The amount of fentanyl deaths, has been skyrocketing for years, and has pretty much affected all of our lives. Yet i've never seen any kind of a rush to find a solution to stopping this monster. In America, Someone dies every 11 minutes from fentanyl. But unlike the drugs of the past now the od's are often a surprise and killing young kids. 2013 Was the year that we saw An explosion of synthetic opioids hit our streets raising the overdose rate 4,209% in the white population and increased 6,980% in the black population.
Let me explain what fentanyl is. Before hitting the streets in 2013, fentanyl was primarily used under medical supervision as a painkiller, but it also was an anesthetic, that is a hundred times more potent than morphine. Pharmaceutical fentanyl Was intended to treat severe pain and treat ternally ill patients who weren't going to live long enough for addiction to matter. It was just supposed to help people who were dying, alleviate enough pain to have some quality of life until they passed. But that is not what is causing the problem. It seems it is just as addictive as it is powerful. People are ordering it from china on the dark web and now adding it to all street drugs to enhance immediate effects of even marijuana and also increase the profit by adding weight and making it more addictive, ensuring the customers need to return and do it more often. It's found in heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, It's also used in eye drops and added to nasal spray. Most of all hands down, It is killing kids because it's disguised as exact replicas of drugs like xanax, Percoset, oxycontin, adderall and others. It only takes 2 mg to kill an adult. Almost every pill that's been confiscated contains three times the lethal amount. Young teens, trust their friends.And that's why so many are dying unintentionally. 54% of deaths from these pills are age fourteen to eighteen years of age.
Do you know that in the height of the aids epidemic we'd lost about thirteen thousand people a year? Fentanyl deaths tripple almost every year. Last year in 2023 we lost about a 115,000 young people. The d e a started building a fentanyl memorial wall, But since have hit a stand still. Because not only would it be too big but they can't even keep up with the numbers anymore. Last year the DEA seized more than 79.5 million fake pills. They also seized twelve thousand pounds of the pure powder. Here is the what that is equivalent to. More than 377 million lethal doses. And that's just what they caught and they don't catch the majority of it. And that is just in the first four months of 2024. This year the DEA has already seized 17,900,000 + Deadly fentanyl pills. And1,813+lbs of pure powder. Today, Seven out of every ten pills the DEA finds are enough to kill about three people.
This is just my personal opinion, This is bioterrorism. China figured it out. They don't have to kill us.We will kill each other and ourselves. I ask the Dea every time they call for my son's birthday for his angel day.I asked them what is the plan? I ask every time and never got an answer.
Overdose signs to watch out for: 1. Tired or lethargic 2. They may be snoring or making a rattling sound. 3. They have pin point pupils. 4. Their breathing is slow or stopped. 5. Color change. 6. Doesn't respond to painful stimuli.
People that sell fentanyl, Are not drug dealers They are death dealers!
DEA contact (202)307-1000
If you are going to use drugs no matter which one, NEVER USE ALONE!!
And if you're concerned about a loved one, I will mail you a box containing two doses of Narcan nasal spray. I can't pay shipping. It's like 5 or $6 for everyone, but I'll get it shipped to you in a hurry and I don't charge for the narcan.
My Mental health has caused problems my entire life. In my twenties my doctor prescribed me xanax, at first it helped a lot. It took all my pain away, It's not surprising I became addicted to that feeling. Things progressed over years and at the end, I'm embarrassed to admit I was taking 5-12, 2mg bars of xanax everyday. At this point my family was concerned about my ability to properly care for my children. Then July 5th, the police were at my door. Said they were to remove my children. There's nothing more traumatizing than losing a child. It makes you feel powerless, scared, angry and violated. Even when it's not happening to . you, If you saw someone lose their child, whether it was their life or they lost them to the state, it would break anyone's heart. It is brutal it's inhumane and cause life long issues for both the parent and the child. I never quit crying. I stopped taking the xanax the day they left. That only made things harder.Because I already had a hard time dealing with life and now when the worst thing that could happen was happening, I had to do it without anything to numb it, I felt every bit of it.
