LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Things people say

I have some thoughts.

Oxy wrote:

“I try not to “take offense” at everyone who may be impolite in some way or other, or are insensitive, but at the same time, when people come out and OPENLY DISRESPECT ME, or abuse me. I care about their opinion WHY? I either confront them if it is important, or ignore them if it isn’t. Most of the time it isn’t worth it to confront them, just avoid them in the future. Or as a friend once told me “give them a good case of leaving them alone”

And Skylar wrote:

“But the examples that Kathy posted are perfect examples of stuff that would have gone over my head. Actually, I’ll have to print out that bit and study it because I’m having a hard time internalizing it.”

OneStep wrote:

“i remember, many years ago, the first time i realized i didn’t need anger to set boundaries, or fear to keep them.

Might be very nice to forget these things, and not need those memories to protect your well being.”

Here what I think about these bits and some other writings here about boundaries and our responses to violations. (Things that make us feel uncomfortable, disrespected, “disappeared,” etc.)

Anger is a key issue here. I think Sky has trouble surfacing her anger. I think Oxy feels her anger, but she has tears too because she is disappointed by other people’s behavior and maybe hates having to step into the role of enforcer. (I’m guessing, Ox, but this seems like it might be right.) OneStep is finding her boundaries to be just a part of her identity, so she doesn’t have to go through much emotional drama to just say no.

To me, these are progressive steps in boundary awareness. But it’s important to understand that anger is a normal, automatic response to violation. It’s built into the deepest part of our brain. As I’ve written here before, anger is a reaction that creates an intense and narrow mental focus on the source of the violation and also a physical reaction that prepares us to correct the situation and restore our wellbeing. In other words, our deep survival instinct identifies a problem and makes us pay attention to it and gather our strength to take care of it.

All this was designed back in the era when things like thunderstorms or wolves or enemy tribes were real and urgent threats to our lives, and we had to be prepared to protect and defend ourselves. It’s related to fear, but it’s a conversion of fear into determined action. And even in today’s civilized world, it’s still built into us. It still works the same way.

Anger can be twisted and suppressed. If we grow up in an environment in which normal response to violation is discouraged, in which we are are socialized to accept abuse without complaint, or tolerate abuse as the cost of being fed and sheltered or getting any love at all, we can train ourselves to ignore these feelings. Because they are dangerous to us. I grew up with a violent and controlling father, and my upbringing was like that. If I spoke up, if I fought back, if I even was caught hiding, it was worse for me. So I shut down my normal reactions and endured. It was a kind of la-la land where my sense of “winning” was reduced to gratitude for not being abused, and my sense of obligation was entirely focussed on keeping the abuser in a good mood.

Undoing this, getting my anger to surface, took a lot of work. Thankfully, the sociopath in my life finally forced me to start reacting, because I could see that he was destroying me and I could also see that that there was something wrong with my reactions. In fact, he actually said to me, “Why shouldn’t I do this to you? You’re not taking care of yourself. As far as I’m concerned you’re volunteering for it.”

In getting over him, it took me almost a year to stop trying to understand his behavior and come to the conclusion that he was a “bad person.” Not bad in some universal sense, but bad for me, and bad to me. And to do that, I had to find a sense of myself as a very little girl, before I had compromised my normal reactions to protect myself from my father. When I was little, I knew what a “bad person” was. It was someone who hurt me, who made me fell bad. It was that simple. And knowing that someone was a bad person had a meaning to me as a little girl. It meant that I didn’t have to care about that person, didn’t have to be nice to that person, or cooperate with that person. With that person, I had to take care of myself, whatever it took. Maybe that meant running away. Maybe it meant looking for help. Whatever, it meant that it was him or me, and in some important way, my survival or wellbeing depended on stopping that person from affecting my life anymore.

And at the point, when I decided my ex fit the category of “bad person,” I began to react like a normal healthy human being, albeit one that had a lot of deferred anger to deal with. I finally got angry about all of the things he did to me. And then I got angry about a lot of other things in my past. The anger was always inside me. It was affecting my whole life, because it was always pushing for recognition. It made me anxious and fearful, it made me defensive and passive aggressive, it made me resentful and bitter. All aspects of my character I never really understood, until the anger started to surface. I finally realized not only that I was angry, but I had good reason to be angry.

This was the beginning of awareness of boundaries. That there were aspects of me that were just mine, and that I had the right and the obligation to protect, comfort and nurture. For the first time, instead of searching for love with people who would be better parents than my own parents had been, I started becoming my own parent. I took care of me.

