Whenever I reflect upon my short comings, paranoid thinking due to incidents of abuse in my formative years that shattered my trust, and the pattern of rejection that seemed to reinforce it later as an adult locking me into a victim’s mindset... I think, at least I wasn’t raised Catholic! Then I’d never have a chance to effectively function in this world. 😳
Is this a form of survivor’s guilt? It seems to be common amongst victims of physical or sexual abuse as both a child or an adult and amongst those who suffer from ptsd. We outweigh our blessings and try to forget our trials. We don’t recognize where we were hurt and this disconnect leads to a psychosis of sorts because we can always look to who had it worse and insist that our privileges have built in an ability to cope. This is self delusional and it comes around to bite us in the foot when try to strive forward.
But I have loving parents who worked hard to give me the best life that they could and continue to provide for me financially in my time of emotional recovery. But am I really in recovery? I’m still isolating myself while living in fear of being ostracized by my peers. I still don’t feel good enough to be accepted and ashamed I’ve had it so good! I still take every action and decision towards my placement in every group dynamic as a slight and proof that I’m a victim of bullying as an adult. I expect everyone in a position of authority to either feel jealous and threatened by me or just callously prey on my vulnerability to make me hurt. There’s no in between. Nobody wants to recognize my worth and place me on equal footing. Is this a self fulfilling prophesy or just the real way of the world? I can’t tell.
I do know in an unstructured system of earning advancement where expectations are psycho-social as much as they are physical standards or merit based on effort shown, I’m petrified to leave my pedestal of withering dignity and surrounded by a chasm of hellish monsters and ghosts. People on the perimeter either ignore me seeing me frozen in resistance or whenever they call out to me, the chasm distorts these words. A traumatic childhood experience, no matter what the degree of atrocity nor the amount of nurturing received to contradict the extent of suffering, always results in a hyper-vigilant defense mechanism. My parents lied to me about Santa Claus for their own amusement and now I’m expected to dance like a monkey every time someone’s unconscious body language reveals some untruth to their words. I constantly look for behavior patterns to affirm or deny whatever I’ve been told.
I’m suspicious and for good reason too because if you look beneath the surface everyone has personal biases and ulterior motives for what they do whether they’re aware of it or not. You can hold people to their word and maneuver yourself about the world positively and not get disturbed. However, if you’re confidence is eroded you fall into the fear that people are playing good faces while they undermine, plot, and cook. Thing is this too is not unreasonable or irrational because remember, if you play into that option people enjoy a good deception plot and will hold themselves in high regards all the while too. It’s up to you which path you choose and what part of the person’s programming do you add your piece of code.
Woah 😎 Matrix swerve. The other result of childhood sexual trauma in addition to hyper-vigilance is disassociation, a refuge from personal pain. These combine to make one an expert in pattern recognition where you can always remove yourself to the level of statistics, mere metaphors, or writing in third person about your own deepest insights and experiences. Clinical. This is also what the IQ tests you for. People who can peer beneath the surface at how things work have high IQ scores. On the good neuro-normative side you can become an engineer, chemist, biologist, doctor, or physicist. On the neuro-atypical or emotionally damaged side you become an empath, drug addict, sensitive artist, self analyzing psychologist, social neurotic philosopher and self aggrandizing blogger.
So what do I want? I want people to recognize me as special and treat me special and I don’t know why... I think it’s because of my trustworthiness, truthful intentions, loyalty and commitment to do right by everybody. I have this firm belief that if you’re only a good person people will be good to you but that’s not true. People perceive you, not as you perceive yourself, but how you perceive them! If you don’t trust someone, they won’t trust you either. If they belittle you, it’s you who’s belittling them. Someway, somehow, this is the way of the world...
With that I think I may have solved my problem!! This will be bizarre to put into practice and test but I think if I treat people better than they are, they will treat me better. Instead of focusing on projecting myself as competent and capable, project that they are exceptional and they’ll qualify me on their own accord. Weird. Seems manipulative. But if it works, it works! I suppose naturally trusting people follow this pattern automatically whereas I just always bring out the worst.. Sure couldn’t hurt to try something new if only habits could be installed and uninstalled like software. So do I wear my insecurity on my sleeve instead of bury it where it won’t be used against me? Fishing for compliments wouldn’t hurt since I need some encouragement.
Thing is I’m hurt. Always hurt. Afraid. Cautious. But confident that I can do anything when given a chance!! The bridge is people though and I think I forgot that essential sit down session. It’s true that I’ve held a long developed habit of burying my head in the sand around the wrestling scene going all the way back to SSP after parties when the conversation would flip back and forth like lightning between kayfabe and politics. As a working circus artist and a respected friend, I was permitted to track and add ideas and speculate on the creative part but I didn’t speak wrestle jargon then and mainly knew folks by their stage names. Whenever they would flip to behind the scenes, and I’d ask tracking questions.. I was told “don’t worry about it” and “stay out of it” if it escalated and I drunkenly tried to mediate the mood. (btw.. There’s a movie of all of this!!) Policy was I stayed out of politics. Period.
Problem is now I still don’t feel like I have a place backstage to talk and therefore my thoughts and feelings are superficial when they’re not. I’ve been smoking pot and avoiding talking then erupting in these enormous monologues all day all alone. Heheh. Here I was thinking I was hard working while I use working to avoid the hard work. Afraid. Cautious. Hurt. How’s this gonna work?
