Guest guest Posted January 5, 2012 Report Share Posted January 5, 2012 Anyone who is long time NC with children, please read this and give some insight. Do you feel you have corrected most of your problems? Do your children display normal emotions? Please help. " A child born with a cheerful, warm, placid or passive temperament would be unlikely to develop BPD. " http://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com/understading-bpd/a-bpd-brief That's good, because I always worry about my nature. How much of me is learned behavior, genetic predisposition, or decided correction? So worried about it now that we're getting closer to having kids. How much will I pass on, how much will I teach them, and how much have I overcome so that they'll never know? I was always a calm child. No, I was submissive. I don't think that's the same as placid or passive. Did I have such a strong survival instinct from a young age that I just never acted out or did I just naturally placate? Hard to say. Nada's sister says I was a happy baby, but I remember the first signs of my mom's mental instability from the age of 2. We all know I wasn't a happy kid or a happy teenager... " Like most other mental illnesses, Borderline Personality Disorder does not appear to originate during a specific, discrete phase of development. Recent studies have suggested that pre-borderline children fail to learn accurate ways to identify feelings or to accurately attribute motives in themselves and others (often called failures of " mentalization " ). Such children fail to develop basic mental capacities that constitute a stable sense of self and make themselves or others understandable or predictable. One important theory has emphasized the critical role of an invalidating environment. This occurs when a child is led to believe that his or her feelings, thoughts and perceptions are not real or do not matter. " I have always had a strong intuition and perception of other's feelings. In order to survive with her I had to know what she was thinking and feeling before she knew it. I know what people are thinking and feeling and how they feel about me, what they expect from me, and what they want to hear within a few minutes of meeting someone. The invalidating environment is the scary thing, though. So, I could see the real world and the real reactions and real feelings, but I had to live behind glass in another world where everything I saw on the other side of the glass meant something totally different with her. It was like being Jane Goodall, but in a gorilla cage at the zoo; Jane knew that smiling on one side of the glass meant happiness and on the other it was a sign of aggression. My mom, of course, was the gorilla and she would use any sort of force necessary to convince you that you had committed a faux pas. Nada's sister says nada wasn't always like this, no one really noticed until I was born. I'm sure growing up with a BPD dad herself was a huge contribution; but no one really talks about that time. I think there was a lot of backlash when she got pregnant with me at 20 and the family (especially my great-grandmother, the matriarch) stopped talking to her. Maybe that was the abandonment that pushed her over the BPD edge. My mom used to talk about how no one wanted to help her when she had me, but it's okay for cousins in the family to have children while unwed. Pop-pop was the invalidating environment for his three kids. Refer to the Gerhart Gothic Novel that Uncle Rodney wrote me when I inquired [not shared here]. Not light reading, nor light family history. It's also guessed that pop-pop's father was very abusive and very condescending about pop-pop's size and learning abilities. Who knows if there was any actual abandonment there, but maybe the abuse was enough. Maybe it's good that my mom smothered me instead of abandoning me. Maybe it kept my feet on the ground. Who knows, though? Who knows anything, really, about the secretive pasts of the BPDs? Not me. All I can do is try to make little connections with all the frayed threads and cut ends. Being a detective makes me feel active though, like I'm controlling my own mental outcome. I need to constantly read, research, postulate, hypothesize for my sanity. Though, sometimes it drives me mad. Sometimes I want to scream, " WE ARE ALL ALREADY FUCKED UP! Let's just tell each other the fucking truth and move past it. " Then again, I've always been wise beyond my years. No one else would ever go for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 5, 2012 Report Share Posted January 5, 2012 .....well, if you like to read, I have a suggestion for you. It is a book called " Parenting from the Inside Out " by Siegel. The focus is how understanding ourselves, and in particular our own experiences of being parented and being children, helps us be better parents to our own children. The VERY good news is that the more we make sense of our own lives (childhoods, developmental experiences, ways of having been parented, social contexts growing up, etc.), the better able we are to be parents to our own children. There are exercises in the book to help you do this and lots of explanation as to the science of why it is important. Hope you find it useful. HC > > Anyone who is long time NC with children, please read this and give some insight. Do you feel you have corrected most of your problems? Do your children display normal emotions? Please help. > > " A child born with a cheerful, warm, placid or passive temperament would be unlikely to develop BPD. " > http://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com/understading-bpd/a-bpd-brief > > That's good, because I always worry about my nature. How much of me is learned behavior, genetic predisposition, or decided correction? So worried about it now that we're getting closer to having kids. How much will I pass on, how much will I teach them, and how much have I overcome so that they'll never know? I was always a calm child. No, I was submissive. I don't think that's the same as placid or passive. Did I have such a strong survival instinct from a young age that I just never acted out or did I just naturally placate? Hard to say. Nada's sister says I was a happy baby, but I remember the first signs of my mom's mental instability from the age of 2. We all know I wasn't a happy kid or a happy teenager... > > " Like most other mental illnesses, Borderline Personality Disorder does not appear to originate during a specific, discrete phase of development. Recent studies have suggested that pre-borderline children fail to learn accurate ways to identify feelings or to accurately attribute motives in themselves and others (often called failures of " mentalization " ). Such children fail to develop basic mental capacities that constitute a stable sense of self and make themselves or others understandable or predictable. One important theory has emphasized the critical role of an invalidating environment. This occurs when a child is led to believe that his or her feelings, thoughts and perceptions are not real or do not matter. " > > I have always had a strong intuition and perception of other's feelings. In order to survive with her I had to know what she was thinking and feeling before she knew it. I know what people are thinking and feeling and how they feel about me, what they expect from me, and what they want to hear within a few minutes of meeting someone. The invalidating environment is the scary thing, though. So, I could see the real world and the real reactions and real feelings, but I had to live behind glass in another world where everything I saw on the other side of the glass meant something totally different with her. It was like being Jane Goodall, but in a gorilla cage at the zoo; Jane knew that smiling on one side of the glass meant happiness and on the other it was a sign of aggression. My mom, of course, was the gorilla and she would use any sort of force necessary to convince you that you had committed a faux pas. > > Nada's sister says nada wasn't always like this, no one really noticed until I was born. I'm sure growing up with a BPD dad herself was a huge contribution; but no one really talks about that time. I think there was a lot of backlash when she got pregnant with me at 20 and the family (especially my great-grandmother, the matriarch) stopped talking to her. Maybe that was the abandonment that pushed her over the BPD edge. My mom used to talk about how no one wanted to help her when she had me, but it's okay for cousins in the family to have children while unwed. Pop-pop was the invalidating environment for his three kids. Refer to the Gerhart Gothic Novel that Uncle Rodney wrote me when I inquired [not shared here]. Not light reading, nor light family history. It's also guessed that pop-pop's father was very abusive and very condescending about pop-pop's size and learning abilities. Who knows if there was any actual abandonment there, but maybe the abuse was enough. Maybe it's good that my mom smothered me instead of abandoning me. Maybe it kept my feet on the ground. Who knows, though? Who knows anything, really, about the secretive pasts of the BPDs? Not me. All I can do is try to make little connections with all the frayed threads and cut ends. Being a detective makes me feel active though, like I'm controlling my own mental outcome. I need to constantly read, research, postulate, hypothesize for my sanity. Though, sometimes it drives me mad. Sometimes I want to scream, " WE ARE ALL ALREADY FUCKED UP! Let's just tell each other the fucking truth and move past it. " Then again, I've always been wise beyond my years. No one else would ever go for it. > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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