I’m a nasty bitch and always have been

[Wanderislu]

The hatred I have for myself began to tip over into other people in my twenties.

Objectively, I’m successful, financially pretty ok with wealthy ish background, lots of friends, slim, reasonably attractive and when ‘on form’ and feeling ok can be a great friend; patient, kind, extremely understanding. I can be good fun and lightheaded and people seem to like me. But probably wouldn’t if they knew the truth.

fundamentally, and pretty much all the time I hate myself. I have snippets of seeing myself in the ways I describe above but it’s not consistent behaviour. I have crumbled further in recent years, made more mistakes.

I text a best friend’s boyfriend when I was 17. I knew fully what I was doing and knew it was wrong at the time.

in my early twenties I had a bit of a social crisis. Friends from school getting married etc and I just shrunk away. I didn’t got to one of the girls hen dos and I lost my circle of friends from school. It still makes me sad now. I did reach out but they were quite cruel so I didn’t try again afterwards.

at uni I used to see a guy in our friendship group in secret and then one of the girls started to like him. We carried on in secret even though she would talk about how much she liked him. When they found out they did forgive me but it was never the same again.

in my twenties I had a lovely relationship but couldn’t cope when it became more intense. I remember once I actually ran off down a canal and he had to chase me. I shouted that I didn’t love him.

I had an affair in my late twenties with a married man. He claimed to be separated and at first I believed that but a few months in I found evidence that he was definitely still very much married. I carried on.

I can be lazy at work. I’m paid a decent amount of money and some days I do the absolute bare minimum. Probably 10% of someone in nursing or another job that SHOULD be paid well. I’m awful.

i don’t get on massively well with my family. There were problems growing up in that my sister was seen as the one who could do no wrong and I was the tear away. That narrative has continued and I am not really part of the family unit in any real or genuine way. That makes me sad as my family are actually good people really, even if they made mistakes bringing us up.

I lie easily and naturally. There are lines that I draw where i wouldn’t lie and for example I would never lie to the police or about something serious. But still, I can lie and I do it well. I do it often if it benefits me. I hate myself for this.

I am intelligent and I know it and can often outwit other people in stressful situations. I had a partner who was in a very high up job, well educated and switched on. if we had an argument I would absolutely wipe the floor with him. I cannot stand myself for having this quality, my mind is always in overdrive and I am, most of the time, one step ahead without realising. I can never relax and be genuinely happy.

I confided all this in a therapist before and she said because I had self awareness this was a huge plus point and that someone who was genuinely unkind and evil wouldn’t even question themselves. How can that even be true?! I probably KNOW on some level that by analysing myself it can lessen the blow of what I do and how I behave in terms of others’ perceptions…which just makes me even more of a nasty and manipulative bitch, not less. Im still behaving the same way even though I recognise it’s not right. I am even worse than someone who doesn’t recognise it!!

When I feel alone or stressed I can be absolutely awful to my family and partner. It’s like I hate myself so much that I want to be hated by everyone else. I can’t really control the words that come out of my mouth and it is like an out of body experience. I’ve explained this to them in calmer moments but of course there’s little sympathy because a) it sounds like a feeble excuse and b) I’m still being an utter cunt and why should they care the reasons behind it.

I hate myself when I am ‘on good form’ these days because it almost scares me that I am capable of such varying degrees of behaviour. I no longer really can tell if the nice me is the real me. How can I know.

Ive made so many mistakes and lost so many people and because I can chat and engage and be a good friend when I am feeling ok, I manage to recruit more people in my life which I tend to later fuck up. I do have a few long term friends of ten years or so but we are very close and I guess it’s just that we get on so well that it’s been fine.

I am now mid thirties. I have some very good friends but my relationship with my family is very fractured and I often reflect on all the awful, manipulative, selfish things I have done. I do not cope well and I will either have days where I am absolutely brilliant and could be the most in control, sunny, kind woman and days where I don’t wash, can’t hold a conversation without getting angry and then spend significant time in tears. There is no middle ground.

