That Tightness In Your Chest

If you know me personally - even if you don’t but have been following my blog, you know that I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder & Severe Anxiety. Well, I also suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder which often gives ones irrational fears of abandonment or makes it damn near impossible to NOT read into everything a person says or does, this is so because in my situation I was taught to read nonverbal social cues, the change in a persons tone or body - if I didn’t read into these things I often was accused of being nonobservant & stupid.

Well, on top of all these mental disorders/illnesses, I also am very much an empath. This makes everything ten times more powerful when you hear the tone in a persons voice change.

”Why are you saying all of this? What does this have to do with anything?” Excellent questions. Here is my answer: Because I can’t control it. Read it again, absorb it, take notes. If you suffer from these disorders & are not medicated, getting help, or even if you are - it is damn near impossible to control how we react to this. It isn’t just a mental thing, our entire bodies may react, and there very little we can do if the source is someone we care very deeply for & if all they say is, “Let it go” over & over because we were punished for letting it go in our past, we were scolded & ridiculed & devalued for “letting it go.”

By devalued in my situation, I mean I was literally told that I wasn’t a good friend, person, or listener ( basically just not a good person in general) for “letting it go” for “leaving it alone.” Because, “why would you let go of trying to check on a person who’s depressed, upset, angry, or offended? That just makes it worse, that just means you don’t care enough to try to help them.”

Before you say anything, it is not the same as bringing up the past, in fact it is a form of PTSD, & conditioning to not let it go because often times severe punishment came of it. The past is the past, I understand that & I try to leave it in the past but it’s hard to do when all you can do is think about the punishment of doing it again.

Think about it in terms of disciplining children, child bites their parent or breaks a glass plate that happens to have belonged to the mothers recently deceased mother & the parent punishes them - back in my day, it was beating my ass with a belt & grounding me, but often times if a child gets that form of severe punishment, they aren’t going to do it again because it hurt or made them feel bad or scared them & they never want to experience it again. It’s the same concept when it comes to “letting it go“ when somethings wrong after having received a notable punishment. You’re never going to fall for that again, which leads to questioning everything the other person says - especially if they have a “tone“ or the sound of their voice is not the same sound as it was before event A happened to upset them.

I really wish the person I’m referring to would read these but I know they won’t & so here I am trying to help other people understand if they’re in a relationship (intimate or otherwise) with someone with these disorders. You can’t just tell them to “let it go” & then they are fine - especially if whatever they’re supposed to be letting go of happens to be something that affects the one (s) they care about.

In my situation, person B is very depressed & I know that B has had a past of not taking care of themselves while they have been depressed, so it all started with me worrying about their well-being & has escalated to them not even wanting to talk to me because all I can think about is “B isn’t going to take care of themselves because last time they got this depressed, they didn’t eat for two days or shower or do much of anything” not only that but I know what it’s like to be depressed & B has asked me the questions I’ve asked them but did I get pissed about it? No, I appreciated that B was worried about me & knew how I got when I was low. It helped me feel a little better, knowing that someone was thinking of me & I was worth something to someone.

So those of you who deal with those that have any - or all - of these mental disorders, please be patient & try to understand that we aren’t trying to boss you around or treat you like a kid, we just really care about you & want to make sure you are taken care of or take care of yourself like you did with us.