the mind cannot see what it cannot accept

“The very thought of [them] makes me depressed; it makes me feel helpless and abused and targeted. This feeling is all too familiar for me […] I felt the same way about some of my friends in the past. It makes me feel very uneasy. And it has a very strong hold over me. It gives me anxiety.”

From My Journal, Day 81

I often felt crippling anxiety around friends and acquaintances. I stayed up at night ruminating on my interactions with them. I was overcome by strong emotions, i.e., fear and dread, shame and guilt. My thoughts were racing. I felt restless and uneasy.

Many said I was overthinking. I was too sensitive. It was all in my head. I needed to let it go and take it easy, or see a therapist or psychiatrist about it.

In the presence of others, I unconsciously resorted to people pleasing or bullying. I made myself small by self-deprecating and playing a victim, or I made myself big by being loud and aggressive. I talked incessantly. I dominated every conversation I was in. I constantly drew attention and roused laughter. I was much like a circus animal performing tricks on stage to entertain and satiate emotional hunger of my spectators. Except those were not tricks. They were often real stories about my painful and lonely existence that some seemed to enjoy hearing about and others were too timid to walk away from.

I was so caught up in the day-to-day drama, I was not able to see clearly. I continually went in and out of the state of awareness, which was accompanied (or perhaps triggered) by repeated spikes in stress hormones followed by inevitable physiological crashes. My body and mind were in a perpetual cycle of intoxication and exhaustion. However, I was not influenced by drugs or alcohol, I was influenced by other people. My judgement was clouded by persistent strong emotional reactions. My thoughts were entangled in lies and manipulations and projections. I was confused. I felt I was crazy. I felt I could not trust myself. I could not understand whether I was right or wrong, fair or biased, imposing or gaslit. I was enmeshed. I could not see myself separate from another.

It was not until I temporarily isolated myself that the fog began to clear. I needed to distance myself physically from these interactions for some time to regain autonomy over my emotional and mental states, and see the situation for what it was. And although, I could now see the enmeshed, codependent, toxic (as in inflicting real measurable harm on my mental, emotional and physical bodies) and otherwise unhealthy nature of these relationships, I did not see a way out. I was afraid of retaliation, harassment and overt aggression. Afterall, there was a reason I made myself small or big, and I enmeshed - I was protecting myself. There was wisdom in my dysfunction.

These seemingly maladaptive responses to social situations have some interesting parallels with self-defense strategies we are taught when encountering a bear in the wild. I am no hunter, or hiker, or nature enthusiast, but I believe the advice goes along the lines of “If it’s brown, lie down, if it’s black, attack.” In other words, we are told to protect ourselves by making ourselves small in the presence of some bears, and big in response to others. Although there were no bears or lions or wolves in my vicinity, there were people in my life who had no reservations about lying, manipulating, bad-mouthing and distorting the narrative in any other way possible. My unhealthy excessive worry and rumination were in fact a healthy response to an unhealthy environment. My incessant chattering distracted and lulled the scheming minds of others. By enmeshing, I made myself close and similar and, therefore, unthreatening. My nervous system was signaling to flee, but without any escape route in sight, I only edged nearer.   

I did get out eventually. I was betrayed, and then I was discarded. Although a part of me saw it coming and was relieved, it still hurt. I still had a hard time believing and accepting it. And I was enraged. I punched and threw pillows in my bedroom. I cried and screamed (alone in the privacy of my home because society condemns justified anger expressed in response to unjust offenses). And I wrote about some really disturbing violent fantasies in a journal as a way to channel my anger onto paper rather than people. I was quite surprised by how gruesome those images were, and how satisfying it felt to entertain them in my mind. I did not know I was prone to at the very least thinking of such violence. In truth, we are all capable of violence just as much as we are capable of love. We are all criminals, and we are saints. We are all oppressors and saviors. It is not the question of if someone can be violent, but rather it is the question of what it takes them to get there.

Betrayal may have saved me from my entanglements this time, but it did not save me from me. I was still attracted to dysfunctional relationships like a moth to a flame, and I continued to engage in the dance of accommodating and intimidating within those relationships. These were my coping mechanisms, and although it may seem logical to address unhealthy adaptive behaviors directly and attempt to change them – to trade people pleasing for authenticity and self-expression, to replace aggression with compassion and understanding, to train one’s mind to be present and the body to stay calm – the unconscious simply will not allow it. There is danger in being authentic around liars and compassionate around manipulators. There is foolishness in staying put and calm when the body alerts to run. There is no use in setting boundaries where none are respected (more on that later).

What I needed was discernment, and then acceptance. There is already wisdom innate to all of us which guides us through the realities of life, if only one can adequately perceive them. I needed to see people for who they actually were rather than who I hoped they would be. I needed to put an end to rationalizing and emphasizing with their red flags. I needed to stop assuming responsibility for their behavior. I needed to face the darkness in others rather than glossing over it to fit the narrative I was projecting.  

And in order to recognize the monsters around me, I first needed to witness the demons within me.