I feel utterly broken
I feel emotionless so often. Things that I know should bring me joy, sadness, and shame often feel like they fall flat. I feel hollow, as though I am not really here... I am watching events unfold.
I lack empathy. At times, I feel like I almost have to fake it because I see in myself that it's not what it should be.
I have been told I am a sociopath but it seems like there are definitions of that which do not match with how I feel. I certainly have a sense of morals and know right from wrong. I strongly identify with what I have read about Borderline Personality Disorder. I dissociate. I struggle with emotional dysregulation. I seem to become cold and even extremely angry, lashing out easily. I often distort context and other people's intentions in my head, struggling to see things as they are. I get triggered and become callous and abusive, always feeling like a cornered animal. Always seeking to run or push people away.
It's killing me and it's killing my wife. I'm destroying my family in a hell of my own making.
I know the cause of so much of this is the years of neglect and abuse and pain—anger pushed down for decades—and yet I seem helpless to control it at times. I don't mean to allow it to continue ruining my present, my future. My wife has given me everything—all the love and support and protection I could ask for; certainly more than I deserve. And yet, I am destroying it all because of things that mostly happened before I met her. Years—decades—have passed and it seems like hardly anything has improved. I find myself emotionally stunted and lack any coping skills. When I think about a problem or how to fix something awful I have done, it feels as though I am looking directly at a dead-end and unable to think my way out, unable to comprehend. At times it takes cutting myself to feel anything at all.
I am worried I have become a combination of my mother's narcissism and my father's emotional detachment.
I just felt like I had to write these words. I know it's for me to fix.
I lack empathy. At times, I feel like I almost have to fake it because I see in myself that it's not what it should be.
I have been told I am a sociopath but it seems like there are definitions of that which do not match with how I feel. I certainly have a sense of morals and know right from wrong. I strongly identify with what I have read about Borderline Personality Disorder. I dissociate. I struggle with emotional dysregulation. I seem to become cold and even extremely angry, lashing out easily. I often distort context and other people's intentions in my head, struggling to see things as they are. I get triggered and become callous and abusive, always feeling like a cornered animal. Always seeking to run or push people away.
It's killing me and it's killing my wife. I'm destroying my family in a hell of my own making.
I know the cause of so much of this is the years of neglect and abuse and pain—anger pushed down for decades—and yet I seem helpless to control it at times. I don't mean to allow it to continue ruining my present, my future. My wife has given me everything—all the love and support and protection I could ask for; certainly more than I deserve. And yet, I am destroying it all because of things that mostly happened before I met her. Years—decades—have passed and it seems like hardly anything has improved. I find myself emotionally stunted and lack any coping skills. When I think about a problem or how to fix something awful I have done, it feels as though I am looking directly at a dead-end and unable to think my way out, unable to comprehend. At times it takes cutting myself to feel anything at all.
I am worried I have become a combination of my mother's narcissism and my father's emotional detachment.
I just felt like I had to write these words. I know it's for me to fix.