Honest to Blog - Wolf Totem
- Ang Nicole
- Apr 14, 2019
- 10 min read
Anyone who knows me probably also knows that I have super diverse taste in music.
Lately I have gotten strangely obsessed with Mongolian rock music – specifically Wolf Totem by The Hu (on Spotify, but I would recommend also watching the film clip on Youtube)
There was a random video on Facebook that had this song on it and after listening I tagged a few friends and then I went into this kind of vortex in which I just listened to heaps of music within the rock genre… except none of it has been in English.
Trigger Warning:
I will be talking about BPD and hence briefly mention hospitalisation and therapy. There is also a very fleeting mention of suicide plus a few low-key swear words.
If I find music I like then I listen to it until I can’t anymore.
I do this with almost everything. If I meet a new person and we get along I don’t just like this person, I goddam love them.
I do it with food too! My partner likes to joke about the phases I go through and refers to me as a little squirrel because I am always finding little snacks that I love.
When we first started dating I was super into Kit-Kats. I ate a couple of blocks a week to myself. In the past year and a half alone I have been through a lemonade phase, mangos, apples, chocolate Bavarian, hazelnut coffee, apple pie, croissants, fajitas, pasta, and more! I will just eat (or drink) the same thing daily for weeks until I am sick of it.
I guess I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I have had people coming in and out of my life and it’s kind of made me stop and wonder why this is… like, why do I go in and out of liking people.
The other day as I was pondering this I started out blaming the people in my life that I thought were pushing me away. I was mad that when I go through times where my mental health is super hard it always feels to me like nobody has time for me. I cried about it before going into an absolute panic that I am not worth caring for and ended up self-harming. After doing this I sat on the floor of my bedroom and my mind started racing. I blamed myself for not being the kind of person people would want in their life. I started thinking maybe if I just had it together, was more interesting, was prettier, was skinnier, was better qualified, was more self-assured… just maybe, then people would care.
And then it hit me… I have been splitting!
Trigger Warning:
As this post is about splitting I will be talking about BPD and hence briefly mention hospitalisation and therapy. There is also a very fleeting mention of suicide plus a few low-key swear words.
I have mentioned splitting in a previous post briefly with a link for those who wanted to look into it further, but the issue with that is it takes time to sit and research and time is a precious commodity that none of us seem to have enough of.
I have also mentioned my Borderline Personality Disorder and skimmed over the fact that I have also been diagnosed repeatedly with depression and anxiety disorder.
Although I wasn’t diagnosed with BPD until 2017, I was first diagnosed with severe depression more than a decade ago. I would have been about 13 or 14 years old when I was first diagnosed with depression.
Anywho… since these diagnosis, and since starting this blog, I have been wanting to write this post about what splitting is and what having BPD really feels like.
It is one thing for people to know that I have these diagnosed mental health illnesses but being aware of these things doesn’t mean that you guys actually understand or can fathom what it is like to live with them daily, and why having them can make me seem a bit self-involved.
It was super cute last night when my younger sister asked me what BPD is. She was so tentative about it, checking with me that it was okay she asked because she meant no harm – she simply didn’t understand and wanted to. I guess I always say I have BPD and when I explain it I talk about the effect it has on the brain and stuff, but I suppose when I do talk about my mental health I mostly talk about anxiety and depression rather than BPD.
So, for my sister, and anyone else still wondering… this is for you.
Borderline Personality Disorder is diagnosed based on a person expressing to a doctor that they experience at least 5 of the 9 traits on the list below, and that these have an effect on their daily life:
· Frantic efforts to avoid real or imaginary abandonment
· Consistently intense and unstable relationships with other people
· Persistently distorted self-image or sense of self
· At least 2 impulsive behaviours that are potentially self-damaging
· Ongoing self-harming behaviour, suicidal behaviour or threats
· Intense feelings lasting hours to days
· Long-term, chronic feelings of loneliness and emptiness
· Difficulty controlling intense and inappropriate anger
· Feeling disconnected from reality, or having paranoid thoughts
Obviously the testing is more comprehensive than just saying you have 5 of these listed feelings, and can take weeks for testing to come back conclusively, but essentially the above points help diagnose BPD. That being said, there are many more traits that BPD sufferers are known to exhibit.
So, back to what I was saying about splitting…
Splitting is a coping strategy used by someone with BPD which basically is to avoid rejection or being hurt. I have read lots of fantastic articles and really insightful blogs about splitting which all say the same sorts of things – that splitting is a strategy where those with BPD characterise things as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
On a more personal level, let me describe for you when I have ‘split.’
This example happened very recently and I am still kind of reeling from it.
So, I have been seeing my psychologist sporadically since 2017. In the past 2 years I have moved houses, then countries and back again so my sessions have been somewhat inconsistent. What has been consistent through all of the changes in my life is that my psychologist makes a huge effort to utilise Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) to work with me so I can learn skills that help me to overcome lots of BPD hurdles (such as how to respond to issues mindfully and how to keep myself feeling calm).
This year has been hectic for me; so as my mental health rapidly declined my psychologist and I agreed it would be best I spend some time in a psychiatric ward so that I could kind of regroup.
Once I left the ward and went back to therapy I noted that there was a major shift in the way our sessions were running. Rather than talk about the events of the last week, and discuss how I could have handled them better so that in the future I can potentially go through the same things and cope better, my psychologist started working on something entirely new – strategies for coping with trauma.
For a lot of people who have mental health illnesses, it is common to have some trauma related to this. For me, trauma is not something I like to EVER talk about. The stuff I have been through, as far as I am concerned, can stay in the past. I prefer ignoring the shit that has happened so that I can look forward to what will happen… unfortunately for me this has not exactly been working, which my psychologist picked up on so she changed her tactic with our sessions.
