Therapy Works

I got an email earlier today that bothered me. I felt as I was reading it that the writer was attacking me. And I acknowledged the feeling that he was attacking me and tried to push it away - to not respond to it. He probably wasn’t attacking me or meaning too.

When I was in the hospital emergency room here in London (for the first time I think) - suicidal being the reason. I talked with a psychiatrist. Explained what was going on, tried to persuade an admittance to the hospital.

Anyways. He. I felt like he was attacking me. And I responded as such, I got defensive and shifted how I was approaching the conversation. And then he paused and he pointed out what had just happened. Borderline Personality Disorder has lots of symptoms and stuff - look it up if you want. One of the traits, something that I struggle with, is feeling like I am being attacked - whether I am being attacked or not. Mostly not being attacked. But I feel like I am being attacked and I respond, I change my nice calm conversational tone to defensive and I get all huffy because I feel like I am being attacked.

Now, knowing I do this, that it happens, doesn’t make it not happen. I definitely struggle with some traits of Borderline Personality Disorder. Being able to recognize what is happening helps. This email from this guy I felt like he was attacking me. I acknowledged that I felt like he was attacking me. I acknowledged that he probably wasn’t attacking me. And I chose to not let it bother me. To not get all huffy. To not defend myself or attack him. I read the rest of the email. Content that I had expressed my opinion to him. I exited the email and patted myself on the back for my healthy coping.

And then I spent the next 4 hours patting myself on the back for being awesome and handling it well. And finally paused what I was doing (reading a book) to get these thoughts out of my head on paper, so I can move on. Which I have now done.