I am so worried I will end up in a very awful state and unable to function at all.

You lash out because *they are hurting you

Pretty much this too.

When I'm ok I'm ok. I'm fairly intelligent, have relatively normal habits etc though do get obsessions over certain topics on and off.

I think personality disorders like autism have a spectrum and they flair up when the going gets tough as it were.

Sounds exactly like me, I did a lot of the same stuff, caused complete havoc in my late teens and hurt a lot of people. Was court ordered to see a psychologist, personality disorder diagnosis, started medication and am now so much better. That was nearly 10 years ago

Agree. You don’t sound like a nasty bitch, OP, you sound pretty normal tbh, except that you suffer from overly harsh self criticism.

This does not sound like BPD OP. This sounds like you have an extremely harsh inner critic and you are acting like the scapegoat because you have been conditioned to act out and be the scapegoat because your family made you the bad one.

Patric Teahan on youtube does some great family dynamics. Have a look.

Stop beating yourself up. So you feel lazy and can't be arsed to wash, why are you beating yourself up, try being curious and asking yourself why you feel so bleugh,, get down past your feelings and to your core belief- which is most likely that you don't feel worthy or loveable as your parents made you the bad one. You are not bad. You are worthy and you are loveable.

Also we all have days where we're on form and where we're not.

We've all been selfish and bitchy and mean in our teens and twenties. Stop beating yourself up. You're a perfectly imperfect human.

Terrifying, yes, but a recognisable and understandable set of behaviours from someone who has been forced to feel that they're the black sheep from day 1.

What I mean is that anybody could be pushed to this. You are normal.

And please at least promise us you will stop calling yourself 'a nasty bitch'

When I came on I was expecting a list of burglary and beating your child, and smashing your friends' houses up....and then I read your post and thought wow this person really needs to rediscover her own value.

You need to stop being so inwardly focused and start to look outward. Self awareness and knowledge is a good thing, but in the kindest way, you sound overly interested in yourself and your own behaviour. Very little you have posted is in any way remarkable, its just being a human being with strengths and weaknesses, like everyone else. Start focusing on other things and people, learn about them, let them occupy your thoughts. Other people's behaviour is fascinating too, and the more you learn of it the more it helps you see that you're not abnormal.

Oh, and if your job only requires 10% of you, maybe you would benefit from something more challenging? Nothing encourages unhappy introspection like too much time on your hands.

If click on this link it will show you how if you are a scapegoated child you will either rebel or comply and shows you how either one plays out:

You were clearly in the rebel section

This is what you do when you're having a bad morning. It's not what you do when you hate yourself and have all your life. OP may well need to stop judging herself, but working out what's wrong with her and focussing on herself is far preferable to just passing by what's happening and looking at other people instead.

There's nothing suggesting you have BPD. I'm sorry so many people are trying to push you towards a personality disorder diagnosis. This is sadly an extremely common thing for women who have been through trauma.

Trauma doesn't have to be one huge, headline grabbing thing of the sort that everyone would instantly recognise like being in a bombing. Bullying can cause clinically recognisable trauma. An invalidating and persistently hurtful family environment can cause trauma. There are a wide range of ways in which trauma can develop and affect people; it's very complicated.

It really isn't necessary for people to try and label you with a diagnosis, because just in doing so they show they aren't professionals. No one who actually diagnoses things like PDs would ever do so in a discussion forum like MN. These are people casually suggesting it, or projecting their own issues, and it's likely to be unhelpful if you think of all this in terms of your personality (a core part of you) being 'disordered' (wrong, flawed, dysfunctional). You are already very harsh on yourself. This is why I'd recommend seeking a therapy modality that can help you with looking a bit more deeply and particularly trying to find some compassion for yourself (and for your child self).

I think personality disorders like autism have a spectrum and they flair up when the going gets tough as it were

Agree with this! There is very much to learn about how our brains work.

