Reddit reviews Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

read this book :

https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Again-Rediscovering-Relationships-Emotional/dp/0143133314

all you doing to get a better job, quit drinking etc is external so it wont work. healing needs to come from within.

I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through. A common story. Check out this book. It might help with the healing.

Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143133314/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_IDTzCb4RH84P9

Hey man, even though my background and trauma is very different than yours, I relate to how you feel. There's no simple way of explaining this, and hell, I've only practiced it actively for a few weeks so I'm far away from reaching real self-love, but it comes down to being mindful of your ego, and to actively be kind/loving to yourself. Imagining yourself as a 3rd person to your ego, being nice/caring like you would be to a friend having bad thoughts of himself is one of the best ways I've heard it described. It takes a long time for that to become the default I think, so it's something you have to stick with.

This book has really helped me, I have a feeling it can help you too. It explains it a lot better and more extensively than I did. I'm naturally skeptical, and 'self help' and all that stuff always seemed silly to me (or my ego, really), but this book spoke to me on an incredibly deep level, give it a try if you're up for it.

https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Again-Rediscovering-Relationships-Emotional/dp/0143133314

Credit: from the book Whole Again

You’re so right that the love never really goes away, for better or worse. The fact that it was there at all is such a wonderful thing. Without defending her (my ex did the same exact thing), I think she thought she meant those heavy promises when she said them. People with BPD experience and expose their partners to profoundly intense feelings that often (not 100% of the time because nothing is 100%, but close in this case) lead to chaotic, passionate, addictive, and ultimately unstable relationships. It’s completely understandable and natural for you to have lingering feelings. Being able to recognize, healthily process, and just stay with your feelings, even when they feel so awful that your heart could just burst, is what makes you different from a pwBPD who discards and devalues. I know it sucks so much now and it might suck a lot for longer, but returning to a pwBPD who isn’t sincerely committed to treatment will make things suck way more. In my case, I always felt so awful when we “split up,” but I got used to it after her coming back enough times. It always felt great when we reconciled, but only for, like, a few weeks; something would happen, I would say the wrong thing on the wrong day, and the ice got thinner every time. After some failed attempts to “put myself out there” in the first few months, I realized I’m just not ready to date. I still think about her too much, all the in-jokes we had and the way I could talk to her for hours like no one else; but, I am beginning to accept that... most of the time, things were not as good as I initially thought. Moving on and dating again are just not the same thing, and for me, I need to focus on the former before I can commit to the latter.

I recently read a book called “Whole Again” that I saw recommended somewhere on this subreddit. One of the big takeaways for me that I’m still struggling to accept is that what was done to us... it was not personal. It may not seem like it sometimes, but the pwBPD is perpetuating their own emotional hell by virtue of not possessing healthy attachment and coping mechanisms, and we got caught up in that. Not to say the pwBPD is all bad and we’re all good - just, blame and resentment and holding on are not going to help us heal. Anyway, I do recommend the book!

Another book that I think would be good for you and I've just got on amazon kindle is Whole Again. It goes into why we go for these type of people and how to heal ourselves to prevent it. I've just downloaded it today and im impressed

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whole-Again-Rediscovering-Relationships-Emotional/dp/0143133314/ref=asc_df_0143133314/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310973726618&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1679857959206534129&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006864&hvtargid=pla-546139229406&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

You should read Whole Again! (https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Again-Rediscovering-Relationships-Emotional/dp/0143133314). I picked this up on a whim at Barnes and Noble fully expecting to return it, but I ended up reading it almost in one sitting because the way he describes self love FINALLY clicked with me. Its a great read.