People with Cluster B Personality Disorders, especially BPD, can y'all relate?
Even if you don't have them but relate, feel free to share. Even if you can't relate and just want to listen, that's fine, too. When I get an attachment, I want to BE a part of their body. I'm crazy and obsessive. I suspect BPD but don't know if I 100% have it, especially since I'm young, but I've always had an unstable or undefined sense of identity.
Even if I'm sure I'm a trans man, for example, one of my attachments was a cis woman who used to be trans a while ago before realizing it wasn't her and feeling dysphoric after identifying as a femboy. I'm trying to get over said attachment and be normal around people like her, but something in me thought it'd be the answer if I too was cis and a detransitioner and even though it's not me to be a girl, I wanted to repress my identity for a bit so I could be a woman, but then I see that I'm a man and repressing just makes it come back and the dysphoria doesn't go away at all.
I just got diagnosed with BPD and I definitely relate.
I've had some pretty severe childhood trauma, and I didn't know about bpd when I was younger (like 20's), but I feel like looking back I could easily have ticked those credentials (of having bpd). I've just spent so much time working on myself and trying to help myself with the big emotions and things that cropped up in my life that felt uncomfortable.
Bpd is essentially survival mechanisms you developed in childhood that get kinda stuck, and they definitely don't serve you in adulthood. None of it is your fault, and all of it is trauma.
I had absolutely no sense of self or self worth, or self esteem, and I would attach to toxic abusive people, expecting them to feed me this sense of self etc, but all they did was break me more. I found, those people I attached to, were always toxic, and it's because they feel familiar to the upbringing you had (not saying this is you). Just that it's common to find what's familiar. So if you grew up in a toxic home, and you try to escape, and then you end up choosing, subconsciously, similar people, because theres this safety in the danger you know. You survived the danger you knew. So it feels like a safe option. Yeah, I know, don't expect brains to be smart, they're not, they just calculate odds of survival.
Let me tell you some things I enjoyed learning on my journey to finding myself. You are not your emotions. You are not your thoughts, you are not your meat suit. You are the entity that observes all of that. And it can feel all consuming, when those emotions burn so hot, it's really hard to step back. And it's hard to feel safe. It feels like your world is spiralling out of control and your chest is so tight you don't feel like you can survive this emotion, and you would do almost anything for release.
But release never comes from the places that burned you in the first place.
All those big emotions, they're a communication from a part of your brain that is entirely non verbal, it is just designed to notice a need or danger, and help you survive it. And it gets a super work out, when you have lived through trauma, so it's a little super powered.
The trick to it is to learn how to turn off your fight or flight that's making you feel like clinging to that person is the only solve to those huge emotions.
I'll bet you are amazingly attentive and intensely focused and great at looking after those people you fixate on. Why not turn those superpowers back on yourself. Start by noticing. It sounds silly, but those emotions get louder and louder because they feel like they are warning you of a danger AND they feel like you don't hear them. So notice them. Stop where you are, place a kind hand on your chest and say, I notice I'm feeling some big feelings right now. And then turn all of those attentive superpowers on filling your needs, no matter how small, for the rest of the day (and always, but start there). Have you eaten, do you need to rest, is your clothing comfortable, are you thirsty, does your soul need a song and dance, do you need your favourite cup and a nice view. Take some time to pamper yourself and really look after yourself, until you're feeling a little better.
Then start doing all that stuff without the big feelings, just all day every day.
You get to spend the most time on this earth with yourself, no matter how long a relationship you end up in, nothing else comes close, so make that the best relationship of all, and everything else just falls in place. You got this, I believe in you.