Coping with Christmas

Too much to even begin trying to explain @pip. I should start my own thread if I was to try. Thanks for expressing interest.

The best thing we ever done was to " opt" out of the christmas rubbish of having to visit everyone, go to my family, go to my partners family. I didnt realise at the time as I wasnt diagnosed yet but those days were full of triggers, yelling, arguments, people backstabbing it was so toxic! (mainly my side of the family) so we told both our families from now we will come and see you for christmas before or after but as we dont have kids we dont want to get into the christmas thing as it stresses us out too much. They didnt like it at first but then when they saw we were not going to change our mind they were ok with it (mind you my family always gave me digs about it). This has made such a difference to us around christmas time no more stress!

Sometimes you need to give yourself priorty over these sorts of things and do whats best for you not what everyone expects you to do.

l learnt that the hard way spent most of my life trying to please my parents, never happened just caused me more grief.

@pip

This is so true, and I think BPD we have this need for approval and that just feeds their already bad behaviour toward us.

Within my family there was so many expectations around christmas and new year. We had to go to my mums or grandmas, plus presents that they all just bitched about. Hell my father used to pick on my partner because my partner would not get drunk and drive me home, apparently to my father this was a bad thing he would have much rathered that my partner got blind drunk and drove his own daughter home like that - this was when we were in early 20's so still kids really. Everything was expected that they wanted, even to the point when my parents got divorced my mum wanted me to do another extra year of highschool even though I had passed with flying colors (always B & C student) so she could go straight on the pension. She actually called me at the time of 16 years old a selfish bitch for wanting to get a job instead of repeating a year at school that I didnt need to do. I was expected to put up with all the abuse because " he is your father" , she made me feel like I owed her , I had to beg to get my hair cut when at school becuase she was rather spend the money on herself (buying adress to go out with etc) It shook their world when I stopped and they could not fathom that it was my choice so the next logical thing was to blame my partner and tell everyone he is brain washing me!