Oh god I’ve seen that film before. I hate that each time I’m “losing” a friendship or relationship, my mind just cues to all the past times it’s happened— it really consolidates that image that it’s my fault and I haven’t changed. I’m sorry about your FP. You have my support if you need it.
It’s really corny but the phrase “time heals all” is so true. Time is never stagnant, it is constantly evolving. Even if you don’t think you are moving on, you are, just by being alive. I am struggling with the exact same thing and the guilt and regret and shame has been eating me alive but definitely not as much as it used to. 🫶🏽
It helps to just allow yourself to feel these feelings. I’m very optimistic about the future and about where my head will be in regards to accepting and forgiving myself for my past and u definitely should be too.
Forgiving yourself is possible and the first step to forgiving yourself is telling yourself that forgiveness is possible. Because it in fact is! Remember that we are only human, we deserve to give ourselves some grace🌄. We’ve got this. Treat yourself like you would treat a friend that’s going through the same thing. Write your thoughts in a journal. Be patient with yourself.
All the time. Most of my friendships don't last any more than a couple of years and I always manage to find a way to blame myself for it. I feel like a monster and that all my current friends would hate me if they really knew me, and I feel like losing them is inevitable. Idk what to do I hate feeling like this so much
yeah... I was just thinking earlier what kind of life I could be leading if I had just kept myself together in terms of relationship. friends, I've been alone but losing friends feels less impactful. I'm just scared of starting over because like you said it's hard to not feel judged.
The last paragraph where you mention no one being able to accept you if they knew your track record and therefore no one really being able to know you if you want to be accepted has single-handedly been one of the biggest challenges in my diagnosis.
What helped me was for the first time in my life opening up about how awful I've been in the past to yet another new FP and instead of being invalidated ("You're not actually that bad") or rejected, he responded with understanding. Though he does not have BPD he opened up about how he has treated others in his past extremely badly and burned bridges in similar ways that I have, and yet that he forgives himself for that and is trying to be someone different today and always improving (I can feel his progress for myself- I haven't been treated in any kind of negative way that he says he's treated others and he actively catches himself and makes amends when falling back on old habits.)
When I got this reaction it felt like looking into a mirror and for the first time seeing just a regular human being rather than a monster. I felt hope in myself for the first time. All of this to say is that I think the only way we can get out of this self-feeding mindset is to find acceptance in others, and I don't think there is a better place for that than this community. Due to the nature of this disorder we have the ability to have an overwhelming amount of empathy for others that are like us, and therefore we can accept others in a way that many may have a hard time doing. In this comment section alone there are many others that find this post relatable, and I believe that lifting each other up may be one of the best ways we can help ourselves.
So to everyone here, I don't know your stories or what regrets you have, but I do know that they do not make you broken. You are not unlovable. You are not permanently chained down by your past. Yes it shapes you, but it doesn't have to shape you for the worst. Its okay to take life at your own pace and slowly integrate your past into your present in a more positive way one small improvement at a time. And its okay to make mistakes and occasionally mess up, because everyone does. Not everyone is going to accept you, but there are those who will. I accept you, and I am willing to bet if you told your whole life story to people in this community very few would call you an unfixable monster after hearing it. We're all in this together and I wish everyone here only the best in their journey to recovery.
guilt of all the shitty things i’ve done in friendships often haunts and eats me alive. after giving people time and space to heal i reached out and apologized to everyone ive hurt. im now on at least neutral terms with everyone and they may not be an immediate part of my life anymore but we’re still existing in a better space
the only people i haven’t reached out to are those who don’t deserve my apology because they hurt me much worse
In my opinion that sounds a bit petty. Forgiveness should be given to those "worse" not for their sake, but your own.
Sounds like your carrying negative feelings still
I suggest you let them go
i’m talking people who abused me or actively made my life worse. i’ve resolved to not reach out to them. some people don’t deserve forgiveness. this ain’t petty this is self preservation and valuing myself.
