The Psychotic Submarine
**spoiler alert ** This is probably the biggest Personal Victory against my Borderline that I have experienced so far since my diagnosis from the beginning of February. But first, we must tell story. One I think might help all of you understand. Its my analogy for Personality Disorders. One that will explain Schizophrenics and other disorders that involve detaching from reality.
You are a captain. Of a submarine. For the sake of this analogy you are a permanent submarine captain bound to spend your life underwater. You have monitors and sensors. And you watch these like a hawk.
Using these sensors you live your life in a submarine. You dodge the rocks and canyons and explore everything, rising and lowering in the water based on your very whims. You find another submarine and you wander around with it. Sending communications back and forth you explore things. You get other submarines, and you all chill.
Suddenly, the lights on your systems blink once and your systems go into red alert. You don't know why, but your sensors are showing red nukes coming your way. You start dodging, and firing. The nukes are coming from your friend. You fire at the nukes, and start firing at the enemy. Other ships start turning to leave, and you run after them, and they keep zooming away. And suddenly, you're all alone, and you don't know why.
Later on, one of your sub friends has the guts to approach you, and tell you what happened from their side. No one had fired on you. You're confused.. your sensors told you they were trying to hurt you. They told you that you started firing first. But, your sensors never said that. You never told the sensors to hurt anyone.
How, were supposed to know what your system was doing, if your sensors weren't telling you the right things? How were you supposed to know how to react, how to live, if the things you relied on to tell you things were giving you false information. At any point do you ever feel a need to distrust your sensors? You'll react and go with the flow the minute things start changing.
Definition of Psychosis: A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality
Continuing... Typically, when I become emotional I can hit a dissociative and psychotic moment. What I think is only "letting someone know how I feel" turns into massive bombs attacking everyone.
It was typical for me to march over to someone's house and demand validation for the extreme emotion/rejection/abandonment I was feeling. And to demand that validation it came out in the form of passive aggression, anger, and guilt trips. And then be an empathy vampire. I was wired to do that. That was my reality. That was my instinct. I knew there was nothing wrong with what I did. Or so I believed. I wandered into a reality that wasn't socially acceptable, and that I had no idea what was wrong.
So many times I've jumped to twitter in a passive aggressive way to generate the guilt trips to those I 'saw' hurting me on my own sensors.
Do crazy people know they're crazy? Only during the sane moments.
If you've never read the Trilogy: Uglies/Pretties/Specials, you should. Underlying theme is a dystopian future where people undergo a surgery at 16 to become 'pretty' and conform with each other, except, during the operation, people are rewired to be happy, docile.. etc. By the time Specials comes around the main character is SO rewired, that she knows there's something wrong, as seen by anger management and superiority complex. Throughout the series she's put in situations where she rewires herself against conformity and instinct, and chooses her own neurological pathways. In the 3rd book, everyone else uses a pill to break down the wiring, and she was forced to do it all on her own.
And I used to crave that book, wishing I could ever be in a situation that required me to do something remarkable like rewire my own brain. (This was like.. end of high school.. ish, i think) And I would consider it a personal victory. Everyone is always rewiring your brain, and you're never going to rewire it so far as to notice a major change, unlike the book when someone was like "OMG Tally! You're like [blank] when you were like [blank]"
Except for this Abandonment.
Someone in my life is gone. Or at least that's what my brain wants me to think. I suffered an abandonment, and I cut off the irrationality and saw a big picture/gray area. Where my brain wanted me to believe he hated me and it was all my fault, I saw and understood that he was still friends with me on Facebook and on Xbox, leading me to assess the "Gray area" that I never can venture into. Where my brain wanted me to march to his house, this time, I was able to assess that he has his own reasons, that may not be directly related to me.
What usually is 4-6 hours of anxiety, weeping and crying, yelling and screaming, was about a half hour of anxiety while kristen came to retrieve me, 20 minutes of weeping as I spilled it out, acknowledging that I was fully conscious of my own decisions and
WAS MAKING THE FREAKING CHOICE OF MY OWN FREAKING VOLITION TO *NOT* MARCH OVER TO SOMEONE'S HOUSE BECAUSE THAT WAS WRONG! IT WAS INCORRECT BEHAVIOR AND I NEEDED TO FIGHT AGAINST EVERY INSTINCT AND URGE TO FOLLOW MY OWN INTERNAL REALITY.
So I just cried. I cried to Kristen.
"He needs to come talk to me when he's ready. I can't go over there, but I let him know that his choice was his own, and I wasn't going to come after him for it."
And then I cried.
And then Kristen played Twilight Princess on the Gamecube.
And I was better.
OMG THAT IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN 6 HOURS OF SUFFERING THAT HAS EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL AFTER EFFECTS.
XD
GUYS! THIS IS THE BIGGEST VICTORY SINCE I GOT DIAGNOSED.
I caught the psychosis. I made the decision. And I conquered the Borderline for a night. yes, every time the thought bubbles up, there's a wave of anxiety but then, the Grey area that I found within me is a template. I can overlay it on top of what I have, and it works. I achieved that area I was looking for, and now I can get back.
And I think... I think Aerie's death had a big part of it. That was emotion that lasted just exactly as long as it needed to, and it wasn't extreme. and then it was over. And now I have a balance I can aim for with every emotion.
I'm actually succeeding at ignoring an abandonment. And I processed the emotion, and then it was gone.
You are a captain. Of a submarine. For the sake of this analogy you are a permanent submarine captain bound to spend your life underwater. You have monitors and sensors. And you watch these like a hawk.
Using these sensors you live your life in a submarine. You dodge the rocks and canyons and explore everything, rising and lowering in the water based on your very whims. You find another submarine and you wander around with it. Sending communications back and forth you explore things. You get other submarines, and you all chill.
