I think I dated someone with BPD

[cheverolet88]

Hi my story is that I broke up with my ex several months ago and began therapy for a few months but ended up people pleasing my therapist and didn't get much out of it. I just restarted therapy after shopping around through several phone consultations and had a very upsetting first intake session. I have been reading pete walkers cpstd book and think I am a fawn type and when i get upset and someone asks "what's wrong" my fawning kicks to please them. I think when my latest therapist was like I can see that bothered you then I got anxious because I thought she wanted to know if I was angry so I tried really hard to figure out a reason for being angry instead of just being angry I guess.

I think my ex had BPD because they always asked "are you mad at me". I broke up with her after one of these episodes because i think realized i was letting her manipulate me. We never argued and I was never mad at her, we only had these "episodes" where she would be worried i was mad at her so i would reassure her and turn off my feelings until i felt ashamed of myself and sorry to her. This could go on for an hour idk. It makes me think of when she cheated on me (i didn't realized she cheated until after i broke up and talked with friends) so in response when she cheated I sent a very long apology text where I apologized for feeling upset that she cheated on me and praised her for being so love and smart and intelligent and mentioned how I don't know what i would do without her. It doesn't upset me to type any of this out right now. When I broke up with my ex, my first therapist was like are you feeling mad or angry at her since the breakup and I was like no of course not she didn't mean it etc. That's what happened to the therapist as well - i didn't want my first therapist to feel like she was a bad therapist so I could be a good client by telling my therapist yes you are right that lands with me thank you now i feel better when she would try to empathize with me after I shared an upsetting story.

I think my ex had a narcissistic dad and ended up with multiple boyfriends before high school which all ended very poorly for her and i wanted to be kind and caring and fix her which started a very weird multi year relationship.

Anyways it feels weird that I haven't really gone through a lot of my memories of the episodes and my theory is if i let myself be manipulated (i belive being accountable helps me not be a victim) then i have CPSTD and there are a ton of memories i need to go through and feel hurt and be compassionate that i won't hurt myself like i did again.

I haven't made any new close friendships since high school except for a very anxiety inducing friendship where i people pleased the new friend and let them disrespect me. My boss at work scares me and I want to get rid of all my anxiety thoughts and quit people pleasing.

Overall I'm doing great in life and have health insurance and am able to do therapy. I think my family is great but my therapists have been trying to do family of origin to figure out where i learned to tolerate this nonsense and i guess my mom is kind of codependent and my dad wasn't present for a lot of my childhood but i still think most of my problems are from my ex.

[notrightinthehead]

Welcome! I so can relate to the fawning bit with the therapist. That happened with me too - I wanted to please him and make him feel good about himself, so I pretended to get better much faster than I really did. Fortunately I found one later where I didn't repeat that behaviour.

You seem to have good self awareness, you might want to experiment with different behaviour when dealing with others. Decide that you are going to behave assertively and when you feel fear, you do it anyway. Then assess the outcome. This comes from Self confidence training or assertiveness training, check it out.

See you around on the boards!

[cheverolet88]

Thanks. Assertiveness could work for current and future relationships, but right now I want to quiet my racing mind and reduce my anxiety thoughts. I did some "what would it feel like to be assertive" with my first therapist and I think it can be helpful for people like my boss at work but I don't think it has done much for anxiety. I want to work on getting angry/feeling hurt from my past relationship with my ex - Id call that processing trauma and want to do that with my therapist.