Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Reciprocal Relationships with Others and Ourselves
Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: Garbanzo on July 21, 2019, 03:02:43 AM ---Sorry I deleted it. Sometimes I try not to respond with something that sounds like advice. Like I think about something, write and delete it. Also I was doing voice recognition so it was a little unclear anyways which doesn't help.
--- End quote ---
Aw, I got what you were saying but it was getting late and I was going to wait until today to write back :) And I've forgotten a lot of it now as well lol, my brain is like a sieve, but I think it was about opening up to people and that being difficult? Which I really identify with, although my brain is now saying is that what it said?! My memory is so bad lol, is voice recognition where it types it for you as you speak? xx
Twoapenny:
I've just realised, in the midst of my warbling mindset, that a big part of the problem I have with friends is that I don't like to discard them once I no longer have a use for them. It feels like a very narcissistic thing to do - I've taken what I need from you and I have no use for you now. It happens to me a lot and I hate it, so I hate doing it to other people. But I have realised that you can just get to a point in life where certain friends don't fit any more and I think that's what's happening to me now. I really want to be around people I can learn from and absorb information, advice and energy from. I think perhaps I've done that for a people a lot in the past (and found it exhausting) but my time is very limited now (because of my son) so I feel like I want to spend time with people who at least understand what the situation is. I find constantly explaining what we can and can't do exhausting and I feel like I spend a lot of my time with people who need the explanation. Today I want to spend mostly in bed, and I can because I've very purposely not been arranging things so I can be flexible and meet my own needs rather than worrying about anyone else. I think perhaps that's it; I just need to concentrate on moving forward in my own way and under my own steam and if people join in then great, but if people get left behind then perhaps it's just time to say that chapter's over and move on. Growing isn't easy! It feels bloody exhausting a lot of the time.
Twoapenny:
How do you guys cope with feelings of guilt? I am struggling at the minute. I want/need to reduce a couple of friendships - not cut them off completely or fall out with them but I am realising that I want more than some people can give me and rather than spending time and energy who can't give me what I need I want to keep the space open to look after myself and hopefully meet more people on the same wavelength.
I feel guilty about doing it - they're good people and they haven't done anything wrong, but I've realised for me that reciprocity (as Hops mentions) is important, as is regular contact. It doesn't have to daily or for many many hours but a text message now and again with no agenda other than "how are you, what are you up to" means a lot to me and is something I want in my life (and am lucky enough to get from some people). I also feel like I need deep connections, like the ones I have on here. I want to be able to have some conversations in real life in the same way that I do with you guys. So I need to free myself up a bit from this but feel guilty about doing it. Any tips?
My other guilt point is my mum, partly brought on by something G says in one of her threads about her mum being defined by the men in her life. I am aware that women's lib didn't exist when my mum was born; she grew up in a world where women were expected to look nice, keep house and keep quiet. Her education was basic, even though she's intelligent, and her own home life wasn't nice. Life was generally tougher in those days with fewer distractions (I think of the times I veg in front of the TV for nine hours to block out the loneliness or the boredom and ask myself what my mum would have been able to do years ago when it wasn't possible to watch telly for nine hours?). Her turning to drink seems inevitable. She is herself trapped in an abusive relationship, albeit a luxurious one, so she doesn't see it that way, but he controls everything she does. So there are a lot of negatives there and she did grow up in a different world to the one I grew up in. That said, she has had opportunities to do something about it and has chosen not to but again, sometimes the pain of facing up to what made you the way you are is too much. None of that excuses the things she's done and I don't want to engage with her - poking the sleeping bear is the way Lighter puts it and that's absolutely right. But there are times when I wish I could mother her and give her what she never got and what I think that little girl inside her still desperately wants. So I'm feeling guilty about my mum at the moment. I'm aware she's getting older and that she has health problems and it is alien to me to leave an older person to get on with it and not give two hoots. It just jars with everything I think is important in the world, but at the same time I can't bear to be anywhere near her all the time her husband is still alive. Just the thought of him still makes my flesh crawl. I find myself picturing one scenario where my mum dies suddenly and that's it, there's no getting older and needing help stage. Alternatively I see him dying first and there being a reconnection between myself and my mum (which realistically would be a disaster but some part of me feels that I need to see or speak to her before she dies). I find the prospect of having to manage the least damaging scenario unappealing and alien but equally feel guilty about not being able to make things different. Which I know makes no sense and I know there's no point to guilt - but it is still there :)
Anyway - picnic in the park this morning with the nice mums. Son is doing art and craft at college, I've got the nice mums meeting, then some jobs to do in town and then getting my back done. Son will be collected, we'll be home by about 3.30pm and for the first time in months I feel like I have a manageable workload in front of me. That is all good.
Meh:
The emotional struggle is real. With both the friend situation and the mum situation.
Picnic sounds kinda pleasant.
Hopalong:
I hope the rest of your day went well, Tupp.
Sounded like some good getting out.
About the guilt over friends who are less supportive than you need. Instead of framing it to yourself that you are "discarding" them, could you instead try thinking about them with gratitude without the guilt? More like privately "thanking and releasing them" (from your expectations)? IOW, you can stop bothering about as much contact, but leave the angst over it behind. You can love yourself AND old but ineffective friends. Just by thinking of them peacefully; loving them doesn't mean staying locked in a harmful painful yearning. You can love people without being much in touch. Maybe you feel gratitude for times when it did click well and meet mutual needs, and "releasing them" from keeping up with your present self. You have grown and changed and are seeking more. And that's okay and it's normal and LOADS of people evolve through relationships that way throughout life.
It doesn't make you an N or a "discarder" of people. Friendship is an active thing, if it's satisfying. And when it becomes clear it's not and can't be...it's okay to think of it as a relationship that worked once, but isn't active in your life now. With peace.
As to the Mom guilt, you do have compassion for her, but your compassion for your own hurt girl-self, who was so badly injured by her behavior, plus the monster's, has got to take priority. Perhaps if monster dies first, you'll be able to have some visits and closure with her. Even if it doesn't work out that way, you'll still find your way to that peace. You've punished yourself enough. And your Mom's age and declining health is sad for her as for every old person, but it comes to every single one of us and is a natural if poignant part of life.
You know you can't change that. But perhaps as you continue your deep work on self-healing and finding ways to carry on, you will somehow connect with the little seed of mothering in yourself that did not grow in her. It's not present in her body and her mind as she lives now, but mothering is still in you, and in the world around you. You can find it for yourself as so many have to do, and in doing that, I believe you will find peace about her. (She will find her own comforts as life winds down, because the seeds of that are in her, too. It's not on you to fix it for her, though in an ideal universe, of course you'd like to.)
Hugs
Hops
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