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As an update:

This person has now started a smear campaign of me and another friend to others in our social circle, openly trashing us behind our backs, and doing what we've come to call "passive aggressive meme bombing" on social media to get attention for his "plight" -- and other friends are now contacting us to try and figure out what's going on. 

I've reached out on the OotF forum for advice, but this whole thing is hugely triggering.  Managing the fear and anxiety from those triggers is becoming exhausting.  Especially since it's coming from multiple sources.  I'm having enough trouble managing my day-to-day life, and the triggers that just naturally come up... Trying to deal with this on top of all that is completely overwhelming. 

Dutch Uncle --

Thanks.  Some of the stories over there helped.  But the toolbox has been even more helpful. 

Flutterbye --

I have a lot of the same struggles as you do, when it comes to making friends and dealing with groups.  I have a hard time opening up to people, and I constantly worry that I'm being intrusive if I contact people or ask if they want to hang out.  So it can really be difficult for me to form friendships. 

Today things sort of came to a head with this BPD friend, and he had a melt down in a group discussion and just sort of heaped verbal abuse upon me, even when I wasn't responding or participating.  I had to disengage, so I just backed away.  And then when other friends in the group tried to call him on it, he just got more abusive.  And when they tried to disengage, he accused them of abandoning him... So... At least other people are seeing his behavior now, and aren't okay with it.  Which is reassuring. 

I've decided that I'm just not going to interact with this person outside of situations that I cannot avoid seeing them in.  I'll keep going to my support group, but I'll avoid talking to them.  And I won't socialize with them outside of it, even if that means missing out on group trips. 

I don't deserve this abuse, and I know it.  I'm not going to stand for it.  If other people want to think I'm petty, then so be it.  But I don't think that will be the case, now that others have seen it for what it is.

DutchUncle -- thanks for the reminder about OOTF as a resource.  I completely forgot about the toolbox over there.

I'm not really committed to "working on it" with this person.  I'm just trying to figure out how to navigate this social circle without having to deal with the BPD (diagnosed and self admitted), or at the very least without ending up triggered by him.

Like... How do you go LC with someone that's enmeshed themselves amongst people who are just as much your friends as theirs?  How do you go LC with someone who's the leader of a group that you need to stay functional? And how do you do it with minimal impact on those friends, and that group? 

I know how to go LC and NC with people who aren't so enmeshed in my life, or who have little to no influence on my friendship circles and support systems.  But I don't know how to do that with people who are enmeshed, or do have influence over my friendship circles and support systems.

I get the whole "medium chill" tactic... And I'll be trying that from here on out.  But beyond that?  I'm kind of stumped.

So, a while ago I joined a support group.  All in all, it's been good.  I've made friends there -- good ones -- and have been building a support system through them.  But I've run into a bit of a snag.  One of them has BPD, and it seems like nothing I do/say around him is the right thing -- I feel like I have to walk on eggshells around him, and every time I don't... He winds up getting upset and throwing some sort of fit about how awful I am to him (I swear I'm not -- I'm one of those people who is overly quick to apologize, even if I'm not sure I've done something wrong).  This is, understandably, pretty triggering for me and it makes me not really want to be around him or be involved with him any more than I have to be.   

Unfortunately, he is, of course, at the center of the group who are all friendly with one another outside the group, and not interacting with him means not interacting with the other people I've come to care a great deal for (and who've come to care a great deal for me as well).  He's also, of course, in a facilitator position for the support group.  So the only way to get away from this cycle of behavior is to abandon my newly formed, and much needed, support system.  And I'm not willing to do that.  There's part of me that feels like doing that is "letting him win", and I don't want to do that.  And there's part of me that recognizes that there has got to be some other option, or way to deal with things, than giving up and disappearing when I need to have friends and a support group to go to. 

Confronting him isn't an option because none of what he's doing is rational, and thus can't be reasoned with.  Avoiding him isn't really an option either, unless I get petty about "if he's going on X outing, then I'm not".  So I'm not really sure what to do.  I feel kind of stuck.  None of the options I've been able to come up with seem like good ones.  But I can't really go on being triggered and walking on eggshells either.  I have to do something.

