Shadow work - betrayal and disappointment
Nov. 21st, 2022 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamingsword#2. Think about one time where you’ve felt betrayed. What would you say to the person who broke your trust?
I trusted you to keep those things safe for me, and I honestly have no idea why you threw them away. You didn’t even ask me. Why was I so forgiving of you, when it can’t even be said to have been an honest mistake? I mean, I know I was lonely and you were one of my few friends. But my self respect really was just that cheaply bought, that I would forgive you throwing my letters and comic books away when I had asked you to keep them safe for me. When your embarrassed and desultory apology was all I got from you about it, I gave up so easily on ever getting anything different from anyone. It wasn’t even a trauma, I just … never expected to be given things back after that? Because I thought that you cared and that I wasn’t worth better than how people treated me. How you treated me. And I deserved better than that from you.
#3. Write about a time you felt let down by someone you’d previously looked up to.
Well, Lily/Christina/June/whatever throwing away my letters and the hand-drawn comic books that David made was super disappointing. And I had thought that she was the safest friend to leave them with, because her mom was trying to be a “cool mom”, who would not toss hand drawn comic books and printed out letters. So when I was trying to re-write my brain to not be in love with David, I wanted to put the physical things that reminded me of him in a box and leave the box with someone else until I was sure that I had done it.
And a few months later I asked for the box back and it was not her mom that had been the problem at all. She had just thrown it out, bc she “thought i didn’t want them anymore”. Except that doesn’t make any sense. And I didn’t stick up for myself at all, just learned that I could not ask people for things. That there were no “safe people” to ask for important things. That depending on others, even people who cared, was just another opportunity to be let down. And I kept that belief from my teens into at least my early thirties. Hell, it still colors how I look at the world now.
It feels petty to even still remember this incident, like, of all the things my brain could choose to remember, it picked this? But I guess maybe what I remember is either more random or more negatively focused than I had thought.
I trusted you to keep those things safe for me, and I honestly have no idea why you threw them away. You didn’t even ask me. Why was I so forgiving of you, when it can’t even be said to have been an honest mistake? I mean, I know I was lonely and you were one of my few friends. But my self respect really was just that cheaply bought, that I would forgive you throwing my letters and comic books away when I had asked you to keep them safe for me. When your embarrassed and desultory apology was all I got from you about it, I gave up so easily on ever getting anything different from anyone. It wasn’t even a trauma, I just … never expected to be given things back after that? Because I thought that you cared and that I wasn’t worth better than how people treated me. How you treated me. And I deserved better than that from you.
#3. Write about a time you felt let down by someone you’d previously looked up to.
Well, Lily/Christina/June/whatever throwing away my letters and the hand-drawn comic books that David made was super disappointing. And I had thought that she was the safest friend to leave them with, because her mom was trying to be a “cool mom”, who would not toss hand drawn comic books and printed out letters. So when I was trying to re-write my brain to not be in love with David, I wanted to put the physical things that reminded me of him in a box and leave the box with someone else until I was sure that I had done it.
And a few months later I asked for the box back and it was not her mom that had been the problem at all. She had just thrown it out, bc she “thought i didn’t want them anymore”. Except that doesn’t make any sense. And I didn’t stick up for myself at all, just learned that I could not ask people for things. That there were no “safe people” to ask for important things. That depending on others, even people who cared, was just another opportunity to be let down. And I kept that belief from my teens into at least my early thirties. Hell, it still colors how I look at the world now.
It feels petty to even still remember this incident, like, of all the things my brain could choose to remember, it picked this? But I guess maybe what I remember is either more random or more negatively focused than I had thought.
betrayed
Date: 2022-11-22 02:06 pm (UTC)Re: betrayed
Date: 2022-11-27 05:25 am (UTC)I have to be super careful about comparing myself to other people, as it makes me judgmental, bitter, and a fun-suck to be around. I hope you have better luck with it, as I hope you are not using this as a form of mental self-harm the way I used to do.
Re: betrayed
Date: 2022-11-27 10:19 pm (UTC)