On Second Thought, Maybe I Don’t Talk Too Much

I wrote a post before about how I talk too much.  I based this personal impression on two things: I felt I was betraying my privacy by feeling compelled at times to reveal more about myself than I would feel comfortable with, and also by feeling I need to fill in any gaps in what I’m saying to prevent being misunderstood.

Between the two I’m often afraid that I’ve come across as tiresome or “weird”, but I also notice that some people are quite chatty and that people just take that as their personality, not that they’re weird.  Maybe that’s how people saw me.  I actually didn’t know how I came across and, like most scapegoats, I tortured myself with assuming the worst by not properly being able to appraise my own behaviour and only seeing it through a “I don’t fit in” lens.

I have a neighbour that I sometimes go for a walk with, etc.  She was one person in particular where I kicked myself for talking too much every time I spent some time with her.  I apologized once after an extra talkative time when I was speaking on a subject I was passionate about.  She genuinely didn’t think anything about it, saying that I didn’t talk too much at all and that I spoke of things that day that she never thought of or knew before.  I thought to myself that if she didn’t think THAT was talking too much then I must be doing okay all the other times.

That was nice for me to hear and helped me to see how I come across to others.  I realized that I feel I talk too much because it’s actually ME that’s making that determination and not necessarily other people.  It’s me that doesn’t feel comfortable with feeling I need to fill in the gaps of my ideas with details,  and it’s me that doesn’t want to feel compelled to reveal too much about myself.

Now, that’s not to say that, since I’m given to fill in details without being prompted by the other person to do so, I’m not going to be considered talkative to some people.  That’s going to happen, for sure, because I’m a very easily articulate person.  Expressing ideas and recounting events is something that’s like breathing with me.  I would like to do it less often, though.  Especially when the subject is myself or something close to home.  It was just a relief to consider that maybe most people I speak to don’t think anything about it at all.

It’s funny how there are times in my life when I wouldn’t care about this specific trait of mine.  I had overthought it to a crippling level as of late.  It may be my being alone so much through my illness that made me not know how to see my interactions with others when I began to gently re-emerge into the world.

I rarely have a conversation in which I leave satisfied, though.  There are a few times lately that I thought I did well and that are significant and need mention.  This is because I’m slowly learning and practicing social behaviours that show me in the best possible light that anxiety tends to prevent me from.  I’ve entered the grocery store and other places in town where I’ve gone in with a relaxed open face even though I’m under tremendous stress.  This helps me feel that I’m keeping what’s my business to myself.  Others may not have interpreted a frowning, deep-in-thought face as that I’m going through stuff, but I want the comfort of controlling that anyway.

Entering a public place like this also did something else I didn’t expect – it actually changed how I viewed myself and my lot in life.  I go in and smile like everything is okay, and it makes everything seem okay.  It made me realize that maybe having stressors and fears in life are what a lot of people go through, I just have a more difficult time dealing with these things out of a feeling of being victimized by life’s stressors.  Learning to smile through it part of my learning to deal with these things.

People react differently because I must have looked relaxed and confident.  The usually awkward interactions at the cashier was easygoing, efficient, and friendly on both sides.  I’ve left a few times thinking, for the first time in my life, that it was enjoyable and relaxed.  I’m so tired of feeling awkward and nervous, and these little things are a breakthrough for me.

So, I don’t talk too much, and when I do, it’s probably more a matter of perspective, either mine or the other person’s.  It’s funny how at my age I’m learning such elementary things.  But how nice to be learning them.

The Relationship “Curse”

I was around nine.  I had been either arguing with my younger sister or not agreeing with my mom on something, I don’t remember.  I wouldn’t have dared argued with my mom at that age, so the worst would have been that I just voiced disagreement with doing a chore or something light like that.  And if it was an argument with my sister, it would have been the usual fare seen in homes around the world.  I mention these things to show just how bizarre and over-the-top my mother’s response to me was:

“The way you are, a man would never want you for more than two years.”

It was a bomb.

A Beggar at the Table

I had a recent life-changing realization.  I became aware that I approach my family and others in general as if I were the beggar at the table.  Putting it in those words has shed a huge light on my behaviour with others and an angle to my of anxiety.

I knew the feelings and perception of this concept all along but the wording is what allowed it to all come together into something more solid, enabling me to be able to have a good look at it.

In a variety of words and behaviours I was given the message all along.  My adoptive father adopted me after marrying my mother only because my mother wanted to bury the having-a-child-out-of-wedlock status.  The other five children in the family were his biological children and, therefore, he had no motivation to really embrace me as his own.  It seems his paternal instincts were satisfied without me.  I and all the other children knew that I was unwanted and a mistake from another man.

She said, a few times, that she wanted to abort me but had me to spite her father, whatever that meant to her.

She resented spending any money on me, acting like I was a mooch if I mentioned how my toes were hurting in my shoes and she knew she had to buy me new ones.  It wasn’t a lack of finances for this as my younger sister was close enough in age that she could have had some of my hand-me-downs but she received only new clothing, so we weren’t desperate to save money in this area.  As an example, when I was around ten-years-old she once attempted to by me black boys’ boots (the kind with the red stripe at the top) because they they two dollars cheaper than the girls’ boots until the young sales girl convinced her not to.  She saw my tears from a feeling of hot shame and intercepted, and may God bless her for it.  Trust me, my mother didn’t care about saving two dollars, she just thought it was unnecessary to spend on me.

