Desperate need

[tink1382]

Hi Im completely new here and wondered if i could share a problem im having to see if it is something any of you are also experiencing. I cant seem to understand it or help it.
The issue is that i fall to pieces when with caring motherly women. Feeling SAFE and cared for makes me dissolve. Its terrible. Today i was attending a class at our recovery college on journaling. It is a lovely safe feeling environment and the teacher is so caring. I couldn't control my need. My child. I felt myself go small and panicked. I got tearful and detached. I excused myself form the class and the teacher came out to see if i was ok. I was shaking and crying and clinging on to her for dear life. HELP. HOLD ME. DONT EVER LEAVE ME. I hardly know this woman but her safe motherlyness brought out this MASSIVE uncontrollable feeling desperation. Its like an urge - like needing the loo or needing food. It is primal and i dont know how to control it. I am fine with strangers but with people i find safe i turn to jelly. These women all react calmly and seem untrubbled by me - they sit with me, hug me, tell me to breathe and that im safe. I think my behaviour is actually very tame compared with the wild feelings of NEED. It is causing me such distress though. My child jumps to the front and is desperate for comfort and my critic is screaming abuse for being week and needy and pathetic.
Any thoughts? All the stuff ive read so far seems to assume C-PTSD = inhibited/closed off reaction. I am the opposite completely. I cant stop talking about things and feeling and this child need for a 'mummy' is so powerful it makes me feel ill. I cant function when i always become an emotional wreck around people who are caring/safe/motherly. 

[Kizzie]

Hi Tink - I am wondering if you are seeing a therapist? I ask because it may take some guidance as to how to calm your IC and ICr and not dissolve when you are around safe, supportive motherly women. E.g., Perhaps these women can serve as role models you can use to reparent yourself and when you're able to do that the need will decrease.   

[tink1382]

Hi Kizzie,
Thank you for your response. I am not currently in therapy but have had several years of it at different times of crisis in the past. There doesn't seem to be much talking therapy on offer these days on the NHS, i am on a LONG waiting list to see someone from the trauma team. I can't afford to go private. I do have the issue that this mother need means that i attach to therapists STRONGLY straight away and it makes life fairly torturous every second im not in that one hour a week with them. I often wonder whether the distress of attaching so strongly and then inevitably loosing each professional outways any good done in the years of therapy! God its all so hard! I am asking for help and accepting everything i get offered - so far drugs and recovery college courses. At the moment it is this urgent need for protection that is flying out at safe women that is my main problem. I'd love to know if anyone else here has experience of this. It is the need of a tiny baby for protection against death. Primal.

[Indigochild]

Hi,

I do hope that this message isn't too triggering, and that the info i suggest to look up doesnt send you into a huge spin. Maybe that would be helpful to you right now, to delve in, but i urge caution. I think seeing a therapist is a great idea.

You are not alone. I know exactly where you are coming from. It has happened and is happening to me. Lots of times.
I understand the pain and the desperation.
Like you, i never knew what it was.

You can not help it, and it is not your fault. Your feelings must be here for a reason.
It sounds like your inner child is screaming out for motherly love. It needs the grief of ...whatever happened or did not happen with your own mother to be grieved, angered, it needs all those feelings to be released out of you.

It might be helpful, if you would like, to look up mothers who emotionally neglect their children...as emotional neglect is invisible. Emotional abandonment too.  Look up mothers who ..abandon...and mothers who on the opposite side, abandon their children by smothering them.
if something has been missing, the mind tries to find subtitles for its pain.

Perhaps you felt panicked because you thought you wouldnt be able to have the connection you crave, from your teacher?
I describe this as like looking at her through a glass wall.
That was what it was like and is like with my own mother, only now i am finally aware of where it comes from. That came from a lot of reading.

It sounds to me like a flashback. One thing that made me think this is that, your reaction is not a normal one for the situation as it was just class. And you mentioned you felt really small and was shaking.
Of course, with your past, the FEELINGS makes complete sense FOR YOU. (not intellectually) But not for outsiders unless it is explained.

It sucks that your inner critic is going wild, screaming abusive things.

It doesnt matter that you express this in the opposite way to being closed off, inhabited.
Talking is one way people try to deal. Perhaps you are looking to be heard, seen, for the validation that your perhaps never received in childhood?

