Eerie Anne's Journal

[sanmagic7]

 

[Eireanne]

@San 

I read The Four Agreements, then read The Fifth Agreement, and here are my notes (AKA the parts of the book that stood out to me):

You look at yourself in a mirror, do you like what you see, or do you judge your body and use all those symbols to tell yourself lies? Is it really true that you are too short or too tall, too heavy or too thin? Is it really true that you are not beautiful? Is it really true that you're not perfect just the way you are?

Can you see all the judgments that you have about yourself? Every judgment is just an opinion.

-it's just a point of view - and that point of view wasn't there when you were born. Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it. You learned the opinions from Mom, Dad, siblings, and society.

They sent all those images of how a body should look; they expressed all those opinions about the way you are, the way you are not, the way you should be. They delivered a message, and you agreed with that message. And now you think so many things about what you are, but are they the truth?

You see, the problem is not really knowledge; the problem is believing in a distortion of knowledge and that is what we call a lie. What is the truth, and what is the lie? What is real, and what is virtual? Can you see the difference, or do you believe that voice in your head every time it speaks and distorts the truth while assuring you that what you believe is the way things really are? Is it really true that you're not a good human, and that you'll never be good enough? Is it really true that you don't deserve to be happy? Is it really true that you're not worthy of love?

Remember when a tree was no longer just a tree?

Once you learn a language, you interpret a tree and judge a tree according to everything that you know.

That's when a tree becomes the beautiful tree, the ugly tree, the scary tree, the wonderful tree. Well, you do the same thing with yourself. You interpret yourself and judge yourself according to everything that you know. That's when you become the good human, the bad human, the guilty one, the crazy one. the powerful one, the weak one, the beautiful one, the ugly one. You are what you believe you are. Then the first question is: "What do you believe you are?"

If you use your awareness, you will see everything you believe, and this is how you live your life.

Your life is totally dominated by the system of beliefs that you learned. Whatever you believe is creating the story that you're experiencing; whatever you believe is creating the emotions that you're experiencing. And you may really want to believe that you are what you believe, but that image is completely false. It's not you.

The real you is unique and it's beyond everything that you know, because the real you is the truth. You, the human, are the truth. Your physical presence is real. What you believe about yourself is not real, and it's not important unless you want to create a better story for yourself. Truth or fiction; either way, the story that you're creating is a work of art. It's a wonderful story, a beautiful story, but its just a story, and it's as close to the truth as you can get by using symbols.

You're telling yourself a story, but is it the truth?

If you're using the word to create a story with self-judgment and self-rejection, then you're using the word against yourself, and you're not being impeccable. When you're impeccable, you're not going to tell yourself, "I'm old. I'm ugly. I'm fat. I'm not good enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm never going to make it in life." You're not going to use your knowledge against yourself, which means your voice of knowledge is not going to use the word to judge you.

Everything you perceive is a reflection of what is real, just like the reflection in a mirror, except for one important difference. Behind the mirror, there is nothing, but behind your eyes is a brain that tries to make sense of everything. Your brain is interpreting everything you perceive according to the meaning you give to every symbol, according to the structure of your language, according to all the knowledge that was programmed in your mind. Everything you perceive is being filtered through your entire belief system. And the result of interpreting everything you perceive by using everything you believe, is your personal dream. This is how you create an entire virtual reality in your mind.

I'm sharing the truth with you. I do my best to use words in the most impeccable way so that you can understand what I'm saying, but even if I share an exact copy of the truth with you, I know that you will distort my message as soon as it goes from my mind into yours. You will hear the message, and tell yourself the same message in a completely different way, according to your point of view.

Then perhaps what I say is the truth or not the truth, but perhaps what you believe is not the truth.

I am only one half of the message; you are the other half. I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand. You are responsible for what you understand; you are responsible for whatever you do with what you hear in your head, because you are the one who gives the meaning to every word that you hear.

Right now, you are interpreting what I'm saying according to your personal knowledge. You are rearranging the symbols and transforming them in a way that maintains an equilibrium with everything in your belief system.

[Eireanne]

Things taken from YouTube Shorts:

I love you and I'll love you forever, but I'm no longer interested in the level of love you have to offer me, and because of that, I have to let you go. I'm not even asking you to change. I just need you to understand that you can keep doing what you're doing and how you want to do it. You just can't do that with me. Sometimes you gotta love people from a distance to protect your peace.

The original version of yourself is not the version you want to get back to. The original version was susceptible to the manipulation that got thrown at you. We need to actually build a different version of you, a better version of you than what was already there. That means the pieces of you now aren't completely broken or shattered, but need to be assembled back together in a way that actually makes you stronger.

Healing is quite simple.  It is nothing more than to experience the opposite. Abuse. Being treated in a poor way. What is healing? Being treated in the opposite way. That is your recipe for what it is you need.  Then it's about what thoughts, words and actions do I take to get in that direction.

