Confusion: A Precursor to Obsession
When you’ve been involved with a Borderline, you can’t help but incessantly wrack your brain about what went wrong to cause him or her to abruptly leave you, or pick a fight so emotionally heightened and volatile, there’s no coming back from it.
People Pleasers, fixers, rescuers and caregivers routinely become romantically involved with Borderlines, because they were raised by a mother who groomed them for always placing the needs of others, before their own. This skews their ability to recognize and choose a potentially viable, healthy partner capable of reciprocating their love and affection AND overlooking their own needs, feelings and priorities, in favor of being “responsive” to someone else’s.
This deeply entrenched personality defect spells impending disaster for any relationship dynamic. Self needs and desires are completely foreign to someone who was raised to always put another’s feelings first. People who grew up not feeling lovable or good enough, are left with core shame. The emotional essence of ‘shame’ that’s stored in the cellular body since infancy converts to thoughts of, “I’m not good enough or lovable.”
When someone breaks up with us after what has seemed like a copasetic, relatively harmonious relationship, it feels confounding. We just can’t make sense of this event in context of relationship experiences we’ve shared with our significant other. Often, these breakups happen “out of the blue,” and the confusion we feel about them produces a constant source of torment inside us.
Mostly, we keep questioning, “what could I have done differently or better, to have averted this excruciating pain I’m feeling?” We mentally replay each moment of interplay with our ex, looking for clues that either confirm the pain we’re feeling is OUR fault, or isn’t. We WANT to find a way to rationally view our relationship so we can curb our incessant self-flagellation, but it’s of little use~ because we’re accustomed to being rigorously self-critical.
As small children, if we displeased a parent we were often called “a bad boy (or girl).” Defective parents never convey to a child, “I love you very much, but I don’t like this behavior, and I need it to stop.” The child who’s made to feel he’s “BAD” for angering or disappointing his parental unit, grows up with core shame.
The problem with retaining a shame-based core is, this negative ideation of oneself lasts lifelong~ or until he/she engages highly specialized help to dismantle it. There is nothing that contributes as powerfully to one’s selection of grossly impaired romantic partners (or those with personality disorder traits) as unresolved core shame!
Human nature is such, that we want to reason away dark, negative feelings our body experiences from time to time. As young children, we went up into our head to find reasons for inexplicable inner pain, and may have learned to give ourselves pep talks to help us temporarily ameliorate it~ yet, the pain always returned (as is typical in the course of 99% of psychotherapeutic interventions).
It doesn’t matter how much brilliant “insight” you acquire about inner anguish, it never eradicates it. Insight may help you become ‘resigned’ about your inner pain, but it can’t help you resolve it~ meaning, it continues to recur and detract from the joyful events in your life!
Confusion forces us to obsessively THINK about an issue, until we can either feel resigned to it or resolved about it. When a lover cheats on us or leaves us abruptly, we have no choice but to obsess over the shock and disappointment we’re feeling until we can make sense of why this terrible thing happened to us! Sadly, the tendency in all core-injured people, is to blame THEMSELVES for painful outcomes.
My online article, “Obsessed With a Borderline” speaks to the torment we endlessly swirl around in, post-breakup with a partner who has BPD traits. It highlights the very real fact that it’s NOT the lost love we’re obsessing about~ but OURSELVES.
We’re not remembering about how they kissed or made love to us. We’re not mentally dwelling on their talents, abilities or positive traits. No, instead we are constantly replaying OUR behavior in the relationship, desperately hoping for respite from our feelings of Shame. If we can even begin to stop blaming ourselves for the agony we’re in, we can let go of this obsessional thinking~ which is rarely possible for people with poor self-worth and a CORE that’s jam-packed with shame about it.
The narcissistic Codependent believes, “if I feel bad, it must be MY fault.” Their borderline disordered partner believes, “if I feel bad, it surely must be YOUR fault.” If you hadn’t grown up criticizing, blaming and shaming yourself for not feeling good enough, you’d never be choosing romantic partners that echo this for you, and you’d be able to walk away from a toxic ex-lover with far less wear and tear on your brutalized little soul.