Eerie Anne's Journal

[Eireanne]

Here's something else I had saved, that I wanted to reflect on...


The more you're in a thriving relationship towith yourself, the more the relationships around you will thrive.

Actually, it's not so much that my relationships around me are thriving, it's that the more I've been giving myself what I need, the more I recognize I've been settling for less than the bare minimum of everyone around me, and as I continue to practice the concept of letting go of core hopes, the easier it is for me to see that these aren't people I want around me anyway.  We deserve better.


...because you'll know who you are, know what you want, know what your boundaries are, what you're going to put up with, and be able to communicate your needs because you're in tune with them.

I had to actually reflect on the relationships I did have, and listen to myself, as I work on re-parenting, to discover what it is I want to feel, want to hear, how I want to be treated...by my friends, by my work, in any and every relationship I have.  But in order to work on it, you need to actually BE in a relationship, and I had only been in one, with an individual that has absolutely no interest in me as a human being.  I spent years allowing my friendships to replace "how to model a family" as my manual for understanding how families work. And asking those friends about their relationships with their partners to understand what to accept and what not, but I got it all wrong.

...in relationship to self, you'll actually just feel more fulfilled

Is it because, everyone secretly has the hope that they will have the perfect person that will understand them 100% in an out and really KNOW them, but that person doesn't/can't exist, and no one will ever know you like you know yourself?

...they're often abandoning or betraying their own boundaries and their own needs, prioritizing others, diminishing or repressing what they're feeling, what they're needing - Well yes, I had to do this at work, because the moment I attempted to take care of myself...well, we all know how THAT ended... You know...I think that's the problem with these types of things, they all talk about how "co-dependent" people are about not standing up for themselves, being a victim, not having a backbone, but seriously, when our safety depends on it? We will do and say whatever we can just to survive.  People are just ignorant (Anger says hi  ). 


...to try to gain connection or love, but that's the ultimate self-betrayal - and when are perpetually doing that, part of repairing broken trust is learning to show up for your own needs, your own boundaries, take yourself into consideration when making choices and decisions in your life first and then do some reprogramming work so our trust baseline is stable.

Ha, sounds like what I'm doing now. 


...understand that you did the best you could in that moment with what was available to you at the time and with what you were going through.  Move the needle from giving yourself conditional self-love (only when you think you're deserving of being kind to yourself) to unconditional self-love (being able to give yourself love and kindness and compassion even when you mess up). Isn't that what you want from others? So why do you not give that to yourself?

Because I didn't know what it looked like. I had never experienced it.  If you don't know what you don't know how are you supposed to KNOW??? This is what I've been asking people and they don't get it, they just...are confused, how could I not know? It's a basic human need for me that has NEVER been filled. Everything I do is in some way asking for connection.  I do arts and crafts projects - I don't even think I ENJOY arts and crafts - because I want people to do them WITH me, I want it to be tribal, communal, a group of people working quietly together - interdependence.  This is all I have ever wanted to experience, and so every time I meet someone and they say things, hope wants to believe them, but they let me down over and over again.

I started thinking about my mom and her inability to tell me anything.  She didn't want me to be "disappointed" and in doing so she didn't teach me how to regulate hope.  So things hurt just a little more when I get my hopes up about something...like surely I could make ONE friend in two years that will go with me to a hot sauce festival...nope...Sigh. Oh well. Letting go of that core hope and giving myself compassion. 

...talking about the lack of not being considered, the lack of not being seen in how our parents/partner/boss does not have the ability to read hear/listen to/understand what is going on with us the way that our inner child wants them to. 

Sensations and perceptions shape the way humans see the world. The ability to take in information from reality and process it in meaningful ways allows people to form a worldview that helps them to understand life and make wise decisions. A lack or loss of sensations, such as cognitive impairment, creates a gap in the experience and makes it harder to understand events fully. A perception failure leads to misinterpretation of life and an inability to respond adequately to the current situation.

