u/Spiritual-Action4919

my ideal session is one where I can take plenty of time afterwards to also do mindfulness and rest to properly integrate for the rest of the day or majority of the day. but some days i just don't have the time - either because of work or social plans or also somedays I just have no energy to "sit with and stay with" difficult emotions and things that come up during the session, so i resort to dissociation to different degrees. But I still practice regularly. I just worry that if I don't do it properly it could cause more harm than good.

TLDR: I suspect I experience certain symptoms of bpd especially in interpersonal relationships but it feels quite mixed with my other cptsd symptoms so it's hard to tell them apart, but I notice bpd a lot more when I started splitting and turned from love to hate when dealing with feeling hurt or betrayed or invalidated in relationships. Those of you who have comorbid cptsd and bpd, or suspect that you might - how do you experience the symptoms and how do you cope? How do you cope with splitting and intense rage against someone you love just moments ago?

I have been working on my cptsd for many years but I always suspected that bpd manifests in my life as well, especially in close relationships. When i get an emotional flashback from a fight or a trigger relating to a relationship with someone, like eg my partner, I usually regress into a very scared child who feels an intense need to fawn (appease the person) or flight (run away to cry and self isolate). but then other times I get intense rage attacks and I become extremely angry and resentful towards the person whose actions or words I perceive as threat, betrayal or intentionally hurtful, and then I think I start splitting. Sometimes I get a mix of both - emotional flashback mixed with some splitting. Today it was a slightly new expression of symptoms where i experienced only a little bit of emotional flashback (regressing back to a hurt and sad child) and mostly I feel myself splitting - I woke up this morning loving my partner and seeking connections, but we had a fight about something and I couldn't help but interpret his reaction to me as extremely mean and intentionally hurtful and I started to hate him and rage intensely. Nothing physical happened only some shouting - everything was internalised and even though on the surface I have calmed down and stopped crying I feel very stuck and in a way dissociated but mostly in hatred and in the splitting mode.

I don't split that much in other aspects of life - eg. i don't see the world as black and white, I cope well with dualities or at least I am getting much better with it, I don't tend to see people in black and white terms unless we become close, but a sign is that I have had a fallen out with almost every single close friend I made since 19 - I have a few close friends now but I met them after I started therapy a few years ago. I feel like I split mostly in intimate romantic relationships - when a person who supposedly love me but lets me down intensely or makes me feel hurt.

To include other potential symptoms of bpd I’ve noticed outside of relationship dynamics: I feel chronically empty inside but I don’t really self harm and I only have passive suicidal ideation. I do feel intense negative emotions only when I get an emotional flashback - I struggle to feel intense positive emotions though - I do feel numb and shut down a lot - so that’s a mix of both I think. I dissociate quite a lot - mostly through self-numbing activities. my self esteem is stable and chronically low and not attached a lot to other people's view of me - so more cptsd in that sense I guess. my trauma is mostly related to childhood emotional neglect and constant instability

Those of you who have comorbid cptsd and bpd, or suspect that you might - how can you tell that you have both? How do you experience the symptoms and how do you cope? How do you cope with splitting and intense rage against someone you love just moments ago?

I have been working on my cptsd for many years but I always suspected that bpd manifests in my life as well, especially in close relationships. When i get an emotional flashback from a fight or a trigger relating to a relationship with someone, like eg my partner, I usually regress into a very scared child who feels an intense need to fawn (appease the person) or flight (run away to cry and self isolate). but then other times I get intense rage attacks and I become extremely angry and resentful towards the person whose actions or words I perceive as threat, betrayal or intentionally hurtful, and then I think I start splitting. Sometimes I get a mix of both - emotional flashback mixed with some splitting. Today it was a slightly new expression of symptoms where i experienced only a little bit of emotional flashback (regressing back to a hurt and sad child) and mostly I feel myself splitting - I woke up this morning loving my partner and seeking connections, but we had a fight about something and I couldn't help but interpret his reaction to me as extremely mean and intentionally hurtful and I started to hate him and rage intensely. Nothing physical happened only some shouting - everything was internalised and even though on the surface I have calmed down and stopped crying I feel very stuck and in a way dissociated but mostly in hatred and in the splitting mode.

I don't split that much in other aspects of life - eg. i don't see the world as black and white, I cope well with dualities or at least I am getting much better with it, I don't tend to see people in black and white terms unless we become close, but a sign is that I have had a fallen out with almost every single close friend I made since 19 - I have a few close friends now but I met them after I started therapy a few years ago. I feel like I split mostly in intimate romantic relationships - when a person who supposedly love me but lets me down intensely or makes me feel hurt.

Those of you who have comorbid cptsd and bpd, or suspect that you might - how do you experience the symptoms and how do you cope? especially when you are angry with someone?

EDIT to include other potential symptoms of bpd I’ve noticed: I feel chronically empty inside but I don’t really self harm and I only have passive suicidal ideation. I do feel intense negative emotions only when I get an emotional flashback - I struggle to feel intense positive emotions though - I do feel numb and shut down a lot - so that’s a mix of both I think. I dissociate quite a lot - mostly through self-numbing activities. my self esteem is stable and chronically low and not attached a lot to other people's view of me - so more cptsd in that sense I guess. my trauma is mostly related to childhood emotional neglect and constant instability