Everyone’s either dated one or been friends with one. The girl described in a current pit thread. She’s emotionally unstable, self-absorbed, constant persecution complex, over the top and seemingly unprovoked fits of anger. I’ve done it all. Broke out in tears at work because a boy I had a crush on at the time didn’t show up, threw beer at an ex’s back door when he wouldn’t come outside, stormed over to another boyfriend’s house in the middle of the night because I heard another woman was in his bed, “Cleaned out” my car in another guys driveway then showed up at his door crying 2 days later because everyone hates me. 5 years ago or so, I had enough with my life constantly being a mess. I started counseling to put myself back together and I’m not all finished, but I’m sufficiently removed from those thinking patterns that I may be able to clear some things up.
Anyway, ever wanted to know what that crazy bitch you dated in college was thinking? I may be able to tell you, or at least an approximation. Ask away.
Ummm, why go full mental over an innocent comment instead of clarifying what was meant? In a similar vein, why ask loaded questions in order to blow up at any answer? Is make up sex good for you or just a manipulative play? Do you ever ask “do these jeans make my ass look fat” and what kind of answer did you want?
I’m sure I’ve got a lot more but these ought to be a good start. Nice thread idea.
Was it a compulsion or brain chemistry thing that you had no control over at the time or was there (at the time in your own mind) some rationale and justification for the way you were behaving. In other words did you *know *you were irrational while you were being irrational or not?
Is sex with crazy women as hot as they say? Seriously, it’s a constant meme that crazy and unstable women (in good shape) are the hottest rides imaginable despite the danger of winding up with a knife in your back or your car destroyed. Were you more sexually adventurous when you were more unstable vs now or was there no correlation?
Have you actually been diagnosed with anything like bipolar or borderline personality disorder? Does your therapist say anything about the causes of the problem or do they mainly focus on just helping you change your thoughts and behavior?
It sounds to me like you just had some emotional issues. You weren’t ever really diagnosed as psychotic, were you? Are you dating someone or married now, and if so, do your old patterns ever threaten to start up again?
Thanks. Going mental over an innocent comment has two explanations. First off, in the mind of the person who receives the comment, it’s not that innocent. I’m sure we’ve all had moments in our head where someone said something and we said “WTF!!!” and then had the emotional control to slow down and think about it before reacting, later realizing that that reaction would have been ridiculous anyway. It was probably when you were having a bad day and not feeling wonderful about yourself. Well, for people like me every day is that day. But basically, I guess it comes down to a lack of emotional control. Second, You probably also said something that triggered or related to an issue she’s already hating herself for. Which compounds the control problem.
The loaded questions are definitely a play. We feel crappy that day and need to hear you say “I think you are awesome”. We don’t feel we can ask for that, so we start with the questions, and then can’t control our response when it doesn’t go the way we wanted. As far as make-up sex, there is a certain satisfaction that comes with knowing you can piss someone off something fierce and they are still back for more. That was never really a before-the-fact factor for me, but I knew a couple of girls who wanted to know how far they could push a man. Since ALL their self-worth laid in their ability to be sexy, it was like they purposely cultivated as nasty a personality as possible. “See, I’m SO MEAN to him, but I’m so fucking hot, he comes back for more.”
Loving, but distant. He was gone most of the time, totally involved in his work. He literally traveled six months out of the year, and we lived separately from him for a year when he stayed behind in Australia. He had stayed behind because he wasn’t sure that he wanted to come back and be my dad and my mom’s husband. He went so far as to ask my mom for a divorce. I’m not sure what happened or why, but he came back shortly after and his commitment to us was renewed 100%. He was very active in our lives and twice as loving after that. I was 14 or so. Then, ten days after my 16th birthday, he got the flu, then later had a heart attack on the couch while I called 911. He was dead three hours later.
For someone with emotional issues, what’s going on in that moment that’s triggered whatever feeling is the BIGGEST THING IN THE WORLD. It screams loud and pushes everything else out. It’s friendship ending, it’s massive, HOW could they DO THIS? When everyone else doesn’t react to it the way you do, that’s not a cue that maybe you are off, it’s a sign that everyone is TERRIBLE and treats you SO BADLY and NO ONE LOVES YOU and you should just go KILL YOURSELF NOW!!! sobsobsob. It’s only later that you realize that you acted like a raving lunatic. Sometimes you can patch up relationships despite those outbursts, sometimes not. The thing is, even after you realize you were nuts, you’ll still fight it to the death if someone challenges you on it. Low self-esteem cannot allow you to concede any point to anyone.
Um, I’m less adventurous and fun in bed now, probably. I don’t know if that has more to do with getting married and having two kids and hormones and all that. Something to think about. I know that when your emotions are running so hot all the time, that definitely carries over to the bedroom.