You're one of the most kind, considerate, understanding, thoughtful and loyal people I know. You would give anyone the shirt off your back. You enjoy serving people and trying to make their lives better. You're a giver – these are your greatest weaknesses.  Most people are takers. My conflict avoidance and unchecked giving makes me the easiest target to be taken advantage of.  I'm looking to work with another giver, so I can learn how to say no sometimes. To have my boundaries respected so I can bring 100% to work every day and feel like I can also maintain health and wellbeing. 

Why do I need to ask my wife 10 times what's wrong before she'll finally tell me?
My guess would be safety and trust. She doesn't trust that you're a safe space for her to share. It could be a number of different things, maybe going all the way back to her childhood. Let's rule out a few obvious ones:
Do you have a habit of invalidating her feelings or experience?
Do you ever dismiss her as too emotional, too sensitive, or making a big deal about nothing?
Only if she's being irrational
If she has the courage to share something in a respectful and vulnerable way, do you immediately get defensive, shut down or feel unfairly attacked?

[Eireanne]

What is toxic 'breadcrumbing'? Experts share signs and how to address it

Breadcrumbing refers to a form of manipulation — whether intentional or not — involving one person feigning interest and acting as though they feel sincerely interested and invested in a relationship with another person when they are not.

Those who intentionally act in misleading ways may do so to get the fun parts of a relationship without having to commit. Stringing a person along keeps someone from looking elsewhere for a more stable, reliable and real connection, and remain hopeful and focused on them.

Others may just be conflicted about what they want, or uncomfortable with intimacy due to their upbringing or trauma. These people may also feel inadequate and incapable of engaging in healthy, authentic relationships.

Breadcrumbing works on the psychology principle of "intermittent reinforcement," which drives the addictive cycle and success of gambling behavior.

"Over time, the target is emotionally manipulated, deceived and disrespected," she added. "They feel anxious, sad, confused, lonely, inadequate, abandoned, embarrassed ... hopeless and hopeful, angry and unworthy of love or attention."

As a result, someone may settle for scraps of attention, thinking it's normal or what they deserve — therefore lowering one's expectations of relationships, repeatedly searching for relationships with familiar patterns and preventing oneself from finding something better.

If breadcrumbing is happening in a relationship that's important to you, confronting the person is worth it. If you've expressed what was bothered you and they don't change, that's when you can say, 'I'm not going to do this anymore.'

Being able to recognize breadcrumbing is the first and most important step. You need to identify the root of why you're accepting such maltreatment, which can help you begin the journey of building your self-esteem.

A healthy relationship cannot be forced, because if it's not genuine, it's not real. If it doesn't come organically, if it doesn't come from the person's heart ... just doing the act for the act itself without the emotions and the commitment is actually quite meaningless.

Don't personalize people's actions. Remember people show you who they are — not who you are.

[sanmagic7]

hope you're doing ok, EA.  love and hugs

[Eireanne]

   San (and everyone else who stops by my journals, I'm so grateful for your patience as I continue to work through my recovery) 

The parts have been pointing out it's been a while since they've had an opportunity to talk, that they've been flooding my head with images, and they come way too fast for me to jot them all down.  Which was perfectly illustrated at the pandemonium caused by the rocking chair in the Nellie Bly movie I watched on Hulu. I was interested because the frame of reference I have (aside from knowing the story of Nellie Bly herself) was an amusement park where I grew up, and I can picture it in my head...sometimes I look stuff up like that, and reminisce...my childhood memories are of places.  The only memories I have of my family are bad ones, and I keep seeing it in my research.

I keep telling people, I just need words, I understand concepts, but I don't know what things are called anymore...there are too many words I've never heard before, or never knew what they mean, and I don't spend enough time being a part of a conversation, to even follow along...let alone participate? All I do is talk to myself all day long (not that it's a bad thing, I'm doing this 40 day self love thing and journaling non stop, listening to the Hamilton Soundtrack while I walk a mile, I tried yoga...but now my knee hurts I have to find out what works for me and I'm being intentional, but that's just it, I want to have intentional conversations, I want to have DEEP, talk for hours, look into each other's eyes types of words I learned from being a part of the Feely Human Community - vulnerability, intimacy, platonic and non-platonic and it all gets jumbled up because these words were not in my lexicon before, I didn't know these were things, and I...don't know how to express that to another human being, but they somehow sense it anyway, something is off about me, they always seem to subconsciously be repulsed by me, and I've always been picked on, bullied, was completely invisible at home, I was the only one who wanted to talk, and i was told to go to my room all the time...it's not FAIR, I just want to be liked, I want to have a group of friends, I want to fit in.