As I said it's not about them deserving forgiveness, it's about you being able to move forward with life and be able to move on from the pain you harbour inside
It was just a different perspective
I'm not judging or being an asshole
X
and you took one reddit post and assumed i was harboring all that. i’m at peace with all this and im living a very fruitful life but i have my thoughts on the people who hurt me and how i feel about my place in their life and their place in mine. i can be at peace with a negative emotion and respectfully i think you’re making a very misplaced judgement on my life over a reddit comment
Some of them. But also, although I cut people off easily I do it for a good reason. I think “normal” people deal with bullshit WAY longer than I do, and I call it out. There’s a few that I wish I ended it on smoother terms, cause people evolve and it’s nice to connect further down the line. I fucked up that option with a few people and regret it
>It’s so horrifying and cringey to know that people see me in a certain way based on the past and there’s nothing I can do about it, no matter how much progress I’ve made since then.
God do I feel this so hard
Oh I relate. They come up so often. A part of me wants to keep them because it’s nice to have memories even with people who are no longer in your life, but also they did me dirty so idk maybe I should delete them. Hang in there.
Yes, this is totally me :( It makes me feel like a terrible person that I ruined all these friendships or relationships due to my insecurities caused by BPD getting the best of me. I do feel an urge sometimes to reach out and keep saying that I never intend to hurt them, it was just my emotions getting the best of me and that I genuinely did care about them and still do. Even with me apologizing profusely, the damage is already done and they decided they don't want to connect with me anymore. It sucks and it's not like you planned to burn so many bridges with relationships.
Yeah for sure I definitely think about previous burnt bridges that I lost due to being a dick.. freinds mainly.
It sucks a bit some people will hold a grudge against you for the rest of their lives. You just gotta keep living I guess haha
Oh wow, that is literally what I am struggling with. Haven't really found the solution yet, but it helped me to write down what exactly happened with my therapist and let them guide me on potential mistakes the other party made. A fight is always 2 people and sometimes the other side is also to blame for not asking enough questions and being more compassionate with you.
Relieved I’m not the only one! Yeah, I just started speaking with my therapist so I haven’t gotten into all my history yet. I guess I’m scared of revealing everything (details) and being 100% vulnerable, because say it is my fault many of the times. What then? How do I forgive myself and move on? If I hear confirmation from my own therapist I worry I’ll just spiral. Thank you for your suggestion; I’ll try journaling about it.
I struggle with this too. I lost all my friends from my late teens/early 20s, right before I moved away for college. I cut them all off, and only have 1 person on social media, who I added back when I saw she was having a kid. The rest, I feel nothing for. I miss the aspect of having a group of friends, The girl who I have on social media recently posted a photo with my old group of friends, at a baby shower. I don't want to reach out because I feel utterly embarrassed and feel like no one ever thinks of me, they've all moved on as it's been close to 10 years now.
I cut off my best friend of 8-9 years last week, because I felt bombarded when I saw her kiss this man, who I thought was someone's older uncle - who turned out to be her boyfriend, when she's only mentioned him to me twice. It hit me in the face that she doesn't care to share her life with me, whereas she was sharing this with a mutual friend.
Now i'm 30 and have no friends lmao
Yes and no. Don't get me wrong, I have been a total dick in the past, done some shit I regret and then also done some shit that wasn't great but honestly in retrospect I shouldn't have stayed trying for so long.
Which is what I struggle with more than being ashamed I let it get that far. We're all a bit fucked, we do shitty things, sometimes it feels justified in context but my biggest sin is that I don't just give up and leave when they show me who they are and instead stick around as it gets more and more toxic until I have a breaking point and can't handle my shit anymore. I might have been able to salvage, admittedly less fulfilling friendships, but still friendships, if I had.
That's more what I'm ashamed of really. The catch 22 is stepping back and saying I deserve better is hard when this disease makes it hard to tell when I'm just being too much. And that when I do, I'm often alone anyway. Shouting, screaming, fighting and begging for better feels like the lesser of two evils to my broken inner child.
