Can anyone explain why devaluation or splitting happens? What does it feel like?

Well first of all I hope you really deep down 100% know that how your ex behaved has nothing at all to do with you and is 100% all about him, none of how he treated you defines you and I hope your self esteem has or can soon heal.

Splitting is awful and for the most part of my life I was not aware of what was happening when it happened and I am only becoming aware of it recently now that I am learning more about BPD. Even now that I am more aware of it I’m still not able to control it yet.

Let me try to make up an example to you. Remember that people are different and this is just how my stupid head works.

Let’s say my husband comes home from work and we are talking about our days and he tells me about a coworker of his making some misogynistic comment about a woman, I say that dude sucks and my husband agrees. Innocent, no weird reactions on my end, we move on. Well my crazy ass randomly thinks of it hours later and I dissect his comments, tone of voice, facial expressions, and my mind might tell me wait a minute that wasn’t innocent at all I think he was actually siding with his sexist coworker.

So now I am MAD and it is cemented in my brain that yup my husband is as big of a crap bag as that coworker, so I accuse my husband something like “ SO what’s with you siding with you sexist coworker.”Obviously he’s thrown off like “wtf are you talking about?” Well bare in mind, I am in my mind 100% positive that him and his coworker are sexist and spending all their time being douches at work now (yup seriously my mind will get warped this quickly), and since I’m so convinced of all of this, his defensiveness makes me more upset because it’s basically him lying to me and telling me that my very real feelings are invalid.

Let me pause to tell you how crazy I know this sounds, like I said I’m just starting to become aware of it all.

Unpause, so he’s defending himself still and I’m getting angrier and more convinced that it’s all been a lie and he’s not who I thought he was, all the sudden it’s hours of arguing later. Eventually maybe I realize I was wrong but now I’m already in it and I can’t back down now and probably some old shit gets brought up to try to continue being the one who is right, because if I am the one who is right in the end he is the one who has to apologize and he has to be the one to be sorry so that he can make me feel better because I’m so miserable I’m going to die.

That’s the other thing that this is all about, holy fuck the FEELINGS. It truly feels like it’s going to last forever. So sure I get irrationally mad about something that isn’t even true logically but it feels like I’m going to spend the rest of my life feeling the most intense unhappiness I can imagine unless he can make me feel better.

For some reason I can’t just be normal and be like hey, “I’m overthinking your comment about your coworker earlier and I’m feeling insecure, you don’t agree with them right?” Nope, my mind has to make me think this guy I’ve known and laughed with and loved for years and have made children with has been lying to me about his core personality since I’ve known him and that scares the hell out of me so bad that it makes me spiral into a complete breakdown in the matter of seconds.

Recently my husband has been looking into how to respond to people like me and he has been trying to stop defending himself initially because he knows that it makes things worse and instead he just has been saying I’m sorry I gave you a reason to feel that way your feelings are valid and I love you, and he will say that over and over until I’m willing to look at him and let him hug me and by then I’m usually feeling better and apologizing for getting upset and telling him thanks. It’s helped a lot but I definitely look forward to more of these DBT skills so that it’s not just him catering to my crazy for the rest of our lives.

Hopefully that gave you some insight and hopefully no one judges how crazy my dumb mind works.

Also, in the moment I don’t realize it’s an abandonedment/rejection defense mechanism, I’m only realizing that through learning more about it, so it’s not like we are splitting and actively thinking “I’m worried I will be abandoned so I’m going to be mean to this person so that I am not hurt when they tell me they’ve never loved me”, it’s all subconscious. At least for the most part, like I said it seems every one with BPD is a bit different and this has just been my take. I hope it gives you some understanding and I really hope you know how your ex responded to life seriously has nothing to do with you or who you are.

/r/BPD Thread