RE: [Splitting and BPD] Today I Learned...
"Mommy fed me, mommy good" in one moment and "Mommy took away my favorite toy, mommy bad" in the next moment.
In my experience I would say that kind of both does and doesn't sum it up. It's actually a bit more dehumanizing and a lot less forgiving when splitting is occurring. When someone is going through this extreme black and white thinking, it's clear that there is no grey, but I think for someone on the receiving end of the behavior it feels more complex.
I would describe it almost like a more bipolar sense of attachment. When someone sees you as good, nothing else you've ever done matters. For example if mommy beat you ever day and was very much black or bad, as soon as you got given the toy the rest is forgotten. The opposite would be someone could have been the perfect friend and never done anything wrong, and then the one time they say no I can't hang out right now I have to go to work, they get immediately discarded and regardless of how long the friendship has existed or anything else it simply doesn't matter as it has ceased to exist in the mind of the person splitting.
In some ways it's kind of like the most brutally honest way to exist in the moment I suppose, but it makes it extremely difficult to form meaningful relationships with anyone and it drives a lot of people away. This person has some good videos that I watched a while back about it:
Thank you so much for elaborating on the description of splitting. I do feel like I over-simplified my description of it in my second draft of this post. Partly because in describing it in my mind, a lot of memories were coming to the forefront and I just couldn't dive into it without getting super emotional. I'd say I've been on both ends of splitting. It is very complex in my experience on both ends. In the moment I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing or saying what I was saying until hindsight was 20/20. And also on the receiving end, just getting bombarded by the other person's emotional state until I just start apologizing and begging them to just stop and no matter what the situation I just wanted them to give me the blame so they feel better.
I've run into a few of Autumn's videos in the past, thanks for sharing her page as well, I'll see what she has to say about it.
I had to do some digging, but a while back there were some really good posts about this I thought you might want to read.
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