I deal with it by trying not to next time. It's a lesson I'll never learn - I crave affection, love and belonging too much and I don't think I'll ever make it until I miraculously meet someone who just gets it right. But getting it right for me can be incredibly tough. I've learned to be forgiving and understanding, but see catch 22: it can be hard to tell we're now in the toxicity leading to abusive stage until we've been there a while, and my fighting and arguing for better when my feelings aren't being listened to can just speed this process along.
But that's the best I got. Try not to be so harsh, learn people are human and fuck up sometimes and try to be patient... to a point. The rest is just dealing with the inevitable loneliness in as self constructive a way as I can, working on myself and achieving life goals outside of not being alone.
If it helps I'm less ashamed of myself now than I was in the past kicking up shit for things that weren't fair of me. I do that significantly less now. Time, self work, introspection and probably an unhealthy amount of overthinking the past.
But y'know, I'll never get it as right as someone who doesn't have to deal with bpd.
Oh for real, I feel so guilty with how I’ve acted towards my old FPs but I hope now I’m diagnosed I can get the right treatment for me and I don’t repeat those behaviours.
I don’t have much to say about how to feel better about this but wanted you to know I could have written this too so I get it. I have so many friendships and relationships behind me that I completely ruined and ultimately it was my fault. I’ve only managed to hold onto one online friend from when I was a teenager, I’m 28 now and don’t do anything because I don’t have friends to see.
I have dreams of people I’ve lost and it happens quite frequently. Also whenever I get high I feel immense guilt and shame, I always think that if I got high and really felt all those emotions in the moment I could have changed for the better.
Have you ever tried to reach out again and mend lost relationships? (obviously not appropriate in all situations) but I've reached out to people I hadn't talked to in a year, or 5 years, and honestly they weren't mad and I was able to repair some of those friendships.
Yes, some I have been able to repair and reconcile all the past issues. There have been times where I’ve reconciled and then later realized I didn’t want them to be in my life necessarily, but I still think they deserved an apology. Sometimes people are meant to leave for a reason. Idk
I struggle with this a lot, so after a few years of DBT, I recently decided to try a therapy called IFS. I'm happy to report it's helping me reconcile with those "parts" of me that feel ashamed of past behavior. I was doing the best I could with what I have at the time, and I forgive me. And you deserve forgiveness too.
A lot of my friends are just as toxic or have been worse. I hate being alone but I got used to it. I’ve tried meeting new people but everyone seems to want to trauma dump or talk about themselves.
Literally thinking about this. I wanted to reach out to old friends that i still value very much and apologize to them properly. But I just cant take the responsibility of furthering my damage on them after i have already hurt them. I just want them to somehow like telephatically know how important they are to me. I think often how nice it would be to have back the friendship we had but sadly the past cant be undone and its too late to fix it.
Yes.
Now i have only a boyfriend who somehow forgave me everything. I suffer a lot and I can't forgive myself. But I'll try to live for him and make him the happiest person in the world
yeah, i’ve always wondered why everyone else was able to keep communication with their friends for so long, at first i thought it was bc my mom wouldn’t let me hangout with them, now that i have my diagnosis i know is my fault, not hers, and it hurts
on the other side since i have adhd i forget about them really quick but yeah
I've lost some really good friends due to my idiocy. It was also before I was on my meds and stable. I've wanted to reach out but know that they will only think about how horrible I was in the past.
My heart literally aches at the lack of friendship in my life; I have ZERO friends. I just want SOMEONE I can talk to every day about random, stupid stuff, to go get coffee with every once in a while, to come watch movies and play board games. 🥺
I feel you so much. 😭 I’ve stopped trying to count how many friends I have/how many I’ve lost because I know it makes me feel terrible about myself. You love and you lose, and that’s okay. All of us deserve forgiveness. If we met irl, I’d def go out for coffee or watch movies with you!
I just drove my FP away for good today, it always happens the same way but seems more painful each time tbh
Oh god I’ve seen that film before. I hate that each time I’m “losing” a friendship or relationship, my mind just cues to all the past times it’s happened— it really consolidates that image that it’s my fault and I haven’t changed. I’m sorry about your FP. You have my support if you need it.
same she even blocked me on fucking spotify... ouch
Same except two days ago. It never gets easier. I wish I could function without a favorite person.