I remember every single night, I would wake up to my hands gripping my husband's head. I know it was because I was scared he would disappear too. When you lose your children, You don't know who you are without them and you feel like you failed at the only thing in life that really matters. And when you get them back you continue to be upset because you can never get back the time that they were gone. When children are removed because of drugs- you would think It would be simple just quit and get them back. It's not that easy like my situition.I was going through the hardest experience of my life and at the same time feeling everything for the first time in years. I felt Raw. The parent is using drugs because they don't feel able to deal with life, It's just too much. Then take their kids, now dealing with life is unbearable and hopelessness and a lack of confidence often makes them even worse. It's bad for everyone and it leaves the children feeling like the parent chose the drugs over them and and this is not true! The overwhelming sadness, shame, and grief are more than an addict can handle and they use as a coping measure. The drugs don't make them feel good, they distract the user from the life they can't deal with. Clearly they were struggling to deal with life before this life shattering traumatic event took place and and robbed them of their only reason to live and they are left even more unable to deal with life.
I'm grateful that I was able to stop numbing the very day I began to deal with this drama. Looking back I understand it had to happen. If my children hadn't been removed I would have continued to use xanax. I may have ended up with children who never spoke to me again.But this gave me a chance to wake up, stop and build a much better relationship with them. I still think removing them should only happen if the child is in danger. I think had they told me that they were going to take them I would have quit and avoided all of this.
When your child dies, It feels similar to when they are removed, only times infinity, because it's forever, no smiles, no laughter, no comforting hugs, no hope, no happiness and nobody can make it better. It's an unbearable VOID. When they were removed I wanted to try, try, try. But when they pass you want to die die die. I mean how many kids do I have now? Do I still have two or do I have one now?
I've had Mental health issues as long as I can remember. I started cutting in third grade. I never wanted to live, I remember praying at night in elementary school, for God to take me in my sleep. I have been in treatment for my mental health forever. I also advocate for mental health, take crisis calls and educate others. I'm probably more familiar with mental health than any other topic.
I didn't know much about bipolar, just the basics, but something I definitely remember was my son's eyes. Since he was maybe age 8-10 when I noticed his pupils would get so big! If he had been a teenager with those eyes, I would have got him drug tested. I didn't know that your pupils can be a sign of your brain health. We found out at age 14, he had bipolar 1(the hardest one). Nobody had ever mentioned bipolar eyes to me until last year when I saw it on TikTok and was reminded of my son's eyes. When he graduated he was working in the emergency room, was in college, had so many friends, and he was very passionate about social issues. I had never really seen anything.I considered mentally ill, until he was 21. He knocked at my door really early in the morning, Said he didn't know where he'd been for 4 days. I'm not sure, but I think it was the first time I had seen him, or anyone manic. I was scared, how could he not remember 4 days! What had he done in those four days and did anyone get hurt?
I called his psychiatrist and then moved his things into my place. Like I said, I've always suffered from my mental health, been depressed, but when he moved in, his mental health scared me. I remember that first month he stayed in bed and cried the whole month. With BPD I'm up and down several times a day. So watching him be that low for that long, I was scared he was going to end it, but he didn't. He did however, without my knowledge, begin to self medicate. I tried to get him in mental health programs, but I was frustrated because he was an adult and would refuse things. He started asking me about what meds I had. "RED FLAG" I immediately said, " You can't take other people's medicine!" I knew if he asked me, then he asked others, and so many of the pills on the street are really fentanyl. The fake pills look identical to the pills that they are sold as. That's when I started getting Narcan and started passing it out in my community. I told him so many times. He bought a xanax from someone in Jan 2023, and never woke up. My kids were removed by my mother when he was 11 because I had a problem with xanax. I quit the day they were removed. They hated xanax because of that. How ironic, it was my drug of choice that killed my baby- the remorse.
Part 1
A FP, in relation to BPD Is a favorite person or more realistically a fixated person. Many borderlines have a FP, but not everyone with BPD has a FP. I have found a definite correlation in those with an FP, and those who don't. It seems borderlines who have a FP are normally those without a solid support system. Those who have solid support from family such as those with good relationships with their parents, Siblings and or children, don't need a FP.