There are ways, which i do find difficult, of talking back to that inner critic.  How can you do that with the very mind that is ...broken?
With in time, if you are able to understand where this is coming from, and understand your own situation, perhaps you will feel slightly more empowered to start comforting that child inside you and talking back to your inner critic.

I do hope this has been some help. 
I have no idea what to do about it...not sure if your looking for answers as yet, just the need to know your not alone, and to perhaps figure out what is happening?

Take care 

[no_more_fear]

i attach to therapists STRONGLY straight away and it makes life fairly torturous every second im not in that one hour a week with them.

Again, I want to echo everyone's sentiments that you are not alone. I feel exactly the same about my therapist at the minute, hate leaving her office and knowing I have many days before the next session. It's like my therapist has become my world and I try to ignore all these feelings I have, except when I'm with her. Not good! When I see her after a week I'm the same as you, I have a primal reaction.  I think the only way forward is to explore these feelings, as you are, and talk about them with people who understand and can help you through them.

[FloatBoat]

Wow! I can relate to this, but with me, I get that initial small child response, followed by a reaction of fear and anger. It's like being around someone who cares and is the least bit mothering sends me off the deep end.

[tink1382]

Wow thank you all so much for your replies! I really do feel alone in this and its amazing to read that others have similar experiences! Indigochild what you wrote was wonderful thank you! The psychiatrist i am seeing at the moment is wondering where to place me next. He is considering the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. I have no idea if that diagnosis fits. I have problems with it. He says that it is basically the same as C-PTSD and seeing as the latter doesn't exist as a diagnosis then treatment for borderline is the next best thing. I feel extremely confused and in a spin. From what i read about borderline, manipulation is a major component and it horrifies me to think that i may be able to control this need more yet dont so that i receive care from others. I really need to find some way to comfort this DESPERATE child myself. The whole experience of being comforted is terrifying and extremely stressful for me even though i feel unable to stop the urgent need to try and get it. I think a lot of the terror is - what will this do to the other person, is this ok, what will it do to the relationship, how will this make me suffer later, WHAT AM I DOING!!! etc etc. FloatBoat your reaction sounds similar to what i mean in that the need RACES forward like a sudden desperate need for air and then massive parts of me fights it and lashes at it ferociously. Do any of you know of any useful tips for controlling/stopping up this need when it is triggered? At the moment i feel unable to be around women because of the feroceous mummy need and unable to be around men because i feel vulnerable and easily stressed by them. Really really hard.
SO grateful for all your thoughts and kind words!!!!

[Indigochild]

Hey....
I am so glad you find it helpful hearing others experiences.
I was surprised myself to come back to this thread and see that many others feel the same!
And no problem...(i cant believe you think it was wonderful haha!) 

I have had a similar experience to you as well. at age 19, say psychiatrist as the doctor put me on meds...he said BPD traits but that i was too young to diagnose.
Have you watched this guy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0k5DvjiRNU

He is called Spartanlifecoach, and i love all his videos. He is not the most sympathetic to people with personality disorders, but i think his aim is just to empathise with people seeking help from dealing with persons in their life with disorders that negativley effected them.

This video explains how Cptsd and borderline peronslaity disorder are similar- and the reason why they are similar, is because apparently ALL PERSONALITY DISORDERS and depression, bipolar etc. are a result of trauma. Trauma causes PTSD or Cptsd.
Narcasism personality disorder, borderline, whatever it may be, are the normal, natural ways you tried to cope as a human, BECAUSE of the trauma that was happening to you, and the after effects of the trauma on you.

Even though a persons mind is *disordered* after trauma, and therefore their actions are distorted, i hate the word *disorder*, as it sounds like you are not a human being, with a very normal response to trauma.
Anyone, Jo blogs down the street, would have tried to cope in a similar way to yourself, if he was in your household or wherever the trauma / traumas happened.

Oh yes, and also, not everyone fits the entire nine criteria listed for borderline personality disorder. Some do, some don't, but we are not robots, therefore not everyone will fit the *textbook* down to a T.
Some people have mixtures of personality disorders.
They call this being *co morbid* so for example,
you could have Borderline, and be com orbit what Narcissistic persoality disorder.

From both parents, you usually pick up both traits, therefore resulting usually, in a disorder, com orbit with another, of you have *traits* of your disorders.

I hope this makes sense, and sorry if you know this already.

This guy also explains CPtsd.

