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Follow-up to the entry about my alleged feelings:
I Skyped with him and reminded him of, like, my basic humanity, and he is sorry that he spoke about me in a way that made it seem like he had forgotten about or didn't appreciate our friendship and my, like, emotional presence in it or his life or whatever.
I think he did need a reminder to jolt him out of the Suffering Solipsism and I have given it to him. I'm still a little wary, because not everybody would even behave this way at their worst, but I managed to eliminate the 3-4% probability that he'd just say, "Um well yeah of course I think that. If you had real feelings you wouldn't be able to control yourself so well."
Probability eliminated.
He said that he was coming to some wrong conclusions about things, a lot of things. He also acknowledged that it put our friend in a weird position to phrase all these things like they're stuff she's obviously going to agree with and be on board with.
I reiterated to him that I'm not yelling, I'm not deliberately hurting him just because I'm hurting, I'm not doing any of that stuff. I reminded him that this is normal, that he can have this all the time, with everybody. Basically it was just my obligatory reminder to him that I am not a magical being who is uniquely capable of discussing hurt feelings in a non-abusive way.
We did laughing and joking and stuff, too, when possible. I always try to do that when I am talking to someone about (relatively) heavy shit. Nothing gets done if I just batter the other person with everything that is terrible about them; exchanging smiles and jokes throughout the process are my way of making it clear that they have reason to not just... give up and flop down in defeated despair.
He asked if we were cool and I told him that I'll probably be a little wary for however long he's up in the canopy of the crazy jungle (which is like being in the crazy tree except moreso) just in case there is further fuckery, and he said, "No. No, I will try to limit it to listening to good advice, acknowledging it is good advice, and then not doing it. That is as crazy as I will get."
I laughed. "So, business as usual?"
"...Yeah."
"Okay. Take care dude. Talk to you later."
So despite strong physical symptoms of anxiety before having this conversation, it has been had and it went more or less the way I thought it would, which happened to be the best case scenario in which only a vanishingly small portion of his distress was automatic guilt to be thrown onto the self-pity pyre, with the bulk of it being a recognition of what was actually not cool here. That's important to me. Apologies aren't all that useful to me if they're reflexive, given automatically as a pacifying measure. Comprehension is important; it's helpful to double-check that what I'm saying is actually being recognized.
Thanks, all, for being with me as I process.
I Skyped with him and reminded him of, like, my basic humanity, and he is sorry that he spoke about me in a way that made it seem like he had forgotten about or didn't appreciate our friendship and my, like, emotional presence in it or his life or whatever.
I think he did need a reminder to jolt him out of the Suffering Solipsism and I have given it to him. I'm still a little wary, because not everybody would even behave this way at their worst, but I managed to eliminate the 3-4% probability that he'd just say, "Um well yeah of course I think that. If you had real feelings you wouldn't be able to control yourself so well."
Probability eliminated.
He said that he was coming to some wrong conclusions about things, a lot of things. He also acknowledged that it put our friend in a weird position to phrase all these things like they're stuff she's obviously going to agree with and be on board with.
I reiterated to him that I'm not yelling, I'm not deliberately hurting him just because I'm hurting, I'm not doing any of that stuff. I reminded him that this is normal, that he can have this all the time, with everybody. Basically it was just my obligatory reminder to him that I am not a magical being who is uniquely capable of discussing hurt feelings in a non-abusive way.
We did laughing and joking and stuff, too, when possible. I always try to do that when I am talking to someone about (relatively) heavy shit. Nothing gets done if I just batter the other person with everything that is terrible about them; exchanging smiles and jokes throughout the process are my way of making it clear that they have reason to not just... give up and flop down in defeated despair.
He asked if we were cool and I told him that I'll probably be a little wary for however long he's up in the canopy of the crazy jungle (which is like being in the crazy tree except moreso) just in case there is further fuckery, and he said, "No. No, I will try to limit it to listening to good advice, acknowledging it is good advice, and then not doing it. That is as crazy as I will get."
I laughed. "So, business as usual?"
"...Yeah."
"Okay. Take care dude. Talk to you later."
So despite strong physical symptoms of anxiety before having this conversation, it has been had and it went more or less the way I thought it would, which happened to be the best case scenario in which only a vanishingly small portion of his distress was automatic guilt to be thrown onto the self-pity pyre, with the bulk of it being a recognition of what was actually not cool here. That's important to me. Apologies aren't all that useful to me if they're reflexive, given automatically as a pacifying measure. Comprehension is important; it's helpful to double-check that what I'm saying is actually being recognized.
Thanks, all, for being with me as I process.
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no subject
Date: 2013-10-08 06:17 am (UTC)From:W/ best friend a good argument helps find the places that need strengthening. W/ my hubby, too. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-10-08 09:25 pm (UTC)From:Among your feelings is an extraordinary kindness, the sort of kindness that is willing to make a long term project out of polishing some diamond in the rough who often makes you reasonably want to throw up your hands and give up.
If it helps you to find it in you to go the extra mile, remember that I had to be a few peoples' long term project once, burning a couple of bridges to ashes in the process, before I was ready to live my life as an example not a warning.