I've never experienced a period of time where I've been friends with more than one or two people...like in real life to have as an activity partner or a confidante, or a...I don't know, I can't put it into words and its like I can PICTURE it in my head I know what it feels like, it feels like having someone just come over with tea and blankets and cuddles and hugs, I want them to hear....I'm so touch starved my body is short circuiting, it's not fair, I just need platonic intimacy, I want a relationship where I can build enough trust that I can be intimate and vulnerable and share my actual thoughts, because I...

And then the parts take over and say, "hey, here's some relational issue I cannot figure out, because I've forgotten how to people"  and honestly, the only solution I come up with is no contact...but...it's literally with every relationship I've ever had.  My neighbor pointed out it's because they are stagnant and I am growing and learning so we aren't resonating with each other anymore (that's not quite what my neighbor said, I keep shifting and can't seem to tell a sentence from beginning to end quite the way...like...ugh...it's starts out one way in my head and then it veers off course? I don't know how to EXPLAIN what it is I'm doing, how to put it into words, and it all gets messy...

And usually, I look for a distraction, because I don't like sitting here.  But it's triggered by something...that if I ONLY HAD SOMEONE TO TALK TO ABOUT IT...someone I had the intimacy of an established relationship with to just sit and listen to me because it just doesn't make sense to me, but then my parts take over and see it from a brazillion different perspectives.

I feel things deeper than most people, most people are stuck in the major spectrum colors of Anger, Jealousy, Sadness and really aren't good at naming their feelings, that's why so many people need to be given feelings wheels, and I'm like yeah, I already know a) all the feelings I'm feeling, I can name them (oh look, there's vengeance!) and b) why i'm feeling them, oh and let's take it to the next level C) Why I'm feeling why I'm feeling them.  and all I'd need was someone to tell, someone that was a friend I could count on, someone, oh I don't know that called me sister? Said I was family? And then completely stopped talking to me and I never understood why.  My brain conjured up a thousand and one reasons, it was something I said, something I did, I overthink every little detail (overthink isn't the right word, because there's nothing wrong with the way I think, my mind is fascinating) But the only other person that happened to think say so was Cracker, and he has a personality disorder. 

[Eireanne]

I've been spending the past few weeks going back over the transcript of my conversation with C, I gaslit myself a bunch of reasons why I shouldn't admit that (shame) I shouldn't have done it (unhealthy behavior) but my subconscious knew that it was important. Like grabbing the documents and running out with them so they don't stay in the burning building? And I could take my time and process them, our conversations and make sense of what happened and notice the signs of him gaslighting me, testing my boundaries and me just keep talking to him so he keeps doing this thing...right? But at the same time I was saying from day one, "this is what I'm looking for in a relationship, here are my boundaries, and he's like, "those are reasonable af" he gave me confidence, I was happier when I was talking to him I was more myself and being present about my present situation openly and honestly to those around me, looking for a sense of community, like I've always done....so I've spent way less time on C (I stopped talking to him around the same time I stopped updating these journals? Linear time...

He allowed me to talk about D in a way that allowed me to deal with all the betrayal trauma that was lying around, most of it has been around for the past 8 years, which...


In being able to step far enough away from the relationship I had with D, it was wrong from the beginning but I didn't see the signs, because "society" pushed me into it and I had a faulty manual.

He pressured me into every aspect of the relationship, and none of it made me feel good. I never felt a sense of connection with him but I threw away my own sense of self, because who I am at my core has been rejected since childhood, so I was always grateful that he was "putting up with me" that I knew I was "too much" and he was so good about tolerating me.

I wanted to talk for hours and he wanted to be on his phone while we watched TV "together" The shows we watched were shows he wanted to watch, if there was a show I wanted to see, but he didn't, he would let me watch it alone.  The sense of betrayal when he started watching things he didn't want to see virtually with other women while we were still together was very hurtful.  The constant gaslighting messed with my head.  The red flags I saw and pointed out but he just kept repeating how much he liked me, and no one had ever liked me before, not anyone available anyway.  But to express the nuances of...how I referred to him as a puppy and his constant joy at seeing me (peeing on the floor) made me cringe, I never was swept off my feet and felt a sense of anything that I think everyone assumes I had, they keep using terms with me like co-dependent (all I've ever wanted was an interdependent relationship). I would find things online of how to set healthy boundaries and I'd try it with him, but he'd ignore them. I'd ask people in relationships, how do YOU navigate this, and they all said the same thing, so I thought this is just what a relationship is.  We never talked, we never bonded, we never shared intimacies...I shared with him all the ppl that were bullying me and how much I was struggling and how trapped I felt and I never felt like, I had him on my side.  I just knew that he was my one shot at being in a relationship, the only one that wanted me and not just as a side piece, actual me, but we lived like roommates and he burdened me, never made me feel safe, loved, cherished, adored, he was just on his computer, playing games, talking to other people, tuning out, drinking, spoking pot, not able to face his own demons, or even talk about them, never opened up, was just a shell of a person, and since I was a shell of a person...each person before him taking a huge chunk out of me until there was nothing left...I don't know...I can't get those years back, I'm just trying to accept that it's an experience I survived and move on, but the not being able to get closure - not with him, but so many other people orbiting around these situations that have been and are continuing to affect me. 

