Well, the bad and good news is that it’s pretty much exactly that - we lack the protocol for dealing with good stuff. That’s bad news because it took us at least 25-26 years to “train” ourselves to the world, a large chunk of which was crisis response mode, and it’s much easier to pick up a new habit (or thought pattern) when younger and more malleable. The good news is, it can still be done, although it takes more work…

Oh, we have those in common, then!:)) I also have a hefty dose of physical abuse in the form of slaps from a big army guy, leather belts, and hefty wooden shovel handles. And I must say, the psychological and emotional parts are way more impactful in the day-to-day… The physical bit at least showed me that I can take one helluva beating, so that’s the shittiest way to gain some confidence, although, same, don’t do well with random touching. My whole body flinches away reflexively when I accidentally touch anything, from people to objects. Plus that confidence is but a drop in a busted bucket, because the emotional stuff left me with a 7-year depression after I nearly married my grandmother…

As for your crisis responses, yeah, I’d say the main problem is that you forget that you gotta protect yourself as well. The delayed action may, honestly, stem from the fact that your mind is just that good at gauging the variables, evaluating the danger, that it also knows instinctively just how much time it has to act before shit gets really real, y’know? Found this out during my brief stint in management, estimations and identifying potential risks and their impact on the timeline were on point way more frequently than they weren’t. At worst, I undersold and overdelivered.

And now to what helped me. I have no idea if any of these will do anything for you - I very much hope they will and am preemptively sorry if not:

• The main thing which helped me reprogram myself was looking for the hidden benefit in every single element - what skills have I developed to be an ace undercover fireman. Writing these out really did help, as did writing it as a sort of character study on a clone of myself. This last part especially, because it was impossible for me to give myself credit for anything when starting out, as everything was “bare minimum” at best from the standards imposed by my family. I also think it’d work regardless of who embodies your traits, all that matters is to keep (as) objectively (as possible) true to who you know yourself to be, then evaluate who you see as you would any other human being around you.

• That imposed standards bit. It was VERY important for me to see exactly what was expected of me - again, list form helped immensely, because that represented most of my standards. And the shitty part is, they’re actually not Mine, they were crammed into my head without my consent and I was gaslit into believing they’re the only valid ones.

• After I’d set everything on a list, I gave it a Voice in my head. I made one up, so that it sounded best-fitting for all of that oftentimes vile and mostly unreasonable shit. After that, every time a critique would come, I’d take the brief time to see if it was on the list, and if yes, I slapped the voice onto it. Did this for a while, and then they started coming out directly in that voice, so I kinda’ know to avoid them without needing to look too closely. Dimmed a lot of the psychological impact and cleared up some self-confidence - enough to trust myself with Life In General, not enough to trust myself around people. Living with that Voice for a while also helped me understand just how artificial they all were.

• I then did the Voice thing for a couple more elements which I knew were taken from my folks, such as my grandfather’s quickness to anger and his urge to respond excessively (this is honestly just an angry version of myself, because it turned out to be useful when adequately directed), my tendency to underevaluate myself (that one’s whiny as fuck, because of course), my innate thirst for justice (this one isn’t really a Voice, as much as it is a… hmm, a nuance of feelings, I think), because it could very easily get polluted by the anger and just turn into Blind Vengeance, and because it developed as a result of the fact that I started understanding pretty early on that what was being done to me was immensely shitty, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so there’s over-boiled frustration in there. Again, this helped me while digging for my Core, because I thought it would be easier to attach new programming closer to the stem:))

• and finally (although still a huge bit of it all), I started doing sanity checks on myself. Every time something new came up and it wouldn’t fit any of the Voices, I’d start slowly opening up and asking people. Specifically just about that, how did they see the cause of my conundrum and how they’d react to it. Asked as many people as I could, also posted a lot of it on the old reddit mental health boards. And I’d just wait to get a relevant enough sample, average out the sanest-seeming response, then compared it to mine. Very important, every single time, I asked myself specifically what I WANTED to do. Checking my own opinion and making a conscious choice made me feel like I “owned” myself, and really helped with starting to prioritise myself a bit more (when justified, within reason, and that last one’s a lie, because I still give slightly too much, although I’ve limited it to people I love, in whichever way).

