Letter to a group of women I know

[Blueberry]

Dear all,

Some of you seem to think I haven't been the last few times because I couldn't get there on my own. There we are at the pesky topic. I hate the way you go on at me for cycling!! And I'm sick of it. That's why I can hardly be bothered to come any more. I never know when you're going to start harping on at all those evil cyclists again and talking down to me like "Blueberry, you don't know. You don't drive." No I don't any more, it's true. And your point?

If you think you're going to change my lifestyle somehow, forget it! I'm a dyed in the wool commuter cyclist, that's not changing. Why do you care even? What's it to you if I cycle almost everywhere? If your goal is to reduce the number of people coming to the meeting, you're certainly doing a good job there.  It certainly puts me off.

I once objected slightly and L.P. said "No, no, that's not what we're doing, we're not criticising you." Well, you certainly harp on about the subject. If I feel criticised, I feel criticised. It's not for you to decide that your behaviour is OK. Because you are not the recipients. I am. Imagine every time C. comes and you harp on about the illogical aspects of vegetarianism? What would you all think about that? What would you think about it C.? Might get annoying after a while or just plain old boring. "Ho hum, Yawn. Please find another topic." It's more annoying though. I can't even defend myself, there are too many of you all at once, not even listening. Just grinding your own axes on the nearest serious cyclist.

Blueberry

[Three Roses]

 

[Blueberry]

It was good to write this. First of all I realised quite quickly that that's not something it would be wise to say to anybody in that group. If it's bothering me that much, it's best to either stay away or stay away mostly and/or get to the point where I can address the issue calmly next time it comes up.

Then yesterday I realised why it gets on my nerves so, so much and why I can't just let it slide in my mind like water off a duck's back. It's really no surprise and I hadn't actually really forgotten. Plenty of people in my past particularly FOO and extended FOO (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, even their friends...) and some of my own friends too harped on at me for years about my lack of a driving license.

Cycling everywhere day and night, winter and summer was my way of proving to the world that I'm not a burden to other people for not driving. People made it out that I was, for e.g. not being able to drive my grandparents to places, though they all could drive and did (!) or for sometimes needing a lift somewhere difficult to get to or even for not managing to buy a large item for FOO when I still lived at home. There were 3 other drivers in the house, surely one of them could have done it?! No, M just needed to find something to nastily criticise me for. M found me generally a burden to drive anywhere before I was even old enough to have a driving license and she didn't mince her words or emotions on that. She seemed jealous and resentful too if F drove me anywhere. When I was a teen I also thanked them effusively. That's maybe not wrong, but I'm pretty sure my brothers didn't, accepting it the way there was a roof over our heads and food on the table. I felt quite subservient then. I didn't feel worthy of being part of the family, even walking apart from FOO, a few paces behind them, "like a dog walking to heel" F joked, without being capable of thinking why that may have been. M scolded me for it but I didn't change I don't think, I certainly continued to feel neither part of the family nor worthy of being so.

I do have a license but didn't use it much after I got it and haven't driven for years now. I never will again, that's clear. I got it mostly to get people off my case about not having a license. I now live in a country where it's relatively easy to get around without a car or driving license, much easier than in the countries I grew up in. Still, not everybody sees it that way and not everybody sees it as none of their business as evidenced by this group of women.

It's been useful to write all this out because my understanding of the topic has evolved during the course of it. This afternoon I will spend a couple of hours with this group but some of the men-folk will be around too which often makes a difference and more particularly we won't be sitting about talking which can lead to axe-grinding. We'll be playing mini golf  which is fun and you have your mind more on the game than on other people and their 'failings'. It's very nice weather too, for autumn.

[radical]

I've found it useful to watch how others enforce boundaries.  I've seen that with particular kinds of eye contact and posture, people who are expertly boundaried seldom need to use words, and when they do, they use very few.  They are not about trying to persuade a boundary buster that they are wrong, but to stop an offensive behaviour in its tracks.  What they communicate is "I don't like this and I'm not going along with it.  I expect respect".

I read a piece by an ex-dominatrix in NY who was giving workshops about how women can hold their power when they are experiencing bullying or harrassment.  The women were mainly professionals who struggled with being treated as less-than in the workplace, whether through belittling comments or having their contributions ignored, or outright sexual harrassment.  She made the point that when someone is offending us it is important that we don't turn our attention inwards, which is an attitude of submission, but focus our attention on the person who is offending us, and  that feeling self-conscious is what a bully or abuser intends to throw us off-balance.

[Boy22]

Blueberry, your last paragraph. This, this is what I am finding helpful by being a participant here.

[Blueberry]

That's really interesting radical! It makes sense too. First impressions before you've even opened your mouth are so important e.g. in job interviews. It makes sense that this would be the case in other situations too. Of course I'm unfortunately quite practised at going inwards. As with most other things though that has been getting slowly better. Not to the point where I show people I'm not going along with it though.

[Blueberry]

I've been noticing in the past couple of weeks how little I miss that group of women. There was a time when I was newly out of inpatient care when it was good for me to go to this group and socialise with them, but now I have other things going on. I spoke to one member of the group today in another context and she mentioned that they're meeting tomorrow. I actually could go, but I don't want to.