People think the abuse I endured and the damage D did is what's holding me back, I think they're wrong. It's the not being listened to, not being heard, feeling invisible, with no voice and no way (not even here, in this post) to truly express the intricacies of the way my mind works to say, yes, this bothered me, but this didn't and this? I didn't even recognize was abuse...etc.

[Eireanne]

In the little book of letting go, it says there are 3 steps to letting go of something.

1. To remove what obstructs your experience of wholeness and peace, first look at the obstruction. 

My obstruction is that I am often getting in my own way, wanting to feel a sense of belonging, of acceptance, that I fit in and have a tribe, am viewed as approachable, and people see me the way I see myself, full of untapped potential if only someone would give me a chance.

To counter this, I am trying to accept and love myself more, talking to myself and allowing myself to grieve all the things I'll never experience.  To have compassion for myself all the times I've been excluded, all the times I've spoken my truth and been ridiculed for it.

Any attempts to want this situation to change is preventing me from "letting go" I just have to allow/accept it as is. 

Learn how to feel whole and embrace the environment of scarcity, lack, need and learn how to be ok with not having.

2. Make sure you want to remove this obstacle. 

Well obviously there's a part of me that thinks it's safe here, because opening myself up to the possibility of belonging just means more rejections, more abandonment, more of never really being more of an outcast that no one will ever love the way I need to be loved...and that mindset keeps me from "letting go".

3. You must respond from your whole mind, and not the conflicted mind.


So...I see I have my work cut out for me.


The way we experience love (adapted from the book to fit my lived experience):

My mother had love for me because she wanted someone that would love her.  The reason this doesn't work is that the child has to act like the image of the child that the parent expected.  But the child is her own person and acts like herself, so the war begins and war never feels like love.

...

I keep coming to this point over and over with my mother.  I did not feel love, I felt she said the things she said out of obligation, I would often counter with "you are supposed to say that, you're my mother" but I didn't feel it.  I thought of her as Mommy Dearest...I was often the recipient of her frustration, helplessness, rage.  I see she wasn't equipped to give me the childhood I needed to be whole and I've forgiven her but that still leaves me ill equipped to function in life.  If I had a skill, to be funny, to be a straight A student, but I wasn't ambitious, I wasn't disciplined, I was...a product of genetics and my environment, and as such have been operating at a huge deficit. 

I don't compare myself to others, because I am so different, I do not have fomo, I have simply not understanding why I am consistently universally rejected.  I'm sad for me and I don't have answers of "what I should have said or done to not make it turn out this way". and here's where I've been stuck. 

I need to learn how to respond from my quiet, united, loving mind.  Wherever that hides. 

[Eireanne]

Support is still a real trigger for me.  I'm reading this opinion piece in The New York Times, about a woman who receives a cancer diagnosis (her husband wrote the article) and there are so many sad things in it:

Imagine how much harder that fight, any fight, would be if you fought it alone.

Nancy and I have experienced countless bursts of light shining through, each one coming through the love and care from other people.

The reason for our revival is rooted in a profound truth elegantly captured by an old Swedish proverb: "Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow." ...I'd never felt its truth so powerfully until November, when our sorrow was so deep and the love of our friends so profound.

...describes the crushing burden of feeling utterly alone...feeling abandoned...

Those of us who have been blessed in this way must bless others in return. (funny that they don't though)

The key word in the Swedish proverb is "shared." You don't just tell me the reason for your sorrow or joy, and I don't just listen. The word "shared" implies participation. When you share a meal, you are not merely one of two people eating. You are eating together. And so it should be with sorrow and joy.

if you're really sharing sorrow, you're feeling it as well, and as you feel what your friend feels, you lighten your friend's load. "If I share something with you that's very difficult, I'd rather you say, 'I don't even know what to say right now. I'm just so glad you told me.' Because the truth is, rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection."

And honestly, what have I been asking for my whole life, but to feel this?

And how am I supposed to fill this need on my own?

[Eireanne]

I have pages and pages of stuff I'm trying to read and process and make a part of my life but when I come up to something that triggers me, I get stuck.  So here's one of the things I found triggering recently, and don't know what to do with this information:

The greatest reason is that we often need time to heal. This is a deep stage. So much of what happens here takes place underground. Our psyches need time to reorganize and integrate. The greatest thing that we can do is to nurture ourselves, to learn how to be kinder to ourselves as we grieve, reflect, and prepare ourselves for stage three. So far, great. I'm on board, doing the work.