Suddenly, the lights on your systems blink once and your systems go into red alert. You don't know why, but your sensors are showing red nukes coming your way. You start dodging, and firing. The nukes are coming from your friend. You fire at the nukes, and start firing at the enemy. Other ships start turning to leave, and you run after them, and they keep zooming away. And suddenly, you're all alone, and you don't know why.
Later on, one of your sub friends has the guts to approach you, and tell you what happened from their side. No one had fired on you. You're confused.. your sensors told you they were trying to hurt you. They told you that you started firing first. But, your sensors never said that. You never told the sensors to hurt anyone.
How, were supposed to know what your system was doing, if your sensors weren't telling you the right things? How were you supposed to know how to react, how to live, if the things you relied on to tell you things were giving you false information. At any point do you ever feel a need to distrust your sensors? You'll react and go with the flow the minute things start changing.
Definition of Psychosis: A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality
Continuing... Typically, when I become emotional I can hit a dissociative and psychotic moment. What I think is only "letting someone know how I feel" turns into massive bombs attacking everyone.
It was typical for me to march over to someone's house and demand validation for the extreme emotion/rejection/abandonment I was feeling. And to demand that validation it came out in the form of passive aggression, anger, and guilt trips. And then be an empathy vampire. I was wired to do that. That was my reality. That was my instinct. I knew there was nothing wrong with what I did. Or so I believed. I wandered into a reality that wasn't socially acceptable, and that I had no idea what was wrong.
So many times I've jumped to twitter in a passive aggressive way to generate the guilt trips to those I 'saw' hurting me on my own sensors.
Do crazy people know they're crazy? Only during the sane moments.
If you've never read the Trilogy: Uglies/Pretties/Specials, you should. Underlying theme is a dystopian future where people undergo a surgery at 16 to become 'pretty' and conform with each other, except, during the operation, people are rewired to be happy, docile.. etc. By the time Specials comes around the main character is SO rewired, that she knows there's something wrong, as seen by anger management and superiority complex. Throughout the series she's put in situations where she rewires herself against conformity and instinct, and chooses her own neurological pathways. In the 3rd book, everyone else uses a pill to break down the wiring, and she was forced to do it all on her own.
And I used to crave that book, wishing I could ever be in a situation that required me to do something remarkable like rewire my own brain. (This was like.. end of high school.. ish, i think) And I would consider it a personal victory. Everyone is always rewiring your brain, and you're never going to rewire it so far as to notice a major change, unlike the book when someone was like "OMG Tally! You're like [blank] when you were like [blank]"
Except for this Abandonment.
Someone in my life is gone. Or at least that's what my brain wants me to think. I suffered an abandonment, and I cut off the irrationality and saw a big picture/gray area. Where my brain wanted me to believe he hated me and it was all my fault, I saw and understood that he was still friends with me on Facebook and on Xbox, leading me to assess the "Gray area" that I never can venture into. Where my brain wanted me to march to his house, this time, I was able to assess that he has his own reasons, that may not be directly related to me.
What usually is 4-6 hours of anxiety, weeping and crying, yelling and screaming, was about a half hour of anxiety while kristen came to retrieve me, 20 minutes of weeping as I spilled it out, acknowledging that I was fully conscious of my own decisions and
WAS MAKING THE FREAKING CHOICE OF MY OWN FREAKING VOLITION TO *NOT* MARCH OVER TO SOMEONE'S HOUSE BECAUSE THAT WAS WRONG! IT WAS INCORRECT BEHAVIOR AND I NEEDED TO FIGHT AGAINST EVERY INSTINCT AND URGE TO FOLLOW MY OWN INTERNAL REALITY.
So I just cried. I cried to Kristen.
"He needs to come talk to me when he's ready. I can't go over there, but I let him know that his choice was his own, and I wasn't going to come after him for it."
And then I cried.
And then Kristen played Twilight Princess on the Gamecube.
And I was better.
OMG THAT IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN 6 HOURS OF SUFFERING THAT HAS EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL AFTER EFFECTS.
XD
GUYS! THIS IS THE BIGGEST VICTORY SINCE I GOT DIAGNOSED.
I caught the psychosis. I made the decision. And I conquered the Borderline for a night. yes, every time the thought bubbles up, there's a wave of anxiety but then, the Grey area that I found within me is a template. I can overlay it on top of what I have, and it works. I achieved that area I was looking for, and now I can get back.
And I think... I think Aerie's death had a big part of it. That was emotion that lasted just exactly as long as it needed to, and it wasn't extreme. and then it was over. And now I have a balance I can aim for with every emotion.
I'm actually succeeding at ignoring an abandonment. And I processed the emotion, and then it was gone.
And I did it just like all the rest of you....
Except I did it in a Psychotic Submarine, with malfunctioning sensors.
4 thoughts :
dont give yourself more credit than you deserve.
youre just at the top of your loop right now. just watch where it goes from here.
Actually after 9 months of trying to actually succeed at this behavior, I deserve every ounce of credit. And if I can do it once... then I can do it again. From here it can go up or down and if i fail again is cause i stumbled but it will not dampen the amount of work to reach this point. But I succeeded and I choose to be super happy about it because it gives me and the other borderlines following the story hope.
Do not... my friend... do not.. belittle the amount of mental work it has taken to suceed against instinct and wiring.
Not that I expect you to ever be happy for me.
Laura....I hope all goes well for you. Tim
Good job bobbing and weaving the vicious comments from a sad human being, Laura.
Also, you deserve every ounce of pride you have in succeeding- Just remember that it takes a lot of misses to start making hits- Don't get upset at yourself for not changing in a day- Our personal mountains are rarely ever so easy to climb.
If it means anything, I'm proud of ya.
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