Someone needs a FP, For emotional support and this is much more than a supportive friend. It is someone they have a very unhealthy attachment to. Someone they feel they can't survive without. They are the very first one that they talk to in the morning and the last before bedtime. They are unable to regulate their feelings without them. They need.constant support and validation. If the FP has a bad day, they both have a bad day. If it is a good day for the FP, it's great for both of them.
The borderline is essentially obsessed, they put the FP on a pedestal that is so high, they believe they are the best person in the world. They want all of their time and energy and are even triggered by the thought of sharing the FP. For the FP, They may be flattered however, it's an unfair expectation of anyone. Favorite person is not a sweet. choosing that a particular friend is very special, it is an unhealthy attachment and reliance on someone who could never give them all that they need. It cannot be a healthy attachment until the borderline realizes they are just a normal person and are to be treated as such.
Part 2 The Borderlines perspective
For those of you that do not know me I’am Maddy, one of Lisa’s moderators on her Facebook group. I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in September of 2018 while admitted on an inpatient stay. Today I am going to talk to you about a Favorite Person but more
importantly my experience with having a FP and the damage it did to my relationship with that person and what it meant to me.
One random night I was struggling with my head and the poor self esteem and the lack of self worth and love, so I was in a BPD page on Facebook and I reached out to see if there were any other borderlines that understood what I was feeling and going through. Someone commented and said that they were going through some similar feelings and said that she had sent me a private message. We talked and she encouraged me and we shared stories and then we started to talk more frequently cause she would message to check in and vice versa.
Then one day we just decided to become friends and would message each other all day every day. My friendship with this person became more and more like they were a family member because they cared more for me than my family. I thought of her as my mother because I never had one because my biological mother died from a drug overdose when I was a very young child. I was in and out of foster homes my whole life until I was 12 and I was officially adopted to some very toxic abusive people. We texted all day every day and called each other pretty much every night. I could see myself becoming more and more reliant on this person although I never knew what a FP was even though this person was my FP.
The months started going by and my attachment to her only started getting worse and worse. It was getting to a point where if I wasn't texting her or talking to her I had a meltdown and felt like it was the end of the world but still had no clue that this was unhealthy attachment by any means.
I seeked everything from her from encouragement, validation, and what emotions I was gonna feel on top of a lot of other things. Fast forward a couple of months I got so dependent on her that she had to walk away from me or abandon me in better BPD terminology. We went about 6 months with no contact whatsoever and then one day she came back around and we talked again. It was ok for a while but then the extreme attachment came back and I was 100 percent reliant on her for everything again. It got a little worse this time to the point we had a
fight and stopped talking again but this time it was longer. We went through a period where we would talk and then not talk because my attachment was too unbearable and not able to be handled.
Then in the summer of 2020 she reached back out to me while I was living in Texas at a Halfway house from just leaving Drug and Alcohol treatment. We were talking again and I was trying to have a healthy attachment and she was getting better at setting better boundaries with me. I started to get a little dependent on her again but not as bad as it normally was. I was in a relationship with a girl that I was in treatment with. Well one day me and her got into a really huge fight and I had left her place without my phone and had gone and gotten my drug of choice and got high and while I was driving I nodded out.
The next thing I know I woke up 8 days later in the hospital. I texted my mom(FP). This is where the attachment got extremely out of control, I was so lost from the accident. I don’t remember what happened after I nodded out but I woke up paralyzed from the waist down. I'm still in a
wheelchair to this day working on learning how to walk again almost 4 years later. After the accident my attachment to her got to the point where even when I would be on the phone I would cry and freak out that she was gonna leave me. It also got to a point that I would base my emotions off of what she was feeling. Our relationship got progressively worse because of situations I got myself into. It got to the point where I tried to end my life a couple of times because she would walk away
from me. I didn’t want to live without her. She is what made my life worth living. Everytime she would walk away I would feel Like someone died, I would cry for months over her leaving. We went through alot more periods of talking and not talking because she walked away because the
attachment was completely out of control. Every time that she would come back into my life I couldn't comprehend that the reason she was walking away was because of my behavior and my attachment.