In this stage, the seeds of your newly emerging self have started growing, but you probably won't yet be able to identify how they are beginning to influence your life. In this stage, we need to start looking for the relationships, situations, and activities that nourish us, that don't chip away at our sense of self-worth.  Ok, well I've always looked for relationships that nourish me. I've always brought my open, honest and vulnerable self to every situation, putting myself out there and hoping to find kind, compassionate, like minded souls. It's this next part that's so upsetting though...

Often, we are surprised to discover that we are somehow finding new relationships with safe people, who consistently value us for who we are. And we find that they don't bore us or irritate us as they might have in the past! This is an indication of true change.

Um...D actually bored, and irritated me. So here I was thinking, oh this is a healthy relationship because I felt aggravated and frustrated and he was safe and consistent and I had stability and a social life and friends....My head is already screaming, and I'm reminded of these words being mirrored in a recent exchange of me admitting I'm recovering from a lifetime of abuse and being told that "once I find healthy relationships and am healed myself I won't find them boring or irritating" HUH!? I'm so distraught from this, does this mean I'll never heal?  I am NOT attracted to people that treat me bad, I am surrounded by the inability to set boundaries to be treated GOOD, I have no basis for comparison, only a lifetime of failed attempts and being abandoned by the slightest misunderstandings, then being told I am a victim, I complain, I am negative....

The third stage is where we begin to actively build a life that's rich with healthy love.

In this third stage, life is more full — but less full of drama.

There's a kind of peace in this stage because the people we choose to be with have fewer qualities of psychic violence than the people we may have dated in the past. I've never dated. People with personality disorders are attracted to me, the only thing I need to take responsibility for was that I chose to talk to them...and I'm sorry but when ALL your friends and family disown you and you spend months in the house alone with no one to talk to but your laptop, and suddenly, someone comes out of the blue and allows you to verbally ventilate all the abuse that you previously couldn't even process, let alone put into words and you are finally HEALING so much faster than you could have done in isolation...I'm sorry, I don't see the "psychic violence" of being given attention that makes you more confident, more likely to take chances and go out and meet people and speak up for myself....why can't I explain it?

In this stage, now that we are dating people who are safe, available, and kind, we finally have the opportunity to practice the deeper skills of authentic intimacy, such as generosity; learning to swing out in terms of how much we give and how deeply we receive. This is the foundation of rich, exciting, and passionate love — but only when we practice it with safe people.

When we reach this stage, the "field" will have changed for us. The people we notice will be different. It's amazing that this happens, but it does happen because our attractions have changed. We find that we are more likely to meet people who are kinder, and more available. Our dating life feels like it's beginning to change for the better.

Reading this just breaks my heart 

How am I supposed to know who is safe, available and kind when men like cracker manipulate and pretend to be safe and kind, exposing their own vulnerabilities, having uncomfortable conversations, allowing me to feel heard, whereas all these "safe/kind" people I had in my life abandoned me when I said I needed help.

What do?

[Eireanne]

Excerpt from a video:

We need a task list so when this happens, or when I feel this, I do that.

This is will help us reprogram the reactive mind and the propensity to be overreactive and to be driven by ego.

When you come from a home where you felt Invisible - this could be very difficult for someone to understand - this enormous grief and
this enormous loss - because you don't know that you are in grief, you don't know that there is loss. If you came from a home where parents were gruff, they minimized your emotions, they didn't talk to one another about their emotions, this becomes very difficult for a child. The child is learning about self and their emotions and how to process by how well the parents are able to process their emotions.
If there is no healthy communication between parents, children don't know how to communicate with the self. We need people and parents who are able to handle their emotions - specifically strong negative emotions - and when parents are able to process strong emotions rather than react to frustration, react to anger, react through ego, that is when they teach the children to do the same.

Being the lost child implies that there was no one there to really help you process emotions.

When parents didn't know how to communicate, we develop hyper-vigilance and this becomes a way of life, and below the veil what's happening is unresolved grief. There's grief work to be done, but we can't acknowledge that there's loss because we're in this pattern of thinking that's habitual, that has protected us since we're children, but it doesn't work in our adult lives.

We end up thinking and blaming ourselves. We end up attracting people into our lives that are very wounded.

If you had parents who told you that you had no right to feel what you felt, any form of abandonment trauma whether it's physical/emotional abandonment will cause shame, and that shame will cause us to basically turn on ourselves.

All of these opinions (that you are too sensitive, that you want too much, that you are weak, gullible, have no self esteem, are a doormat, don't owe people explanations, that you're needy, co-dependent, annoying, complain too much) did nothing but induce more shame. I had no ally in the World.