I’ve had a couple of different counselors. The first one thought I was a great candidate for Borderline Personality Disorder, but wasn’t qualified to make the diagnosis. My current lady focuses on teaching me ‘how to talk to myself’. She thinks that I inherited this pattern from my mother, who has all kinds of crap going on in her own head, although she’s doing much better the past three years herself. I’m seeing my medical doctor on the 8th, and will probably get a referral to an honest to god psychiatric doctor. The first lady told me to do some reading and see a real doctor, and I’m just now getting around to it.
No, I’ve never been diagnosed with any actual disorder, other than ADD and dysgraphia when I was a child. I’m married now, with two little boys, and I do have to fight these patterns sometimes. He understands that when I walk away from him and keep to myself for a couple of hours, it’s because I’m not feeling that I can interact healthily at that point. He’s understanding. He’s also knows how to weather my occasional storm with grace. The fact that my current counselor also sees us together sometimes helps.
First of all, congratulations on your progress. I can’t imagine you’ve had an easy time of it.
You mentioned counseling and a family. Were these things alone enough to bring you away from the brink, or were there other things that helped? And what prompted the switch? Was there an intervention, or did you take a look at how your life was going and decide to change things?
I dated a man just as crazy as I was (am). His dysfunction leads him to verbally and physically (never me, but he did hit two subsequent girlfriends.) abuse anyone who manages to get close to him. He picks girls who are totally unsuitable for him and then constantly browbeats them for not having the exact and specific personality traits he wants. When you challenge him in the least, he explodes. Combine that with my issues and…yeah. It was an insane, dysfunctional mess. It finally exploded in a break-up that included beer at the door, internet accounts broken into, two broken friendships for me, physical fights and police intervention. I was totally shocked and upset by the breakup. Anyway after the physical fight, I sought counseling. I thought he had damaged me. It wasn’t until I got really into the process that I realized that I had damaged myself. I’m 27 years old and I have some awful memories. I’ve left broken friendships and fights in my wake where-ever I have gone. You know how most people have ‘old’ friends? I don’t. I don’t want to look back and say the same thing when I am 47.
The growth was far enough along to allow me to have a stable relationship when I got pregnant with my oldest, but my kids have accelerated the process quite a bit. If they are scared when mommy yells, then mommy has to really work not to yell. They keep me honest, I guess. I don’t want to pass on to them what my mom did to me, so I’ve redoubled my efforts, I guess.
Hmmm . . . so it was a bit like hitting your personal rock bottom and climbing back out. Again, that had to have been harder than hell (Too many H’s) to overcome, but I’m glad it helped you out of the abyss. Best of luck to you!
If you were in a group situation and other people were not responding like you (ie not pitching a fit) did you have an explanation in your mind for their behavior? Maybe like, “they’re just afraid to stand up for themselves” or something?
torie, please don’t take this as a slam on you, it’s just my theory and I’m seeking confirmation or denial…
Does it kind of fundamentally come down to “Well, when I behave like this everyone pays attention to me, and if everyone is paying attention to me, then clearly I’m important.”
Sometimes I would flatter myself by saying I was so brave and assertive that I wasn’t taking no shit off no one, and everyone else couldn’t understand that. They weren’t brave and assertive like me, and they took all kinds of shit off everyone. Sometimes I would convince myself it was because they hated me too. People just have no integrity and won’t stand up for you when it matters because they suck. I had a million little rationalizations within arm’s reach. I used the “I’m so assertive” one so many times that now I’ve almost gone too far to the other extreme, and rarely stand up for myself with my friends, even when they are being legitimately inconsiderate. I fought with a friend in October because I had made that mistake and kept her around despite the fact that she was abusive toward everyone in her life. Now that she’s out of my life, she serves as a lesson to me. I need to find a balance between my old self and my new one.
Not consciously, but most probably sub-consciously. I love attention. I’m not sure if that’s a personality trait I can consider an asset or not, but it’s definitely not an attractive one to others. So I make efforts to mitigate it now.
My question is how do you cope with those thoughts? It’s one thing not to react to them, but how do you deal with the “OMG Everyone hates me” even though you know that there’s a possibiltiy it may not be true?
Do you find yourself awkward among the friends who know the old ‘you’? Felt a need to be defensive of what you have done? I know I can be a bit skittish around people who knew my ‘background’
I don’t have any questions yet since the key ones have already been asked and answered, and I’ll be keeping an eye on this thread because it’s very interesting.
I don’t mean to sound patronising, but I just wanted to say that I’m relieved to see that ‘psycho girls’ can regonise their issues and get on the road to recovery.
Going mental over an innocent comment has two explanations. First off, in the mind of the person who receives the comment, it’s not that innocent. I’m sure we’ve all had moments in our head where someone said something and we said “WTF!!!” and then had the emotional control to slow down and think about it before reacting, later realizing that that reaction would have been ridiculous anyway. It was probably when you were having a bad day and not feeling wonderful about yourself. Well, for people like me every day is that day. But basically, I guess it comes down to a lack of emotional control. Second, You probably also said something that triggered or related to an issue she’s already hating herself for. Which compounds the control problem.