just get over yourself

but it's better treated with medication/therapy

meantime, stop wrecking people's lives with your hollowness

Wow, what mean responses! I'm not sure I have a whole lot say that would help, but I can say that in the past I often felt similar to what you describe -- to the point of not even knowing how to get into a relationship, let alone be in one, much of the time.

Therapy helped me immensely. The time set aside for a conversation that lets you experiment emotionally can be such a relief. Cary's right about that, even if the rest of his response rambles on a bit.

Therapy's also hard work. Are you prepared to change who you believe you are? Therapy is not going to just make you feel happy; it requires you to really examine yourself and to try and learn where your feelings (or the sense of having none) comes from and what in you triggers it. I, too, come from a family that despite declarations of love, struggles to say the "l" word and often fails to expressed sustained love or even affection. After therapy, I remember feeling brilliant, sometimes painful, emotional clarity after years of being in a haze. It's wonderful stuff when you find a therapist you can trust to guide you through all this.

As for this man you're seeing. Well, can you talk to him about your history, your feelings, your fears? I don't mean make him a substitute therapist, but if you want to have an emotionally honest relationship then you're going to have to confront what's frustrating you. It would be too bad if you both end up hurt and angry and full of sorrow because he's somehow seeking someone who, like you, avoids sustained outward emotional connections and because you aren't able to take those first little steps to helping yourself understand why you destroy what's apparently also very important to you.

Good luck. And all the best, because it's good hard work you'll need, not just luck, to help yourself move on from where you are now.

I grew up like the LW and had the same experiences with relationships. Nothing changed until I learned how to love myself.

It starts with one very simple premise: I didn't get what I needed from my parents, so, I will have to be my own parent, my own mom. And if I am a good and loving mom, how will I treat myself? I'll be forgiving of myself. I'll accept myself even when I screw up. I'll believe that I deserve good things and I'll make them happen in my life.

When things start to slide backward into the void, I just have to remember: What is the kindest, most loving thing I can do for myself right now?

Changing your thought patterns from negative to positive. Changing your actions from self-destructive to nurturing. But, we aren't used to doing things that way, and it takes a long time to establish new and healthier habit patterns. You have to keep practicing and don't beat yourself up when you forget and slide back.

The first thing that helped me was emotional release work with a massage therapist. Old memories, hurts, and traumas live on in us at the cellular level. This worked much better for me than talk therapy, which I did for over ten years.

Then, I learned Buddhist meditation, which teaches you how to watch the mind and redirect it, and how to practice loving kindness to yourself and others. I spent over a year just working on the first stage of the meditation, loving myself, because it was so hard to do. I could easily love another person, or imagine I did, but not myself. Learning how to do that was like slaying an inner dragon.

A curious thing happened: over a period of a few years, my thoughts became more positive, my self-criticism started to wane (actually it's internalized abuse, but the important thing is to quit doing it), and I quit beating myself up all the time. I was happier, more self-confident, and could take things a lot more easy. And I attracted a healthy partner, for the first time in my life, and made the relationship work. We've been together ten years now.

I still work on the self-love and changing how I think every single day. I probably always will. This is not something that changes overnight or even in just a few years. I've been at it for 15 years at this point and still have relapses. But it gets better and better.

There really is only one answer, and that is to love yourself. You aren't ready for a relationship until you have built up some inner resources of your own, until you can generate love from just yourself. Even if you never got the love you needed growing up, you still can do this. Your parents didn't have to love you in order for you to learn to love yourself. Think of it as an atrophied muscle that you can strengthen with the right mental and emotional exercise.

And once you have gotten the knack, you'll have love to give. Relationships between needy people don't really work. People in successful relationships are capable of emotional self-reliance, and they give their love as a gift, not as a bribe or to barter to get what they need.

This kind of numbness comes from emotional abuse. One turns off the emotions as a way to survive it.

I've felt the same way all my life and it made me extra demanding in a codependent way. I just couldn't believe that I was loveable. I'm not as far as some of the other writers, but I'm working on it with the help of a loving partner. Best to the letter writer.

When did "borderline personality disorder" (or 'complex PTSD' among those who prefer the term) become a term of abuse? It's a diagnostic label, which tells clinicians something about the patient's personality structure, gives coherence to a certain constellation of symptoms & traits, and possibly says something about their etiology. People who might be so described are hardly going to profit from being told to "get over themselves." Nor should they be told not to be seek out intimate relationships because they're presumed toxic to other people. But that said, what makes any poster think the LW even comes close to the clinical thresholds?

She sounds like someone who might well benefit from some kind of psychoanalytic psychotherapy (given her conviction that the roots can be found in childhood), but that doesn't mean she has BPD. In fact, given her (rather impressive - actually) insights into her own behavior, such a diagnosis strikes me as extremely unlikely. Neurotic misery isn't necessarily (or even usually) indicative of a full-blown Axis-II personality disorder. Why frighten someone unnecessarily? And why throw these terms around? Give the LW some credit for coming to her epiphany. Hopefully she'll find a good therapist with whom to explore that insight - and much else besides. To the LW - good luck!

-corwalch