By not feeling my feelings, I manifested somebody who was on a similar wavelength - there are just some people who are hardwired to not hear you and they won't awaken in this lifetime and that's difficult.

We're starting to talk about what really happened,  we're finding allies learning how to be our own ally and stop abandoning ourselves.

Level three consciousness is when you're in the process of reprogramming. You're finding your true self, you're understanding what you missed, you're recognizing that it's not me it was my programming.

Level 3 is about reprogramming and in level 3 you're also re-experiencing what you were never allowed to experience as a child and so this is a corrective experience - you're not running away from this pain anymore and level four is where you are discovering your true self.

You're not ashamed anymore. This is who I am, this is what I've been that was a consequence of how I grew up.

[Eireanne]

What do you do after you notice that there's an aspect of your shadow coming up to be seen and  acknowledged and accepted? That's really all shadow work is, it's seeing, accepting and acknowledging all parts of me, right? That's the integration work of shadow.

What do I do now that I know that it's remembrance + emotional charge? What do I do with that once that shadow aspect comes up?

Be aware of it. I allow the fullness of this to surface. You're opening up your energy  for that shadow aspect to come up, instead of pushing it down, something is in your shadow only because it's not acknowledged. Sit down, close your eyes, come into a meditative place and start to follow that energy. That's going to take  you to the initial wounds, to the deepest part of that shadow aspect that was unacknowledged.

If you ask the question, why am I feeling  this way? You're not going to answer with your head. You're going to take a nice deep breath and you're going to feel more deeply into it. You do you see where I'm guiding you? It's not up here. It's down in the body. The shadow resides very deep in the body. So you're just  opening your energy to feel more deeply into the shadow.

Then you write about it. Maybe  some answers come up spontaneously and you write about it. Then you read it back to yourself. The  more that you do this work, the more that you feel deeply into certain aspects of your shadow.  Another way of saying this is that feeling deeply is the equivalent of sending light into your shadow. Okay? As soon as you send light into your shadow, as soon as you send understanding  into your shadow, it's not shadow anymore. 

[Eireanne]

Some parts work and venting that may belong in a different journal, but oh well, it's here now...

What I wish you knew about me.

When I say I'm neurodivergent, it does not mean I'm autistic.  It means I think outside the box.  I am hypervigilant, which means I catch details you may miss.  I have an insane amount of attention to detail, and I will make sure that I have all your logistics aligned to the T, because I have years of practice considering everything that could possibly go wrong and what I can do to avoid it.  I've done it so well, so effortlessly, it took me years to realize that this was a skill, I just took it for granted everyone was like this. 

Much like everyone takes for granted I've had the same lived experience as everyone else.  When I try to get to know someone, and want to explain myself, it is usually so far outside of someone else's lived experience that I have learned to be guarded about what I say, this is called masking.  Other neurodivergent people may have been diagnosed and received support for their differences, since my disability is exacerbated by chronic isolation, although I may understand on a conceptual level how to put social interactions into practice, I have so few opportunities to work on this skill someone is trying to explain to me that I feel as if I have one chance, and if I dare say the wrong thing, then that person will stop speaking to me.  Which is usually why I shut down at parties, there are too many neurotypical social rules that I don't understand. 

And when I don't understand something, my chest tightens.  People cut me off and say, "oh, you just have anxiety". I say, no, that's not it....and I'm told I can no longer do this if I want to be friends, because people feel "corrected" and it shuts down the conversation.


I need to be allowed space to describe what is happening to me. I have been shut down so many times, by medical professionals, by therapists, by friends, by family, by every manager I've ever had, from the one person I thought actually loved me, from my mom, from my dad, from my brother...I can't actually think of one person that has actually listened to me, I feel so alone in this.

"L,can you come over, I just need someone to listen to me attempt to explain how I feel in my own words" Instead she sends me a meme "give yourself permission to feel better now".

How would YOU navigate that situation and salvage the relationship? WHAT relationship? You weren't there when I didn't need you, when I needed you, when I said specifically what you can do to help - you are NOT a friend, and I simply cannot tolerate the breadcrumbs I allowed myself to put up with. Yet it hurts how loved and supported THEY are while I sit home alone.


So let's recap.  Any attempt I make at conversation shuts down the conversation.

What do you mean by that?

Insert any and all attempts at conversation/dating/getting to know someone:

Usually, by the time I get to a level of intimacy where I feel I can share something of myself with a person, it's been a few months. I still have been as careful as I can to be considerate, (people pleasing) and I mention something. I'm in a relationship, and it's my first time I've had a healthy relationship and I could really use a girlfriend to talk about it with, can you hold space for me?

my week has been very bad actually.  Something you said caused me a great amount of relational trauma and I'm still working through it.  Please don't feel bad, that is not my intention, I am not ready to talk, I still need probably a few more days, because it's not you, and I know it's not you, it's the trauma talking, but I'm hoping that we are good enough friends that we can say, hey, I am feeling a sort of way, and I'd like to discuss it because your friendship is important to me.  The way I was feeling was that I had done something to say or upset you, and I wanted to give you space to be heard, because if I said something to upset you, I'd rather you talk to me about it than just stop talking to me. And when I felt like that, you replied, "I don't feel the need to discuss."

