yvannairie | Tensions

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Tensions

I went and added some commentary on a post about communication (as you do) and now I'm sitting here struggling with my brain going "see? Speech is an action, therefore talking about your thoughts qualifies as acting on them"

Which is a really bad rabbit hole to go down when you have OCD and intense intrusive thoughts and a horrible pattern of blaming yourself on shit that was brought about by failures on both sides of the social equation. Because it's true that if people treat me like shit based on the way I talk to them, then that's entirely deserved, but at the same time, me saying "I sometimes think about how bad I am for my friends, how I'm always going to hurt them and how being my friend is an ordeal"... won't make it true, because things cannot be true just because I think them.

I don't know how to square the circle of communication being something you need to consciously do that isn't an action. Not all speech is even equal in this regard, because even I recognise that sometimes saying things that make others feel bad is not the same as being verbally violent with them, and the other way around. With speech, intent matters so much -- with a physical action, it either hurt the target or it didn't, but with speech you always need to consider whether something was intended to inform or to manipulate, whether it was proactive or reactive, whether it was truthful or misinformed, before you can even get to "did it cause harm"?

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Yeah, I feel like there's a huge intentionality thing that your brainweasels are trying to make you ignore?

Like, you can say 'There is a thought in my head that I should do X'. Saying that is not doing X, nor is it even necessarily stating an intent to do X. It might just be you expressing frustration that your brainweasels are trying to make you do X when you don't want to.

I also think that 'did this cause harm?' is a different axis than 'was this intended to cause harm?', but that's also its own can of worms sometimes.

I'm nice enough to assume that people don't mean harm with what they say, so I didn't really think of that -- or, I guess rather I can't judge because I've given up not causing harm even when I don't intend it so I apply the same standard to everyone.

IDK I'm so VERY sensitive and take everything so VERY personally (legit, another one of my go-to strategies is to point out how someone's behaviour towards themselves reflects their treatment of me -- some people feel worse about being shit to others than they feel about hurting themselves) that I try to give others the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. Intent, ideally, doesn't matter when addressing the consequences.

Bluh. I just know that when I unintentionally hurt people, I, at least, aim to take ownership of it even if it makes me feel like shut. I do not understand how people who don't do that cope with their fuckups.

It's a good assumption to make! I tend to make it a lot of the time, too, unless there's clear evidence to disprove it.

<3 you mean the best, and you think others do too, and that shouldn't be a bad thing. It's just hard when the world assumes you've got thicker skin or more of a shell, and you really don't.

Yeah, thanks. It's something I'm still kind of learning to understand about myself -- I am not tough at all, I'm just very good at shrugging off the things that hurt me and walking with a broken leg if I have to. It's something that's hard to communicate to people who ignore their pain and pretend it doesn't exist. I know full well I'm hurting, and just because I'm not reacting anymore doesn't mean I've stopped hurting.

People are hard.

"Harm" is also subjective as a concept, because like... I think often about the fact that a surgeon's job is to inflict harm onto others, but this harm is lauded. The same harm done by a non-surgeon would be violence, but the surgeon's harm is viewed as positive, despite how absolutely awful recovering from surgery is (if a full recovery is even possible). To that extent, there are times when something needs to be said, and saying it causes harm, but it's not necessarily a violent or strictly negative harm. Talking about trauma can hurt, but it's often something victims want to do and it's a positive thing to do. Talking about boundaries can lead to awkwardness and resentment, but boundaries need to be established some way or another. Making note of somebody's problematic behavior can hurt the problematic person's feelings, but there's a huge difference between those engaging in "callout culture" and puritan attacks and those who have legitimate good faith concerns and approach with the intention of being accommodating and compassionate.

I feel this. Some of the most harmful things said and done to me have been done on the basis of "I'm trying to avoid harm (to myself)" which Sure Is Fun because if it were me having caused that harm, I'd be going out of my way to acknowledge that my intentions do not change the effects and consequences of my actions... But you can't really make a statement like that about others without feeling like you're imposing.

Similarly, when I think about the things I've said to people that to this day I think they needed to hear... None of them are particularly nice. My bread and butter is telling people to stop being a fucking sadsack and have some perspective. I'm not nice, and I won't say nice things to people if it's their own damn behaviour and attitudes causing harm.

And it's just... Being as prepared for causing harm as I am, because I CANNOT let comforting lies stand, it has never worked, anytime I think "I can make this work, they don't have to change, I'm being too hard on them" things have gone to hell... Being as ready to understand that my demands are high and people WILL have to deal with being uncomfortable with me, is not a fun feeling, because ideally being friends with someone shouldn't be hard. Life might be, but your people shouldn't be.

Hmm, I think I may have similar feelings as to being the "tough love" friend, but one of the things I'e had to confront with myself is that I have a tendency to view friends as people to "fix" and that I am very much a fixer-upper, which... most people don't appreciate being reshaped and prodded without their consent, because they don't view friendship as a "make the other better, even when your criticisms become detrimental to their emotional well-being" relationship.