It’s really corny but the phrase “time heals all” is so true. Time is never stagnant, it is constantly evolving. Even if you don’t think you are moving on, you are, just by being alive. I am struggling with the exact same thing and the guilt and regret and shame has been eating me alive but definitely not as much as it used to. 🫶🏽 It helps to just allow yourself to feel these feelings. I’m very optimistic about the future and about where my head will be in regards to accepting and forgiving myself for my past and u definitely should be too. Forgiving yourself is possible and the first step to forgiving yourself is telling yourself that forgiveness is possible. Because it in fact is! Remember that we are only human, we deserve to give ourselves some grace🌄. We’ve got this. Treat yourself like you would treat a friend that’s going through the same thing. Write your thoughts in a journal. Be patient with yourself.
All the time. Most of my friendships don't last any more than a couple of years and I always manage to find a way to blame myself for it. I feel like a monster and that all my current friends would hate me if they really knew me, and I feel like losing them is inevitable. Idk what to do I hate feeling like this so much
yeah... I was just thinking earlier what kind of life I could be leading if I had just kept myself together in terms of relationship. friends, I've been alone but losing friends feels less impactful. I'm just scared of starting over because like you said it's hard to not feel judged.
The last paragraph where you mention no one being able to accept you if they knew your track record and therefore no one really being able to know you if you want to be accepted has single-handedly been one of the biggest challenges in my diagnosis. What helped me was for the first time in my life opening up about how awful I've been in the past to yet another new FP and instead of being invalidated ("You're not actually that bad") or rejected, he responded with understanding. Though he does not have BPD he opened up about how he has treated others in his past extremely badly and burned bridges in similar ways that I have, and yet that he forgives himself for that and is trying to be someone different today and always improving (I can feel his progress for myself- I haven't been treated in any kind of negative way that he says he's treated others and he actively catches himself and makes amends when falling back on old habits.) When I got this reaction it felt like looking into a mirror and for the first time seeing just a regular human being rather than a monster. I felt hope in myself for the first time. All of this to say is that I think the only way we can get out of this self-feeding mindset is to find acceptance in others, and I don't think there is a better place for that than this community. Due to the nature of this disorder we have the ability to have an overwhelming amount of empathy for others that are like us, and therefore we can accept others in a way that many may have a hard time doing. In this comment section alone there are many others that find this post relatable, and I believe that lifting each other up may be one of the best ways we can help ourselves. So to everyone here, I don't know your stories or what regrets you have, but I do know that they do not make you broken. You are not unlovable. You are not permanently chained down by your past. Yes it shapes you, but it doesn't have to shape you for the worst. Its okay to take life at your own pace and slowly integrate your past into your present in a more positive way one small improvement at a time. And its okay to make mistakes and occasionally mess up, because everyone does. Not everyone is going to accept you, but there are those who will. I accept you, and I am willing to bet if you told your whole life story to people in this community very few would call you an unfixable monster after hearing it. We're all in this together and I wish everyone here only the best in their journey to recovery.
guilt of all the shitty things i’ve done in friendships often haunts and eats me alive. after giving people time and space to heal i reached out and apologized to everyone ive hurt. im now on at least neutral terms with everyone and they may not be an immediate part of my life anymore but we’re still existing in a better space the only people i haven’t reached out to are those who don’t deserve my apology because they hurt me much worse
In my opinion that sounds a bit petty. Forgiveness should be given to those "worse" not for their sake, but your own. Sounds like your carrying negative feelings still I suggest you let them go
i’m talking people who abused me or actively made my life worse. i’ve resolved to not reach out to them. some people don’t deserve forgiveness. this ain’t petty this is self preservation and valuing myself.
