Trigger warning
This is just an update, that I am very hesitant to make because of my experiences here.
@Faith-and-Hope @Appleblossom @Shaz51 @Eden1919
This morning I was having an online conversation with a person on another peer support site for mentally ill people. I have been a member there for 5 years, and have a private blog there that I write in on a semi-regular basis about my lived experience with severe and complex mental illness, and the psychoeducation I have gained over the years about complex trauma and child abuse.
Recently, as with here, I have been doing that significantly less because of how people respond to the way/s I communicate and me revealing that I have a personality disorder. Only there, I had a much more prolific presence and a far more established "relationship".
Over the recent months, I have been struggling a lot with the lack of options for practical and functional support to manage my illnesses and get through life overall. I appreciate that is my experience and that not everyone has this issue. However, part of aging for me has meant that my personality disorder has become more ingrained and established, and that I have had additional challenges with areas effected by having a personality disorder. For me, several of those areas are doubled because of the challenges that come with being an autistic adult, especially communication and relationships.
In my case, this presents itself in me being brutally honest in a way that many people find disturbing or very difficult to deal with. My personality disorder comes with markedly rigid beliefs, thought patterns and behaviours regarding a wide variety of topics, and I can understand that other people have different ones, but as applicable to me and my life, my brain does not accept any others besides my own as the truth and right for me.
I am very aloof and emotionally blunted and restricted in affect and emotionality, to the point it is very common for me to be viewed as cold and insensitive. I have little, if any tolerance and ability to deal with emotional energy and to understand things that are emotional and emotional standpoints. At the personal level, I struggle immensely to experience any emotions at all other than numbness, apathy and anhedonia. I have never experienced any emotional or mood state besides this and my severe treatment resistant depression in my memorable life. Even my severe TRD is very different to the emotional presentation of depression people are used to.
In addition to my rigidity, I don't have "normal" beliefs or thought processes. I only have obsessive and fixated ones that are pre-occupations. They are like a never ending broken record. I am also very analytical and can easily communicate about any subject as if it is perfectly normal and acceptable, from a rational standpoint, even when it is far from that. It has made me be taken less seriously in a wide variety of contexts.
I understand that it can be very difficult to understand a person who has a personality disorder if you have no experience with it. I accept it. I accept that it is bizarre and disturbing to come across a person who is so inflexible, and who has no real identity outside their complex trauma and very basic information. I accept that I can be difficult and a right pain to deal with at times. But it seems others have no concept of the reality that they are difficult for me because of having my personality disorder.
That things they deem basic are no longer basic for me. Things like having a conversation that will inevitably not be mutual or functional. Things like not being able to communicate openly. Things like being dumped with other people's expectations, whether intentional or not.
Things like motivation, having a wide range of experiences, being able to function in life, things like self-care and being safe, things like self-regulation skills and being able to respond appropriately to a variety of stimuli. Things like change and acceptance of change. Things like being able to understand and accept a wide variety of beliefs and opinions, and effective mutuality between fellow humans, heck even considering yourself as human and a real person.
The conversation revolved around how I am going at the moment and how I am managing my chronic suicidality and the things that contribute to it. I stated that I am struggling a lot with the lack of practical and functional support options, and with dealing with the consequences of not being taken seriously and of continuing my existence amongst the specific circumstances I exist amongst by no choice of my own.
I stated that I am struggling to be interested in communicating openly because of censorship and people ignoring me whenever I bring up things that are actually important, that actually matter for me on a personal level, as opposed to writing content for other people and their education, which I do a lot of.
That it seems my truth doesn't matter because it can't be fixed and doesn't fit in the box people are used to. That the having to repeat myself, repeat my explanations as far as my circumstances in life are concerned goes, has started to drive me nuts and exacerbate my sense of alienation and dehumanisation.
I am a very philosophical person, in a nihilistic way. It is one of few things that keep the ever fraying string of my existence in tact. That keeps me skating on very thin ice, whether I like it or not.
Of course, a lot of people think I am delusional because of it. For me, merely being alive and extant does not equate to actually having a life and actually living. For me, survival is not something to be grateful for with blind ignorance, I'll save you from the other examples.
I spent a long time producing my answer to this person's questions. As I've said before, I don't do small talk. The person responded with "I care about you and want you to live for me even though I know you disagree with that. I am very affectionate toward you and have a lot of emotionality and worry for you".
This is what I responded with
What am I supposed to do with that? What can be done with it? Its a feeling, not a tangible resource that has practical use. It isn't actionable. I don't think there is a nice way to say how little someone caring can do when circumstances that need practical resources that are actionable, that need change that can only be brought by those, are involved in why a person believes they should commit suicide or that doing so is the only way to deal with there not being any such resources available to produce the means necessary to action keeping themselves alive.
That's what I'm dealing with and what I have always been dealing with. Whether someone cares about me is irrelevant and has no impact. Never has. Its like a thanks for nothing situation. I need to learn to care about myself in the practical and functional sense in order to begin benefitting from fickle and non-practical things like other people's care.
