Same issues. I feel like I'm the scum of the earth a lot of days. Ironic, though, if someone else tells me so, I immediately go into fight mode - one big reason I haven't tolerated all of the "round up the mentally ill" threads very well.

Now, if someone compliments me, I hate that, too.

This is how I handled my feelings of utter worthlessness.

I've kept a personal journal for many years.

One day maybe 6 or 7 years ago I decided to try making a list of the good things about myself on the pages of the journal.

That first time, the only thing I could think of was that some people had told me that I have a nice smile. I was crying as I wrote that down, because I couldn't think of anything else.

But after a day or two, I tried again. And I thought of other things. And I wrote every now and then and added to the list.

Within a year I had collected plenty of things to feel good about, and they were convincing, because I was doing the telling instead of relying on the words of others. It helped me develop a sense that I was better than I'd thought I was, and this has stayed with me.

Of course four years of being unemployed has done damage, but I still have that feeling that deep down inside I'm worth something.

Social norms and expectations of current society, it's hierarchic structures... I just read another friend having anxiety attacks from the continuous work related stress. I'm content I'm free of that, unemployed, idle, with time to think, study, feel, be, do DU. Word 'school' comes from Greek 'schole' which means 'idle'.

I feel guilty and dishonest for tricking a small number of people into liking me.

My parents are somewhere on the autistic spectrum and simply didn't have shame or guilt in their parental toolkit. Anger, oh hell yes, my mom can go berserker on anyone, and my dad has his moments too, but I can't remember a single time they ever tried to shame me or make me feel guilty or small. Formal punishment was rare too and only seemed to happen when my parents were trying to appear normal to the outside world. In our familiar world the anger itself was the punishment and evaporated quickly.

The rules in our family were pretty simple. Don't make mom, or dad, or God angry. If you lie, steal, cheat, or hurt innocent creatures (including the human sort) there will be trouble. If you punch a hole in the wall, you have to fix it. But whatever trouble you were in there's always a place for you at the dinner table.

I used to get in trouble at school quite a bit. The school was always reluctant to call my mom because she'd often storm in ferociously angry at me, or worse and much more embarrassing, ferociously angry at the school. Eventually schools would stop calling my parents unless I was bleeding too badly for the school nurse to patch up and send me back out into the jungle. One time they had to call my mom because I had a broken bone, another time a concussion. If I wasn't getting beat up I was being a klutz.

Academically, my mob of siblings and I did all right. All of us were reading when we started school because that's what people did in our house. My parents started reading to me when I was a baby, and I read to my younger siblings. Art and science were important in our house -- it soaked into us by osmosis.

My most serious mental health issue is depression. I cannot function without meds. Without meds my world becomes a very dark place. But rather than a "self hatred/destructive drive" I have a paranoia/OCD/psychosis/anger drive, what I call my "feral human" state. The paranoia is the worst part because it prevents me from seeking or accepting help.

If I'm angry and I hurt myself (which I've done more times than I care to think about) it's not because I'm angry at myself or want to punish myself, it's because I was angry and irrational and did something stupid. God knows I've hurt other people in that state and it's my duty to repair those relationships, if possible, and when I can't repair the damage I'll feel a tremendous sense of loss and sadness but I don't think I was ever trained to translate those feelings into self-loathing or self-destruction. Or maybe that's one of the reasons I got the Asperger diagnosis; maybe I'm missing some bit of mental hardware most other people have.

If what I wrote here isn't helpful in some way, please disregard it. I'm also not sure if it's an appropriate reply to this thread. If it's not, I'll delete it.

Mine is related, I believe, to my intense fear of humiliation and failure. I feel like I have come a long way in seeing myself as an actual human being, both dark and light; but I remember the worst times and those come into my mind also. Medication has done a lot to keep this from screeching out of control in my mind, but it still comes. I have been cursing myself as an idiot and a failure for ever thinking I could knit because I don't like the way my latest project turned out. I feel like it's idiotic for me to go home and work on my new project tonight after failing so utterly. I dread humiliation like it is some kind of soul-death. Nevermind that many of my projects have received a lot of complements. I feel like a fraud right now, someone that shouldn't even pick up the needles again; what would a REAL knitter say about this horrible sweater? And when I was young I might have thrown the sweater around the room screaming and ended up beating my head against the wall so I could focus on physcal pain and not the emotional kind (and because a creature like me damned well deserved it) before collapsing in tears; I heard over and over "what's wrong with that child?", from my parents.

