Seasonal Sadness

Hello BPD Interested Persons. My topic today is about "seasonal sadness". Most of us are dealing with it whether we want to admit it or not. Expectations rule the season of cheer, giving, receiving, sharing, providing, and shaming. Why? It is a time when most families get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas--where maybe they have not the other times of the year. Family dynamics come into play. The roles of many years ago, while we were residing with our families of origin, re-surface, and we fall into these old roles like falling into a sodium pentothal haze right before surgery.

For me this year, well.....it was worse than that. My stepfather died at the beginning of November. He was a good man to my mother, but showed his disdain for me with my Borderline, emotional moments, rocky life, and battle with addiction (which ended 23 years ago when I got sober!) The verbal abuse I put up with and my mother allowed the last couple of years of his life were unforgiveable. The add insult to injury, he had spewed his poison onto his adult children, my age. In the few days before his death, and up to and during the day of his funeral, one adult child in particular displayed scenes in the hospital, at the funeral and at my mother's home: insulting her, shaming me, and nobody, I mean NOBODY, stopping it. Immeasurable damage had and occurred. I have never seen such un-Christian behavior from someone who calls herself to others "a Sister in Christ", and delivers such barbs of hurt in the next breath. And I as a Borderline, trying to keep it all together, keep my mother afloat, and taking care of immediate business. My brother has shut me out, my mother locked me out and I sit in my pain. I reach out to therapists, meditation group, sponsor, and 12-step meetings. I just want to make sure that I have not be part of the grave errors and mass destruction that occurred the month of November. Then I had 2 more funerals to attend two weeks later. That wasn't easy either. One was a drug/alcohol-related death. They're never easy to witness. "There but for the Grace of God go I. Amen"

I am doing the best I can. I stayed sober. However, I did self-harm after amost 4 years of not falling into this behavior. I almost stuck a knife into myself. Sometimes, the Borderline trait of having no emotional skin and feeling like I am "covered with 3rd-degree burns" is too much to bear. Somehow, with the DBT skills, I will get through this, maybe even make the best of the holidays. 

Why do things seem to fall apart at the end of the year? I am thankful that I have recovery tools to use to help me through. Tools that help me plant seeds of happiness; not tools to dig my own grave. More later.