That's my trauma.   

Because I have felt that perhaps I was triggering your people pleasing tendencies and my excitement to engage in conversation with D and wanting to share the parts I've figured out about my relationship with C, but I was having such a hard time putting it into words that my relational trauma was triggered. 

I perhaps assumed you were a safe space to share my thoughts with (because you said you were and we even established ground rules and told each other we'd have open and honest communication, but that all goes out the window and you just react, rather than respond, which causes me to react and not respond and now neither one of us are speaking to each other, another relationship gone.

We set expectations at the beginning of our friendship and I thought we understood we could talk to each other about anything, but now I feel like I'm missing something, and it's adding to the relational trauma and snowballing to the point I'm actually jealous of autistic people.  When I try to explain to someone that I'm neurodivergent and they say, "oh autistic" I say, no. I'm not.  Because then you're assuming I am, and inadvertently start using ableist language around me, which is excruciatingly invalidating to hear.  So if I try to insist, please, I need MY experience validated, please just let me explain myself to you, I need to be seen, I need to be heard, I need you to stop making assumptions about me and just listen...people....would rather stop talking to me completely than just sit down and listen, because I use the word "Trauma". 

There is such a stigma around trauma that every single one of my friends has either completely stopped talking to me or distanced themselves from me to the point that I can't even consider them a friend, we've grown apart.  They think of it like, oh god, she's going to share some god-awful thing that happened to her and it'll make me uncomfortable, I won't know what to say, I don't understand your condition enough, I'm not qualified, you should really just talk to a therapist. 

I tell them no, it's not like that, it's really more than I'm socially isolated and I just need conversation, any conversation, anything, just stick me in a family chat, so I can remember!!!!

But they don't, they hedge, they make excuses.
 
It's like I gave you a recipe and I said, wait, I wasn't paying attention when I gave it to you, I actually mixed two different recipes together, let me separate them out for you so you make the right thing and you tell me, that shuts people down, it makes them uncomfortable, they feel "corrected" and I say, I'm not correcting you, I'm....

Imagine, I find out after years of confusion that I'm (insert correct diagnosis) and I want to come out to my friends and they all stop talking to me.  I tell you, hey, I'm going through a really bad time right now, I just came out to all of my friends and they stopped talking to me, I'm grieving a lot, because I felt like these people were family, but they don't want to support me and instead of saying, yes, but you still have me, and I'm family, how can I support you? you tell me that I'm hurting everyone by asking them to listen to me to try to explain my trauma so when I go back to work I can advocate for myself.

Language matters.

You say we talk a lot about my trauma, when we've never once talked about my trauma. I occasionally mention to you things I'm traumatized by, like the fact that none of my friends would hold space for me when I needed support to recover from the abuse I endured during the pandemic.  Most of them havne't talked to me for three years. We grew apart, we weren't even friends anymore, and when we'd talk I'd ask you for advice for things that are currently traumatizing me, but since you have no interest in curiosity in how to talk to Trauma Brain, I'm triggered once again.

And yet trauma brain can't stop asking for other people's advice - WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN THIS SITUATION TO SALVAGE THE FRIENDSHIP, I CAN'T STAND ANY MORE LOSS/REJECTION.

[Eireanne]

This same situation has been weighing on my mind for a while now.  I was very isolated, and I started to make friends and had some activity partners. One person I enjoyed hanging out with, J and I started playing a game in our phones (due to my boss at the time telling me I needed to) and I was looking at it as a cooperative way to have a social life, but as I started to make friends, I was being excluded and picked on a lot. I didn't understand why. I still don't. I would share something I heard, and not being able to make sense of it, I'd repeat it to others, and I was told that was gossiping. 

It wasn't like a "did you hear so and so did this?" It was more like, "I keep being told x, and I really don't understand the dynamics, I'm just trying to make friends" So x ended up being told and misinterpreted by others as to "what I am doing" and everyone puts all these attributes onto me I just don't have.

I had plans to hang out with R one day, but J was having a party, he was just going to flake on her, I said I was going to at least stop by, so I did, and she was upset with me when I was leaving, I don't know why, I SAID I was only stopping by, so she still included R (who bailed and flaked and was a no show) but since I showed up, it changed the dynamic of our friendship, and she stopped inviting me places, the more popular she got, and everyone was sure to let me know there were things happening but I was being excluded and I still can't figure out why.