In 2022 I found out that I had a long lost biological brother that I didn;t know I had because our grandparents took him in and didn’t want me. Shortly after my brother came into my life, my FP came back and formed a relationship with me and started to with my brother as well. I started
having surgeries to try to help with trying to learn to rewalk and nothing was happening. I depended on her for everything emotionally and mentally in these times, anytime I was having a surgery I would have to have all kinds of encouragement and validation and reassurance from her
that everything was going to be ok.
In the fall of 2022 I had fallen and had some cuts and bruises and got sepsis and I had already had a yellowish tint to my skin and wasn't feeling right well,They found out that I was in Liver failure and needed a partial transplant. I went off the deep end and watched my relationship with
her spiral out of control to a point that it had never been at before. Shortly after my transplant she walked away from me again because I had gotten diagnosed with brain cancer that had spread from having uterus cancer a few years before and we talked on and off till summer of 2023.
Fast forward to the Summer of 2023 the lady that had adopted me reached out to her worried and to ask her to talk to me because she had finally gone to the doctor and they found stage 4 breast cancer that had gone untreated for quite awhile. MY FP told me, and we slowly started talking again and my relationship with her was going better than I thought. She stood by me and my mothers side through it all, walked her through her treatments and helped me handle having to get a whole liver cause I rejected the other and had been on a list for a few months at this point and I had to have another back surgery in an attempt to get me walking again. The more I saw my mom decline the more my attachment to the FP got worse again. To the point she didnt know what to do with me she thought about leaving me forever because she didn't think we would ever have a healthy relationship because she is borderline as well. We tried to work out a healthy relationship and then on September 27th of 2023 my mom passed away 3 months after finding out she had breast cancer. I went off the deep end and completely lost my shit and my
attachment and obsession got worse with my fp. We had a huge fight and I was told I lost her forever. I started spiraling out of control because I lost my mom and my fp all within a few weeks of each other and I tried to end my life once more and I failed and I had to be committed to an
inpatient facility in Florida. I have been talking to her again for about a month out of impatient and the relationship is as great as it has ever been and we are doing really well with having a healthy relationship with good boundaries. Us both working on our borderline has helped tremendously as well.
The point of this blog post was to give an inside look at how bad having a fp can hurt your life and make you feel like everything is crashing when someone abandons you for their own health. It can be so detrimental to a Borderline because it is the person they love and idolize the
most. It is their best friend whether it is a best friend or a partner or a family member.
Part 3 The FP Perspective
I met maddie when she wasn't eighteen years old, We were on a facebook borderline page and I answered third her call out for help. I remember the very night.I met her.She made me promise that I would never leave her. I had no understanding of a favorite person.Or what was about to take place. I'd never been a FP But I genuinely cared about this young lady. But it started to be clear that I could never give her as much as she needed. I would get frustrated because she was so dependent on me and I was mentally ill my self.So I could not handle all that came with what she needed. This caused me to have to walk away several times, Because she had no respect for my boundaries.and just wanted more. I would feel so Helpless talking to her when she would cry.Because I needed to get off the phone or she would cry because someone else was calling me and she didn't want me to talk to them. Then.After enforcing my boundaries she continued to try to take her life and blame it on me, And I thought it was so unfair after all I had done for her. I was there through her darkest.Dand even slept on the phone with her the night before her transplant because she was scared and so was I.
But I continue to walk away because I had To put up boundaries and she hated boundaries. It is not an easy relationship on either person in this situation. It is a miserable thing when someone constantly needs.You and you give them everything you have and it's still never enough. I couldn't stay away though, because I did love and care for her. I always will, And now.That she has taken some DBT therapy she is so much better and respects my boundaries.And we have a much healthier relationship now.