So, have any of you been in a similar situation?  How did you handle it?  Are there any resources anyone can point me to for help with this? 

I've had a change in therapist, since the last time I wrote here.  And several changes in medication.  The new T is so much better than the previous one, as much as I liked her.  She asks me questions that actually make me think about why I'm feeling what I'm feeling, and why I'm reacting the way I'm reacting, towards the events that are going on in my life.  It's not something I'm used to getting from a T, those types of questions.  And I welcome it.  It's something that I need, a guide to point me to the things I'm overlooking in myself.  And it's been incredibly helpful.

The medication has been a roller coaster of nasty side effects.  I just started a new one which, as long as I don't develop the horrible life threatening side effect, is supposed to be pretty darned benign in terms of side effects.  So I'm hopeful there. 

About a month ago, my ex came to pick up the very last of his things.  He'd had a plan on how that was going to go, an expectation of how it was going to go, and when he experienced the tiniest bit of a hiccup with it, he basically threw a tantrum.  At first, I fell into the old pattern of trying to fix things for him, of trying to regulate his emotions for him, but it only took a few minutes for me to realize that "No.  His emotions are not my responsibility.  He's not rational, and I need to walk away from that rather than try to manage it for him."  So I walked away from it.  Literally.  I set a boundary for myself, and I honored it. 

And seeing how he behaved... Seeing how he completely lost his junk (I'd normally swear here) over such a small situation... It completely changed how I saw things.  It was like flipping a switch.  I thought to myself "THIS is what I've been living with for 10 years?  THIS is what I'm mourning the loss off?  Oh HECK no!"  And a wave of relief washed over me when he finally left.  A wave of feeling free.  And a wave of pride in myself, of hope too. 

The realization that I'd spent a decade managing the emotions of this child in a man's body, that I'd spent a decade building his dreams, his hopes, his desires, making sure he didn't lose his junk and destroy our lives... Well then, if I could do that, for someone else, of course I could manage to take care of myself that way.  The realization that despite the fact that I'd felt like I was walking on eggshells around him, despite the fact that it felt like he had all the power, all the control... Except that I was the one with power and control -- over not just myself, but of him too because he refused to control himself.  I was the one who did all these things, made our life possible.  And if I could do all that, then I didn't need him at all.  In fact, he was holding me back.  Because if I'd spent all that time and energy on myself, instead of being his conscience and emotional toilet, could you imagine where I'd be right now? 

So now's the time for me to focus on me.  To build me, my hopes, my dreams, my desires.  And if I don't know what they are yet, that's okay.  Part of building me is figuring those things out.  And I'm finally free to do that.  It's scary, sure.  But it's mine. 

I started the process of signing my son up for the Air Force, this week.  It's what he wants.  He's excited.  And I'm happy that he's going for what he wants.  But sitting with him in the interview, hearing the recruiter ask him what his goals were, why he wanted to join up, and hearing part of his answer be "I want the stability of never having to wonder where rent or food is coming from" broke my heart.  I know that's partially my fault.  I had him so young, there was very little that was stable for him, or for me, for a long time. 

Even now, things are back to being unstable.  My long term relationship ended.  I have no income of my own.  I'm living off what amounts to charity (but would be alimony, if we'd been married) from someone that... Well, with help from therapists and psychiatrists and friends, we've figured out had extreme narcissistic traits -- just subtle ones, covert ones.  It's not a place I want to be, because I know it feeds his ego that he's being so "magnanimous" in supporting me right now, while I "get back on my feet".

I'm realizing that I spent the past 10 years working towards his dream.  Not any of my own.  I took on his desires as my own, and gave myself heart and soul to help achieve them.  I think, maybe I've never really had true desires of my own, beyond the typical "wanting to be loved" that most people have.  I warped and contorted myself to help make what he wanted happen.  Just like I warped and contorted myself to make what ex husband (who was a pathological liar, and expert emotional manipulator) wanted happen.  Just like I warped and contorted myself to appease my uNPD mother, or win the approval of my absentee father.  I've been living the exact same life, for my 37 years.  Just with different abusers. 

