Processing Negative Emotions

[soos_mite_ah]

 

[soos_mite_ah]

The Problems In My Life At This Moment 

1. Friendship Problems (Pain Level: 8) 

• I feel like I'm experiencing a lot of grief regarding how my relationships are changing now that I'm an adult and our lives are structured differently. I'm getting better coping mechanisms and better mindsets to deal with a lot of difficult emotions but it can be difficult and intense at times. There are some posts that I saw on social media that really resonated with me to where I found myself crying when I saw them: 
  • "I saw my friend having fun without me and suddenly I felt embarrassed for thinking we were close. It wasn't that they went without me. It was how quickly my brain turned 'I wasn't there' to ' I don't matter anymore.' Then, every late reply, every plan I found out about later, every 'we should hang soon' started feeling like evidence. I wanted to ask 'are we okay?' Insterad, I liked the post and tried to look normal. Because how do you say 'I know you're allowed other friends, I just need to know I still matter,' without sounding jealous? So I checked who was there, how long they'd known each other, and whether they looked happier than they do with me. Then, I felt embarrassed twice. Once for being left out,  and again for caring this much. Friendship anxiety isn't always 'don't have other friends.' Sometimes, it's 'please don't quietly stop choosing me while I'm still choosing you.' Maybe that photo wasn't proof, but the fear didn't come from nowhere. It remembered every friendship that went quiet before I knew I was losing it. For tonight, one photo can be one photo. It can hurt without becoming proof that I'm being left behind." 
  • "I noticed I wasn't included. I just made sure nobody noticed that I noticed. They mentioned plans I didn't know about. I smiled like I already knew. I asked one casual question so I wouldn't sound as hurt as I felt. Then, I went home and started checking where I stood with everyone. Who gets invited first. Who gets the full story. Who gets remembered without asking. I kept saying it's probably nothing. But my body had already gone quiet. The worst part wasn't missing the plan. It was pretending I didn't care so I wouldn't look needy. So I got a little smaller, replied less, waited to see if anyone would notice. Sometimes friendship anxity is acting completely normal while quietly mourning your place. I didn't need to be included in everything. I just wanted to know I still belonged somewhere." 
  • "Nothing happend, I just slowly felt less included. Nothing happened, I just stopped feeling like I belonged there. I heard about plans after they already happened. I noticed I was always reaching first. Then, I went home and replayed everything. What hurt most was feeling embarrassed that I cared. But wanting to feel included isn't needy. Some friendships don't end, they just feel different. That quiet distance can hurt more than people know. You're not too much for wanting to still belong." 
  • "I know they're allowed to have other friends. I still stared at the picture like I'd been replaced. It wasn't only that they went without me. It was how quickly my made it mean I mattered less. Suddenly, every 'we should hang out soon' felt like something they only said to be nice. I compared everything. How easily they talked, ho happy they looked, whether they seemed happier without me. And the embarrassing part? Nobody actually left me. I was already grieving my place in their life. So I got quieter, replied a little later, acted like I was busy, just to see if they'd notice I was pulling away. When they didn't notice right away, my brain called it proof. Not proof that people have lives, proof that I was optional. I didn't want to control who they cared about. I just needed to know that caring about someone else didn't erase me. Maybe the feeling wasn't 'I want to be your only friend.' Maybe it was 'please don't mkae me easy to lose.' Tonight, I'm trying to let the picture just be a picture, not a goodbye I have to survive." 