With manipulation, a person with BPD can be manipulative with out meaning to. It horrified me also and i didnt think i fitted that category.
There intense emotions, fears, whatever the symptoms....can effect people they are living with.
Manipulation can happen because for example, they are afraid a person will leave them. Some people may threaten to hurt themselves if that person leaves..or if they go away for the weekend....and that threat, even though out of sheer fear and desperation, can unintentionally manipulate the other person to comply to the person with BPD.

Once i was so angry at my boyfriend for smoking canabis, that i  ended up saying some pretty hurtful things under my breath whilst we were at a friends house, where he was smoking it.
I felt, that he didnt care about how that would make me feel (sounds quite narcissistic that!), as i had expressed before how it hurts me to see him do it. I felt that he didnt care about my feelings, and that he ENJOYED hurting me.
He said i was quite nasty, and i can imagine i was, as i am like my mum as a result of her upbringing. He said he has never seen me be so manipulative.

Being manipulative along with BPD, doesnt mean you have the tools or ability to control your disorder. It doesnt mean that you can control weather or not you are manipulative.
Thats the thing, many people with BPD are shocked that they are *maipulative*, they just don't see it, because they feel so utterly powerless most of the time and in pain!
Its all done uncntously.

Now, some people are more aware that they are doing whatever it is, but they can not stop because of how they feel.  They could be being really mean, but are so upset they carry on, or they are so mad they carry on.  Or they feel so wronged by the other person, they know that smashing up their car is wrong, but they do it anyway.

Aware or not, that person would be in pain and the pain is the driving motivator for their actions.

It sounds like your inner child from long ago, just thinking that if you could control  your needs, you would get more care from others.
Perhaps your parents didnt like that you had needs as a child and teenager, so you thought- if i wasnt crying / needing this, that...then they'd love me.

See, the reason you may be BPD etc. is because all your life, you did things for others, you hid your emotions etc. and things bubble up and come out.  Maybe so far, being *good* and not manipulative, has not gotten you very far. You may think it has in society / with friends...but you are probably sick of being *good*.

What you are describing sounds like the push pull - its quite normal for a lot of us who have had trauma.
Yes yes yes!! Pushing people away once you have got what you wanted, you push away the thing you need the most.
People can be afraid of being hurt by the other person, afraid of them leaving, you could feel suffocated, could worry that on the opposite end of the spectrum if you want to call it that, that you will be smothered by the other person.

Im sorry but i don't know how to stop this need once triggered.
I think your mind / inner child is trying to get what it needs, and it can only get what it needs when you are able to provide that for yourself. When you are able to mother yourself.
This is a process, and not to put you off, but as you know, its hard and scary, and the inner critic likes to get in the way and sabotage that a lot.

Im so sorry you are struggling.  Are you seeing a therapist or have you considered it?
oh also, I'm sending you this by Katie Morton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8TCDlGjK-M
She answered these questions:
1. ok, so your vlog explained WHY we get attached to female teachers but i want to know HOW do we detach? how do we stop idolizing, wanting attention and generally STOP this attachment that we have with people?

2. related to the previous question...Lesbian or wanting a mummy figure? Ok so because i look up and get attached to attractive females in my life am i gay? having BPD makes me struggle to answer my own question about sexual identity, one day I'm like "yup defo gay...my god... she's hot..yay! next I'm like " hmmm, i dont no, maybe i just want them to be my mummy?" pleeeeeease help?

3. Whenever I first see a therapist/ school councilor/ social worker I feel really freed by telling them everything and I am pretty open BUT then after about a month or so of seeing them I always stop trusting them and so this means I never continue seeing them. Have you ever experienced this as a therapist? And do you have any advice for me as I'm meeting a new therapist (Through CAMHS in the UK) in tomorrow and I really want to escape how I'm feeling although I'm scared to let go of my self harm as I have relied on it so long. Sorry that was really long, I love your videos so much thanks

I myself found her answer disheartening and i know ill be so mad at my parents if i have this incessant need for the rest of my life, even though it might not have been their fault i received that kind of parenting.

Let me know what you think....

[tink1382]

Wow that was a lot!
I will think about what you wrote. I hadn't heard of Kati Morton before but have just checked out her youtube videos and she is fab! I will definitely be watching some more of her stuff!
Thanks

[Indigochild]

Yeah Tink- im so sorry for the HUGE message!!
I didnt think that i should not have provided *advice* or any ...resources?...maybe i misjudged that.
I hope it doesnt overwhelm you.

If you do have any questions, feel free to ask. I wont reply with such a ramble next time!