I made myself small for these people.  I made myself meaningless.  And now... I have no idea what I want out of life.  My 17 year old child has a better idea of what he wants out of life than I do.  I have no dreams, of my own.  No goals, of my own.  No real wants, or desires, of my own.  Except for the pain to stop.  Except to feel loved.  And those... Aren't enough to get through life on.  They're not a foundation to build a life on.  And I have no idea where to start figuring out what I want, for me. 

I feel lost.  So very lost. 

I am trying to have hope that with the help of therapists and psychiatrists and support groups, I'll be able to figure out what I want.  I'm trying very very hard.  Knowing that I don't know what I want, that maybe I never knew what I wanted... It hurts.  But you can't solve a problem if you don't know what it is, right?  So at least I know.  At least that gives me the power to change it.  Right?

Though I want to 'propose' a caveat: How can I consider myself as a survivor without acknowledging I was a victim to start out with?

Because you don't have to be a victim to survive something. 

You survived abuse.  You survived horrible treatment.  You survived betrayal, and hurt, and pain, and suffering.  You survived.

None of that has to make you a victim.  It just makes you a survivor. 

[against]

Viewing oneself as a victim is something that just about every trauma counselor, every domestic violence support group, advocates against.  Instead, it's encouraged to see oneself as a survivor.  Because viewing oneself as a victim can be self destructive.  Viewing oneself as a victim encourages feelings of powerlessness, self blame, and self shame.  Viewing oneself as a victim internalizes the abuse, and causes it to become part of one's identity. 

It is good to realize that someone else is doing something bad to you.  It's good to be aware that someone else is (or was) victimizing you.  It is good to be aware that this is not your fault.  It's good to realize it to the degree that it helps you get out of the situation and protect yourself.

But it's wholly self defeating to view oneself, to identify oneself, as a victim.  It robs you of your own agency.  It robs you of your own strength.  And it encourages the cycle of abuse to continue -- even if through a different abuser, in a different situation. 

So, I came across a way to "reframe" the term "self-care" (which in and of itself can cause me a bit of anxiety) as "state management".  Thinking about things like making sure I get enough sleep, eat, brush my teeth, take a shower, exercise, as "managing my state" is an idea that seems to appeal to me.  It distances me from the emotional feedback over the idea of "caring for myself", and makes it easier to think about doing these good things for myself. 

So far, I haven't put it into practice (as I just discovered this way of reframing last night), but just the change in thought process seems promising.  So I thought I'd share the idea, to see if maybe it helps anyone else too

Nor was I taught what the right thing to say to a compliment is. I never received them, so I as an adult, I have no idea how to respond to them. My ICr immediately tells me that the person giving the compliment is manipulating me, lying to me, just being nice, that the compliment is untrue, etc.

I have the exact same problem.  I've taught myself, over time, to just say "thank you" (even if I don't believe them) and move on to another subject as quickly as possible.  But man, when I hear a compliment, I tend to panic (at least internally) and get flustered.

I went the other directions about being late though; I'm terrified of it. If I am late to something I am ashamed because I've inconvenienced someone else. My parents beat it into me (both physically and mentally) that I should never come first and everyone else is more important than I am. As a result, being late and inconveniencing someone else is a no-no for me.

Lateness went that way for me too.  I can't stand being late.  I'd rather be an hour early than be a minute late, and inconvenience anyone. 

While I was taught practical skills (laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, being on time, paying bills, that kind of thing -- because well, those things were all *my* responsibility to do, because no one else was going to), I wasn't taught social skills.  How to make friends.  How to have a healthy relationship.  How to interface with the greater world around me on a personal level.  How to have my own appropriate boundaries (although I am compulsively respectful of other people's boundaries).  What the right thing to say to a compliment is.  As a result, I'm incredibly awkward around other people and I'm always afraid I'm doing the wrong thing -- that I'll inadvertently hurt someone's feelings, or be rejected, or seem "stupid". 