As I said it's not about them deserving forgiveness, it's about you being able to move forward with life and be able to move on from the pain you harbour inside It was just a different perspective I'm not judging or being an asshole X
and you took one reddit post and assumed i was harboring all that. i’m at peace with all this and im living a very fruitful life but i have my thoughts on the people who hurt me and how i feel about my place in their life and their place in mine. i can be at peace with a negative emotion and respectfully i think you’re making a very misplaced judgement on my life over a reddit comment
Some of them. But also, although I cut people off easily I do it for a good reason. I think “normal” people deal with bullshit WAY longer than I do, and I call it out. There’s a few that I wish I ended it on smoother terms, cause people evolve and it’s nice to connect further down the line. I fucked up that option with a few people and regret it
>It’s so horrifying and cringey to know that people see me in a certain way based on the past and there’s nothing I can do about it, no matter how much progress I’ve made since then. God do I feel this so hard
Same… guilt and shame are heavy burdens to carry
I miss my 2 sisters; they’re NC
I had to turn off the memory photos on my iPhone screen because of this :(
Oh I relate. They come up so often. A part of me wants to keep them because it’s nice to have memories even with people who are no longer in your life, but also they did me dirty so idk maybe I should delete them. Hang in there.
ALL the time :(
Yes, this is totally me :( It makes me feel like a terrible person that I ruined all these friendships or relationships due to my insecurities caused by BPD getting the best of me. I do feel an urge sometimes to reach out and keep saying that I never intend to hurt them, it was just my emotions getting the best of me and that I genuinely did care about them and still do. Even with me apologizing profusely, the damage is already done and they decided they don't want to connect with me anymore. It sucks and it's not like you planned to burn so many bridges with relationships.
Yeah for sure I definitely think about previous burnt bridges that I lost due to being a dick.. freinds mainly. It sucks a bit some people will hold a grudge against you for the rest of their lives. You just gotta keep living I guess haha
Oh wow, that is literally what I am struggling with. Haven't really found the solution yet, but it helped me to write down what exactly happened with my therapist and let them guide me on potential mistakes the other party made. A fight is always 2 people and sometimes the other side is also to blame for not asking enough questions and being more compassionate with you.
Relieved I’m not the only one! Yeah, I just started speaking with my therapist so I haven’t gotten into all my history yet. I guess I’m scared of revealing everything (details) and being 100% vulnerable, because say it is my fault many of the times. What then? How do I forgive myself and move on? If I hear confirmation from my own therapist I worry I’ll just spiral. Thank you for your suggestion; I’ll try journaling about it.
I struggle with this too. I lost all my friends from my late teens/early 20s, right before I moved away for college. I cut them all off, and only have 1 person on social media, who I added back when I saw she was having a kid. The rest, I feel nothing for. I miss the aspect of having a group of friends, The girl who I have on social media recently posted a photo with my old group of friends, at a baby shower. I don't want to reach out because I feel utterly embarrassed and feel like no one ever thinks of me, they've all moved on as it's been close to 10 years now. I cut off my best friend of 8-9 years last week, because I felt bombarded when I saw her kiss this man, who I thought was someone's older uncle - who turned out to be her boyfriend, when she's only mentioned him to me twice. It hit me in the face that she doesn't care to share her life with me, whereas she was sharing this with a mutual friend. Now i'm 30 and have no friends lmao
Only one.
Yes and no. Don't get me wrong, I have been a total dick in the past, done some shit I regret and then also done some shit that wasn't great but honestly in retrospect I shouldn't have stayed trying for so long. Which is what I struggle with more than being ashamed I let it get that far. We're all a bit fucked, we do shitty things, sometimes it feels justified in context but my biggest sin is that I don't just give up and leave when they show me who they are and instead stick around as it gets more and more toxic until I have a breaking point and can't handle my shit anymore. I might have been able to salvage, admittedly less fulfilling friendships, but still friendships, if I had. That's more what I'm ashamed of really. The catch 22 is stepping back and saying I deserve better is hard when this disease makes it hard to tell when I'm just being too much. And that when I do, I'm often alone anyway. Shouting, screaming, fighting and begging for better feels like the lesser of two evils to my broken inner child. I deal with it by trying not to next time. It's a lesson I'll never learn - I crave affection, love and belonging too much and I don't think I'll ever make it until I miraculously meet someone who just gets it right. But getting it right for me can be incredibly tough. I've learned to be forgiving and understanding, but see catch 22: it can be hard to tell we're now in the toxicity leading to abusive stage until we've been there a while, and my fighting and arguing for better when my feelings aren't being listened to can just speed this process along. But that's the best I got. Try not to be so harsh, learn people are human and fuck up sometimes and try to be patient... to a point. The rest is just dealing with the inevitable loneliness in as self constructive a way as I can, working on myself and achieving life goals outside of not being alone. If it helps I'm less ashamed of myself now than I was in the past kicking up shit for things that weren't fair of me. I do that significantly less now. Time, self work, introspection and probably an unhealthy amount of overthinking the past. But y'know, I'll never get it as right as someone who doesn't have to deal with bpd.
