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Entry tags:
on taking it back
I've been careful to tag entries like this "therapy" so they're easy to filter out? Please let me know if there's anything else I could or should be doing. Thank you, dreamwidth friends!
So last week my therapist asked me a bunch of questions about my relationship with my work colleagues, such as they are, and I tried to describe what worried me when I have to interact with them.
Mainly this boiled down to (1) fear of failing to guess their expectations (2) fear of being annoying. The first one has a whole subset of fears, including: fear I'll come across as controlling if I ask them what their expectations are. It's a whole Scylla and Charybdis... thing.
But this morning it occurred to me that when trying to describe my inner maze of competing fears, I rarely think to mention that I... ugh I don't know how to put this. In my head, I think of it as "sometimes people take things back." I'm sure there would be a succinct way of expressing that but I can't think of it just now, idk. What I mean is: someone (like a work colleague) might say something kind one day, like that I'm "a treasure," say, and then the next day be in a bad mood and say that they've never had a work colleague who was as much trouble to work with as me. Like to me that just feels like a thing that could happen anytime, you know? Which is important, I think, in describing the responses I have in some situations. In describing how, despite teaching at the same music school for over 10 years, I can still lose sleep over some incidents that may seem small from the outside.
When I try to really put my finger on, like, where that feeling is drawing its power from, I... I dunno I keep picturing myself as a little violin student. Like I'm a tiny human, somewhere between 4 and 10 years old, and I'm being congratulated on whatever it is I've just played. Like, fawned over. But I'm not reacting to the congratulations, like I'm not happy about them, because:
(1) I literally don't understand what they're for (my teacher just did a thing, and looked at me, said "now, you," and then I did the thing - which is what I do every day for everything and I have no idea why it would be different for this thing*) and
(2) I already know that this is a double-edged thing and that any day, any time, my parents might take back their congratulations and instead say that whatever I did was obviously easy for me so there's nothing to congratulate. Or, they might turn it around into a pessimism thing, saying that sure I did well once, but since I never put any effort into anything, it'll never amount to anything! Or worse, they might use the fact that I was unusually good at this against me somehow, like by asking how come I'm not as good at schoolwork, or sports, as I am at the violin?
in terms of workplace relationships, that translates thus: no matter how many times I've shown myself to be reliable, competent, and hardworking, and no matter how many times my workplace colleagues compliment and thank me, I can easily imagine them turning on me anytime.
Again, I'm sure there's a way to describe that succinctly. And really, that's what I'm trying to get at by writing this? I guess? A way to say in few words "you know that thing when you know that people might just be saying something because it's what they feel in the moment they're saying it, but they feel like it's ok to take it back or say the opposite whenever it suits them?"
Anyway update about the email thing I wrote about on the 19th: the email was very much a best case scenario email! Such a relief! Also it turned into an opportunity to have a good talk to one of the school administrators. Basically it's like... I used to be so scared of my concerns/feelings/worries being dismissed that I never discussed challenging situations with that administrator, but in the past year I've given it a try twice and both times turned out fine.
Ok ok it is super late, I'm off, happy easter, good night!
*re: why was it so different when I learned the violon. I suspect, now, that it had something to do with the way classical music is often taught. Basically it seems designed to work with an ADHD brain? Something about how you're absolutely not supposed to separate your emotions from the intellectual work of reading, analyzing, and performing sheet music. And something about how, especially if you play an orchestra instrument, you're almost always playing music with other people.
So last week my therapist asked me a bunch of questions about my relationship with my work colleagues, such as they are, and I tried to describe what worried me when I have to interact with them.
Mainly this boiled down to (1) fear of failing to guess their expectations (2) fear of being annoying. The first one has a whole subset of fears, including: fear I'll come across as controlling if I ask them what their expectations are. It's a whole Scylla and Charybdis... thing.
But this morning it occurred to me that when trying to describe my inner maze of competing fears, I rarely think to mention that I... ugh I don't know how to put this. In my head, I think of it as "sometimes people take things back." I'm sure there would be a succinct way of expressing that but I can't think of it just now, idk. What I mean is: someone (like a work colleague) might say something kind one day, like that I'm "a treasure," say, and then the next day be in a bad mood and say that they've never had a work colleague who was as much trouble to work with as me. Like to me that just feels like a thing that could happen anytime, you know? Which is important, I think, in describing the responses I have in some situations. In describing how, despite teaching at the same music school for over 10 years, I can still lose sleep over some incidents that may seem small from the outside.
When I try to really put my finger on, like, where that feeling is drawing its power from, I... I dunno I keep picturing myself as a little violin student. Like I'm a tiny human, somewhere between 4 and 10 years old, and I'm being congratulated on whatever it is I've just played. Like, fawned over. But I'm not reacting to the congratulations, like I'm not happy about them, because:
(1) I literally don't understand what they're for (my teacher just did a thing, and looked at me, said "now, you," and then I did the thing - which is what I do every day for everything and I have no idea why it would be different for this thing*) and
(2) I already know that this is a double-edged thing and that any day, any time, my parents might take back their congratulations and instead say that whatever I did was obviously easy for me so there's nothing to congratulate. Or, they might turn it around into a pessimism thing, saying that sure I did well once, but since I never put any effort into anything, it'll never amount to anything! Or worse, they might use the fact that I was unusually good at this against me somehow, like by asking how come I'm not as good at schoolwork, or sports, as I am at the violin?
in terms of workplace relationships, that translates thus: no matter how many times I've shown myself to be reliable, competent, and hardworking, and no matter how many times my workplace colleagues compliment and thank me, I can easily imagine them turning on me anytime.
Again, I'm sure there's a way to describe that succinctly. And really, that's what I'm trying to get at by writing this? I guess? A way to say in few words "you know that thing when you know that people might just be saying something because it's what they feel in the moment they're saying it, but they feel like it's ok to take it back or say the opposite whenever it suits them?"
Anyway update about the email thing I wrote about on the 19th: the email was very much a best case scenario email! Such a relief! Also it turned into an opportunity to have a good talk to one of the school administrators. Basically it's like... I used to be so scared of my concerns/feelings/worries being dismissed that I never discussed challenging situations with that administrator, but in the past year I've given it a try twice and both times turned out fine.
Ok ok it is super late, I'm off, happy easter, good night!
*re: why was it so different when I learned the violon. I suspect, now, that it had something to do with the way classical music is often taught. Basically it seems designed to work with an ADHD brain? Something about how you're absolutely not supposed to separate your emotions from the intellectual work of reading, analyzing, and performing sheet music. And something about how, especially if you play an orchestra instrument, you're almost always playing music with other people.
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OUCH. This is much too familiar. ♥ ♥ ♥
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Which of course isn’t true when it comes to relationships, and... although I get why we say that about music, I don’t think it’s actually true about music, either. I mean. Everyone fucks up or just has a bad day sometimes, and hearing someone that I respect fuck up doesn’t make me think “well, guess I was wrong about them and they actually suck!” It makes me think “that sounds hard, and so-and-so usually sounds so good!” or even “thank god even so-and-so is human and has a bad day sometimes!” And yet. Yeah. I think I know what you mean about the feeling that a person or the world at large could turn on you at any time.
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