starting over

[sanmagic7]

feeling better today.  as someone in my other journal wrote, i'm not doing it wrong, just doing what works best for me.  also talked w/ my D about it, and she's never felt like she fits in here, either.  it's true, i don't often hold the same life values as others here - i'm much more curious, more likely to be adventurous, less trendy/more comfortable, more accepting of my body, especially in public.  stuff like that.  free spirit and mostly unconstrained.  i've been told people are jealous of that, envious of how i've lived.  intimidated by me, even, cuz they can't see a pattern when it comes to my words or actions. 

it's just difficult at times, to be thrown back into the midst of that mindset when i'm around others.  i was raised very conservatively, my cousins are extremely conservative, and i'm just not.  i haven't been around very many of those kinds of people for a long time, and it kind of took me by surprise, i guess.  i just don't like feeling judged.

when my D and i were talking, she brought up the incident of meeting my cousin.  my D was playing her video games online w/ others - something she does every day as part of her routine and part of her way to socialize and relax her brain/mind. so, that's what she was doing when i introduced them, and my cousin immediately said 'how old are you?'.  my D was quick, and said 1002.  the next day i realized how very disrespectful that was of my cousin, in that tone of voice.  to me, a very limited world view, one that isn't very accepting.

families . . .

[sanmagic7]

it's been a while.  been sick w/ stress flu, it's only just beginning to get better.  still not walking right, tho.

this thing w/ my cousins has really knocked me for a loop.  have gotten so very tired of feeling like an outcast or some kind of fruit loop just because i see or do things differently than what 'they' might consider 'normal'.  when i went for the visit, one of them said - o, you're wearing a dress.  haven't seen anyone wearing a dress in a long time.'  since there was no compliment in there, it felt like a judgment.  but a lot of their 'being' felt judgmental cuz i wasn't the same religion as they, (which has been a bone of contention in my family forever, actually, cuz my mom left her religion when she got married to my dad, and her family disowned her, priests wouldn't baptize me cuz she had strayed from her religion, and one of these cousins would actually cry for me cuz she was taught that since i wasn't the same religion as they were, i was going to *. period. then i moved out of the country for a period of time which was referred to as 'and you (meaning me) were who knows where!'.

am i just too sensitive?  i know i am sensitive, have been called out on numerous occasions for being 'different' such as from a therapy supervisor to a colleague - this is san, our flaky therapist.  not really complimentary, again.  i know i have actual, thought-out reasons for what i do, and they have always made sense to me.  i know i would not be alive today if i hadn't gone to mexico - i ran from an intolerable life, and didn't know where else to go.  but i was dying where i was, so had to go somewhere.

ach!  the other day i thought about the idea that these kinds of 'judgments' or non-acceptance sting/hurt cuz the person believes them in the first place.  i know i'm different, have a different perspective from many of the people here where i live now, which is where i was born and raised, and have felt much more accepted in other places i've lived which had different cultures or viewpoints on living and being.  i just don't like feeling judged because of it.  and maybe that's my own projection.  but i've lived to the best of my ability the other way, doing things the way others wanted or approved of - maybe that's the word/feeling that stings so much, that my way of being isn't approved of in this part of the country - and all it did was repress the real me to the extent that i had anxiety about being me since i was a little girl.  well, that's not right, either.

so, i continue to struggle, but i hope letting this out will help.  struggling to be is not new.

maybe i just need to accept w/in myself that i DO do things differently than others, well, actually, i do accept that.  but i don't like the feeling of being put down somehow because of it. 

[Chart]

Hello San, hoo-boy where can I begin... so many things in your post ring for me too... Like "am I too sensitive"? Moley jehosephat, I say that in my head all the time. I wonder I wonder I wonder... I speculate, I analyze, I reflect... if only I wasn't so darn "sensitive"...
True and not true... maybe. But for me the thing is not to not be sensitive, but rather not be controlled in my reaction... AND (of course) not beating myself up all the time "because" I'm so sensitive.
Ouf (as the French say)

So lately, what's been formulating in my brain is, Yes, be sensitive, but re-wire the impact of my sensitivity.