2. I look and Feel Gross (Pain Level: 6) 

• I think this is related to the friendship problems but it then bleed into other things as well. I feel gross about my life because I feel out of alignment with my values. The best example of this is when I think about how much I value platonic connection but then I'm spending most of my time with my significant other. Don't get me wrong, I do love him and we have a good relationship but to me, platonic love is just as important if not more important than romantic love. And because so much of my social diet is coming from the romantic relationship, I feel gross. I know I didn't intentionally set up my life this way. I have been trying to make friends and put myself out there but I haven't had much success. I know because of this effort, the way I carry myself, and the way that I view this relationship that I'm not one of those male centered women. But I think if most people look at my life, if they didn't know me, they would think I'm one of those sad, pathetic women who only hangs around their significant other. And that makes me feel like my inability to actualize my values is reflective of some kind of moral failing.
• Then, when I think about feeling gross, I also start thinking about body image. I feel gross in my body, in my size specifically. While I have a flat stomach and the faintest amount of abs, I can still squish a good amount of fat. My inner thighs touch as I walk. My muscular legs feel heavy sometimes. I have these small back rolls that feel like they ruin every outfit. And while I have muscular arms, because I'm not super lean, I don't look skinny or jacked. I know that I'm not objectively a big person and I think one of the big reasons why I feel the way that I do is because of how the definition of skinny has shifted in the last couple of years with all the celebrities being on ozempic. I have written about this in the past so I'm not going to repeat myself too much. But this shit feels inescapable and I can feel the collective brainrot forming in real time. 
• On a similar note, I do think I'm neglecting my physical appearance. A lot of my clothes have holes and mystery stains I cannot seem to get rid of. My hair has overgrown and I've been due for a haircut for a couple months now. I need to get my perm re done. I just don't want to spend that kind of money considering how I took my leave of absense and I didn't have any income coming in for two months. But yeah, I feel like a gremlin. 

3. I don't know about my reproductive choices (Pain Level: 3)

• I feel like I have mostly made peace with this because I got to process a lot of my complex feelings around motherhood and parenthood. I also know where I'm going in that I need more life experience to really know what I want. Which is why the pain level is low. But it can still feel a bit existential crisis inducing at times as I'm getting older and I'm feeling more pressure to figure out this area of my life. 

4. Wanting to Move to New York (Pain Level: 3)

• Similar to the bit about my reproductive choices, my pain level is relatively low because it's not super pressing but it is sometimes existential crisis inducing. I feel like I want to move because I think it would be much more in line with my values and the kind of life I want to build for myself. I care about walkable cities. I care about a more natural form of community with infrastructure to support that. I care about being in a place where the nuclear family and the so-called American dream is less emphasized, because it was never my dream. And sometimes, being in Dallas feels suffocating. I see people have their lives revolve around their jobs, buying a house, and popping out kids. There is nothing wrong with that but I don't see examples of the kind of life that I want to create for myself here. I don't care about the same things. And sometimes, I feel like I tell people what I want in life and they either think I'm juvenile (like *oh of course you will eventually come around to having kids and buying a house*) or they think that I'm crazy because they simply don't get the vision. I'm asking all these important questions of what settling down looks like for me and it sucks that I'm only being fed one narrative of what it means to be an adult and what it means to settle down. 
• I have always wanted to relocate to a larger city growing up and part of me feels sad and like a failure that I have been in the DFW area my whole life. Don't get me wrong, I don't think people are failures if they don't live outside their home town/city. I can think of some very legit reasons to do that. But it feels like a failure to me because I'm falling short on something that really matters to me. And I'm trying to reassure myself that me not living in New York right now isn't because of some kind of stagnation, fear, or passivity. I have been making decisions in a way that makes sense for my life to build my life in a sustainable way. 
  • I have had situations in my life where I did eventually get what I wanted but I got it later than I hoped. I think sex and dating is a good example of this. It felt agonizing to wait when I saw my peer reach various milestones before I did. Sometimes, I wondered if something is wrong with me. Then, I remind myself of a piece of advice I got a while back that was along the lines of "you can get what you want now and have it be mediocre or disappointing OR you can get what you want later on, but it's going to be everything you have dreamed about and more." And as far as dating and sex goes, I'm really glad I waited because that saved me a lot of trauma, unnecessary heart break, and potentially dangerous situations. And I think the same mindset can also be applied to friendships as well as my desire to move to New York. 
• Then there is the way that this ties into my reproductive choices. Part of me wonders if I would have a more favorable outlook on motherhood if I wasn't in the suburbs. Another part of me wonders if I would have the same desire to have a kid if I had more of a community and I have gotten closer to achieving some of my  life goals such as relocating or travelling more. Because, there is a chance that if I have more of a sense of community and I felt like I was progressing more in my long term goals that I would want to have a kid less because I'm less lonely and I feel less stagnant/ unfulfilled. But, there is also a chance that if I have the community and I achieve these goals that I would want to be a parent more in order to share the beautiful life I have created for myself with a kid. I don't know which camp I fall into yet and I think the only way that I can find out is by creating the life that I want for myself. Because either way, regardless of if I decide to be a parent, I will still build a beautiful life for myself. And I think moving to New York is a part of that process. 

