09-07-2016, 05:53 AM
(09-05-2016, 10:33 AM)4Kingdoms Wrote:(09-05-2016, 09:59 AM)mat422 Wrote: I've pretty much learned the social game, but when I play it I'm not me. I'm watching myself jump through all the hoops to get a favorable outcome, but I'm rarely myself. This makes any and all social interactions just plain suck for me. I've lived a large portion of my life feeling like if people knew the real me, they wouldn't like me. And I took that as the truth and never really challenged it enough. I guess at some point in my life it was true, otherwise why would I believe it? But I'm at a point in my life where I'd rather have people not like me and be happy, than keep trying to appear a certain way that pleases people.
Play the game, get ahead. Stop playing, get held back. Several people at my job play the game and they are known for being good at politics or bullshitting.
Then there is the other group of people at my job that refuse to play the game and they are unsatisfied with their choices. They know what is holding them back, they still refuse to play the game.
I try to find a balance. Be myself and play the game when it's to my advantage. I'm perceived as a "nice guy" and people are surprise when I speak up and defend myself. They didn't mind hurting my feelings, why should I care about raising my voice and hurting their feelings? Find a balance for yourself!!
This happens outside the workplace as well. Neighbors that try to run the neighborhood, I'm okay with that. Just don't try to run me.
You raise a good point. I'm a bit of an idealist and I've always despised the game playing and lack of authenticity. But there are definitely some people who don't respond to anything else and you have to get on their level a bit to make a difference.
Some really messed up stuff happened with me the other day. I was doing a chest stretch to open up my chest because I have chronically tight muscles. I think a lot of it is due to the anxiety. But during this stretch I noticed a lot of unpleasant emotions coming up. It got to the point where I couldn't handle it, it was that bad. So I laid down and just had to sleep for an hour or two. When I say bad, I've never had to deal with that emotional intensity before, I felt like I wanted to throw up and curl up into a ball. My only conclusion is that a lot of my muscular tension in my upper body has been locking down some more of these traumatic feelings. By stretching my chest out a lot I released them all at once.
I'm still dealing with processing what came up. Tried to listen to E2 and I can't, it's just too much. I never considered myself traumatized in any way, but now that I look back on my life there was a lot I was afraid of as a kid that was more traumatic for me than other kids. I coped with this by learning to disconnect from those intense emotions, but now I'm realizing as an adult it's like stacking emotional trauma on top of emotional trauma, I haven't been doing a good job of actually healing it.
I might have to cut back E2 to two loops a day. My lack of progress might be due to trying to take on too much at once instead of listening to my body. There's a lot going on inside me that I wasn't aware of and I've realized a lot of the relaxation exercises I've done over the years dissociated me further from my emotional trauma. It's not like I had one incredibly traumatic event that messed me up, but more like a continuous stream of small ones just enough so I never felt relaxed or safe. This pretty much echoes how I feel in my day to day life as an adult, constantly feeling like something awful is going to happen and not knowing why.
