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I made this topic 4 months ago and I wanted to say because you guys could relate, it's gotten a little bit better since then.

I got a haircut and have a hair routine now. I have like, everyday hair products. I use mouse now, isn't that weird? Lol. In a good way.

I'm trying to fall into a shower-and-then-choose-clothes routine. I have one of those bathrobes now, which also feels weird. And actually buying decent clothing basics has been helpful. Ones that are convenient to wear and make outfits with. The process already stresses me the heck out, I don't need to bother with clothes that are difficult to make into outfits, or clothes that make me feel self-conscious, you know?

I have hairstyles for days where my hair is a little greasy, which is apparently a normal thing people have. I've never had go-to hairstyles like that, and now I have like...3 whole hairstyles just for greasy hair days and a hat.

I still get frustrated and feel this way all the time but in retrospect it is getting better. Little by little.

I had similar experiences growing up, and I feel you.

When I was younger, the idea that someone could just not like my emotional reactions and energetically invade my privacy to read my emotions, which imo is kind of an intimate invasion of privacy, and then force their own energy on me, when it was unwanted, and if they were truly and empath or even a normal human with the ability to understand body language they would know I Did Not Want That. (and didn't agree to it either) And they did it specifically because something about me made them uncomfortable.
(TW sexual abuse) Like, it sounds rape-y because it is rape-y. I was supposed to understand that some people just "naturally" invaded others privacy (were empaths) and were "helping" by forcing themselves on others who didn't consent or agree or ask.

You could take that sentence and apply it to rape. You could apply it to medical trauma. You could apply it to cult abuse. You could apply it to a lot of abusive things because it's abusive. It leaves you with messed up boundaries and self-concepts. I leaves you more susceptible to new kinds of abuse. It teaches you things about consent. And it teaches you to put others who don't care about hurting you or making you uncomfortable above your own needs and feelings, not just because they're special or anointed but because hurting you makes them feel special and annointed.

I hope I didn't go too extreme with this, I have a hard time with this sort of thing. I'm glad you're getting back into meditation and seeing that things aren't supposed to be like your mother did them though.

I'm just sitting here, not doing what I needed to do today because something about getting ready triggered me into a massive flashback AGAIN. (second time in three days)

I'm so so angry. All I can do is sit very still and stare at the wall and remember to breathe, I'm so angry. Idk if I'm angry at myself, or at the situation but it's unbearable and I have no idea what to do! I don't even want to fix it. I've spent my adult life learning how to do basic things and I still can't pass for clean, normal and put-together sometimes.  I've only started passing a little in the past year. I still can't even just simply get ready in the morning sometimes. It's just an unending spiral of trying to make myself normal and never being even basic amounts of acceptable so where am I supposed to keep getting the drive to learn and do better?

If it were just my parents not teaching me things then I should be able to fix it by learning to do hygiene and grooming. But precious little comes naturally and I mess up all the time. I just feel like I can't fit in with the world and I have no place out there.

On some level I understand that having messy hair I don't know how to deal with and having flashbacks are two different things? I guess people have bad hair days all the time and don't feel anything like the way I'm feeling right now. It's not the messy hair it's the being set up for failure and the rejection and the trying so very hard and never being good enough. It's the dissociative episodes making it worse. It's the public shame.

But she's a friend?

Like, she's kind of being an * but I have no reason to believe that she wouldn't try to change her behavior if asked. She's repetitively shown she can change harmful behaviors and grow as a person so I guess this isn't different?

And I guess she's shown a capacity to be empathetic of me, even if I'm upset at her?

But the only confrontation I know is having a screaming match or pleading, humiliatingly, to be treated like a person. And I think the screaming match is because the people in my past either did not care when they hurt me, or were too deep in their own coping mechanisms to acknowledge it. Why calmly tell someone you've been hurt when they don't care or won't acknowledge it? What purpose does it serve? It's not really a problem to them unless you make it a problem. (via a screaming match)

Every fiber of my being wants to make this a screaming match and feels like she's not going to be able to hear me because she's too stuck in her own mindset. But idk if evidence supports that belief. I don't want to scream at my friend? How do I handle that? What do I do with all of this anger?

I'm trying to learn how to value and protect "who I am on the inside" but honestly I just kind of don't feel like I'm worth protecting?