I've got a good dose of OCD too, the kind that doesn't show as much on the outside (except for the tics I have learned to mostly hide) so what negatives show up in my mind tend to ruminate over and over. My therapist says to ask if "this is true" when that crap comes up and to counter it with something; which is how I at least rationally know that I've knitted projects that have turned out quite nicely.

With the OCD my brain is a battle ground some days, other days it's more like seeing ugly kites flying past and letting the breeze take them off to the edge of the horizon. I try to look for the positives, or a new thing, just move on. I will move on and keep working on my new project because to hell with it, if it's a waste of time then winter is a waste of time, can't do anything anyway. There always has to be an out, something to move on to. I have to try.

Depression, PTSD, ADD, anxiety

Grew up with a Borderline Personality mother. Unpredictable, enmeshed, abusive, immature, non-nurturing...sick. And phony as hell.

Dad was great but gone all the time. Much later I realized he was an alcohic.

Eh.....I should do an intro post here, so I don't hijack the thread and for proper etiquette. ......
I just don't have the energy to do it right now.

My self destructive stuff now (age 55) is mainly isolating. A lot. Good thing I have a job that I like and do well and that doesn't demand paperwork and stuff I don't do well.

I identify, enough said.

Have you read, "Understanding the Borderline Mother" ?

I might have the name a little wrong...I'm on mobile right now. Will have to search.

Have to run but for now.....



Thank you for replying!

My sister and I ate through that like a box of chocolates during PMS. We figured out our Dad was the "Huntsman". Mom is a Hermit.

Alternating with waif or hermit.

Not good.

That book helped me understand.
You're lucky you had a sister to share the burden!



Oh gotta run..I'm at work

The Witch would be Hell. I am very grateful for my sister. Our Mom pitted us against each other when we were young but we got close as adults. We each have taken our turn at being the bad one.

I even developed Ulcerative Colitis which is excruciating and life threatening but it at least gave me some protection ( she didn't follow me into the bathroom), and some of the doctors and nurses were nice to me.

Yeah it was pure, relentless hell. More like warfare....boredom alone stuck in my room, interspersed with unpredictable attacks that could go on for hours. Never had a conversation with her...she was not capable of participating in normal conversation. Communication was limited to lecturing, haranguing or screeching in bizarre twisted rage triggered by who knows what, or non-sequiteurs, or sometimes phony sweet platitudes..

It's strange cuz of the weird difficulty in understanding how bad it was. Like intellectually I remember mostly everything (I'm much less compulsive about remembering and talking about it anymore, though. Thank god.), but kind of in a numb sort of way. Know what I mean?

I didn't realize, for example, how bad it was when in a blind rage, she held me down and tried to stab me in the face with a scissors when I was somewhere around nine. I finally realized how traumatizing that was (sort of) when my ex was in a blind drunk rage and was in my face with his finger. His eyes were bugging out, face red and spewing spittle and foam flying as he tried to hold himself back---and what did I think? I thought, "oh my god that's exactly what my mother looked like". That experience was a couple years ago.

Bleh. Well lucky I'm in a slow assignment at work, right now. They don't need me at the moment so I can hang out here.

Time to think of other things now.

Now I just gave myself a sweaty hot flash talking about it!

Our Mom wasn't as bad as a "Witch" but the rages, OMG. And the strange constant put downs. At some point I blocked out a lot of my childhood, but my sister remembered every detail! Strange how we had opposite reactions.

Our Mom remembers nothing at all that was out of place. It's strange, she has a fantasy of our growing up and our family that is nowhere in the ball park of reality. She even believes she married my Dad in 1963, which is what we were always told. When Dad died my sister and I were taking care of final business (she was totally incapable and is now in assisted living) and we found their marriage license and they married in January of 1964 - which meant our puritanical Mom was pregnant with me when they eloped and got hitched. SHOTGUN WEDDING, ironic after all the times she called us nothing but whores as teenagers when we'd barely even been on a date!

The memories are rather intellectual now, and interesting like I'm reading a novel or something. I can remember a little more but am still detached.

Thanks for this discussion. More needs to be known about BPD, it is a life destroyer, and I think it is a lot more prevalent in our society than the psychological community wants to admit.

but i certainly feel inadequate a lot.

Very self destructive in my life. I didn't see it at the time. But, now I realize I was trying to punish my parents by not living up to my potential, right after I left home.

I didn't want them to have any reason to feel satisfaction in my accomplishments. I only hurt myself. I still survived and did alright. They loved me anyway.

I think a better question would be if all of us here are lonely...(I read a book recently on that topic.)

Not much more to say....you captured it for me pretty well.