Op, take on board all the comments here and do your own research. You sound very much like someone I know and they have been helped once diagnosed with a personality disorder. PDs are thought to be caused by nurture and nature, i.e childhood & genetics.

There is little awareness of PDs so many people will struggle with getting help. DBT is supposed to be more relevant for PDs.

I meant personality disorders, similarly to autism l, have flare ups. I know autism isn't a personality disorder.

Well it clearly isn't is it, as its taking her further down the rabbit hole of self analysis resulting in increased self hatred.
Rather than obsess about her own behaviour in inadvertently dating a married man for example, a more healthy approach would be to attempt to look at how HE was responsible for making that happen.
The OP has gained little from her introspection, even when working with a professional. She has little to lose from trying a shift in focus.

Brilliant post @Innocenta Lots of projecting, non-professionals, here. Looks to me as if OP is understandably and justifiably angry about her upbringing, whilst in denial about the fact that her upbringing formed her. All of this can be worked through and sorted out. Personality disorders can't.

We don't know it is any kind of disorder at all, nothing she has listed stands out to me in any shape or form. It simply sounds like her childhood has been far more damaging than she has been able to so far acknowledge and she needs to work through her negative thinking patterns about herself, in order to feel better.
Once the self hatred stops she won't feel angry or out of control, she won't feel sad and anxious at the prospect of meeting her parents. Once she understands why she is this way, she will learn to love that child inside herself, and the adult she is today without criticising and berating, but attending to her own needs with care and attention.

Op is looking inside and needs to do so, because it is now affecting her life in a major way. Whatever pain and trauma is there is spilling over into her adult life and choices, and needs to be explored and dealt with.
If you had a broken leg you wouldn't be expected to drag it around with no help. This is the same.

gap Introspection sounds like an indulgence in the way you have posted it.

If you had some pain/emotion that was bubbling up and literally ruining your life and shattering your inner peace, would you not wish to get it fixed?

Distraction will not work, and many people use it as a tool to avoid the inner work that is actually needed. You are suggesting op refocuses on distraction to avoid the pain she is feeling, do you think it will all just evaporate? Of course not.The feelings will coming roaring back at will. The distraction is dangerous as it can take the form of drugs, drink, antidepressant dependency, dangerous sex, partying to destruction and generally avoiding the root cause of the pain. I can not think how distraction and avoidance can help op when she is clearly very clearly in need of some support and help.

You don't should awful at all OP. Stop calling yourself a nasty bitch - those thoughts have come directly from your parents. You experienced trauma from your parents and but the sounds of, still do.

Your minimising is not helpful gap

I’m a little concerned that people, likely with no qualifications, are trying to diagnose you as a way to justify your behaviour, when even someone qualified wouldn’t do that based on the snippet provided.

op the truth is there maybe something wrong, there maybe a trauma from child hood, you maybe just selfish with low empathy and an attention seeker. No one knows. Having insight into it doesn’t mean anything. Most of us know when we behave badly. We even know when we are actually doing it. And often people do behave badly, just because they can.

I'm pretty similar OP. I try to use my powers for good rather than evil these days. Makes them easier to live with 😂.

Accept these things about yourself, they're just part of who you are.

Also, this sounds nothing like BPD. Possibly some of the other PD traits, but I wouldn't get het up over giving yourself a label. It doesn't help

Thanks for all the supportive messages, I don’t feel I deserve them at all.

Terrified I will be accused of drip feeding, but one other thing I’ve thought of was when I was in my late twenties I came off contraception with a man who literally did not so much as enquire about it, justifying in my head that it made it ok. I was pregnant and immediately had an abortion I was so terrified. I later met someone else and recently did something similar although this man is very different and is decent even though we don’t have a perfect relationship. I think that’s what provoked me to write this thread actually. Sitting here knowing I could well be pregnant and I haven’t actually changed much from mistakes I was making a long time ago.