Dear Brooke:

Congratulations for taking on the healing process, for attending therapy for the last five months, for reducing or eliminating contact with your mother, and for considering your well being in the context of your current relationship.

My mother too was BPD and Histrionic (a combination of both) and I finally cut all contact with her over three years ago. I considered it before, decades before and finally did it. It was necessary for my healing and I wish I did it way, way earlier, your age or before.

Of course, after cutting contact with her I still had to deal with the mother in between my ears, that is the mental entity of her, and I will be glad to share about this or any other part of my healing with you, if you ask, later on.

Regarding your relationship of seven months. Reads like indeed he suffers from anxiety and deals with it the best he can: multitasking, distracting, and exhausting himself. It is when he is still, at the moment, that he feels the anxiety most acutely, so he avoids those moments.

A sitting meditation for a restless, anxious person, is extremely difficult for this reason: the anxiety is heightened when one sits still. This is why a Moving Meditation is best: if you could involve him in such, there are guided meditations instructing the person to perform deliberate, simple, slow movements that slow the brain. Tai Chi routine of such slow motion, deliberate movements (mimicking martial art fights, in slow motion) are very helpful. I wonder if such an experiment, the two of you doing something like that, will give him a new experience of that quieting of the mind, and he may want more of that!

I think that soon it will be time for you to decide if this can be a Win-Win relationship, win for you and for him. Maybe you can help each other, since you have common challenges. If you can help each other, this can be a very successful relationship.

anita

Dear Brooke:

Reads to me like he is not the right guy for you. You need a man who is .. available to you. He is not available. He is otherwise occupied and he told you that he indeed intends to remain otherwise occupied for years to come.

I think you need a calmer man who has the time and the focus to be with you, to pay attention to you. You wrote last: ” I hate this dynamic of me carrying the emotional weight in this relationship and it is not good for my mental health.”

This is very significant, what you wrote: this is “not good for my mental health”- you’ve been doing lots of work to heal in the last five months. Stay on the healing path. This relationship is taking you off the healing path.

His focus is elsewhere, and you are about to lose focus yourself. Your focus should be on your mental health and nothing and no one should compromise it.

anita