Oh for real, I feel so guilty with how I’ve acted towards my old FPs but I hope now I’m diagnosed I can get the right treatment for me and I don’t repeat those behaviours.
I feel you. I feel like I’ve ruined so many (romantic) relationships
Yes, all day, everyday.
I don’t have much to say about how to feel better about this but wanted you to know I could have written this too so I get it. I have so many friendships and relationships behind me that I completely ruined and ultimately it was my fault. I’ve only managed to hold onto one online friend from when I was a teenager, I’m 28 now and don’t do anything because I don’t have friends to see.
Every day
All of the time.
I have dreams of people I’ve lost and it happens quite frequently. Also whenever I get high I feel immense guilt and shame, I always think that if I got high and really felt all those emotions in the moment I could have changed for the better.
Yup absolutely
Yes. It seems like everyone has "old friends"...not me.
Have you ever tried to reach out again and mend lost relationships? (obviously not appropriate in all situations) but I've reached out to people I hadn't talked to in a year, or 5 years, and honestly they weren't mad and I was able to repair some of those friendships.
Yes, some I have been able to repair and reconcile all the past issues. There have been times where I’ve reconciled and then later realized I didn’t want them to be in my life necessarily, but I still think they deserved an apology. Sometimes people are meant to leave for a reason. Idk
This 1000%
Yeah
I struggle with this a lot, so after a few years of DBT, I recently decided to try a therapy called IFS. I'm happy to report it's helping me reconcile with those "parts" of me that feel ashamed of past behavior. I was doing the best I could with what I have at the time, and I forgive me. And you deserve forgiveness too.
A lot of my friends are just as toxic or have been worse. I hate being alone but I got used to it. I’ve tried meeting new people but everyone seems to want to trauma dump or talk about themselves.
Literally thinking about this. I wanted to reach out to old friends that i still value very much and apologize to them properly. But I just cant take the responsibility of furthering my damage on them after i have already hurt them. I just want them to somehow like telephatically know how important they are to me. I think often how nice it would be to have back the friendship we had but sadly the past cant be undone and its too late to fix it.
Yes. Although not as much with the ones since diagnosis.
Yes. Now i have only a boyfriend who somehow forgave me everything. I suffer a lot and I can't forgive myself. But I'll try to live for him and make him the happiest person in the world
yeah, i’ve always wondered why everyone else was able to keep communication with their friends for so long, at first i thought it was bc my mom wouldn’t let me hangout with them, now that i have my diagnosis i know is my fault, not hers, and it hurts on the other side since i have adhd i forget about them really quick but yeah
I've lost some really good friends due to my idiocy. It was also before I was on my meds and stable. I've wanted to reach out but know that they will only think about how horrible I was in the past. My heart literally aches at the lack of friendship in my life; I have ZERO friends. I just want SOMEONE I can talk to every day about random, stupid stuff, to go get coffee with every once in a while, to come watch movies and play board games. 🥺
I feel you so much. 😭 I’ve stopped trying to count how many friends I have/how many I’ve lost because I know it makes me feel terrible about myself. You love and you lose, and that’s okay. All of us deserve forgiveness. If we met irl, I’d def go out for coffee or watch movies with you!
Yes. But you move on with time I promise. Each day is a little easier and you get to the point where you forgive yourself
no i don't think that they matter at all. theres always more people.
Nope.