Greetings to all in the nest.
Good morning, @CheerBear. I’m glad today has dawned brighter than yesterday. I hope you and the LF have a lovely day.
I’m glad you liked my eleventy million dollar answer. I have huge anxiety around rules too—usually to my own detriment. I live in constant fear that Centrelink (Rule City) will cancel my DSP and I’ll end up homeless and completely destitute. 
You’re not alone in not having heard of quiet BPD. It’s not an official thing, just a different presentation of the traits where all that dysregulated emotion is internalised and directed towards the self. Not long after I got ‘married’ (as married as is possible in this backwards country), my wife went to a BPD carers meeting. She came home bewildered and said, ‘But you don’t throw saucepans at me.’ Sometimes I wish I could let some of the big emotions out (and in hindsight, I really should have thrown some saucepans). I wish I could be kinder to myself.
And that leads me to your questions … What makes me feel good inside? Unfortunately, not really anything. ‘Good’ is not really something I experience. I can feel glad (sometimes even happy) for other people when something good happens for them. Like helping people with their essays—I’m glad I can help them feel better/less stressed. Hugging my cat and having her purr against my chest is nice, but mostly I feel like she’d be better off without me. I am so grateful for her though—I wouldn’t be here without her.
As pessimistic as it sounds, I think the only thing that has really helped me has been accepting that I’m probably not going to get well. That allowed me to stop beating myself up quite so much for not getting better, despite almost twenty years of actively trying. Now my focus is on living the best life I can in spite of my illness. But I recognise and accept my limitations now (of course, they still make me really sad). I do still hold on to the teeniest-tiny glimmer of hope that I might be able to access therapy in the future that will be helpful. I haven’t totally given up, but it is a fight every single day to stay alive.
I don’t have people in my life who I consider ‘my people’. I had a few friends (two of them quite close) before I got married, but my wife cut me off from everyone. I’ve reconnected with one friend since I got back to Victoria and he was incredibly understanding, but it’s not the same anymore. I don’t feel like I have any real friends—certainly not anyone I could call and say ‘hey, I’m not feeling so safe, could you come and sit with me?’ A big part of that is my fault though, because my pattern of avoiding abandonment is not to let people in in the first place. They can’t leave me if I don’t let them in.
As far as family goes, that’s just messy and a really long, boring story. The short version: I don’t have family support.
To be honest, I’m starting feel like I might have found ‘my people’ here in Forum Land. That said, friends are scary and connecting is hard and … yep, it’s all just scary. But I’m still here. 😊
My favourite colour is green, but I also like black and grey (which I know are technically not colours). I find colour really overwhelming sometimes.
Tassie is mostly about the weather, but it is also really beautiful there. I knew I wanted to live there even before I visited. I don’t mind where I am living now in regional Victoria, but summer is too unbearable. I am a mountain/forest person rather than a beach/ocean person, and a small city at the base of a beautiful mountain just seems very right to me. I’d prefer not to live in a city, but I am mindful that the city is where I’ll have the best chance of accessing services. I don’t know anyone in Tasmania but it doesn’t matter because it will be no different to here. (If anything, I’ll feel better about the lack of family support because I can rationalise it due to the physical distance.)
It would have been good to have a specific Brene Brown area (I was thinking ‘Brene Brown: books, tips and wisdom’ or something). But we can still post links and quotes and stuff in the book club thread. I feel like the ‘starting a thread’ thing got blown way out of proportion and feel quite icky about causing that. 
I did read about the buckets and I love the idea of venting into a bucket and then throwing it out of the nest. 😊
I’m aware that this draft post is getting REALLY long so I’m going to stop talking now and just post it.
Wishing you a lovely day of biking and mowing (okay, so mowing is never lovely, but the end result is usually pretty great) and LF time. 😊🌷
I hope today is what everyone needs it to be.🌷