After two sessions of this trauma stuff I started getting really anxious and really angry. I was convinced, with no actual evidence whatsoever, that my psychologist no longer cared about me and was done with me so she was changing her tactic so that I would get upset and stop seeing her.
It didn’t help that she was most likely feeling somewhat defeated since we’ve been working together for years and yet I was at a point where I needed hospitalisation. She said to me that if I wanted to see another psychologist she would understand. This triggered me so intensely! I didn’t even realise it… but I was almost just waiting for her to bail on me because subconsciously I was aware that every other psychologist had at some point or another basically given up (one even moved away without notifying me and I ended up having a huge anxiety attack over it, this was before the BPD diagnosis so I am sure that she didn’t realise the effect her absence would have on me).
So there I was, sat in my car writing a list of all the things that my current psychologist had said that had made me feel angry, hurt and sad.
The list I wrote was full of emotion and was aimed at my psychologist. I wrote it with tears streaming down my face and anger seemingly pulsating through my veins.
It took me a few days after writing this short and angry little list for me to realise what I was doing. I was splitting. I had started characterising my sessions and my psychologist as being ‘bad.’ I stopped wanting to go because I thought it wasn’t doing anything and that it wouldn’t fix me.
I got super depressed and just stopped wanting to do anything.
I had to go see a GP to get a mental health care plan and was pissed off that he wanted me hospitalised for being a mess when I walked in.
I said the things I needed to say, those magical words that doctors want to hear before they trust you again – “no, I do not have a plan.” See, doctors (and any healthcare professional) have to ensure that they have no reason to believe you are about to go kill yourself, otherwise they will hospitalise you… again.
I was angry after this appointment because the doctor had divulged that my psychologist wanted me to see a psychiatrist – meaning that they both thought I should be considering medication for my mental health issues. This felt like a major betrayal because my psychologist had always said that I am insightful and have an uncanny amount of self-awareness. By suggesting I see a psychiatrist I was sure this meant that my psychologist had stopped believing in me.
When people split they do this - they convince themselves that the person their anger is directed at no longer cares. This sort of thinking and behaviour stems form a more childish undertone. BPD sufferers basically regress to the juvenile concept that things are either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ We struggle to see that there is more to the story than just the one side we know of because when we are outside our window of tolerance, we can’t see that there is more to it than that.
On a regular day I know that she is the psychologist, I am the client, and that all of the things she plans for our sessions are based on her professional knowledge.
But take Ang (who hasn’t been coping for months) and stick her in a room with someone who isn’t on the same page and I am convinced that this person and I don’t see eye to eye because they hate me and everything I have ever thought… ever!
Like, I don’t just think they don’t like me. I think they HATE me.
Because in my mind it is one or the other at this point, there’s no grey-scale or rainbow… its black and white.
Thankfully, somewhere within my angry little brain was a voice that just said not to give up just yet.
I went to another session with my psychologist the next day and we talked more about what her plan was from here. She explained why she had recommended I see a psychiatrist and basically set everything straight so that I walked out of my session feeling really great about myself, and about how things would go from hereon.
Another example I can give you of splitting, in my personal life, is the relationship I have with my partner.
I feel actually so sorry for the things this dude puts up with.
It is unfortunately so normal for us to go through me splitting multiple times a day! I can go from cuddling him and telling him how he is my best friend and that I have never loved anyone so much to screaming and crying and convinced through my paranoia that he is talking about me to someone he might be messaging.
I get so paranoid and anxious and convinced that he, and basically everyone, is saying negative things about me and when that happens it can go one of many ways.
Lately when I have these unsolicited thoughts I have a complete sense of being overwhelmed. I get so sure that my partner doesn’t care about me and say things like, “you hate me” or “why are you even with me.”
Sometimes I think that our relationship is part of some weird practical joke where he pretends to love me just so he can prove to other people how crazy I am.
When my fear of abandonment is triggered, which can sometimes even be because he is leaving the room to go get something from another room, my mind just shuts off leaving the one thought going around and around in my head – “he hates you.”
I don’t honestly know how he puts up with it.
Do any research on dating someone with BPD and it is basically just horror story after horror story.
The only plus side for my partner is that when I get passed my paranoia and anxiety, once I am calm enough to see things for what they really are… I know he loves me.
What makes splitting even more confusing is that the belief of ‘love’ and ‘hate’ can sometimes be iron-clad or it can shift back-and-forth from one moment to the next. It isn’t in any way a stable thing.
People who split are often seen to be overly dramatic, especially when declaring that things have either "completely ruined" or "completely turned around." Such behaviour can be exhausting to those around them, especially those who don't understand these thoughts (or that they are involuntary).
I know for me, thinking the things that I do cannot always be helped... When I am splitting, quite often I don't realise I am doing it until later on.
It takes a lot of self-awareness (and sometimes my partner pointing it out) for me to realise when I am splitting.
I know people have said things to me before that make me think they hate me and in turn I shut them out, I stop responding to messages and I just disappear for a while. For those who have experienced this, I am sure you can attest to how shitty this feels!
The worst part is that then I have to acknowledge it and come crawling back asking for apologies coz I did it again without meaning to. It feels like I am constantly apologising for being the way I am.
Splitting, and BPD in general, sucks a whole heap!
Anyway, I hope that me explaining splitting helps you to understand what it feels like for me and how it effects my life.
For anyone who wants to read a more comprehensive explanation of splitting from a more scientific stand-point, I highly recommend that you read the following article: Borderline Personality Disorder - Splitting Countertransference
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