I've always been in harm's way. A large part of my life is feeling and processing big negative things and having nightmarish mental health symptoms. Mind as well try to protect a sewer rat from germs, you know? I live here. I don't really understand what I'm trying to preserve.

Every time I try to use a sewing machine I have a breakdown.

I'm sitting here with the remnants of my latest sewing disaster. And honestly, it's not that bad. Idk what went wrong, but maybe I'll figure it out? I fixed the part that was messed up and no major harm was done so I can totally try again! But it feels like the end of the world. I feel ....completely shut down? Like all of this was for nothing and I need to quit? It's definitely some kind of emotional flashback, I know this feeling. I have this weird urge to hide in a childhood bedroom and dissociate with my toys.

I have a lot of repressed memory, so I'm not exactly sure what this stems from yet. But maybe when I was little and didn't know how to do something correctly, I didn't have any help to fix it? I remember the sting of having so much excitement and passion and energy invested in something and just have it not work. And that's it. I just don't get to do that thing. I didn't know why it didn't work. Probably because I "messed up" right, I just do everything wrong.

As a teen I was really creative but I was never able to finish things. I would get so passionate and want to do creative projects so badly. I would always hit some dead end where I was trying really hard but everything was coming out wrong. Probably because I didn't know how to do the thing I wanted to do, but didn't realize I needed direction. I wouldn't know how to fix it, or what I was doing wrong. Everyone else around me seemed to work hard and do things just fine? And I would just kind of withdraw and clock out.

Kids get direction like that from parents, right? I guess if I was a parent and I saw my kid that upset, I would want them to talk to me so I could help. And if I saw my kid was very interested in something, I would want to encourage them and make sure they had the tools they needed to explore their interests. I feel like there's something buried deeper in those memories that I can't quite reach right now, but at the very least I probably shouldn't have faced those problems alone. I can't imagine thinking about my young cousins struggling like that, it's really disturbing to fathom.

Thanks for all the replies. I've been thinking about all of them.

I've been working on this for the past week and I think the vein runs deeper than I originally thought. What was bothering me about rejection was like the tip of an iceberg. (Better to find them the icebergs then to not see them at all though, amIright?)

I don't understand it yet. But I think there's a lot of unfairness and judgement I've experienced that I've only considered through the mindsets of the people who were unfair. Every time I try to consider my side of things or the truth of the situation, I dissociate something fierce. It's like I can't access empathy for myself in those situations and I can't see things for what they are. I think maybe it could be a survival thing? Maybe if I understood how those judgemental people thought about me, I could navigate abusive situations better? Or something like that.

I've also considered that maybe it would have been too painful to consider that the people doing the judging were mistreating me. Or I may have been too young to emotionally understand. So maybe I adopted their mindsets and saw myself as bad, so I could continue to see them as good?

But when situations happen, especially if they echo some judgement from my past, it's like a part of my brain needs to understand where those people are coming from so I can adapt? It's like it wants to adopt their realities to be safer, instead of aknowleging my own reality. And I keep repetitively thinking about it without trying, sometimes as if to figure out where they're coming from or sometimes to re-assert where I'm coming from, but never in a way that feels convincing tbh.

I hope this made sense, it's still confusing to me so it's hard to articulate.

I've had a few very light little instances of disapproval in the past two days. It was nothing that wasn't understandable. A few people were misinformed. But still, I keep thinking about it without trying.

I remind myself that they're good, well-meaning people with different mindsets, different lives. No one was unkind. We were coming from different backgrounds and had a misunderstanding, that happens. And I believe this when I say it to myself!

But I still feel disproportionately hurt. I keep catching myself being a little more vigilant about if I've done anything else that would cause disapproval. The way I'm dressed, am I standing too close, do my actions seem irritated at all? I know I do this and it will go away soon. I just have to keep reinforcing to myself that everything is fine. But doesn't everyone feel that way about rejection/criticism? I know some people probably deal with it better, and some people have coping mechanisms/skills, but surely no one likes rejection? I thought this was pretty normal.