Yup, all of that tracks. 

[sanmagic7]

If you don't know what you don't know how are you supposed to KNOW???

precisely what i've had to tell myself many, many times when looking back on how i've been in relationships, especially about boundaries. i agree, EA, that we weren't taught basics about boundaries so we were not able to go into relationships and not only not know what was not ok to allow but how to enforce that.  lots of negatives there, but certainly many truths as well. i can totally relate to this.  love and hugs

[Eireanne]

Thank you San 

40 posts left in my old journal, and reading back on May 2021 -

A father said to his daughter "You have graduated with honors, here is a car I bought many years ago. It is pretty old now. But before I give it to you, take it to the used car lot downtown and tell them I want to sell it and see how much they offer you for it."

The daughter went to the used car lot, returned to her father and said, "They offered me $1,000 because the said it looks pretty worn out."

The father said, now "Take it to the pawn shop." The daughter went to the pawn shop, returned to her father and said,"The pawn shop offered only $100 because it is an old car."

The father asked his daughter to go to a car club now and show them the car. The daughter then took the car to the club, returned and told her father," Some people in the club offered $100,000 for it because "it's an iconic car and sought by many collectors."

Now the father said this to his daughter, "The right place values you the right way," If you are not valued, do not be angry, it means you are in the wrong place. Those who know your value are those who appreciate you......Never stay in a place where no one sees your value.

[Hope67]

Hi Eireanne,
That scenario with the father speaking to his daughter about the car, and never staying in a place where no one sees your value is really interesting. 
Hope 

[Eireanne]

I thought it was interesting too.  Thank you Hope 

[Eireanne]

From my journal a few years ago, and honestly my current base fear. Seems I have a running pattern of no one showing up for me when I'm at my worst.  I'm ok with that right now.  I'm doing good.  But I still want to leave this here to work through at a later point. 

Hugs to anyone stopping by.



I've always felt that if I had an illness that could be treated - like an eating disorder, or an addiction, that people would form an intervention, and show that they cared for me by showing up, and wanting me to get better, wanting to work with the therapist or doctor or whoever to get me to fight to be healthy, but what I feel is that no matter how I cry for help, people just aren't interested. 

The fact that I have to do this alone, that no one else is invested in my well-being really triggers my abandonment issues, and I keep getting close to...something...I shy away or distract myself because I'm afraid of what it will open.  I'm afraid the rumination will occur and I won't be able to see the answer and it will just fill me with anxiety.  So I keep on avoiding dealing with things.  I just feel so alone, and I don't know what to do or what I want or how to get out of my own head and stop thinking about the past. 

Everything happens in its own time, and this is the time for me to go through this, and I'm doing so much learning and growing, it's ok that it didn't happen before, I wasn't ready before, and I'm learning to be ready now.  Things here have been beyond hard, and what I'm seeing now is a shift in understanding. 

That the learned behaviors I had aren't necessarily true if I allow myself to see things from a different perspective.  It's still hard, as my brain wants to latch on to what it knows, even though what it knows is based on information filtered through a negative bias, but the more work I do on reframing, the more things make sense.

________________________________________________________

and this that I found from a bit more recently than the above...

I'm not going to be any more lonely or ignored than I already am. 

Why do I do that? Assume everyone wouldn't want to be my friend as much as I want to be theirs?

because of how long they can go without texting me - they all have full lives that don't include me in their inner circle...and my deep, dark thoughts that come up about inner circles, and how I've never had anyone that actually wanted to be that circle.  Like how C may well forget that she said she'd do a family FT and I'd have to be ok with it, and blow it off like it was no big deal. 

[sanmagic7]

if it's any comfort, EA, you're not abandoned here. i'm here for you as are others, no matter what's going on with you.  you're working hard to figure all this out, and i give you a lot of credit for that.  love and hugs

[Moondance]

 

[Eireanne]

It is San, thank you.