This is a long introduction to what I really want to say. Boundaries and anger go together. But the quality of that anger changes a lot as we develop emotionally. For me, taking care of myself before I could surface and really feel and own my anger was difficult. I was always trying to find “rules” that would keep me safe, or people who would protect me. Because I had no clear sense of what was right and wrong for me. I only knew that I seemed to be stupid in some way, unable to see threats or understand that bad things were happening in my life until it got really bad, or I lost something I really loved.

When I finally surfaced anger, I became a warrior. For the first time in my life, I could see threats clearly, learn from my history, and act in self-defense. It took a while of practicing, but I became comfortable with saying no, pushing people away, stopping situations that I didn’t like, speaking out against abuse and injustice, feeling myself grow stronger and knowing that I was progressively becoming more dependable in taking care of myself. I grew to trust myself for the first time, to believe that I could take care of myself in most situations. And I began to look ahead more, to see threats coming before they were on top of me.

All of this personal development was triggered by the long-delayed surfacing of anger. Except for a few extreme cases in my life that I could count on one hand, I’d never been aware of feeling angry. Anger, when it finally surfaced, gave me an insight that I’d never had before. It showed me the difference between what was me and related to my wellbeing, and what was the rest of the world and other people’s issues. Not immediately. It took a long time to undo all the internal rules about taking care of other people, so that they’d take care of me. (The rules that made me a perfect prey for a sociopath.) And I needed that bright, hot anger to help me through that period of learning that no one was ever going to take care of me better than I took care of myself.

Later, when I was more confident in my ability, the big anger was not so necessary. I still had reactions to violation. But I felt them differently. Now, I respond quickly to anything that seems wrong to me. I don’t feel it as the old blazing anger. Instead I feel a little clutch in my solar plexus and a simultaneous sense of unwillingness. Unwillingness to cooperate, to go on with whatever is happening. I start looking for what is making me uncomfortable, and I prepare to deal with it. I’m often not so direct anymore in my counter-attacks, because I’m not so anxious. I look around, consider the whole environment, look for exits and ways to sabotage the problem, but also look for means to make it work out the way I want it to work out.

And this is the other piece of boundary development. It’s not just about keeping out what’s bad or dangerous. That’s only an occasional thing that comes up when there’s a problem. The more common, everyday thing about boundaries is that they make it clear what is inside and what it needs to be healthy, happy and growing. The more conscious I am of my own boundaries, the more I can focus on my own needs and dreams. And when I do reach out into the world, it’s to arrange things so that my future is going in the right direction, and I’m doing good and gaining satisfaction from seeing my ideas turn into something real.

I couldn’t do that before. I was all enmeshed in other people’s issues and needs. I thought I could only be safe if they were happy, and particularly happy with me.

I’m still working on all of this. I still get a little thrill when I say no to something that I don’t like, or say that I want more than what I’m offered, or walk away from something I find pointless or unpleasant. I still have to maintain an inner cheerleader who says, “Man up, Kathy, you can do this,” or “You’re worth it and it’s okay to fight for yourself,” or “Hooray, Kathy, you did a great job at standing up for yourself, you didn’t give in to something that would make you less than you are, and tomorrow is going to be better because of it.” Maybe it’s my boundaries talking to me. Whatever it is, it makes me proud of myself and feel more centered.

I think about what Gem wrote last night. And I think that for a lot of us, it’s going to take some time before we can stop paying attention to our boundaries and just know that we can trust our instincts. That our commitment to self-protection is a habit now. And that we are really focussed on what is good for us, so focussed that we recognize things that are bad for us as simply obstacles. Things to be eliminated from our environment so we can get on with our real lives. And we are so committed and so accustomed to being like this that we don’t have to go through any emotional dramas at all.

Maybe that’s too much to hope for. Maybe feeling disappointed or regretful is just part of life, but I’m not sure that’s true. I have a feeling that eventually I will be less interested in safety, which is still a residue of my background. And more interested and aware of all the options I have all the time. And if one thing doesn’t work out, I can find another path. And if something I’ve invested heavily in falls apart, I can be confident that nothing is ever really lost. That I have the learning and the experience and maybe some goodies to take into the future with me, and things that fall apart have their own reason for doing so. And I just move on to the next interesting thing. Even if it’s sickness or death. We spend so much time letting fear shape our lives. It’s like anticipating abuse, rather than seeing what’s actually around us, and using it to fulfill our needs and our dreams.

So enough of this long story. I need to get back to work. I’m finishing a big project today, and one that I really am proud of. I hope some of this makes sense.

Much love —

Kathy