And those around me need to accept that there are consequences that come from me doing that in these circumstances, just as much as they need to accept there are consequences that come with me continuing my life amongst the same circumstances. Without that, caring about me is useless and just comes across as phoney and forced. Something being done because you feel obliged to do it. You're not and never will be. I despise people who act like they are.
The only person obliged to care about and for me is me. End of story. Right now, I need help being able to do that for myself, but help is the same things that are practical and actionable in my case.
I need a home within myself, and a sense of authenticity and appreciation of and within that home before I can let other people and their care and other psychological and emotional supports in. There needs to be a full me present, where depersonalisation is no longer necessary just to barely scrape by. I don't have that, and I won't until my body is hospitable and no longer a huge threat to my life.
I need to be OK with me in every aspect. I'm not. And that is no one else's responsibility. Please stop taking responsibility for it. It is very hard for me to deal with, because it shows you have no comprehension of what I have to go through and what I need to achieve. That isn't your fault, but acting like you do is. The mixed messages are too much for me to process. I don't have the energy or capacity to right now.
I'm sorry that I can't say I am someone who benefits from other people's care and affection, or other attempts at support that aren't practical. But I can't say it, because I'm not. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the attempt, its just not helpful and its only kicking yourself and me in the end.
I wish there was a nicer and more polite way to say this. But there isn't one I can come up with. I don't understand why everything to do with suicide has to be emotional. It draws me away and leads me to not be open about my own experience anymore.
I have many reasons why I disagree with living for others. Dishonesty is quite an understatement in my opinion, as far as those reasons are concerned. I think it is deplorable and morally rephrensible. I don't buy the whole guilt trip approach, and find it disgusting.
There is little else more wrong to me than asking someone to forget themselves just for your own gain, and just to not cause you pity and hardship.
Please do not shove your emotions onto me. They are yours, and your responsibility. I don't deserve to be suffocated by your personal effects. I don't do that to you, because I am a grown adult who accepts his own problems as his own, and as his own responsibility.
I would never in a million years demand you to live for me. Never. It is your life and I'm not in it to the degree you are to make such a judgement. I have told you before that I have boundaries and expect them to be treated with respect, because of how I was raised. One of them is not dumping your emotional affairs onto me and bringing excessive emotional energy toward me, and not expecting me or anything about me or in my life to be emotional, just because it is for you.
You have disrespected that for the umpteenth time, and this is why I have reduced my contact with you. I have a right to be open about the type of support I am open to and need, just as you do.
The person proceeded to call me a certain swear word beginning with c and told me I am a cold and heartless robot who should just piss off because I am a shame to those who have complex mental health issues.
This has happened probably 50 times in the past 6 months. I get a sense that these forums also do not appreciate my honesty and struggle with the fact that I am assertive about what "help" and "support" actually imply for me as an individual. This is why I am hesitant to continue posting here.
I wish to be true to my real experiences, but not in a way that causes me to be perceived as a cold and insensitive a hole. I wish to be free to be open, so long as I am doing my best to remain within guidelines, without having emotional charge and assumptions about how I am feeling added. Both of those seem to be very common around here. Again, I accept those things are useful for some members, and have nothing against it in such cases, that however does not mean it is automatically helpful for me.
I am a grown adult and whilst I do struggle with emotions and their identification, I don't appreciate being told how I feel by people who don't even know me besides what presence I choose to have on the internet. I have had more than enough abusers in my life tell me how I feel or how I should feel, thank you very much. If I am interested in that kind of help, I am more than capable of asking for it.
I also have the same sense that my problems are way too much for here, and that is the stuff that is within guidelines, never mind the rest, and struggle with what the point is in being open to others about it because of that. It seems that all communications lead to silence in the end, in my case. I don't particularly care about that, but I do care how that makes being here almost impossible and full of mixed messages, and to be honest, rather stigmatising at times.
I don't know, maybe some of you think about me and how I am doing, and I'm not saying I don't appreciate it. Just that its rather useless in this type of scenario where I can't really actually answer you, and even if I could, nothing can be done about it. My frustration does not lie with you, rather with how complex mental health issues like mine are approached.
I really struggle with the emotional, pity, sympathy and empathy attempts that make up a mental health peer support site. All of those are suffocating for a person like me who is not used to having them in my life, and where them being there only serves to remind me why I can't benefit from them being provided. I know its not my fault, but alas, the way I have been treated because I can't makes me feel very guilty that I am incapable of that seemingly "normal" and acceptable response to them. I have horrific memories about attachment therapy in relation to that, that I'd rather not re-live, thanks.
Sorry for the ridiculous length and I don't expect anyone to read this. Thanks if you do, though.
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Emergency, police & ambulance (24 Hrs)
Connect with a lifeline crisis supporter (24 Hrs)
Suicide callback service (24 Hrs)
Kids helpline (24 Hrs)
13 YARN