Day 10 What prevents me from telling people how I feel

What prevents me from telling people how I feel: extensive experience with hostility and condemnation, rejection and bullying from people who on the one hand present themselves as upright, confident and righteous, yet who are actually emotionally delicate, superficial in their values and deficient in integrity.
I know that ideally I'm supposed to feel compassion and that the problem is that I don't accept them because of lack of self acceptance, but I think that I just feel enraged about having to humor people all the time and about having to hold back from telling all these wimpy busybodies off. I cringe and recoil from that rage, too. I feel very stuck.

 

Hi Fredric,

I see that you're doing important self-reflection here. I suggest you do your best to allow all of what is arising, especially the anger/rage at the sense that " I have to accept them even though I don't want to." This is itself a very key place of Tension for you, I think. Very common, understandable.

So one important piece is to acknowledge this as a source of inner tension, and connect this insight to your symptoms every time they arise. Simply 1+1=2. No judgement, no need to fix; just a simple understanding of your real cause of symptoms.

Even this painful stuckness is a direct experience of tension. It is OK.

Further, if you want to work with this stuckness with more self-compassion and skill, discern the superego or Inner Critic here, and learn to disengage/or dismiss it. There is an embedded judgement that you are wrong for your rage. This can be worked with. See Soul Without Shame by Byron Brown.

Andy B

 

I totally hear you!!!! I have put up boundries with people at GREAT expense to my relationships, meaning they freaked out and went ballistic. It was very painful to bear the brunt of their pain - their frustration - which of course has nothing to do with me at those high levels. That is THEIR crap.

If you're dealing with someone that is not totally emotionally inept, you can get through it. But if they're sick (and maybe crazy) then it can be a volcano that erupts over and over again. It can be very scary.

I think my pain manifests not only physically but emotionally too. I can get caught in an emotional spiral that is every bit as scary as physical pain. I hope this work can uncover your repressed emotions! I have struggled with it - I think I'm making things more complicated than they are - classic.

Good LUCK! thanks for the post. Although I don't have a ton to offer, I do have encouragement.

 

I hear you too! In my case, it's not as bad as bullying, but it's about my mother, so I can't really cut her out of my life. Last week, we were at my nephew's birthday, and, since my son was sitting next to her, he wanted to show her pics of the house he bought. He tried twice, and everytime he only got to show two pictures before she started some random story about a totally different thing. He had a total of 6 or 7 pics, and just wanted to say something short about each one ("This is the kitchen. I will probably keep the stove and paint the cupboards. This is the ...") I promise you he wasn't boring the shit out of her with 5000 pics.

And it ticks me off so badly. No, she doesn't have Alzheimer's, and she's been like this for years. Basically, if you don't do what she does, the way she does it, you're wrongity-wrongity-wrong! Also, her stories are interesting, and yours aren't. Except you're a bad child, because you don't ever tell her anything about your life, and she wants to know! Aaargh. And she's convinced she's a good listener, and not judgmental at all.

When I left my sister's house, I could barely walk, my back seized up something fierce. I wasn't even feeling super-angry, at least not consciously, but obviously, my body was angry. When I got home and I got out of the car, the pain had evaporated. Fancy that, huh.

I want to treat her with compassion, but it's hard. So I keep my distance, I don't tell her anything she might find controversial, I don't expect to be able to finish one of my stories, and well, that's just sad. She's my mother, but she gets on my last nerve. The thing is, I can't change her. All I can do is change my own response. It's difficult.