5. Mommy Issues (Pain Level: 5)

• I feel like whenever I'm dealing with something challenging in my life or whenever I feel like I'm in a place where I really need guidance, I'm reminded of how I don't have that. I don't have adults with more wisdom and life experience to guide me through the above. I feel like this hits the hardest when it comes to my issues around friendships. Part of the reason I value friendship so much is because I had to create a chosen family since my homelife wasn't great and I had no siblings. And I feel like if I had a more stable home, I would be getting my needs met more and I wouldn't put all my eggs in the friendship basket. And even if I still had a big hole where my friendships would be in, my parents would have given me better tools and more life experience to navigate this aspect of adulthood. I also think about this in the context of my romantic life where I feel like if I had to deal with a breakup, I couldn't go to my parents about that. I would have to deal with the pain all by myself. And lastly, I think about this in the context of my reproductive choices. 
• Part of the reason why issue #3 is listed as a pain level of 3 is because it overlaps with the mommy issues. I'm scared of becoming like my mother and mistreating my kid. And even though I'm taking waaay more precautions to prevent something like that, such as working on my own issues, carefully considering if parenthood is for me, and educating myself on how to treat children, part of me wonders if any of that will kick in when I'm actually faced with the realities of parenthood. I'm also scared of motherhood because I feel like I lack social support if this is the decision I end up making. Not only do I not have a village, but I also don't have a mother who I feel like I would be able to go to in times of need and distress. The thought of her holding my hand as I'm going into labor and feeling that sense of support feels like a fantasy, like I'm not imagining my real mother. Ideally, I would love to have a mother by my side as I navigate the difficulties of motherhood. But not my mom specifically. When it comes to my mom specifically, I would rather bear the burden by myself because adding my mom to the mix will make things more stressful and likely will multiply my problems. And I think that's pretty tragic. 
• Then I think about how I feel gross and how sometimes, that relates to me not feeling like a woman at all. I feel like a girl and I feel like an adult, but for whatever reason I don't feel like a woman. I think part of the reason why it's hard for me to define womanhood is because it's easy for me to deconstruct it and the narratives around it. It's very easy for me to see what womanhood is not and what it can be limitted by. And perhaps, it's better and easier to define womanhood for myself and how it applies to me rather than having a broad definition of sorts. But, I think another aspect of this is because I never had a solid female role model in my life. I learned about what not to do by watching her, not what to do, similar to how I define womanhood by what it is not rather than what it is. I feel like I have had to figure out things considered traditionally feminine things on my own, whether that be how puberty works, how to do my makeup, how to navigate social situations, how to cook, how do deal with dating and boys etc. And sometimes, I still feel lost. I still don't know how to do my hair and my fashion sense feels abysmal. And there is a part of me that feels more like a gremlin than a woman because gender is a performance and not only do I sometimes forget my lines, but sometimes it feels like I was never given lines in the first place. There is a freedom to that because instead of trying to recite prewritten lines, I can improvise and do what feels more natural to me. But the problem is, that's not how the play or broader society functions and people are still operating under and are still constrained by some lines, for better and for worse. And rather than having this decision to improvise coming from a declaration of my own authenticity, it comes from a place of having no other choice because I simply wasn't given the guidance in the first place. 

