tracks,
dunno if this will help any because it's about me instead of someone else, but I only know my own inner workings for sure - and they're enough like everyone else's, in some important ways, that they might shed some light on some issues.
I used to have fulminating hissy fits - and I mean every word of that, there were lava craters left behind and some are still glowing - when I didn't get acknowledged here right away, especially when I posted about something that was hurting me terribly at the time. There's evidence aplenty right here on this board, a year ago. I left it here to remind myself what I'm capable of...
It stopped when I stopped needing acknowledgement in this place right away.
That stopped when I figured out why it was happening and what I could do about it that was constructive.
In my case, I joined the board at a time when we had many posters whose behavior on the board was suggestive of Borderline PD and that connection was not generally recognized. Some were clearly suffering terribly. Some were pretty obviously here more for attention than for genuine healing. There were repeating patterns: on thursday or friday one of these posters would announce that they were going to spend the weekend harming themselves and the entire board would immediately jump to attention with reassurance, support, validation, etc. that went on round the clock throughout the weekend - so that the BPD wasn't left to fend for themselves and find something constructive to do... [an unkind interpretation, but after three or four repetitions of the cycle, one that seemed to have some truth in it.]
Things just went round and round - in typical borderline fashion: threaten self-harm, get attention; threaten self-harm, get attention; but nothing ever improved for the self-harm threatener, it was clear from their responses that they weren't actually taking in what was being offered in the way of alternate responses and things to try. Eventually, after several cycles, people here stopped playing. They tired, and withdrew.
Meanwhile, though, people who were in honest pain and expressing it candidly, people who really needed the good things that were being lavished elsewhere in abundance, were twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
I wasn't the only person to experience this, I just reacted much more phosphorescently to it.
Now. This wasn't just about me, and it wasn't just me. It just was. It was a combination of people meaning well and wanting to help others, who felt more comfortable dealing with one certain type of expressed pain, and reasonably enough believed the threats of self-harm the first half dozen times the game was played.
So they invested most of their time and energy in that, and didn't recognize right away that they were pouring attention into situations where it just vanished without a trace, zero net gain for the recipient, major net loss for the giver.
My timing was bad and I had insight but no patience. When I realized that I could use my insight to develop patience, but that I needed to find another place to do that, things started to work.
I joined discussion groups on more emotionally neutral, less 'invested' subjects - scientific areas I have a 'hobby interest' in, literature discussion groups - under other names - replied slowly at first - and waited patiently until someone took up or built on one of my posts. Eventually I reached the point where I could share something I thought was significant, on these non-emotionally charged subjects, detach from it, and simply be glad if someone else found value in it. If they reacted positively to me and especially if they responded in a way that allowed a conversation to develop, this was gravy.
I was learning to 'rein in' my expectations. It was good for me!
Being overlooked here when I was hurting and wanted attention, being negatively responded to when I 'acted out' about it [instead of comforted and supported as the self-harm threateners were at the time] may have been one of the best 'strange gifts' this board ever gave me, because it recreated a painful dynamic from my own childhood in which I was essentially punished by my FOO for being less dysfunctional than others in the family! And as an adult, I had other options. I analyzed the situation and took myself elsewhere to practice doing things differently... something I could never do as a child.
This whole experience taught me how lacking I was in true humility in a very important area of my heart. And that was a lesson I needed very much to learn. Can't say I'm as humble now as I ought to be - far from it - but I can see the 'proud flesh' more easily, I'm much less willing to make excuses for it or defend it, I'm less prone to jump on someone else in the heat of an emotional reaction without stopping to run it through my Karpman Screen first - some oobleck still gets past it, but a lot less does now. And that is all to the good.
One woman's partial journey. Story told for whatever it's worth.