To me, I don't think the obvious solution is to give up nursing.  I think that maybe, perhaps, finding nursing work in a less busy ward, or moving to a lower stress nursing position might help.  But I definitely don't think leaving the field entirely is the solution. 

Taking time off is good.  Everyone needs a break, every now and again, whether they've got a mental illness or not. 

I used to work in a very high stress, fast paced, environment myself.  And while I was good at my job, it was just a really bad environment for me to be in.  I needed things to be slower, more flexible.  So I left that job, for a different one where I was allowed to work from home, at my own pace, setting my own schedule.  The effects on my stability were almost instantaneous.  I know that working from home may not be an option for you, in your field.  But there are so many options for nurses these days... A friend of mine is a nurse who works hospice, and is very happy with how much lower stress it is than other places he's worked in the past.  Other people I know with nursing backgrounds went into homecare, to escape the stress of a busy hospital and all the red-tape that went with it. 

I know things may seem hopeless, or that there aren't any good options for you.  But that -- that thought process that says there's no hope -- that's the inner critic speaking.  That's the voice to battle against, to counter, to tell to "shut up!" or whatever other trick works for you. 

For me, battling my inner critic tends to work best when I counter it with facts, rather than just trying to tell it to "shut up".  So, if it were telling me that I was bad at my job I would recount all the ways in which I'm highly skilled, how many people that I respect who tell me that I am good at it, how many things that I accomplish on a daily basis without "screwing it up". I point out to it that if I were as bad at it as it keeps telling me, I would have been written up or fired already, and that hasn't happened, so it must be wrong.  And I keep telling that voice that because of all those things I know that it's a liar, and it's hopelessness is bull**** (sorry for the language, but i find that using such emphatic language with my inner critic helps -- I realize it doesn't for everyone).  Sometimes I even yell back at it -- sometimes inside my head, sometimes out loud. 

I've also had a great degree of success with anti-anxiety medication helping shut down that inner critic -- as that inner critic comes from a place of fear.  I don't know if that's an option for you or not.  If it is, it might be worth trying. 

In any case, hang in there.  You can make it through this.  You're strong enough that you've survived all the horror in your past.  You can do this too.   

So it does feel strange to buy things, it feels like its not really what i actually *need*, it feels artificial and fake, and I'm sure nothing would feel better than a hug and a real parent.

Hope you know what i mean.

I do know what you mean.  I feel that way too.   

Emotophobia is something that SpartanLifeCoach has referenced a time or two, that has really resonated with me.  I have been, over the course of my life, afraid of feeling (or causing anyone else to feel) bad feelings.  I'm working on that, and have been making progress with the assistance of anti-anxiety medication.  However, I thought it might be cool to get a bit of a discussion going here about it, to see what other people's experiences have been.

For me, anger/rage have been my biggest sticking points.  There are very few instances in which I have, historically, been able to really feel my anger (let alone express it) -- and those times are when all my other defenses have been ineffective.  I.E., only when my typical freeze/fawn didn't work, and I was unable to flee. 

My issues around being incapable of becoming angry in most circumstances are three fold -- first, it's not as culturally acceptable for women to express anger, right?  It's "okay" for women/girls to cry, to be anxious, to be scared, etc., but anger isn't generally "allowed" unless it's to protect, say, their children -- and it's definitely not "allowed" when protecting themselves. 

The second part for me is that I was not permitted to express anger (or, indeed, any "negative" emotion) as a child.  Doing so would incite abusive responses (including abandonment, because, well, that's abuse too) from my mother. 

The third part is that the only real model I had for how to express anger was from that same abusive mother.  My dad wasn't around much, and when he was, he didn't get angry very often -- mostly only mildly irate.  I saw her fight with my father and abuse him both verbally and attempts at physically (sometimes with sharp implements), and the cops wound up being called on more than one occasion.  And of course there was how my mother would treat me when she was angry, which, well, Bad Things happened. 

