Being nice when I least deserve it

One skill I am struggling with is "not making it worse."

There are a couple of ways I can make things worse. I can take a bad situation and make it significantly worse by yelling louder, throwing things, making threats, refusing to give up, oh I could describe some doozies.

Alternately, I can make things worse by taking a bad situation, or a mistake, and beating myself up about it. If I'm already upset, telling myself I'm an idiot really doesn't help anything. I can hear the dry voice of my therapist saying "Well, it really doesn't help anything to say that, you know," when I tell him so.

It doesn't help to deny myself access to friends, or to things that make me feel better. No, you can't go out to that movie, you made a fool of yourself at work today. Not only does it not help prevent me from making a fool of myself at work (if that even really happened vs. just being a huge fear of mine or a misrepresentation in my mind), but it makes me sadder and angrier and hate myself more.

In the first case, my goal is to walk away. Hang up the phone. Give up the fight. Don't have to win. Don't make things worse.

In the second case, my goal is to be realistic about how bad my screwup was, and to attempt to fix it. If it is something that can be fixed, apologized for or somehow changed, I should do that. If it is not (i.e. spilling food down my shirt), then I should not fixate on it, I should not make it bigger, I should not theorize that everyone in the office saw it or is giggling behind my back. I should be realistic.

I need to not make things worse.

Tomorrow I will try again

I yelled at my little children. I made my daughter cry and sent her to school upset at me and I feel so guilty. I thought about going to get her out of class to tell her I am sorry, but I know that would just disrupt things again -- she is in a place she is happy and normal and accepted and I want her to be able to be in that place today.

My little boy's face crumpled when I told him how angry I am at him. I didn't do it in an appropriate way, but in a furious way and I am guilty about that. I was able to talk to him before his class and tried to repair the damage, a little.

I will see them both tonight when I pick them up. I will try to be there before the usual 6 p.m. pickup time and maybe we'll have time to play a little on the playground before it gets dark. I will draw them close and tell them how sorry I am for the loud yelling. I will tell them what I will try to do tonight to get us more ready for the morning so we won't be so rushed and prone to being late (which is what got me so angry, I just can't seem to make them get out the door). I will tell them we are playing outside extra as part of my apology.

They will hug me around the neck and my daughter will stroke my face and tell me thank you and say "You are the world's best mom and I know you're doing the best you can," and my little boy will say "Does this mean I get chocolate, too?" and they will run off laughing. Their hearts will be scarred, a little, again, and I will feel guilty but maybe not quite so much.

I am trying to talk to the person inside me who yelled at them, who totally lost control and indulged herself in a tantrum. Wait, indulged is a judgmental word and I'd rather not go there. I didn't totally lose control because I did manage to drive them to school and get myself to work.

I got way too angry this morning and scared my children. Which is not the kind of parent I want to be. They do know I love them, and I know they are forgiving. I will not forget this, but I will try to put it in the past, for now. I will apologize, I will try to repair the damage with the apology and over-repair with the extra time for play. I have made a plan to make the chances of it happening again less likely. That is what I can do about this. That is how I can get past this without beating myself silly. Beating myself up about this will send me to bed with the covers over my head. My kids will be out in the living room, alone, watching TV and wondering why mom isn't cooking dinner. I can be the kind of mom who cries to herself under the covers about why she's such a bad mom, or I can be the kind of mom who makes mistakes, then tries to fix them and move on.

Tomorrow morning I will try again.

If I could punish it out of me, I would

Update 1/8/07: I guess Layne didn't appreciate my comment, and has made her blog private. Best wishes to you.

I read a post today by someone named Layne who's pretty pissed off that she's been told she has borderline personality disorder. She's telling herself the answer to the problems she has is to Just Behave. Be Good. Problem Solved.

Being long-winded, I left her a monster of a comment. Here's what I said:

From the time I was small, the solution to every problem in our house was "grow up." Stop acting childish and accept the reality that things are tough in this world and that's the way it is.

One problem with that is that, well, I was a child for some of that time, and the direction to "grow up" was not really a solution but an insult. I understand that now, but at the time I couldn't help wondering what in the HELL was wrong with me that I couldn't suck it up, stop feeling badly and start acting "good." Why couldn't I behave like they wanted me to behave?

Look, no one wants you to have a diagnosis for the sake of you having one. The only reason we have diagnoses at all is to help us categorize problems and solutions. It sounds like you are fiercely independent (check, that sounds like me), like you are sorry for some of the ways you acted/behaved when you were younger (how old are you now?) (oh, yeah, and check, that sounds like me, too).

