![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamingswordI don't have Covid, but I did have a sinus infection that was giving me some of the symptoms. *yikes-face* Thankfully, that has mostly cleared up.
A friend has suggested that I might want to dig into what is behind the current abandonment issue before I try to repair this friendship. So I have gone with the "Let's put the friendship on pause until the holidays and see if we miss each other" plan.
Of course, rooting around in my brain to get it to stop doing an unhealthy thing sounds exhausting and painful, which of course means that I'm going to do it. Because losing friends isn't hard enough, I feel the need to jump into something punishingly difficult while I'm already going to be suffering! Might as well get all the unpleasantness over with at once, right? And yes, I am using sarcasm aimed at myself to cover for feeling vulnerable, why do you ask?
Does anybody else do this to themself?
Anyway, navel-gazing behind the cut.
I guess I could talk about Brianna, or Aaron, or Jillian, or Tina, or Christina, or any of the other ex-"friends" whose names I've forgotten who decided that hanging out with me was a mistake they were going to stop repeating. They mostly didn't even tell me why I was getting dumped, but one thing almost all of the people who dumped me had in common versus the ones who didn't is the judgments about other people for stuff that I had also done.
I said to her, the friend who dumped me recently, at one point, "when you are judgmental of other people for stuff that I have done, it makes me feel afraid that you will ostracize me like you ostracize them for fucking up". And then she did exactly that. And instead of asking me to explain, she just doubled down on accusing me of stuff I didn't do and putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I mean, I understand why this particular friend dumped me, because even though she accused me of trying to dump her pre-emptively when I was trying to draw a boundary, she then turned around and dumped me pre-emptively for not defending myself hard enough from an accusation that I was untrustworthy with her secrets. And I get that she grew up in a hard environment where attack as a defense was appropriate. But I'm not any of the people who fucked her over in her past. And I did not deserve to be treated that way.
If we are ever friends again in the future, I should get her an audiobook on de-escalation tactics for when she gets into fights. And maybe I will listen to it myself. Because I tried to de-escalate that fight a couple times and it did not seem to work at all. So maybe the tactics I know only work for people who are not emotionally triggered? I don't know.
So, I am still slowly sorting through stuff and waiting for a plan of attack for deactivating the trigger to form in the swirling chaos that is my feelings.
A friend has suggested that I might want to dig into what is behind the current abandonment issue before I try to repair this friendship. So I have gone with the "Let's put the friendship on pause until the holidays and see if we miss each other" plan.
Of course, rooting around in my brain to get it to stop doing an unhealthy thing sounds exhausting and painful, which of course means that I'm going to do it. Because losing friends isn't hard enough, I feel the need to jump into something punishingly difficult while I'm already going to be suffering! Might as well get all the unpleasantness over with at once, right? And yes, I am using sarcasm aimed at myself to cover for feeling vulnerable, why do you ask?
Does anybody else do this to themself?
Anyway, navel-gazing behind the cut.
I guess I could talk about Brianna, or Aaron, or Jillian, or Tina, or Christina, or any of the other ex-"friends" whose names I've forgotten who decided that hanging out with me was a mistake they were going to stop repeating. They mostly didn't even tell me why I was getting dumped, but one thing almost all of the people who dumped me had in common versus the ones who didn't is the judgments about other people for stuff that I had also done.
I said to her, the friend who dumped me recently, at one point, "when you are judgmental of other people for stuff that I have done, it makes me feel afraid that you will ostracize me like you ostracize them for fucking up". And then she did exactly that. And instead of asking me to explain, she just doubled down on accusing me of stuff I didn't do and putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I mean, I understand why this particular friend dumped me, because even though she accused me of trying to dump her pre-emptively when I was trying to draw a boundary, she then turned around and dumped me pre-emptively for not defending myself hard enough from an accusation that I was untrustworthy with her secrets. And I get that she grew up in a hard environment where attack as a defense was appropriate. But I'm not any of the people who fucked her over in her past. And I did not deserve to be treated that way.
If we are ever friends again in the future, I should get her an audiobook on de-escalation tactics for when she gets into fights. And maybe I will listen to it myself. Because I tried to de-escalate that fight a couple times and it did not seem to work at all. So maybe the tactics I know only work for people who are not emotionally triggered? I don't know.
So, I am still slowly sorting through stuff and waiting for a plan of attack for deactivating the trigger to form in the swirling chaos that is my feelings.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-25 04:27 pm (UTC)I think you and I are magnets, and/or we aren't repelled by intensity like most people are. I've often heard that this can be linked to childhood trauma (calm doesn't feel safe, chaos feels safe), but I've preferred to see it as developing a higher tolerance and feeling free to express my full self in return. Trouble is, people who burn bright burn out. I wasn't the favorite person for everyone who has cut me off like that, but it always stings the worst because I think there's something I can do to change how they feel about me. It takes years to realize it was never about me in the first place (or, it was in that I made them feel safe and safe is vulnerable, and when uncomfortable some people just cannot let themselves be vulnerable).
Yes, I, too, prefer intensive introspection when I'm hurting the most. I think of it as emotional surgery. It takes skills, self-awareness, and an imperceptible groundedness to perform on oneself, but I'm still standing and most of the people who have cut me off over my lifetime are... not.
My friend and I tried to de-escalate for 6 months, but in the end we had to just break contact forever. Moreover, it had to be her call, because she would swing wildly between pushing me away and pulling me close. I was only ever a white rabbit object (cf. Jurassic Park) in her life.
Anyway, if any of this resonates, you need to know that there was no perfect world solution, no contortion that would have successfully fended off this outcome. Once you started to trigger her, nothing was going to de-escalate that process but her own healing.
It's also critical that we see BPD as a neurotype. No one is unworthy of relationships and friendship and support, but they often have to understand their own mentality before they can functionally negotiate with others. It doesn't matter how good we are as communicators if the other person doesn't recognize and understand their own triggers.