Thank you Moondance for the hugs

  to you both

[Kizzie]

  What San wrote Eireanne 

BTW, I absolutely love the antidote about the old car!

[Eireanne]

Thank you Kizzie    and thank you for this space, It is so very needed 


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From the old journal, mixed with new thoughts...

My parents had issues that they did not address which caused me to miss out on many childhood milestones, I was a "parentified child", but I didn't know that.  They didn't have explanations for things when I was younger, I didn't have anything to compare it to, I didn't know what I was missing out on, I just thought that's what life was.  I didn't get the opportunity to develop socially because I had negative interactions with my classmates at school, and I always had a sense that I was outside of things...I craved something I didn't have the words for.  When I was a senior in high school, my parents moved to another state.  I made the hard choice to stay where I grew up so I could finish out my senior year with everyone I knew, instead of having to start over again in a new school.  Perhaps that was the first time I realized my decision had a ripple effect that altered the way my life could have ended up. 

On the last day of school, my father wanted to beat traffic back to their house, so he made me leave without getting my yearbook signed or getting a chance to say goodbye to my friends.  Because I am as old as dirt, this was a time before cell phones, we all had house phones and it cost long distance to talk to my friends, so I lost contact with everyone *I* had considered a friend. 

The worst part for me was that there were times I called my friends and they were out with other friends I had introduced them to, so like two of my friends became friends on their own? Then decided they liked each other's company better than they liked mine? I don't know.  All I know is they stopped calling me, and being home when I called them, then not returning my calls.  I would say 17 was when I had my first bout of being isolated, but it felt like depression, so it was probably both?

I have a habit of putting a higher importance to the friendships I have than other people I think...because of these lack of connections with people in my developmental years, and eventually growing into the role of taking care of my parents (it's the way I see it, countless examples where I was asked to take on a responsibility that was for an adult, when I needed to learn how to be a kid).  I feel when I got to college, I was so focused on being an adult, and working to put myself through school that I missed out on interactions I really should have experienced.  Not sure I'm expressing myself correctly, but the reason I feel strongly about it is because now, as a grown "adult" I realize I am grieving for experiences I've never had.  And I'm realizing that my life won't change until *I* do, which means making a lot of life changes, and I'm conflicted.

Part of me realizes the isolation is an opportunity to really take that time, without distractions to sit with myself and really get to know myself.  The other part fears dredging up things from my past that make me break down, and I'm scared I will end up in a spiral of depression, with no attachments in my life to get me out of them. 

This is why I put off dealing with it for so long, the exact lack of support and being at rock bottom and not having one person to hold space for me while I was there.  It's devastating.  I just spent a week with the closest thing to family I have so I could grieve a little while I wasn't alone...but it's more I built up a little bit of whatever lack of isolation is, so I could tolerate the next few months alone. 

I get that my parents didn't have it all figured out, but kids, they don't know this. They expect their parents to have the answers. What I needed was to be leveled with and told, "I don't have all the answers, but I'm here and I can help you find them, we can find them together, you are not alone".

Why don't people see all I've ever wanted to do was fit in?  In hindsight, I needed modeling, social therapy? What is it that autistic people get to train them the appropriate way to interact with other people?

I say or do something "wrong" and then people will just completely stop speaking to me.  All these unwritten rules I don't understand because no one ever told me.  I've been so conditioned to put other people first that I've missed out on a lot of human experiences that people assume I've already had because of the age that I am.  When people ask my age, I feel uncomfortable responding. 

To me, people ask your age so they can put you in a category, to assign you the appropriate box.  Oh, you are this old, so I will now assume you've had the following life experiences.  Since I'm still WAITING to have these experiences, I feel shame when people know how old I am...wait, you are that old and you haven't done xyz? This is a negative reel I need to unlearn.