Not easy, but I'm getting some ideas and trying out some new thought experiments. Just an example... I watched something that encouraged attaching the "desired-thought" (not what I'm actually experiencing) to the fact that I am Conscious. Hard to describe... Like the fake it technique, but I force the thought and bring with it that all this/that is solid Consciousness.

Did that make any sense?

I'm going to continue and the try and explain it better.

Regarding your past life in Mexico... Have you read Thomas Wolf, You Can't Go Home Again?

Imo, you have not returned to your birthplace. It's no longer that. But probably you know that already. I can't imagine, for the life of me ever going back to my ancient haunts anywhere in the US. Even visits to Paris now are too heavy, too much past, too much feeling of sadness for the naive boy I used to be. Just too weird. It's culture shock with each little walk. Maybe I'm in denial. But it seems more and more the past is not interesting for me.

But I'm rambling... sorry :-)

I'm on the highway, returning from a short week of work. Some time of reflection.

Thinking about you, glad you're feeling a little better.

    

[Papa Coco]

San,

That religious abuse is one of the most insidious parts of my life also. My family was very weird. THEY forced me to go to church 6 days a week for 14 years, and THEY put me into Catholic school against my will and ignored my begging them to let me go to a safer public school with my neighborhood friends. And then when I succumbed to the teachings of the church, that same family scolded me for being religious. (Why teach me something you don't want me to know??) Talk about confusing. Then when I walked away from all that religious stuff, THEN they criticized me for becoming atheist and not believing in what they'd taught me. So...I was darned if I did and darned if I didn't. Now I'm crazy.

I've come to understand that they were nothing more than common, run-of-the-mill bullies. And that's what bullies do. They bully. Period. They would bully me regardless of what I was doing. They'd bully me for going to church and they'd bully me for not going to church. If I parted my hair on the right, they told me I should have parted it on the left. So, when I parted it on the left, they told me I should have parted it on the right. They just used anything as a reason to bully me. When you say that your relatives judged you for wearing a dress, I feel like the more accurate phrasing would be they bullied you for any reason they could grab at at the moment. To me, judging and bullying are synonyms.

If you'd have worn pants that same day they would have said the exact same thing, but they'd have said, "oh I haven't seen anyone wear [any color here] in a long time.

I have developed a response that I'm losing control of. When someone says anything like that to me, I automatically start laughing out loud. I worry that one day I'll get beat up for it, but I can't seem to stop it. It's a kneejerk reaction. But if anyone behaves like a bully around me, I suddenly think it's hysterical and I laugh before I can stop myself.

Maybe I've just taken as much bullying as I can handle in my life and there isn't room for any more of it in my psyche

I made a sign once. I should have t-shirts made with this: "The thing I hate most about bullying is that it works."

Personally I respect you more for not being "normal". Normal is not all it's cracked up to be. Normal people don't make history. Normal people don't solve social problems. Normal people follow the herd. Conformity is the only thing they're good at. Lemmings.

Elvis and Einstein weren't normal.

I think being who we are is the greatest gift we can give back to our creator. Even if the world tries to bully it out of us. It's the bullying, judgy, poison tongued conformists who are disappointing their creator.

[Chart]

I have developed a response that I'm losing control of. When someone says anything like that to me, I automatically start laughing out loud. I worry that one day I'll get beat up for it, but I can't seem to stop it. It's a kneejerk reaction. But if anyone behaves like a bully around me, I suddenly think it's hysterical and I laugh before I can stop myself.