In my borderline experience, death of someone has been handled in two different extremes. In the past when a friend or family member has died my natural reaction is, "I can't deal with this", and then I don't. I know that looks cold, but I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it, and I don't like my big feelings. I feel like I must turn those feelings off, because I don't have the mental capacity to deal with it. So how do I process it? I guess how i've always dealt with a death, Is to mentally put my feelings in a box and put them up on the top shelf to deal with later when I can handle it, but then I never do. It's clearly, looking back, an avoidance. It is how I have got through all the deaths I can remember, until my twenty three year old son died. That one hit me completely different, I guess it was way too heavy to put on the back shelf.
It's kind of Crazy that almost every really traumatic thing that has happened in my life, my memory erased it. Then the very most traumatic event of my life, I easily recall every minute until the funeral, because I did lose that memory completely. I'm going to put a Huge TRIGGER WARNING: I am about to recall feelings and memories of my child's death.
I remember I had a feeling when I answered the phone that morning. It was 9:00 AM and I answered my phone, It was my sons stepmother, she was crying and I started putting on my shoes before she even told me anything. She said they just woke up, and one of their kids woke them up , saying , Avery was on the living room floor and they couldn't wake him up. The paramedics were there, they hit him with some narcan and were doing CPR. I heard them defibrillating him. My mom was with me and we jumped in the car to go there. I remember on the way out of desperation. I reached out to a Messenger group of ladies, I went to church with and told them they were defibrillating him and to pray.
I hadn't been to his dad's house before, but I knew the general area, and when we got close , I could see an ambuance. I couldn't breathe, but I flew inside. I walked right into the living room, saw him on the floor, he was purple. OMG! I bean to scream a sound that anyone who heard it would immediately know exactly what had happened. I think I secretly hoped that he could hear my pain, and maybe if he knew how bad I was hurting he would come back. The paramedics made me get out of the house. So, I stood on the porch screaming until there was no sound left.
When they brought him out of the house, they were no longer doing CPR. My mom was an emergency room charge nurse my whole life, so I knew, they had called it (over). We followed them to the hospital. I didn't want to listen to what the doctors had to say and I definitely didn't want to leave my son there at the hospital alone. I got home around one or two and after that , it's a bit of a blur. I do remember that I was having auditory hallucinations that started that day. The next event I remember was at the funeral home, I'm sure I disassociated most of it, but remember feeling like even though I already had CPTSD, I am positive I got PTSD the day I had to sign the papers giving them permission to cremate my baby. How could I ok that? I don't remember the funeral at all.
I know I have dealt with deaths in extreme manners. I either don't deal at all, or I'm unable to move forward. It has been 14 months now, and I still haven't got out of bed or anything but an appointment. My brain just checked out that day and now I struggle to function at all. I don't think I have the skills or the ability to deal with death in a healthy or normal manner. I just feel too much and it kind of feels like I just can't deal with death at all. For somebody with abandonment issues, it is the ultimate abandonment.
One mental illness that gets an even worse stigma than Borderlines, they are Narcissist. NPD or Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder can and often are comorbid, 40% of Borderlines also fit under the diagnostic criteria for NPD. Narcissism is characterized by traits such as: an inflated sense of self-importance, a need to receive constant admiration and external reinforcement from others. Both BPD and NPD are not genetic, and you are not born with these conditions. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a spectrum disorder affecting both men and woman however, 50%- 75% were born male. Behavior that is observable in NPD is: sense of self-importance, preoccupation with power, beauty and success, they come off as entitled, like to be seen with important or special people, they enjoy speaking highly of themselves, can be arrogant, lack empathy, they feel worthy of admiration, they are full of envy and feel others should be envious of them.
Both BPD and NPD are primarily caused from external sources of ongoing trauma and neglect. People with NPD are experts at masking their less than desirable traits. Although NPD and BPD begin the same way, they end up almost opposite. Borderlines tend to believe everybody is inherently good and they normally see the best in others. NPD believes people are naturally deceitful selfish and have allterior motives. NPD like BPD is said to develop in someone's teens to early adult years. People may show signs much earlier, but for many reasons, they won't likely diagnose someone until they feel it is an appropriate time.
