reparenting

I am a lucid dream and it’s uncontrollable. I don’t sleep well #ADHD and when I have these “dream within a dream” they are so challenging and emotional. I don’t get it.

I dream, initially, that my Mom wanted nothing to do with me—I assume a way for my brain to deal with her death is feeling abandoned. (I feel like she gave up but I know she didn’t. There is evidence for both beliefs.)

I spent 18-24months after my Mother died having this progressive dream of her having returned but hardly interacting with me. I even had to watch her die again but did get to say goodbye. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. This was 2012-13. She died December 2011.

All I wanna do is cry, like ugly, snot nose gross cry but I have responsibilities that currently prevent me from just sitting with my emotions and body. #AnxietyAttack #Dream #reparenting

Being a parent who has lost their parent who has children too make life so emotionally challenging. Somehow I do it. #ADHD ‘s object permanence issues, I think, allow me to ignore it since I’ve changed location and association.

I’m not sure I even understand what I’m saying.

#BorderlinePersonalityDisorder

It's taken me a very long time to understand the basics of what Borderline Personality Disorder is and a great deal longer what to do about it. Clinicians themselves are shockingly under informed or uneducated on it, and even less know complete and competent therapies other than to say "DBT", but can't quite articulate why you need it or how it'll help you specifically.

Apparently, one VERY important part of BPD is many of us experience trauma at a very young age by someone we trust and rely on for our needs like a parent or care taker.

I'm not up on all the effects this has yet, but, one is that it arrests our development and emotional intelligence, and that part of us is "stuck" there. This can happen over and over at different times until we are dysfunctional and suddenly cannot take very good care of ourselves as adults.

There's a lot going on here, but one big thing to remember is that inside all of us is an inner child and when people with BPD grow up, they probably emotionally matured way sooner than appropriate, and called names such as "little adults" due to trauma.

One way to heal this trauma is to work on your emotional intelligence by healing the inner child. But, how does one even begin to pursue that?!

There is no set way, but the goal is to teach yourself how to adult on your own, basically. One combination is literally reading self help books on subjects such as emotional abuse and how it is never the victims fault and explains why abusers operate the way they do while simultaneously reading about what is called "reparenting".

Reparenting is exactly what it sounds like: you are going to parent yourself all over again. This is a necessary part of healing from BPD, bc often we were merely extensions of our abusers and do not know ourselves or have boundaries. Our lives are dysfunctional no matter how hard we strive. Its because we usually were not taught life, survival, or independence skills. We learned to serve.

Reparenting can take many forms. Parenting books, independent living skill services, skill building, learning to love yourself as a parent, and so on. People can become very creative with it. What is important is growing out of merely existing and thriving for ourselves.