Incredible. I VERY often have the same reaction in similar situations. I also have that same laugh when faced with blatant hypocrisy in other people. The guy I'm currently working for/with does this often. He criticizes others, then behaves in exactly the same manner. He's completely oblivious and I've taken to laughing and making a two-sided comment/joke when he does this.
Perhaps that's a little immature on my part too. I think eventually I want to take more and more a distant position in situations where I realize the person is actually unhealthy or toxic. It's all about being conscious and "tweaking" myself towards health.

[Hope67]

 

[sanmagic7]

yep, chart, it made sense.  the desired thought rather than the actual thought - i did think about embracing my uniqueness rather than feeling attacked for it or ashamed of it or that somehow i'm wrong becuz of it.  i mean, i'm not going to change it, how i am and i know my choices make sense to me even if not to anyone else. maybe it's that i've struggled to feel acknowledged, accepted for who i am that bites at me. maybe i deserve to be angry about it, but what i want to do is what PC does, and that's to laugh at it. will probably chew on this for a bit.  we'll see.  thank you so for being here w/ me. 

pc, so good to hear from you.  thanks for all you said.  i love your laughter response - when i grow up i want to be like that!  lol!  and i agree, following the herd has not been my style, even when i was trying my hardest to do so.  somehow, i'd always say or do something that was 'out of the box'.  and i do know i've helped people, on the job or off, because of my uniqueness, my perspective and approach to life.  i think i want to give myself more credit for that, and maybe i can help myself not be so affected by doing so. that would be nice.

chart, i'm all for being a little immature at times, being a little petty towards some people.  i usually do it in my head, altho i probably have laughed at people at times, too.  but, i agree w/ you, they're probably toxic and not very good people to be around in the first place, or for too long of a time.  thanks for your support, as always.

thanks for that hug, hope. always good to see you.

feeling better, little by little.  i was explaining how this stress thing works on me to my galpal yesterday.  gave her examples of the stressors just in my first marriage were like, all the losses, the moves, the situations such as being told at 7 1/2 mos. pregnant that he didn't want to be married anymore, having to move, again, to another state, and when my D1 was 7 weeks old, having to move back to my home state, live w/ my mother, all that jazz.  after each incident, i'd say, 'how stressful was that?' and she'd acknowledge, until i just kept going thru more and more until she, with horror in her voice said 'o my god - i see how you could still be so full of stress cuz you never had time in between what kept happening to resolve it' or words to that effect.

and i left out some of the more important things that happened during that time, both in the hospital and w/ me and the total depression i was fighting at one point.  dark, deep depression i wasn't aware of.  she's been w/ her husband for over 50 yrs., has had a stable relationship, no money problems, kids are grown and successful.  she's never even seen another side of anything, except the abuse in her childhood that's never been truly acknowledged. 

but i think it gave her a more concrete idea of why stressors in the here and now have such a radical effect on me.  i was able to agree that since i've moved here, i've had less stress flu, which is good.  it's helped to have someone like her to have my back.  she has really been helpful to me and my D, food, money, clothes.  she told me she's never helped anyone like this before, and that it feels really good in her heart to do so now.  i don't think she's ever known anyone in my situation before.  a good experience all the way around.

thinking about my last post, and responses, i do want to get out of that sensitivity spot when i'm feeling judged. i think it's become a knee-jerk reaction now - i've been ridiculed, mocked, humiliated for being me too many times, so it's just a sore spot, i guess.  i just want to be accepted for my quirkiness, cuz i don't think it's a bad thing.  rather, a different perspective.  maybe i've just been around too many close-minded people for too long. 

when i moved to so. calif. back in my early 20's, living on the beach, being exposed to surfers and hippie culture in the late 60's, early 70's, it was very freeing and i felt accepted rather than judged, felt free to be me.  it was a revelation, a different mindset, and i absolutely loved it.  everyone i hung around with was quite mellow which opened up a new world for me.  i tried to bring that feeling w/ me when i had to move back w/ my baby, but that didn't really work too well.  still, i lived it as best i could in my mind, and just kept looking at the world differently, even more so for the experience of being there, than the people i knew here.

and, yeah, you can't go home again, in a sense, but it didn't really feel homey to me before i left anyway. still don't carry this mindset w/ me, except in the understanding of how others here see their world, which is quite small, secluded, and a lot of non-acceptance of people and cultures which are simply different, but to many of them simply weird.  so i guess i'll remain a weirdo and accept that's how it is,  but i've made my world much smaller now as in how many people i allow in it, so for the most part, i'm content with that.