Edited August 28 by soos_mite_ah

[soos_mite_ah]

I feel like the above post can be summarized by this: 

 

Edited August 28 by soos_mite_ah

[soos_mite_ah]

Neglect 

I think this past year has me more in tuned with the way that neglect has shaped my life since I feel like my current social life is functionally emotionally unavailable. What do I mean by functionally emotionally unavailable? I mean that while the people in my life aren't weirdos and emotionally unavailable on a personal level, they do come off that way on due to systemic factors or because of "life just happening." And I think this functional emotional unavailability due to systemic factors has led my needs around connection, closeness, and fulfillment be left unmet. In otherwords, the system is set up in a way that a lot of people, including me, are being neglected. 

I have been in therapy for years now dealing with life's issues as well as trauma from my family. But I think I have been uncovering this layer of neglect that I didn't quite address before. I think the reason why I didn't address it until now, despite working on myself so much, is because it's hard to define what isn't there versus what actually happened. Like getting hit by your parent is easy to point to but a sense of disinterest coming from your parent over a stretch of time is harder to pin down. 

I think most of the neglect I have experienced (and continue to experience) is at the hands of my parents. I did also experience some neglect growing up in school usually in the form of peer exclusion or just being invisible romantically. But the parental neglect has been more impactful.My parents provided me with food, water, shelter, and an upper middle class material life to where I wasn't worried about college. But they also neglected literally every other aspect of parenting like helping me regulate my emotions, being there for me, empathizing with me, getting to know me, and teaching various life skills outside of academics. 

 I also think the affects of the neglect I have experienced in childhood manifests in many ways.

1. Feeling like the background character of my own life: 

I think the origins of this has to do with not really acknowledged or engaged with. Despite being an only child, my parents were preoccupied by a lot of other things in their lives and didn't really engage with me on a deeper level to emotionally connect with me. My dad was better at this because he actually expressed some interest in my life (even if he struggled with the emotional aspects of it). My mom mainly showed her love by cooking, yelling at me over grades, and doing things around the house. And even then, the cooking often came with almond mom tendencies, the yelling was quite scary, and doing thing around the house was kind of the bare minimum in terms of being a functional adult that everyone in my household did within reason. I don't think at any point she really tried to get to know me and when she did get to know me, a lot of that was weaponized. And the rest of my family was always really surface level with me. I don't think it was intentional, I think it's more along the lines of how you can only engage with other people on a deeper level if you engage with yourself and your world in a deeper level. And that level of introspection and exospection is difficult when you're emotionally stunted which is the case for a lot of people in my family. 

2. Not really having a core of self esteem/ sense of self which then makes it easy for you to internalize EVERYTHING: 
I think the way this shows up is how rarely I was praised or given any kind of positive reinforcement growing up. I can count on one hand the number of times my parents told me I was pretty or smart or the number of times they said they were proud of me. I never got a congrats for my efforts. My achievements were seen as standard and expected. But my failures.... oh they would never forget that. So now that I'm an adult, the thought of celebrating myself (even during my birthday, big life events, and things I put a lot of effort into), doing affirmations, and I guess "believing in myself" all feel like it falls somewhere in the spectrum of uncomfortable, performative, or just plain corny. 

But weirdly enough, I think a lot of people see me as someone with high self worth. But my self worth doesn't come with confidence, it's a result of my values. Like I know it's typical to tell a girl going through a break up with a toxic man that she's too pretty and too smart to be treated that way as a way to appeal to her confidence to help her through this vulnerable moment. But for me, it's more like no one should be treated that way regardless of their looks or intellect because it's about the principle of treating people well. I think a lot of my self worth comes from self-respect and morality as opposed to a sense of confidence because confidence can vary a lot depending on mood in my opinion. And in some ways, I think that my self worth as a result is more stable. But at the same time, I never had a strong sense of confidence. 