Other than that, and to bring this to a close, because fukken Jesus!, did a lot of therapy with people who would let me drone on, rummaging through my own head, and helped me do the exact thing I did with other people, although it was frequently faster due to their professional training. Practicing a sort of exposure therapy to saying “no” when I felt it was a no, forcefully taking care of my biology (“I’m not gonna eat just yet, I’ll finish this Spreadsheet and then I’ll get something” - he said, 8 hours ago), opening up more to and to more people (most won’t get it, but with luck, they’ll at least be interested in hearing it, so free sounding board/Squash wall!), and Letting Life Happen™, Going With It™, and other such very contemporary and youthful sayings. It’s brushing teeth, wiping ass, telling myself I’m not a worthless piece of shit, daily care routine.

Again, sorry for droning on, wanted to offer all I have on this. Genuinely hope with all my heart at least some of it will be marginally helpful… And stay strong!🤗 You’ve made an internet friend today, and I would happily bounce around ideas if you’ll decide to do the sanity check thing!:D

P.S.: oh, and that instinct to protect others from what you know is shitty is 100% noble! Like, objectively! Don’t forget that!

Man. I know everyone is different, but I believe we should look out for each other. I mean, as much torment as it was for me to spend all that time with someone with BPD, I realize that she couldn’t help it. As much as my daughter and I were traumatized, she couldn’t help it.

Maybe it was easier for me to empathize with her because I knew her my whole life, and I knew how she grew up. Her stepdad, the man who raised her, spent nearly a decade in prison for bludgeoning her mother with a pipe wrench, right in front of her. She spent all of her teenage years grounded and slaving away for her mom.

My mom was batshit crazy too, and in my 20s, I didn’t want anything to do with her. I got older though and got closer with my uncle, and the stuff he told me was just insane.

My mother witnessed her mother’s suicide when she was only four years old. Her youngest sibling was 10 years older than her, her father didn’t know what to do with her, so she was bounced around from family member to family member. Along the way she was sexually molested by multiple people. When she was about 11 years old, she moved back in with her father for a time. He had remarried, and she had to spend the next several years being molested by her stepbrother.

All of her siblings are upper middle class or wealthy. She has never had anything. The world cheated her.

Even her siblings are crazy, my aunt woke up, screaming like that and pulling our hair in the mornings. But they had been through hell.

It was chaos leading up to my grandmother’s suicide. My uncle said he spent his entire childhood, pulling his parents apart and getting in the middle of their fights.

I had to move in with my mom for a while after me and my ex split. It ended badly. I love her with all of my heart, we just can’t live together. She was pretty rough on me as a kid, but she her best, considering the life that she lived.

And I’m old enough now that I’ve seen a lot of improvement in my people, self even. I’ve seen them calm down.

I never knew my grandpa when he was the monster he used to be. The man I knew was an activist who worked his butt off to help abused and neglected children. He adopted many children, took care of me.

I don’t know, you do what works for you. You definitely don’t want to put yourself into a situation that can lead to hurt.

Best of luck to you.

I’d look after my mom if she needed me. It would be a lot, but I’d do it.

I’ll share a song with you that my mother wrote when I was a little kid. My bother and I both made our own thing out of it too, without realizing it.

“Mama, I remember you lying on the floor I seen the cold, cold gun that took you away forevermore I remember in my heart I didn’t know what was going on I didn’t know my life would soon be gone

Did you know what you were doing when you took your life from me? Every day I’ve lived through hell eternally

Mama, I forgive you no matter what you’ve done Mama now I understand just what was going on For I too have lived the life that you had to live And it is for that very reason, mama I can forgive”

I might have fudged it a little bit. She was about 23-25 when she wrote it and man, hearing her sing it done something to me and made it easier for me to forgive her.

I wish everyone would make art in some way. It helps us to see past the basic everyday shit and how it has affected us.