[Desert Flower]

Hello dear San, I'm sorry I've been away, processing stuff, I'll get to that in my own journal maybe.

But I just wanted to say there's so much I recognise in your post of August 8! I've always felt different myself, me and my brother too, than the rest of the family. With me, this isn't even a religious thing. I think it was just our mother being different than the rest of her family, they just didn't know how to relate to her, and in effect they didn't know how to relate to us. I remember my brother and I would walk around with this imaginary neon sigh above our heads, saying 'different'.

I think it has to do with a sense of feeling disconnected from our family. And like Papa Coco's experience, some of them were just bullies.

I actually have a tattoo for this feeling of being not 'normal'. It's a skull tattoo, that is not a 'normal' tattoo for women to have. But it is actually normal, Death is the great normalizer.

I also fled when I had the chance, as did my brother, to different parts of the country.

And even now, I'm on holiday in a very religious part of the country, and we're going on some outing with the kids, and that is enough to make me afraid of going because I fear they will disapprove of me, as I am so very apparently not their religion, with all these tattoos showing.

And my hysteric laughter response came out too the other day. We were at this theme park and there was this new haunted house attraction. And I knew I was afraid of even thinking about going in but with the kids, you know, I went anyway. And in the waiting line, somewhere someone slammed a window shut and I screamed instinctively. And then this creaky door opened and some creepy (actor) guy showed himself and singeled me out to come in with him on my own, leaving the rest of the line behind the closed door. It completely freaked me out and all I could produce was this hysteric giggle.

I love how your friend helping you is helping the both of you.

And I love the broad minded person you are.

Big hugs.

    

And yes, I think we're sensitive. But I like to think about what Pete Walker wrote about that. It also gives us a dimension to feel things at a deeper level and an opportunity to grow.

[SenseOrgan]

Not sure how relevant this still is. Mostly a response to your six day old entry.

There's no such thing as being too sensitive in my opinion. It's a hard to be very sensitive, yes. But if that's an integral part of who you are, it deserves to be validated. No matter how difficult it can be to live with. Even more so if people around you are hostile towards your uniqueness. You can't be who you're not. You can only fake that, which is a terrible way to live.

It's very difficult to be torn between the normal human need to belong, and to be relatively different from the people around you. Especially when you've missed validation in your (early) life or got the opposite. For the more fawn-prone people, it makes us doubt our own experience, and often gives a lot more weight to how others judge us than justified.

When you come from a deep conviction of unworthiness, it can be difficult to see that other people are actually behaving like * towards you. The thought train can stop there. "I don't want to be treated this way" is perfectly fine. How much justification do you expect others to give for that, and how much do you expect yourself to bring to the table before it's allowed? It's a great trait that you're willing to reflect upon your own character and behaviour. And there are times and places to go and not go there. Is this where you want to go now, or is this the ICR taking up mental real estate?

A significant part of my sensitivity is the open wound of emotional neglect and abuse. I do think it's important to acknowledge that if it's the case for you too here. I can see how I can greatly constrict around certain triggers because they stir this wound. It always hits harder when I'm already low. When I feel really good, the same things sometimes hardly bother me. It makes more sense to me that in those moments, the trauma isn't surfacing than that my character suddenly changed.

There has been a long period, right after a series of experiences with ayahuasca, where I wasn't triggered in this way. Let's say I experienced what it's like to be not so very much in the grips of trauma. For years, actually. It made me way less reactive. Still sensitive, but not in such a constricted, reactive way. Sensitivity and reactivity have a different feeling tone. The former is part of my basic character, the latter is a result of what happened to me.