Narcissistic people generally do not seek treatment, because people who believe they are better than most, have no desire to change this. They truly believe nothing is wrong with them and it is all the other people who have the issues. BPD and NPD have similar issues within their relationships. They both tend to move very fast as well as feel much more intense emotions than other relationships. One of the biggest differences between BPD and NPD is the belief behind the behaviors are drastically different. Example: The narcissists child brings home a report card with all A's, the parent is pleased. The borderlines child comes home with A's on their grade card, the difference is that the borderline parent is proud of the child, recognizing the effort it took and is proud of their child for having what it took to overcome any obstacle and achieve their goal. The narcissistic parent is also proud of the A's however, it's for a different reason. They are proud of the A's because their child is a reflection of them, they most certainly got their abilities from them, and now others can see what a good job the child is doing representing the parent and their parenting skills.
People with BPD and those with NPD, often do find one another for relationships, why is that?! For the individual with BPD, they see everything they can't do, or struggle to do, in the narcissist behavior and it feels like they are the perfect counterbalance to their own insecurities and the emotional dysregulation of BPD only amplifies this effect. People who are willing to admit they are more narcissistic than others, probably are. Many narcissists are proud of the fact. You can even ask them directly, because they won't see it as a negative quality, as they honestly believe they are superior to others and are fine saying that publicly. If someone with BPD is in a relationship with someone who had NPD, it can work out as they do tend to balance one another out, but treatment is really necessary. Both people would need to be self-aware, and receive treatment, I say that because it's difficult to maintain a relationship for those with BPD and NPD if you haven't received treatment and you aren't self-aware. Treatment changes a borderline who wants to get better. Depending on the type of treatment they receive, someone with BPD has up to a 99% chance of going into remission (meaning they no longer have symptoms of BPD or no longer fit into the diagnostic criteria). NPD has a remission rate for those who receive effective treatment closer to 50%. Treatment (DBT therapy) is recommended to anyone with BPD wanting a successful long-term relationship.
Today, a girl asked me if I thought there was a relation between Child Sexual Abuse and Hypersexuality. I asked over 200 people their opinion about the subject, and 86% said yes, they thought it did and the other 14% said they thought it did the opposite. Studies do show that sexual abuse that occurs during a person's developmental years, does have a strong correlation with hypersexuality, sex addiction and an unhealthy perception of sex, intimacy and relationships as an adult.
Even without experiencing overt sexual trauma, young men can still be easily traumatized by unwanted early pornography or exposure to other unwanted or unexpected online solicitations or interactions. These types of childhood trauma can adversely impact the child's adult sexual behavior.
Research proves that many adult sexual behaviors may be related to childhood sexual abuse, ranging from withdrawal and sexual dysfunction on one end of the spectrum to hypersexuality and even compulsion. It is also important to recognize that just because someone is hypersexual, does not mean they aren't suffering from sexual dysfunction at the same time. Males due to the stigma or stereotypes are much less likely to report childhood sexual abuse or even speak about unwanted sexual interactions. For many men, both the abuse and the reaction to it is very painful, confusing and difficult to comprehend.
Childhood sexual abuse doesn't mean a future of sex addiction, but the research seems to show that survivors are at a much higher risk. It is not clear why some adults respond to C.S.A during childhood by withdrawal, while others respond with the endless cycle of short-term partners, risky sexual behavior, addictions to porn or infidelity. They do know, however, that the victims age at onset of victimization is a factor.
DBT therapy is short for Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It is currently the recommended and most effective treatment for people with BPD, but it's also the most promising treatment in mental health history. DBT is a psychotherapy designed by psychologist Marsha Linehan in the 1980's. DBT shared some of the same principles of CBT, Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Marsha had BPD, and based on her own experience, CBT wasn't always effective in people with BPD, so she developed DBT as a way to address these challenges more effectively. Marsha integrated aspects of CBT, combined with validation, mindfulness, and dialectics (dialectics are the integration of opposites).