A Trauma Counselor and the Black Ball

About two weeks ago I called a counselor I saw before for about a year.  I went to him at the time as I was so paralyzed with anxiety that I couldn’t move forward anymore and empty of hope for my life.  I had a sense in me that everything in my life needs to change for me to go on, and to this day I still have a feeling that things are gong to continue to change in me.

At the time I was seeing him I didn’t have the concepts of scapegoating in my mind, that is, I didn’t have the unification of all the symptoms of maladjustment under one category.  I was still in the mode of piecemealing my reason for seeing any one counselor/therapist or another over my life.  I went to one for my abusive husband and another later for my abusive live-in boyfriend, I went to one or two for depression and suicidal feelings, etc.  All of them I would mention my abusive childhood but I didn’t know to put everything into one bucket and add in my hyper-vigilance, high level of general anxiety, and disassociation.

Now that I have a new confident way of expressing what my issues are, as well as feeling the pressure of all the changes I’m going through and needing someone to help me navigate this, I’ve decided to see him again.

Expectations I Couldn’t Meet and The Anxiety Network.

I have often described my childhood as living in sandpaper.  It was dark and gritty, with no area of comfort or refuge save for what I created myself through self-isolation.  I’d tuck myself away and draw, imagine and daydream, or read.  Reality was too harsh and so I lived in my mind.

It was my only refuge from expectations that I couldn’t meet.  This last sentence rings true but, at the same time, I don’t know what the expectations were, really. My mother was quite frank with me that I was unwanted for my illegitimacy and the cold steel wall she put between us crippled me inside.  My existence was resented, a burden.  I was wished to not be there and, since I was, then wished to be someone or something different than who I was.  I suppose this was the expectations I couldn’t meet. Who could?

Meet and Greet: 8/20/16 — DREAM BIG DREAM OFTEN

It’s the Meet and Greet weekend!! Ok so here are the rules: Leave a link to your page or post in the comments of this post. Reblog this post. It helps you, it helps me, it helps everyone! Edit your reblog post and add tags. Feel free to leave your link multiple times! It is […]

via Meet and Greet: 8/20/16 — DREAM BIG DREAM OFTEN

A Scapegoating Family and Chronic Illness.

I just finished mowing the lawn.  I don’t think mowing the lawn is supposed to make a forty-nine-year-old feel like she’s almost going to have a heart attack and crying, shaking, and stumbling at the end because she’s now exhausted to the bones for the effort.  I am alone and I truly can’t afford to pay someone to do it for me.  Some days I can do it without this much drama but I’ve been in a CFS relapse for the last two months.

This is life is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, where the body doesn’t make enough energy at the cellular level to even properly fuel the body’s organs.  Nobody dies of CFS, at least that’s not what’s written down as cause of death, they die of “heart failure”, “liver failure”, etc.  Because there’s not enough energy the body receives damage to the organs and then because there’s also not enough energy to heal them, the body finally gives out like a worn-out shoe.

Are You Being Narcissistically Abused. – Richard Grannon Video.

This following Youtube video is from Richard Grannon of Spartan Life Coach.  Many of you may have already watched many of his videos.  This one in particular sparked off many thoughts that I wanted to share.  It’s titled “Seven Tips to Know: Am I Really the victim of Narcissistic Abuse or am I just Hypersensitive?”

This video is great for determining whether a new relationship is one that we may not want to go further into.  The video mentions the over-use of the narcissist label, but it mostly gives tools to us who’s first instinct when feeling rejected or mistreated by someone is to run.  We’re probably not being rejected.  We could use tools in learning that we may be misinterpreting the other person’s behaviour and could use some tools to help us navigate such situations.

The Black Ball and Lost Time

I’ve been aware of what I’ve called a “black ball” since I was in my twenties.  And what I’m calling a black ball is a concentration of dark frightening emotions that I sensed in my solar plexus.  I knew all along that it was suppressed emotions but what emotions they were and what they were from I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.  I knew it was significant in why I was “messed up”, unable to interact with the world around me in a manner that I saw others do.

One day I had a little peek at it.  It didn’t go well.

Shared Post: Trauma from narcissistic abuse — Dreams of a better world blog

The word trauma has become such a loaded one. I’m pondering it after seeing a fairly judgmental post on Facebook implying that people have become very weak because they seem to get traumatized about everything. Facebook is a piece of social media I mostly hate because of the pain it causes me. That post was […]

via Trauma from narcissistic abuse — Dreams of a better world blog

Katie from the blog “Dreams of a better wold” writes wonderfully and has personal experience with the world of mental health therapists, both as someone involved in the area of therapy and also as someone who’s been injured by it.  In fact, one of her interests is to make it known the damage that the mental health profession may do to its many patients.

This post of hers I’m featuring here involves the topic of PTSD.  I’ve been studying the subject for the last couple of days and wanted to write a post on it, but Katie did one first, and thank goodness!  She is knowledgeable on the subject where I’d be halting in my delivery of what I’d learn.

My personal thoughts will be in the “Dreams of a better world”‘s  comment section, which is where I’d like to direct my readers’ comments to as well.  See you there!