There are small little micro-confrontations in everyday situations, and I have no idea how to do them well. I always peace-keep, I stay quiet and I listen to other's perspectives even if I can see they're wrong or if I disagree. If they have viewpoints or behaviors that disregard me I always default on "well they don't know better, I will listen to where they're coming from and try to understand them first." I wait for the right time to say something in a way that people may be able to consider calmly, maybe because I understood them first I can explain my side in a way that's palatable. Maybe just baybe I can be diplomatic without stepping on toes and completely ruining our relationship.

This bites me in the rear every time though. The only people it ever works with are abusive, explosive people. And even then, bottling up my own thoughts makes me crazy! I just walk around secretly angry all the time! Thinking about what I want to say to them if I could, intrusively! I don't want to daydream telling-off scenarios, they interrupt my life.  I HAVE to start speaking my mind. But I have no idea how this works.

I can only assume step one is don't let it get to the point where you're seething with anger because I feel like if I tried to speak my mind now, I would just explode at worst or sound really passive aggressive at best and that would be super off putting. It's no one else's fault that I bottle things up. They're behavior/opinions can be naive or obtuse to my realities sometimes but I don't want to explode at them, I just want to have a voice. 

I can't say I fully understand it yet, but the opinion was something along the lines of like... people should want to grow together. And become more realized, better people? Together? Even through healing from trauma?

And then at the same time, that people's "broken-ness" is beautiful? That one gets me. That mind as well be in a different language. I typed that and I think the operating system of my brain encountered and error and crashed.

All my life, I was treated like my "negative" emotions were bad, and my suffering was my own fault, and my negativity was such a burden on others. (Especially others who "empathically and mercifully" endured me anyways, ugh)

The process of emotionally healing from childhood trauma is obviously very difficult. Worth it- but difficult. And it feels like the most true and obvious thing in the world to me that this journey is one that has to happen alone. I'm not pleasant to be around for this reason. I suffer, and it bothers people. Healing is hard and people don't like that.

Is this an empathy thing? Is it a specific kind of person who is effected by the suffering of others that I should be avoiding or having healthier boundaries around, maybe? Or am I mostly right and perhaps there are some rare people who are not bothered by people who are healing? Yesterday I was 3,000% sure that this was a fact of life, that people are just avoidant of suffering, so the fact that these opinions even exist at all is really throwing me for a loop. I don't know what to make of it and I am an emotional scrambled egg.

I'm starting to have a hunch?

The thought of getting rid of the inner critic is obviously freeing, but sometimes I have thoughts like "But how will I judge if my hair looks right (read: how will I know if I should be embarrassed or not) if I have no inner critic? I could look crazy and just..what? Love myself? Surely I can't just walk through life like that." and other such thoughts. My hunch is that maybe there is supposed to be some other inner compass there, and maybe the critic is overcompensating for the lack of that thing?

Like, I constantly feel I exist in a state of messiness and embarrassment that I have to judge in the mirror and then fix before going out. But what if instead of that, I had gotten the message that hygene and self-care is an act of love? Like an expression that someone wants you to be taken care of? What if my parents had done my hair as a kid as an expression that they cared and it was a positive activity? I think it would bother me if my hair looked bad and I would want to fix it as an act of self-love instead of having to judge everything against how embarrassing I am and how much I can't let people know.

So I'll never know if this is really the case, and I'm usually not one to guess. But it's the best suggestion of a word to get my point across, I think.

With my parents, who are both very manipulative, I'm learning to take solace in the fact that their abuse came from a place of shame they had for themselves, taken out on me. More specifically, in present day when I'm inundated with an inner critic the way I'm beginning to deal with it is to remember where the shame and critic came from.

But what about when an abuser doesn't seem to feel shame? What about when people just genuinely want to hurt you to make themselves feel better? And they're not sorry. And they don't think they've done anything wrong at all. I can still get caught in a downward spiral about like... the fact someone can harm me and genuinely think hurting me isn't wrong. Human worth. Human rights. The cruelty of it all. I'm not really sure how to dig myself out of this hole? I'm not sure if what I'm feeling is even shame. I can't put shame back where it came from if there is none. Is this a question of basic worth? Maybe I have to put a belief or way of thinking (i.e. lack of human worth) back where it belongs and firmly establish my own ideas of basic wroth? That sounds difficult.