How about starting from the idea that you are okay and the others are in the wrong for a bit? I think this thing is skewed way too much to being self critical for most of us here. 

[sanmagic7]

DF, congrats on your tattoos!   and i totally relate to hysteric laughter in the haunted house - have done that nearly a million (at least!) times!  thank you so much for this post, your wisdom, and your strength as well as your kind words.  i'm smiling right now.  it really does feel good not to feel alone. 

SO, totally relevant.  thank you for all your insight.  that's where my open wound comes from, the neglect and abuse via humiliation, criticism, and mocking.  those are the things that come up for me when i feel like i'm in a similar situation.  you know, if being different had been celebrated in our youth, hug your quirks, keep an open mind, embrace your differences, what a difference that would have made. right? so, the idea that just struck me is to re-parent myself in this area.  thank you so much for this, honestly.  it gave me a direction i hadn't thought of.  the beauty of sharing here - getting more and new ideas to continue healing. 

i'm quite excited after reading these responses, and the idea to re-parent myself, do some eye movements, maybe some EFT tapping on accepting myself and my quirkiness.  we sure weren't taught to accept ourselves for who we are, with all our similarities and differences, but to my mind, maybe we deserve to celebrate those traits of ours.

i mean, look at us here.  so many of us had been pushed to conform to some image of perfection, like me, which, no. 1, isn't attainable, and no. 2, forced us into not liking or accepting who we are as individuals, let alone celebrating ourselves for having a different worldview, giving us the chance to add something new and different to a conversation, a problem, or a way to live.  we are diverse people, after all.  it's like in the old days teachers trying to force left-handed kids to be right-handed, as if being left-handed was somehow wrong.  i remember hearing about kids getting smacked w/ a ruler on the hand!

i knew a woman who was a devout follower of a certain religion, was heartbroken that her kids hadn't embraced it. then one day she admitted to me that she didn't know that she, herself, actually believed in the basic tenets.  yet, she continued to push her kids to be more involved, be believers.  i found that quite ironic.  could it be hypocritical as well?

i so appreciate having that topic w/ my cousins be spoken to again, even tho it was a while ago that it happened.  it's still been lingering in my mind.  every comment here, however, addressing that, has given me more strength, more insight, and more oooomph! to see it differently and be ok w/ being me.  thank you!!!

[Desert Flower]

  

[Blueberry]

i so appreciate having that topic w/ my cousins be spoken to again, even tho it was a while ago that it happened.  it's still been lingering in my mind.  every comment here, however, addressing that, has given me more strength, more insight, and more oooomph! to see it differently and be ok w/ being me.

  

that's where my open wound comes from, the neglect and abuse via humiliation, criticism, and mocking

I know you're responding to SO, but this was a significant part of the emotional abuse done to me, but it took me a long time to understand that it was abuse and that it was done with an abusive purpose in mind.

Re-parenting those type wounds sounds a good idea to me. 

[sanmagic7]

DF, thanks for the cheers!  to tell you the truth, i already forgot that i was going to re-parent that stuff for myself!  that's how together my mind is nowadays.  maybe this will help me remember.

thank you, blueberry, for cheering me on.  i thought about this last nite before bed, totally forgot what i wanted to re-parent myself for!  i knew i wanted to do something, even forgot about the EFT tapping.  i'll see if i can remember today. i think it sounds like a good idea, too. 

feeling ok today, always a win.  am making potato salad, 1/3 potatoes, 2/3 cauliflower, lots of chopped up veggies and some boiled eggs.  a meal in a bowl w/ lower carbs.  has been one of my favorites for a number of years now.  so, i'd better get back to it while i have some energy.  i run out of that quite quickly nowadays.

[SenseOrgan]

A big hug for the little one 

[NarcKiddo]

You've mentioned your potato salad before. It sounds really nice. I keep meaning to try that.