Becoming, comfortably numb

Being in a relationship with a personality disordered person, no matter what form the relationship takes, what “label” you can put on it (spouse, lover, boyfriend, etc…) the one thing that holds true no matter how the interaction evolves…..is that your emotional data base will be hacked into and every emotion possible will be activated.

You will feel love, desire, longing, passion and a connection. You will feel deeply. You will have care, compassion, empathy, affection and tenderness. You will laugh, be energized, feel hope, joy and excitement.

But-you will then feel angry, hurt, insecure, jealous. Confused, frustrated, wondering. Guilty, scared, irritated and annoyed. Worried, concerned, helpless and vulnerable. Rage, sorrow, regret and remorse. Depression, tiredness, exhaustion, vindictiveness. Compromising, agreeable, defensive and shy. Pathetic, stupid and sometimes too smart. Grief, pain, “crazy”, desperate, paranoid, suspicious, wounded, hopeless, defeated, devalued and discarded.

Our minds have been in over-drive when we constantly tried to “figure out” and decipher the cryptic communications and vague conversations we had with the disordered. To be around people-especially in a dating situation where someone is honest, forthcoming and straight-forward, confuses us at first, as we are not accustomed to that sort of communication.

These relationships seem to bring out all the emotions one can muster-no matter how long your involvement has been. The ups/downs/highs/lows/hot/cold rollercoaster of emotions that are the only thing consistent, the only thing you can count on-daily and on-going. Walking on eggshells, dancing on glass-you can never be sure what emotion you or your psycho will be feeling next, as it is subject to change as quickly as the weather-and just as difficult to forecast.

Its an emotional playground, where you hopscotch, jump rope, swing and see-saw, going round and round on the merry-go-round, and often swinging from bar to bar, just hanging on and hoping to move forward. This evil play pen where you get no break, you get dirty, you get sweaty, you get cuts and bruises and your playmate-won’t let you rest. Your playmate forces you into this macabre recess called a relationship, and offers no respite from the endless “playing”- and then blames YOU for it. You MADE him put you on all this play equipment, meant to keep you moving, guessing and wear you out.

So, is it any wonder, after the initial ending, after the shock, the awe, the horror, the sadness, the despair and the trauma dissipates-we barely feel at all?

I believe this is part of why it is, that we can often go from one psycho to another, finding this becoming a pattern in our relationship lives-because our emotional centers have been over-stimulated and jacked up for so long, that the “come down” leaves us feeling empty and that there is something missing. We’ve become accustomed-like someone who needs endless amounts of caffeine through the day for “energy”-to being over-stimulated and actually feeling we need that stimulation to get through life. To feel “alive.”

Naturally, when and if a normal relationship and non-disordered person comes around, we may find them “boring”, because we are feeling under stimulated. So, we tend to gravitate, attract or bring forth more chaos and toxic people, because that keeps up hyper-active emotionally.

Its another way that these relationships play out like drugs. After constantly being stimulated emotionally, when we come down, we feel numb. That sense of balance, even-keeled emotions and consistent feelings, seems very odd and un-nerving to us-though that is the way it is supposed to be. You are not suppose to be feeling just about every human emotion there is (and most of them negative) with one human being, particularly in a short period of time. There are folks who have been married 50 years, who never caused each other to feel half of the negative things (or even some of the positive) that we felt with our psychos.

I believe that this un-familiar state of “normal” emotional relationships is what sends some of us back, again and again, to either our psycho or another one. I don’t think its conscious. There is so much drama in dealing with these types that we’ve come to be “addicted” to it. Not in an enjoyable way, or not to where we even crave it. But in the same way that someone who says “Coffee doesn’t affect me, I can drink a pot of it and then go right to sleep” is addicted. They are so accustomed to using caffeine all day long, their tolerance so high, their body systems so adapted, that they don’t even realize they are addicted. Until they stop.

When a person quits a stimulating drug- such as caffeine-the come down and withdrawal is intense. Severe headaches, fatigue, lethargy, body aches, depression, anxiety, appetite changes, libido, bodily function changes-it is NOT pleasant. This is why most people don’t even realize they are addicted, because they never even allow themselves to get into any withdrawal symptoms. They’ve acclimated to the stimulation-even if it ends up killing them.

Thus, the same we go thru after leaving a toxic relationship. We have to allow ourselves to go through this “withdrawal” period. Of not wanting another relationship. Or craving love but knowing that we need to find a different kind of love, and getting help in recognizing it. We will be tired, exhausted, physically fatigued-its just par for the course. We are emotionally burnt-out, and we need to allow ourselves to heal the same way we would coming off of anything else stimulating.

We may find ourselves feeling emotionally apathetic towards people and life for awhile, and this can be scary, as we wonder if we weren’t permanently damaged by our psycho relationship(s). Our feelings are in a suspended animation. We still feel love, care, compassion for our fellow man-just not as intensely. And when we meet someone new, allow ourselves to get involved, we may emotionally “detached” from them, as they treat us consistently well.

THIS IS ALL NORMAL. AND IT WILL PASS.

Unfortunately, not being aware of this can cause many a woman to become a “love addict.” This is the reason people think “women love jerks.”

Its okay, its normal and its healthy after being so heightened in our emotional states to have a period of being “comfortably numb.” I can’t say how long that should be for-everyone is different. It may mean that we end up breaking a heart or two, when we don’t see ourselves moving further into a relationship with someone non-disordered because we just aren’t in love with them, no matter how great they are. It just takes time and healing to re-balance the emotional centers, and let them calm back down.

I quit caffeine over a year ago, after a very heavy addiction for years to it. I went through the hell of quitting it, and I thought I’d never be able to function without it. I emerged from it feeling better physically and emotionally than I ever had, and now, if I am accidentally given some caffeine (I order de-caf and they didn’t hear me, for example)-man, do I feel it, and IT IS NOT GOOD. I do not ENJOY it.

The same is true of these disordered fiascos with people. Eventually, we reach a place where people who send up the red-flags of psychoness totally turn us off, and we have no patience, NO tolerance for it.

But, we have to go through the numb period first. Allow yourself to take a break and just not feel for awhile. Be numb. The mind and soul need that to re-coup, as it deletes from its hard drive, all the viruses implanted into your mind by the psychos.

Let yourself be naturally comfortably numb. Eventually your emotions will come back online and be balanced-ready for you to engage in a healthy love filled with consistent, mostly positive emotions.