Starting Recovery: The First Steps If you're like most nons (definition: non - a person who lives/deals with someone else who has problems; in this context a problem is a personality disorder, addiction, or abusive behavior), when you first face up to dealing with your partner's problems, and what all this has done to you, you are confused and overwhelmed with feelings. You've lost touch with what is right and wrong, with what is acceptable and not acceptable. And you are probably fighting an amazing buildup of fear, hurt, frustration, deprivation, and loneliness. Although there is a lot of learning and growing ahead, in the beginning, the key task is to get your head screwed back on as straight as can be, and to get your emotions to a point where you can deal with them and process some other things, too. 1. Work on the confusion. The first thing you need to address is your confusion about what is right/wrong, good/bad. It's characteristic for BPs and troubled partners to distort their SOs' (Significant Others') realities to support their illness. And since they isolate us, we lose the stabilizing input of others. So you need input. When I went through this, the best resource I found was the book Stop Walking on Eggshells. Today, (surprise) I really prefer my own two books: Tears and Healing and Meaning from Madness. If you don't have some of these already, get them so that you can start to put the pieces together. However, you'll probably find that you still doubt that the things you're experiencing are really the same as you're reading about. The free email support groups are great for letting you see examples of other's experiences, so that you can compare them to yours. And the similarities are scary. It's funny, but it seems that all seriously troubled people have the same playbook they work from. But it's going to take a while before you start to realize that, “Oh, that really is his fear he's projecting onto me!” And my favorite recommendation: find some healthy people around you and talk to them --family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, whatever you've got. They will help you. You'll be surprised how supportive people can be. They know you, and they will vouch for your reality. They can reassure you in a way that others can't. You might be surprised how many people around you have had their own problems, and can be very understanding of yours. Now with this input you need to output. Start writing. And don't shortchange it. Support lists are a great place to do it, but you can keep it private if you prefer, or share with just a close person. But the important thing is to write down what you think. While you may reflect a lot about things as you read, writing is a synthetic process that forces you to put the thoughts together in a complete way. You can think of it as making a persuasive case to others, but the real benefit is that you'll convince yourself. And ultimately, you are the only person that needs to be convinced. Later you'll read a section on brainwashing (p. 57) that helped me to really grasp how badly my wife was treating me. By writing it, I made the case for me to push through the denial my wife had put on me and to believe how bad it really was. 2. Work on the emotions. They are real. They demand your attention, and you can't shortchange them. You are hurt. You are neglected. You are abused and demeaned. These feelings are real, and you have them for a reason: they're the right feelings! The problem is that you don't feel that they're the right feelings. I'll say more about this later, when I talk about memory and what we have to do to heal. As a first step, you need to express your feelings, and find people who will validate and support them. You can say them, write them, scream them, or carve them in your SO's back, but spit them out. The support groups (p. 32) are really good for this, but there are other avenues. For example, whether your SO has a drinking or drug problem or not, you can attend Al-Anon (p.35) or Nar-Anon meetings and you'll get loads of listening and validation. And therapy (p. 33) is yet another avenue for this kind of validation. After you work on this for a while - I'd figure three to six months if you're like me - VOILA! You will begin to find a new strength, and a new perspective on yourself. And you'll probably be ready to start making some other really significant changes. Chances are, if you're reading this, you need to.