Here's what I do to myself, and from your writings it sounds as if maybe you do it too. Maybe not (and if you don't, I'm glad as heck because it sucks to do it). When I'm "bad," when I don't clean my house or finish my work, when I'm late paying bills or run out of gas or when my kids leave the house without their hair combed despite my best effort. When my boss is disappointed in me, when I can't get my act together. When I open Spaghetti-O's for dinner. When I burn the nice dinner I've struggled so hard to make. When my kids fight over Christmas toys I sacrificed to buy them. When I can't be understood no matter how fast I talk or how much I explain ...

When things go wrong, when I feel like I'm not behaving, when I feel like I'm acting bad, then I punish myself.

I beat the shit out of myself.

I deny myself small pleasures like perfume, I refuse to look people in the eye, I do things that harm my long-term health, I eat poorly and punish my poor dog by refusing to go for a walk. I huddle under the covers instead of going out to lunch with a friend. I go to work (I have a really GREAT job and make tons of money and I'm a total loser) and close the door and hide out and wonder when they're going to figure out what a sham I am. I act in ways that are risky ... sometimes downright dangerous. I don't cut myself like some people with borderline personality do, but I do take risks and it's stupid and I know it, but it is like I need to tell myself "YOU SCREW UP! SOMEONE NEEDS TO PUNISH YOU!"

And Layne, I've been doing this for several DECADES. And you know what? I still can't behave. I'm still not good. My problems are still not solved. God knows I want to be better, god knows I don't want to be a loser. My self esteem is in the toilet and my life looks as if it is. I am lost and alone and I feel like I deserve it to be that way.

Yes, we are good at manipulating. Yes, we are shitheads. Yes, we should stop crying and we shouldn't need therapists or pills. We should be strong and we should Just Grow Up.

Or maybe -- maybe -- we could try a different approach.

The one that works best for me is to think of myself as the child that was told to Grow Up. I think of myself saying that to my own kids, and realize how really ridiculous it would be to tell a six year old to grow up and stop sniffling about some disappointment. Or to tell a teenager to stop moaning and groaning about stuff when I know it's alot of hormones talking combined with sleep deprivation and a body that doesn't feel right.

So if I talk to myself the way I talk to my kids -- in a gentle and validating way -- I am able to have an effect. I am able to forgive myself for acting out or acting up. I am able to get myself to a different place.

My borderline personality disorder manifests itself in anger, but I know it is really predicated on hurt. Big hurt. Long hurt. Giant disappointment that the world doesn't operate the ways I wish it would. That I can't wish things true or act good enough to make them so.

And if I accept that my anger is born of hurt, then telling my angry self to shut up and grow up is really kinda silly -- right? What I should say is "I love you and want to help you."

I am in a much better place now than I was four years ago (!) when I started dialectical behavioral therapy -- a widely recognized therapy that is proven to CURE borderline personality disorder. Truth be told, I have been cured of many of the more insidious symptoms of the disorder and don't act like the screaming maniac I once did.

The truly cool thing about this therapy -- and therapy in general -- is that it's all about acceptance and understanding ourselves. It's not a weakness that we need this, it's a GIFT that we can give ourselves. If you are in a position to be able to partake of therapy, grab it with both hands. Embrace it and hold it close and love it with every ounce of your being. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my therapist (I call him the World's Best Therapist™) has saved my life. I keep asking him when he's going to cure me, and he keeps reminding me that I have to cure myself.

In the meantime, he's walking the journey with me! Right there, beside me. Someone who totally gets me, who accepts me.

Heck, Winona Ryder is a great actress, and the character she plays has a lot of the behaviors that a person with borderline personality disorder has. But she is by no means stereotypical (where is the screaming rage??!??!) If someone tells you that you have symptoms on this line, it means you exhibit some of a long list (I think it's 13?) of behaviors or patterns that make it up. By definition, then, there is no stereotypical person with the disorder -- it's like a Chinese restaurant menu where you can have any combination of symptoms.

I wish you the best, and I'll be thinking about you this evening. I wish for you that you could ease up on yourself instead of telling yourself to behave. Yes, accepting responsibility for past actions is good. Punishing yourself to prevent future behavior, well, it doesn't work for my kids and it damn sure doesn't work for me. It just punishes me and makes it worse.

One of the things I'm doing to help myself is this -- writing about borderline personality disorder. That's what this blog is about.