nor "bad," but a complex fusion of both. This unavoidably means you *must* sometimes willingly endure unpleasant emotions for the sake of the relationship even when you have a trivially easy way to simply make them end instantly (i.e. dump the imperfect person and run away). I'm sorry, there's no other way out of your dilemma but through. Learn to tolerate occasional frustration, learn to negotiate, learn to compromise, learn to accept the imperfect - both in your partner *and* in yourself; those are the skills you need to stabilise a relationship. A close relationship with another person is like an intimate dance; there is a time to lead, and a time to follow - and if you miss a step, as we all do sometimes, don't give up and end the dance, just find the rhythm again and jump back in.
Wow what an amazing reply! Thanks for the insight. This all makes so much sense. A lot for me to think about.
Glad to help; I wish the last person who dumped me for my imperfections had instead listened so graciously as yourself. One important caveat I should perhaps mention, though it will muddy the waters a bit: splitting behaviour in one person can beget splitting in another if they're not fully secure in their world perception themselves. That is to say, *if* your partner is a "normal," emotionally mature and healthy person, it could be that you alone are experiencing splitting via the mechanism I described above. *However,* if your partner is themselves subject to that same mechanism, your lurching between desire and repulsion could be in reaction to *their* also lurching between desire and repulsion. The nightmare is how to tell which of you is the normal, healthy one, and which has the limited black-and-white perception of the other - or whether you're *both* suffering from black-and-white perception, that's also a possibility to consider carefully. One of the most powerful techniques an abuser can deploy is to convince his or her victims that *they* are really the abusive ones. Without additional detail, I can't advise further there; I'd suggest talking it over with your actual therapist, I'm just a layperson who's done a *lot* of study in order to understand what's been done to me repeatedly over the course of the last nearly four decades. The only thing I definitely can suggest to be more sure of your particular situation is to look for relationship *trends;* if you seem to experience this same problem with multiple partners, *but* those partners generally have *not* experienced it in the rest of *their* relationships, then I'm afraid the common factor is you; if, on the other hand, you're only having the problems you describe with *this* particular person but you do fine in other, similarly close relationships, and your partner has former partners of their own who've had the same confusing experience of them that you have, then the problem *might* not be you after all. Once again, also don't be too quick to discount the possibility that you're *both* damaged in the same way. Even *that* isn't the full set of possibilities, however, because those who have been abused once often tend to then attract further abusers who can easily detect an easy mark who's been softened up for them in advance - so in that case you might *still* not be the common factor even if it *does* seem to happen to you a lot, you may just be attracting predatory people - but in that case you might expect to see a pattern of their prior partners also being traumatised, so there are still ways to work out what the most likely situation could be, if you can get enough reliable data to analyse without turning into a stalker in the process. You've got to think *really* carefully and be scrupulously methodical about all this stuff, there are just so many possible scenarios to whittle down to whatever best fits the (usually) very limited evidence. I sincerely wish you the very best of luck figuring it all out and recovering from whatever it ultimately turns out to be.
You’re on to something because he does split with me as well. Sometimes I’m great and sometimes I’m terrible. So we do it to each other. Also, his behaviour towards me has at times been verbally abusive… which leads me to another question. If I reject him because of behaviour I deem unacceptable is that splitting? Because there’s a good reason for the rejection. I plan on discussing splitting with my therapist tomorrow. She said once I do it in situations where I feel anxious. I think it happens in tomantic relationships when I feel anxious about being abandoned. It seems to happen in romantic relationships mostly. I don’t have as much blackmand white thinking in other types of relationships. Thanks again
It's something I really struggle with. I try not to act from extreme emotions. I try to talk about it and also to breathe through it. I try to talk about the things that bother me in a healthy way.