I think also there must surely be a way (within the realm of ~communication~, whatever that is) to have a separate conversation with somebody after unintended harm was done to be like "hey, how can this confrontation happen again in the future in a way which causes less harm but achieves a similar effect?" kind of thing. Because other people definitely do have the capacity to reflect on being called out and go "okay, you weren't wrong, even if you were a dick about it," so they might actually be more willing to accept the call out if they feel that a reciprocal criticism of how-not-to-be-a-dick-about-it might be well-received.

I'm actually on the swing back towards needing to take more active role in helping the people I make friends with overcome their problems (which is always what being a fixer-upper friend has been about to me -- they're making themselves miserable so obviously I need to help them change to stop that, because that worked for me) because... turns out relying on the emotional maturity of someone else leads to people lying about their maturity, limitations and boundaries in an attempt to seem "mature enough" for me? But I also do have a history of bad friendships where I tried too much to "shape" the other person and realised after the fact that I was doing that. Again. So I shut down that part of myself really hard and here we are.

I had a minor realisation about this, in that I tend to seek out people who talk about being unlikeable or annoying or "hard to make friends with" for whatever reason, because that's something that resonates with me. Kind of a "I will prove to you that you are loveable so I can prove to myself unloveable people like myself aren't", and believe it or not, I've had good results with it, because turns out most people... aren't unloveable, they're just defensive and if you're patient, they will show you their true selves, who are usually delightful people.

And I feel like I've been a good friend to a lot of these people, but a lot of them haven't really... returned the favour, I guess. Because I am also one of those people who is incredibly defensive, and while I can be patient and understanding, I just don't feel like people return that. Out of all the friendships, everyone who's agreed on the premise that I'm hard to be friends with (i.e. not been a hypocrite, which is something I demand from people) has eventually done something that our relationship didn't recover from.

And that's where the speech thing comes back in because I can't help feeling like I caused that by being upfront about being high-demand and creating an expectation that my needs are unreasonable.

Or maybe I'm just chasing my tail. At this point I'm just unpacking my various fucked-up friendships, and trying to understand how people who like me that much will turn on a dime to drop me or curse me out for not being exactly the way they wanted me to be.

I tend to seek out people who talk about being unlikeable or annoying or "hard to make friends with" for whatever reason, because that's something that resonates with me. Kind of a "I will prove to you that you are loveable so I can prove to myself unloveable people like myself aren't", and believe it or not, I've had good results with it, because turns out most people... aren't unloveable

Yes, I feel this very much and it's becoming a Problem that I have too many "asshole" friends that I keep trying to repair with the power of love and it's very draining but at the same time, if that's what I have the ability to do, why shouldn't I do it?

I've also felt like many of the "friends" (read as: projects) that I invest the most time into aren't properly "grateful," and I always have to remind myself that love languages are a thing, and that oftentimes, the gratitude that I'm expecting just isn't coming to me in the mode that I want it. That, and also that sometimes people don't register that I'm expecting gratitude, because, well... relationships aren't supposed to be that type of transactional and many people don't realize that my acts of kindness are a courtesy rather than my innate, effortless nature. Which leads to a situation where they might end up being like "wait, I never asked for you to be ingenuine and catering to me, if you do that of your own accord, that's your problem, it's not your job to fix my flaws and if you've got a problem with them, I can fix them myself after you simply address them."

Sometimes I shy away from friends when the relationship is too emotionally taxing, whether for good, bad, or meta reasons. Sometimes space is a good way or me to process these kinds of emotions and regain a sense of how much work I was actually doing, and it's a good way for the other person to see just how much I do do, or otherwise whether or not their quality of life actually is any better or worse without me.

Interestingly enough, I had a realisation at therapy today that I don't really consider the people I set out to have a fix-em-up attitude to really truly be my friends, because that sense of "people will start resenting you if you try too hard to change them" is so strong. So, if I set out to have a relationship based on "this person is miserable and I want to Do Something about that", I'm a lot more open to that relationship ending and more willing to be quite casual about my own participation in it, as opposed to people I make friends with because I want to spend time and enjoy their company.

It's that second kind of friendship I feel just... keeps fucking failing on me, the type I go into wanting to Be Their Friend, rather than just wanting to have a relationship that is beneficial to that other person, so maybe the problem is that I still don't know my own needs or how to really have them fulfilled, so I end up giving people conflicting information and everything falls apart.

Oh and we also talked about the bad relationship that triggered this all and a lot of it is tangled up in my sense that I'm responsible for my behaviour even if I didn't intend it to turn out the way it did and oh look at that we're back to speech and why it's hard because consequences.

Mmm, yeah, that makes sense. My fixer-upper relationship either fall into either "tough love" or "doting, humble caretaker."

I think in general, it always hurts not to get desired affirmation from the people you want it from, although the conflict and negative associations definitely get magnified by neurodivergence and trauma... Not to be like "rejection sensitive dysphoria," but it's definitely a feel.

I'm glad you made some headway in deconstructing how you feel and what you perceive! Even if it seems like going in circles, you're definitely going to make some good headway that will hopefully improve your future interactions.

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