I'm not sure if it would help, but if you ever manage to find an example of what the cry sounds like, I've known several women in my life who could identify what a baby was upset about by the type of cry. Once we were in public and there was a small baby doing short, impatient sounding cries and the woman I was with pointed out how it sounded and told me the baby was hungry. Another time a woman made an exasperated comment about how a nearby baby was tired and should be taken home, saw my confusion, and explained that the cries were long but not wailing: a tired cry. Apparently long and wailing or high pitched bloody murder cries are "I'm hurt or something unfair happened, pay attention to me".

Idk if that information would be useful to you? If it were me, I think I would find some peace in knowing what kind of cry it was so I could remember that the baby is hungry or tired and feel some empathy and softness for them and by extension feel some empathy and softness for my past self. Or maybe you might find that knowing the baby is hungry inspires some kind of panic in you? That could be helpful to explore. Why would a hungry baby cause someone panic? Or maybe it's a tired cry- why would a tired baby not be able to fall asleep, and instead be crying? Why would a "pay attention to me" cry go unanswered?

My suggestion is that if you've ever seen a high school drama, the girls who are the meanest are also the ones who have the harshest standards for themselves. For me, and this will sound awful but I'm sure you understand, it's cancer patients. I never talk about it because it sounds so bad. I had really severe life-threatening health problems growing up, and no support. I couldn't really talk about it because of my family, there was very little empathy. When I see "recovery parties", or the outpouring of support for cancer patients, something inside me twists like a burning knife. I hate it, I don't want those feelings but they're there. Maybe if you weren't allowed to cry from a young age, there could be something in you that burns when someone else gets to? Not because you're awful but because you're still hurt. It's a kind of suffering.

They walked around and looked into all of my windows first like a creep. They were talking to my neighbors and I didn't know?? They showed up when they knew I was injured and having an adverse reaction to the meds for the injury, impacting my judgement and ability to take care of myself. They know they're not welcome here.

Ugh. Like, I don't need to go on about it. I'm sure all of your creep-o-meters are going off as badly as mine.  It's just that they were so squirrely. In the past I was so conditioned to feel like I was just being crazy when I noticed these things, but I haven't seen this in a year since I went low contact. The way they were speaking was strange for them, they sounded so weirdly desperate. Not groveling desperate, but "I'm desperate, it's unbearable, so I'm here to forward my wants over your needs and safety" That sort of thing. That "I'm going to use you to make myself feel better whether you like it or not" thing.

It's been a while since I've been on the other end of that and I'm a little shaken and dissociated tbh. I have more of an inner compass now, and in my gut I feel like maybe I need to affirm my innate value and humanity to myself and assure myself that I'm not here to be used by any * who prefers to hurt people instead of help themselves. It's hard to push away the humanity of it all though. They've told me before to my face that they prefer treating people this way and have no intention to stop, and that they understand they have a problem but they just don't feel bad about it and don't want to change. They get offended at me when I suggest they need to fix it, as if I'm an unaccepting monster. It's so easy to get sucked into those memories. I hope I can use these feelings of anger and lack of safety to double down and care for myself even more. Protect and value myself even more.

With my parents.
I've been carrying around their insecurities and incompetance thinking they were my own inalienable traits for SO LONG.

I'm still not all the way there, but I think I can see the forest for the trees. I think I can see the confidence in my anger. I feel like Sisyphus rolling a bolder uphill but I think I'm starting to see that the things I've been so ashamed of and thought of as shortcomings came from them and how utterly incompetent and neglectful they were at raising a child- and also life in general. All I've ever done in life is try to fix these problems without the right tools. I put in so much effort and so many tears without any real direction, as a child, and they couldn't even address their own mistakes? I'm not the incompetent one.

I can't say it and mean it all the time yet, but when I'm given half a chance I seem to be pretty hard-working. I seem to try harder than others before giving up, and have a bit of resilience when things are difficult. I, as a person, even in my coping mechanisms, exhibit traits that don't line up with all this shame and blame. I'm definitely not the one who messed up a whole dang kid and then blamed the kid and guiltily hid away the evidence.

I know this post kind of sounds like a downer, I'm feeling some sadness and anger for myself, but I'm also feeling more tenacious and confident then I have in a while. Hopeful, I guess, that all these negative parts of myself that feel branded into my personality might scrub off after all. After all this time. It's bitter-sweet. I wonder who I am underneath all of that.