The thing I realized last night is that all memories, whether good or bad, my body reacts to them as if they are occurring, so when I purposely let my mind go to a challenging experience, it brings up stuff I may be unprepared for. Like the other night when I realized the core of why I hate the way I look. It's all stuff I'm working on reframing and at the same time need to really find good doctors to supplement that work. I know now, thanks to this group, that experience is an EF

[Eireanne]

You know my entire life, my dad never once told me he was proud. One of my grandma's friends told me my dad was proud of me. I was like, no, you're mistaken (or something) and she was like, oh no, he talks about you all the time. And that's the closest I've ever gotten to hearing that. I'm proud of myself now. I'm doing really good and it's super hard. I've learned that I have an amazing network of support and amazing friends and fambly. I'm finally finding the person I want to be without changing who I am.

I wrote that when I was working through my trauma while still living with D, who was heavily gaslighting me and causing me more trauma, while I was also being bullied at work.  Since then, I realize all those people I thought and assumed were my support were a lie, so on top of everything else, I'm grieving that. 

At this point, I scored as an Anxious Preoccupied.  I heard something today that said we are all three which makes more sense to me, because I a) wasn't, and as soon as I was away from D, my score changed. I only want to be around the people that don't make me feel anxious and preoccupied.  This week has taught me a lot. 

From the old journal:

The funny thing is, he stayed and stayed while I was broken and now I'm getting better he wants to end things. Like he only knows how to be with broken girls. He even said he knows that he's just meh and ppl find that out once they see the real him. And I'm like, I've seen you for 6 years. So let him build a fake relationship with an insecure girl. I want a real one. I want someone that will actually take the time to get to know me

[sanmagic7]

EA, 2 things you wrote really struck home w/ me -

I have a habit of putting a higher importance to the friendships I have than other people I think...because of these lack of connections with people in my developmental years

i think my friendships were connections to how i was supposed to be as a person, so they were of paramount importance to me since i didn't learn how when i was a kid.

You know my entire life, my dad never once told me he was proud. One of my grandma's friends told me my dad was proud of me. I was like, no, you're mistaken (or something) and she was like, oh no, he talks about you all the time.

it was my brother who told me this (rather than a grandmother).  my F was the one i was always trying to please (still try sometimes altho he's been dead for 50 yrs -those old desires are often still so strong w/in me)  while i am proud of myself, all i ever wanted to do was make him proud of me.  never happened cuz i never heard it from him.

this crapola surely does wreak vengeance w/ our lives.  here with you on all this.  love and hugs

[Armee]

 

You know that bit about your parents not letting you wait to get your yearbook signed made me feel really sad for you.

[Eireanne]

@San - I recognized I used a lot of my friendships in the past 15-20 years as models for my "manual" on "how to adult" and "how to family" by observing how the people in my life responded to their significant others, learning what was acceptable behavior, etc. but now that all those people have removed myself from my life, I recognize that I received a lot of misinformation that I accepted without question - and now I understand most people view me with the assumption that I have the same manual as them, a lot of my behavior and responses doesn't match what they expect, but now I feel that's on them, for not being curious, empathetic and compassionate, and are people that are not at "my level" and don't want to waste the energy making room for them in my life. 

In the separation between the space they took up in my (heart?) and what I was feeling as an emptiness and a hole, is now a freedom.  It's still hard, but...less hard, knowing I'm making better choices for myself.  I really appreciate you sharing your own perspective with me.  It's still something I'm working through, but feeling ok with. 

@Armee - I was really sad for a very long time, but it's just one line item in a laundry list of experiences I've never had, and part of the grieving I am still doing for that loss.  Thank you so much for recognizing it, and understanding I'm not mentioning it for "attention".  Appreciate you so much.

I've re-started a course I had to stop back in March, there were a lot of triggering aspects to the material that I had a visceral reaction to, so I wrote it all out and now am ready to move on.  There was this one bit that stuck with me, about how to re-think stress:


Normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure. But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge? You're going to think to yourself, "this is my body helping me rise to this challenge". When you view stress in that way, your body believes you, and your stress response becomes healthier.