It's a dynamic that often happens with groups, and I'm just the one that doesn't fit in.

If I keep walking around with this cloud over my head of not fitting in and being the sore thumb, or whatever, how am I supposed to "let all that go"?

[Eireanne]

Every day, I read one Blissful Knowing Inner Guidance Card. I read one affirmation card from Louise Hay's deck (that P gave me), One page from Each Day a New Beginning - Daily Meditation for Women, a page from Instant Health and Happiness Boosters (a toxic positivity gift from L) and a few pages from Notes from The Universe.  I write myself a love letter. 


Then I focus on the tabs I have opened in my browser. I take notes of things that resonate with me. Today's notes:

Toxic Relationship RECOVERY!

...all of the manipulation tactics and mind-games he played ...that I quickly became so psychologically distraught.

I felt worse and worse. I couldn't think straight, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, I had no motivation or energy. I was anxious, depressed, frustrated, confused, and replaying everything that had happened over and over in my mind like a broken record, constantly mulching things over, doubting myself and trying to put the pieces of this unsolvable puzzle together.

I reached out to all my friends, acquaintances, people that had told me they loved me, they were my family...and discovered none of them had the capacity to show up for me in a way that showed their actions aligned with their words. On top of trying to recover from abuse in my relationships and at work, I was also healing from a lifetime of abandonment wounds, and not having a memory of knowing how to depend on anyone else for assistance, just memories of this...breaking down and not knowing how I'm going to survive.

I hit a breaking point. There were a lot of stressors hitting me all at once, but beyond this I'd realized that I had created my whole life around my fears and insecurities. And I just knew that I couldn't go on living like this.

This breakdown was a huge turning point in my life as it led me onto a deep, intensive healing journey. I learned that self-worth, confidence, and happiness can't be found in someone or some "thing". No matter how much money you make, how many degrees you get, or who you marry, or where you live you can't be happy or maintain healthy relationships when you're operating on survival mode, buried under a thick layer of insecurities and defense mechanisms. and for $300, I can learn what took her 20 years to figure out.


YouTube Shorts:

How to deal with toxic and emotionally abusive parents - My suggestion is to write out all the ways they've done blame, shame, guilt - You're making me this way, you're making me miserable, you don't care about me, and flip it. Instead of You, it's I. I don't care about me, I'm to blame for my misery, you see? What it is, is you're showing what's actually going on inside your parent (or anyone abusing you). They're talking to themselves and projecting it onto you. Turn every you statement, every manipulative statement where they tried to say you were the problem and you'll see.

How to change your personality - The main thing you need to focus on, instead of trying to fix your life, fix the way that you interpret and draw conclusions from life events. The real tragedy of life is that we spend a lot of energy trying to fix things that involve other people, which means fundamentally, they're not completely but at least partially out of our control and then what we end up doing is that we ignore all of the conclusions that we draw about ourselves. We don't think about it, we don't work on it, we don't craft the conclusions that we have about ourselves. Those things develop automatically and then they determine our personality. Once they determine our personality, then they'll determine the way that literally interactions get interpreted by your brain. They'll determine your emotional reactions to situations, they'll control the way you behave. So if you want to forge a different destiny, you need to become a different person. The good news is that's actually possible.

People's opinions of you don't matter - I took an English class, I failed. My teacher said in front of the entire class, "you have to be the weakest writer I've ever met in my entire life." That same year, my speech teacher said (after giving me a D-) "I recommend you never speak in public, that you get a desk job." Other people's perception of you ain't none of your business. Everything you've ever been through, set through, rose through, cried through, prayed through - everything is a setup for your next best season.



Healing Trauma in a Toxic Culture - in a way you have a kind of psychological autoimmune illness,  when we divide ourselves eternally when we make that terrible choice between authenticity or attachment, and we we choose attachment which is the seemingly sensible choice but it's the problematic one long term - at the time we give up our authenticity we divide ourselves we exile parts of ourselves out and then including potentially anger and or we get angry at parts of ourselves that we exile that's the kind of mental autoimmune illness. we're biopsychosocial creatures - our biology can't be separated from our psychology or from our social relationships, shaping those social relationships of forces way beyond individual control. 

Allostatic load became too great for me to continue functioning from survival mode.  Nature wants you to be yourself, be true to yourself, more than it wants you to survive. When we've lost connection to ourselves because of trauma (not because we've chosen it) dis-ease often comes along.  through dealing with the illness they become truly themselves for the first time in their lives. 

before you say something, ask yourself - is it true, is it kind, is it necessary? and these are what the sufi call the three gates of speech, so if you can meet all those pass all those three aids then say it. seeing ourselves clearly, seeing the environment clearly and coming to terms with the things that have happened to us and the real impacts that those things have had over time in terms of our behavior, our lives, our relationship with ourselves our relationship with other people.