And because I lack confidence, I can be prone to taking too much responsibility for my surroundings to where instead of being able to accurately point to what's causing the problem, I end up pointing the finger to myself and my sense of self blame masquerades as responsbility. For example, I'm currently having bug problems in my apartment despite keeping my space clean. But instead of being able to point out that this is a building wide problem, my first thought is *the bugs are here because I'm disgusting, there's something wrong with me* even though I vacuum once a week, mop the kitchen once a week, do the dishes everyday, and wipe down surfaces everyday. 

And when it comes to interpersonal issues, I'm quick to wondering what's wrong with me, what did I do, and I tend to take people's critiques of me in face value. It's difficult for me to see how the other person might be at fault, how their biases might impact their inaccurate assesment of me or the situation, etc. It's difficult for me to see how I might be in the right when growing up, I always had my flaws examined and my merits ignored. 

3. Having trouble feeling like a woman: 
I wrote about this in my previous post on how I didn't really have a solid mother figure growing up and how that has made navigating the world as a woman challenging because I had to figure things out for myself. 

4. Feeling a little autistic: 
I don't think I meet the diagnostic criteria for autism but I do think I relate heavily to this notion that everyone was given some kind of social script and guidance on how to be a person but I haven't. I don't think it's entirely due to reasons pertaining to neurodivergence (it can be a factor but it's not the whole story. Now that I think about it, maybe I feel awkward and out of place is because I was never given the tools or guidance to navigate situations. Like no shit part of me always felt a bit behind in some aspects from my peers. I was a kid trying to guide a kid (myself). I didn't have an adult to guide the child version of me. 

5. That envy and deep sense of lonliness when you see your peers become close to their parents in adulthood: 
I would characterize it as the feeling of *I'm happy for them but I'm sad for me.* Because I'm not close with my parents despite trying to be over the years. I found that it's quite unhealthy when I spend too much time around them. I sometimes feel like part of me is stunted because I'm not close to my parents, like I'm the angsty teen that never grew up. I know my situation is more complex than that but still. And I think I greive a little every time I struggle in adulthood because I have no one older and wiser I can run to. I can't go to my parents for comfort because they are my greatest source of stress and feeling of dismissal. 

6. Feeling romantically and sexually invisible: 
I think this is less connected to my parents and more connected to my peers. Perhaps it's the result of my lack of confidence mixed with feeling like I cannot take the same risks since I don't have the emotional safety net that people with reliable parents do. I don't have parents I can go to if a boy was mean to me growing up or parents to go to if I was dealing with a break up. But also, I think I was just never in a place where I was considered particularly beautiful either. 

7, Not feeling platonically unattractive but feeling platonically mid: I don't think that I'm repulsive to where I cannot make ANY friendships or meaningful connections. But I was definitely the floater friend growing up and I haven't had any one consider me their best friend since I was 15. People don't avoid me, but they don't exactly go out of their way to reach out first either. I think that I just haven't "found my people" but it feels a little lame to say that when I'm approaching my late 20s. But then again, that might loop back into me internalizing everything as a personal failing instead of being able to simply accept that there might be factors outside of my control and just timing in general at play. 

8. Not going to the dentist regularly until i turned 25: I had to get my wisdom teeth removed in my mid-twenties and I found out that most people get this done in their teens. My parents also never took me to the dentist growing up and the issues with my teeth felt like another manifestation of their negligence.

9, Physical neglect: Sometimes I neglect my appearance, This can be me wearing the same shit over and over until it has holes, not doing my hair super often, and showering once every other day or every couple days. Sometimes I neglect my surroundings when I get depressed. And sometimes, I neglect myself when it comes to food where I may eat something past the point it was fresh to where I know I'm going to get a stomach ache all because I don't want to waste food. 

10. Discomfort around expressing negative emotions: I think it can be difficult expressing my emotions and crying in front of loved ones because I'm used to having to deal with it myself. It can feel weird having someone sit with me as I'm experiencing intense emotions because growing up I would lock myself in my closet to cry because I know my tears would either be ignored or be met with yelling. It's far easier to talk about things after the fact or intellectualize my emotions all together.