The thing some of them like to harp on to me about as I mentioned further up is: cyclists. I am a cyclist, which they all know. Hard to avoid noticing since I arrive with a helmet and a reflective vest. One of the axes they like grinding is the one about cyclists who are injured or killed in traffic and are not wearing a helmet and reflective clothing (neither are compulsory in my country). There have been two accidents here recently, one fatal, one not. Car driver completely to blame in both cases. Neither looked properly if at all and one had had his license revoked anyway. I cannot bear to sit with a group of people tomorrow who might get onto this topic. I know they won't even mention what the car drivers were doing, they'll just use it as a starting point to get onto one of their hobby-horses, despite the fact that somebody in the wider group they so like to criticise has died.

I also finally realised an additional reason why this topic drives me up the wall. I hear M's voice in my head "It's your / his / her / their own stupid fault." (or sometimes even choicer language). There were a few situations - her hobby-horses - where you knew that's how she would react. In other cases, sometimes she would, sometimes she wouldn't. Somebody's child suffered a fatal accident. Might have been the parents' "own stupid fault" (in her eyes), might not have been. It was hard growing up with this unpredictability of how she'd react and not having an adult to question it or tell me that not everything was my "own stupid fault" for not foreseeing the future.

Though as I write that, I remember being told M was blamed for just that by her F, and it was a traffic situation and the other driver was 100% at fault. Still the way my GrF raged, apparently M as a young adult ought to have known in advance not to have been in the street she was in at the time the other driver was driving. So maybe this blaming stuff is a multigenerational problem in my FOO, idk.

Part of my wanting to set the record straight with these women is undoubtedly connected to me never having been able to tell M what I thought of her harping on like that too. Another topic to process. But at least I've got further to the bottom of it.

[Blueberry]

Blueberry, your last paragraph. This, this is what I am finding helpful by being a participant here.

You mean writing it all out and then things become clear that weren't at all clear beforehand? If so, I'm really happy it's that way for somebody else 

[Blueberry]

Many of this group of women along with partners and (grand)children were at the Christmas Party on the weekend. It was actually quite OK to be among them again. So I think it's partly a question of not spending too much time with them and maybe cutting them off if they get onto the Bad Cyclist topic which one of them did.

Some of them even said they'd missed me and one of them made a space for me at the table. But even if some missed me, it doesn't mean I should go more often.

[Blueberry]

I've found it useful to watch how others enforce boundaries.  I've seen that with particular kinds of eye contact and posture, people who are expertly boundaried seldom need to use words, and when they do, they use very few.  They are not about trying to persuade a boundary buster that they are wrong, but to stop an offensive behaviour in its tracks.  What they communicate is "I don't like this and I'm not going along with it.  I expect respect".

Sometimes it takes a long time for me to really grasp the content of a comment. It's today for this one! Being able to communicate "I don't like this and I'm not going along with it.  I expect respect" with posture and eye contact (and possibly with general aura) - well obviously you have to even know and feel in your emotions that you are 'allowed to' set boundaries. No wonder it's so difficult. The trauma is stuck in our bodies somewhere or a number of places - shoulders, arms, hands certainly in my case, which affects my posture. Eye contact? I tend to look slightly past people. Of course, I 'should' change this but so far I often can't. There's a reason for this. I do work on healing but it seems to be taking its time and that's just the way it is, as many other mbrs here know too.

The "I expect respect" is interesting for me too. Just recently a mbr on here referred to an acquaintance's behaviour towards me as 'disrespectful'. For me: lightbulb!! - "respect" is something I "owe" my elders and betters, I'd never considered that anybody might "owe" it to me. Now my T's words (for me to repeat in T appointment) come into my head "I have a place on this earth, just like everybody else.  I have a right to live on this planet, just like everybody else." So now: "I have a right to respect / to be respectfully treated, just like everybody else." That means moving out of childhood position of, well, being a child, a lesser in the eyes of my parents, and as a lesser not being somebody who needs to be treated with any form of respect. Parents who abuse and neglect their children are not showing respect of any sort. This has become clear to me only now.

An ex-dominatrix in NY made the point that when someone is offending us it is important that we don't turn our attention inwards, which is an attitude of submission, but focus our attention on the person who is offending us, and  that feeling self-conscious is what a bully or abuser intends to throw us off-balance.

Oh my. I grew up self-conscious as could be, pushed into that by FOO's emotional and verbal abuse of me. The mockery and ridicule, almost constant criticism... So then they use(d) that to keep throwing me off-balance. How useful for them.

Also, I've done a lot of therapy where you're encouraged to look at your part of the issue. So when someone throws me off kilter, I'm automatically thinking: "what have I done wrong here?? How can I improve communication with this person?" Except for a little while now I have been changing that a bit. Idk, maybe 3 months ago or so, I mentioned to my current T that "if one person says your behaviour is 'off', they're possibly wrong, but if more people tell you, then it's something you have to look at it" is what I always used to hear in non-trauma T along with of course "you can't change other people, you can only change yourself". It's true I can't change other people, but my current T said looking at my own behaviour is merely looking. It doesn't mean my own behaviour is necessarily wrong. It may in fact be the best possible reaction in the situation with those people. Thinking I always 'have to' look at my own behaviour and then change it, helps me to focus on myself and my 'non-appropriate behaviour', thereby aiding myself in submissive behaviour. Thanks FOO. Not.