Two Things Can Be True

The valuable lesson I learned yesterday

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I didn’t realize I was a splitter.

When I first found out that I have borderline personality disorder, I was confused by the part about “splitting” until I realized it was the same thing I’d been experiencing as all-or-nothing” thinking. A therapist told me about those types of thoughts 28 years ago after I had postpartum depression with my first child.

At first, I thought splitting was one of the symptoms of BPD that I didn’t have, but something happened yesterday that changed everything.

I was texting with a friend I’ve known since right after high school, and she made a few rude comments to me during the conversation. She is usually very supportive and loving, so it caught me off guard. I didn’t point it out to her, but I stewed about it long after the texts were over.

God, that was so rude, I thought angrily. I should just block her and never reach out to her again if that’s the way she feels. It wasn’t the first time I’d done it to somebody who pissed me off, and I normally never changed my mind. Better to cut them off before they cut me off.

It was a classic case of splitting made worse by abandonment issues, only this time I caught it in the act.

I had been reading earlier in the day about balancing, which is basically taking your extreme feelings about somebody or something and bringing them down to a reasonable level. For instance, instead of things being “terrible” or “horrible,” refer to them as “unfortunate” or “too bad.” That helps balance your feelings about it more gently.

So I “balanced” my friend who had been so rude. Yes, what she wrote did hurt me, but it wasn’t the end of the world. It didn’t change the fact that she sat on my couch with me and held my hand through postpartum depression. She was still the one who stayed awake all night at my house after my divorce so I wouldn’t wake up and do anything rash. She wasn’t a horrible person. She just said unfortunate things, but that was no reason to block her and cut her off.

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Another example that happened recently involved my birthday. My two sons sent me a beautiful stained glass hanging that looks awesome in my kitchen when the light shines through. I can tell they really took their time picking it out, and I am so grateful.

It reminded me of being little. My mother used to weld stained glass and make all kinds of hangings in all our windows. I remember all the sparkly and colorful stained glass pieces all around our house and how hard my mom worked to put them together. It’s a nice memory.

Contrast that with my previous belief that all my mom ever did was abuse and manipulate me. When she was alive, we were mostly estranged and hardly talked at all. I thought I could never forgive her for all the mean things she’d done, even after she passed.

However, she actually saved my son’s life right after he was born. She came to me saying that my baby seemed listless and warm and, in the ER, they said he had kidney reflux that led to an infection that could have killed him. We had gotten there just in time.

Therefore, two things can be true. She was not the best mom, but I have good memories of her, too, like when she let me skip school to go see Cinderella at the movies. There’s no reason I have to hate her anymore, if there ever was. Carrying around all that resentment was only keeping me sick.

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I’m learning that nobody is all good or all bad, and that bodes well for my relationships in the future. Like most people with BPD, I have an intense fear of abandonment, but I’m beginning to realize that a harsh word here or there doesn’t mean I have to completely cut that person off. Of course, there are certain people who need to go if they are terminally toxic, but not somebody who is kind but sometimes makes mistakes.

I’m going to move forward with the “two things can be true” concept to see if I can improve the relationships I already have and maybe start some new relationships so I’m not as isolated all the time. It’s becoming another tool in my arsenal to minimize my BPD. I just wanted to share it here to see if it might help somebody else, too.