It helps people with BPD to learn skills that come naturally to others. It helps them to regulate their emotions, to be mindful of others, to be fully present in what they are doing, helping to pay attention and stop dissociating. It teaches skills in distress tolerance, with skills like how to cope ahead and accumulate positive emotions. The last module is in interpersonal effectiveness, this teaches us to communicate in a gentler more validating way, to be logical and not reactive. This skill helps us communicate our needs and get them met, and how and why we should set boundaries and when.
DBT therapy is not talk therapy. It should consist of 2 hours a week in a class like setting doing skills training. It should also include an hour each week for a 1 on 1 with your DBT therapist. The last thing it should include is coaching calls. This is when you are struggling with an issue at home and you call your DBT coach and they help you to apply a skill you learned in class to your real-life issue. DBT is 1 yearlong from 1- last module. You can, and I recommend you do, stick around for two years. The numbers show that people who successfully complete 1 year of DBT - 75% of them will be symptom free. For those that complete 2 years of DBT, they had a 95% chance of being symptom free.
I remember my psychiatrist telling me I could really count on the fact that I didn't have to feel the way I did anymore. I thought if there was a way that I could do something and not feel that way anymore, I was taking it! The psychiatrist was right. After 2 years in DBT, I became symptom free.
Chronic Emptiness is a symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder that you can't observe, it's only something you can feel. A feeling that never goes away. It's an emptiness, a void, a longing, it's uncomfortable, and causes us to, in my opinion, to either depend on others, or depend on alcohol or substances. I used to say, " I can't get comfortable alone in my own head." I always felt like I needed something but never really sure what I needed. I just couldn't be alone and be still.
Even when I was surrounded with people the feeling stayed with me, the need of something more. I'm sure some try to fill it with food, others would sex, some with mind altering drugs or alcohol, and others engage in dangerous or illicit activities or even become workaholics. I think it's got to be part of the reason we become so attached to our partners, we feel like they fill us up, but the truth is they don't fill us up, they do distract us from the emptiness, and we notice it less, at least at first..
I read, that the feeling can cause difficulties in forming and maintaining stable relationships, because our profound sense of emptiness, even when we are engaging in activities with others, we feel a disconnect between ourselves and others. We just always feel dissatisfied, even when doing typically enjoyable activities. It's a feeling as if something essential is missing from our life and it never goes away, so you're never comfortable. I think it may also be the source of a lot of our impulsivity. It's our need to be distracted from that feeling that makes us make many of our poor decisions. Chronic emptiness can cause you to self destruct. I will say after two years of DBT, that I do feel a little Chronic Emptiness, it's just not a driving force in my life anymore. I am heading back to DBT for graduates, after a huge trauma, I think, it can't hurt.
There are people right now, just living on hope. Just having the belief that it will be ok, can give you strength and the will to continue. I know at times, especially as a borderline, we feel hopeless. We feel defeated before we can even begin. Could it be that the battle has already been won or lost in our head? I mean people that believe they can succeed, usually do, and those that believe they will fail, are also right. There is so much power in believing in something, having hope. I read about an experiment that really demonstrated just how powerful hope was, and I'll share it.
There was an experiment that was done on a rat. In the experiment, they put a rat, in a bowl of water in order to find out how long the rat could tread water before he started to drown. The first time the rat made it 15 minutes before it started to give up and start to drown. The researchers took the rat out of the water, dried him off and let it rest. They wanted to do it a second time, to compare with the first time. They put the rat back into the same bowl of water, to see how long it would last the second time. You will not believe the results!
The rat, when put in the bowl of water the second time, was able to tread water without drowning, for 60 hours! The researchers were not expecting the rat to swim that long, so they got together to discuss the results, and the reason for those results. The only conclusion the researchers could come to, as to why it lasted that long the second time, was the rat had hope. Hope keeps you going, when you'd otherwise quit. Hope helps you to last through situations that you considered hopeless before.
You have got to have hope, hope you will be happy, hope you have a great relationship, hope you'll get that job, hope you'll get your kids back and hope your mental health improves. There will be a time, when you just want to give up. In those times, we've got to keep in mind that our struggles today, become our strengths tomorrow. If you can only find a little hope, that hope will give you strength to pull through the difficult situations you never thought you could.