I've had such a huge issue with being afraid to feel and/or express anger that I've been unable to follow through with anger expression exercises in a group therapy that I was part of once.  We were supposed to write down our feelings on a plate with a marker, and then take all of those feelings and funnel them into hurling this plate and breaking it.  I couldn't.  I simply couldn't.  The idea of using any sort of violence (at an inanimate object or otherwise) to express anger was triggering in and of itself, and there was just no way for me to follow through with the exercise. 

So, as I said, I'm working on the emotophobia with the help of anti-anxiety medication.  It's lessening the fear and the catastrophizing that comes along with feeling anger, and so it's becoming easier to feel it.  But I don't know if that effect will go away when I stop taking it (can't take Benzos forever, nor would I want to), and I thought maybe other people might have some advice, or share their experiences with being emotophobic, and how they're working on overcoming it (if they are).

[ever]

My last year of high school things were bad enough at home (both of them, as my parents are divorced), that I wound up going to live with my best friend and her family.  I was barely 18, struggling hard to protect myself, and leaving home was the only thing I could think to do.  That I had somewhere to go, people to take me in, is something that I have been, and always will be, eternally grateful for. 

My best friend (we'll call her Tanya, though that's not her real name) didn't have the greatest home life either, but compared to what I'd been dealing with it felt like heaven.  It was the first time I'd lived anywhere that I actually felt like I was part of a family.  It was the first time I felt like people cared about my wellbeing, rather than just whether or not I was an imposition to them and their agenda.  For that brief time Tanya's dad, Louis (again, not real names), became more of a parent to me than my own.  He made lunches in the morning for us.  He drove us to school and picked us up again.  He helped with homework.  He taught me how to make the best pie crusts ever.  He took us on camping trips, and fishing trips.  He gave hugs.  He gave out chores, and held us to them in a gentle way.  He never yelled.  He never screamed.  He never made me feel small, or inadequate.  He let me make mistakes, and didn't berate me for them.  He encouraged me to do things I liked, even if he didn't necessarily understand them or like them.  It was the closest, at that point in my life, that I'd ever come to feeling safe with, or loved by, an adult.  It was the closest I'd ever felt to being part of a family, rather than just a maid for one, or a babysitter for one. 

And while Tanya's mom, Betty (again, not real name) wasn't the most stable person in the world -- Cluster B Histrionic definitely -- her class of "crazy" was one that I could handle better than my mother's.  She and I actually got along really well, and the few times she got upset and "lost her crap" with me, it came from a place of fear for me, and actually made me feel more cared for rather than less. 

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of Louis' passing away.  Tanya and I spent the day together, reminiscing, talking about our screwed up families, and how amazing her dad was -- to both of us.  We went down to the waterfront and scattered yellow roses into the bay, in his memory. 

I wasn't very good at staying in touch with anyone, when I was young.  I'm still not.  So I didn't get to see as much of Louis over his last years.  I regret that.  I had made life choices that I knew he wouldn't have agreed with, and I was ashamed, I guess.  I didn't want to disappoint him, even though I knew he'd keep his disapproval to himself.  Even though I knew he wouldn't judge me.  He was the only person I ever trusted not to judge me, or make me feel bad for my mistakes.  But even still, I stayed away.  And I regret that so very much.  I could have used a dad like him, while I was busy screwing up my life.   But: fear, and shame. 

I never really grieved his passing.  I stayed distant from it, for all this time.  I didn't cry.  I couldn't.  Until yesterday.  Until last night.  And not just for him, but for me.  For losing everything he was, to me, and to Tanya.  For not having had that, except for from him -- someone who wasn't related to me at all, who I didn't even meet until I was 15 -- and especially not from my own parents. 

Through the grief came rage.  Rage at my parents for not giving me that.  Rage at them for not protecting me.  Rage at them for abandoning me, for hurting me, for abusing me, when they were supposed to be the ones to love me and care for me.  And no Bad Things happened.  No Bad Things at all.  Maybe even Good Things, instead. 

I know I'm not done being angry.  But I'm a lot less afraid of it now.