Why People with BPD Must Stop Living Reactively | Psychology Today:
Key to my progress has been Dialectical Behavioral Training, a revolutionary new mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral treatment that teaches people like me how to use meditation and other skills to accept, distract, soothe and control our oversized emotions and the self-destructive impulsive behavior often resulting from them. Much in the same way a socially challenged person with Asperger's Syndrome can learn social skills by rote, people with BPD can (and must!) learn emotional regulation consciously.
For most people, emotional regulation is an automatic, unconsciousresponse. As time goes on, and as people with BPD practice these skills, the brain can begin to "rewire" itself and emotional regulation begins to be somewhat more automatic, leading, in many cases, to the disorder being eradicated altogether. This is possible because the brain is far more plastic than previously thought, and capable of change. It is my sincere hope that within a year I will reach that point, and that instead of a "recovering" borderline, I will be able to say I am recovered.
In recent days, in part through the help of medications that are helping me to regulate my moods and ward off panic attacks and anxiety, I have moved, mentally and emotionally, from obsessing on the ex and going over everything I did wrong in the relationship to instead starting to focus on the ways I can start to use this experience to learn and grow — and emerge a stronger, better person. I've been forcing myself to engage in positive and uplifting experiences, even when all I want to do is crawl under the covers and sob, including reading books about effective ways of interacting with the world.
The first book I've been reading is the famed The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, which the ex, who is a successful restaurant chain executive, recommended to me some time ago after he'd read it. He told me the book had great wisdom in it, and might help me to become, as he put it, "less other-focused and more self-focused." I kept meaning to read it, but only got through the first few pages before life got in the way. Now, I'm reading it, and, just as the ex suspected, it is very helpful, even life-changing. I have felt a great lightness come over me as I read it, a freedom, as the ideas in the first principle of the seven really sinks in. This principle is very much in keeping with DBT, and is something I think every person afflicted with BPD must understand and begin to put into practice as soon as possible. Here is how I've interpreted this principle for those of us with emotional regulation issues
The key to happiness is living proactively, rather than reactively. Let me repeat this, so it really sinks in: The key to happiness is living proactively, rather than reactively.
So, what does this mean? Living proactively means responding to situations based upon your core values rather than your emotions, something I was not good at for most of my life. Recently, with all the work I'm doing, I am quickly mastering this ability. It isn't hard, it just takes an awareness of what it is and a commitment to changing oneself to do it. Proactive living means taking a few seconds to think before acting so that you are making a conscious choice about how to behave, rather than letting external forces dictate our reactions. It means we always have a choice about how we will allow external forces to impact us. I am embarrassed to say I have been living reactively for almost all my life, completely unaware that there was another way.
Reactive living is just the opposite — it is living in constant blind emotional reaction to everything, as little more than a ghostly reflection of who and what surrounds you. It means being dependent upon other people and things to make you feel good about yourself, and it also means allowing other people and things to "make" you feel bad about yourself. This is the trapped and powerless state many people - and all people with BPD - fall into and are seemingly unable to escape. What a blessing to finally be able to articulate this hellish reality! Naming it, understanding it, means I can get rid of it and take peaceful control of my life, on my own terms.
DBT teaches us that escaping from a reactive and uncontrolled life can be as simple as sitting quietly with your feelings and thoughts when they arise, closing your eyes to meditate upon them, accepting them, and then putting them aside so that you can proactively come up with a well-reasoned, effective and positive response to the world around you.
I have begun to do this by consciously visualizing myself holding my negative, painful and overwheling feelings in my cupped hands, and turning to my left side, where a large red wooden box awaits them. I dump the negative feelings in this box, and close it. The feelings are still there, I've not denied them nor destroyed them, I've not felt shame in having them - but I don't have to react to them or let them influence my decisions or behaviors. I control them, not the other way around. They are locked away, where they cannot harm me or the people around me.
I wish I'd known how to do this long ago. Better late than never!
One of the most crucial and important things I have learned is this: We are not our emotions. We are not even our thoughts. Rather, we are the decisions we consciously choose to make, and we create our own reality out of the consequences of our choices. If our choices are judicious, loving and wise, then so are we. If our choices are impulsive, thoughtless and destructive, then so are we.
Knowing this, and looking back on my relationship with the ex-fiance, who was neuro-typical and far more advanced than I in emotional regulation and good decision-making, it is clear that I could never have been a good partner for him, or anyone, the way I was. No one who lives in mindless emotional reactivity, making one poor and negative choice after another, can.
We attract our reality by the choices we make, simple as that. People who are miserable and reactive attract other miserable people to react off of — and repel everyone else. People who are happy and make good decisions will attract joyful, kindhearted people — and repel all others.
We all attract the people and circumstances that feed off of whatever energy we create for ourselves, not through our emotions or thoughts, but through our choices. Stuck in yet another horrific breakup, one that could be interchanged with many of the others, I am living proof of that.
It is up to me now, to build a life worth living through self control and conscious choices.
