(I just posted this on tumblr also.)

Right so I've rarely tried to articulate this before so I have no idea how wacky it is going to sound to other people:

Sometimes I struggle in a “weak sense of self” kind of way, where if someone, particularly an authority figure, projects an inaccurate personality on me, while ignoring my attempts at correcting them... it’s like I start to worry that this is what my life is always going to be like from now on and I can never make it stop?

In general, all it takes for me to snap out of it is one close friend chatting to me for a few minutes and it’s like the world rights itself. But. I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas about like... objects? Resources? That can act as sense-of-self security blankets? Like for emergencies.

I read this tumblr post a while ago and had thoughts about it. The post is all quotes from people who have felt (or still feel) that love is something they have to earn. I kept wanting to reach through the internet and tell them -

When you feel like the value you have as a person is something that can be quantified, and when you feel that it is your job to figure out what people find entertaining/charming/adorable and to be that, and when you feel like people might like you one day because you “got it right,” and they might not like you the next day, whether you changed anything or not, and when you feel like that's just normal, that's just how things are - ( Read more... )

Maybe this is coming up for me because I read an article about friendship breakups. Maybe it was the particular word choices in a psychology video. Or maybe... I don't know.( Read more... )

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. ( Read more... )

I have a new therapist.

I broke up, so to speak, with my former therapist, in the summer of 2019. ( Read more... )

I've been watching videos about narcissistic abuse.

At first I just found them inexplicably soothing but then over time they became something like a resource? Like... I feel like I have a framework to think about some behaviours, when I didn't before. With a side of "oh you mean other people find that behaviour toxic?" It's been a bit of a relevation.

Not that I would ever dream of armchair diagnosing narcissism. It's more like - ok here's an example. So this morning, in a meeting at the music school where I teach, one person did the following things:

(1) asked about marginal/edge cases that weren't on the agenda
(2) wanted the school administration to establish and enforce boundaries in their place
(3) had poor listening skills; asked about things that had been discussed and decided minutes before
(4) did not thank other teachers for their help
(5) sat weirdly far away from everyone else
(6) literally said none of the students met expectations

Which are all common behaviours in narcissists. Now, I don't care whether this person is a narcissist or just having a bad day - that's not the point. The point is, it's safe to assume that this person's priority, in that moment, was not the students. The students may not be low of their list of priorities, and this person may be a perfectly good teacher. But in that moment, higher on the priorities list than the students, was their self-esteem, a self-esteem that is disproportionately weak.

So it's like: for me, what I get out of thinking of this situation this way, is that it allows me to approach it in a realistic way. For a start, I think of the entire thing as indicative of this person's self-esteem. I.e. if I'm thinking of the entire meeting as a problem to fix, then I identify the problem as this person's self-esteem (so: not their opinions, not their people skills, not their educational philosophy, etc). And then, with that lucidity, I'm able to think of it as: ok, can I do anything to fix this problem? And I'm sure you can anticipate the answer: no. I cannot, single-handedly, fix this person's self-esteem. Or even help it in that situation.

One of the reasons that this has been a bit of a revelation is that I've, in a way, realized that some things I learned to think of as normal, maybe aren't.

So, for example, when I said something in a meeting this morning, and one of my colleagues disagreed, historically I would have found that unsettling because I was taught that if you don't react to someone disagreeing with you, you're tacitly acknowledging that they are correct. But this morning it was like I realized, for maybe the first time? That the concept of "if you don't react to someone saying you're wrong, you are acknowledging that they are correct" is something that was taught to me by people either engaging in, or aping, narcissistic behaviour. It turns out, lots of people don't see "not reacting to being contradicted" as an acknowledgment.

Is there a word for the effect of gaslighting but not the intent? As in, what it feels like? I don't really want to get into a discussion of whether it's possible for someone to feel destabilized about their perception of reality without another person (or group of people) intending to make them feel that way, I'm just trying to explain the sensation of being on the receiving end.

I feel like when there is a discussion of gaslighting, the focus is often on the tactics and the abuser's motivations, and so that's what people think about when they hear the word. Like, they picture sinister motives. When I try to explain what if feels like to have a lack of confidence about my own perceptions, I hesitate to use the word - I want to avoid accidentally finding myself in a discussion of whether there's anyone actually intending to make me feel that way (particularly since, ironically, that would compound the issue.)

Anyway I've tried to look it up but as far as I can tell there's no specific word for "that thing when all of a sudden your brain's main occupation is fact-checking. Except it's fact-checking itself."

First: HELLO FROM FANWORKSCON IT IS GREAT AND EVERYONE HERE IS GREAT

Ok now content. Warning for discussion of past self-loathing and body appearance stuff. ( regarding fears )

what my writing workshop friend asks: "what's on your mind?"

what's on my mind: one time, I wrote a POI story that included this dialogue: “Don’t like the rain, Sir?” “Well, Reese, notwithstanding my likely lowered defenses against bacterial and viral attack, this rain is growing to Noachian Flood proportions, and I do not know how to swim.” and I'm never going to top that

what I say: "nothing, you?"

Fic: But All I Want Is You
Fandom: Stardew Valley
Pairing: Abigail/Sam/Sebastian
Tags: mystery, intimacy, OT3, secrets, magic

3709 words

We each sat in a different corner of Sebastian’s bedroom with a pen and paper, and chose a theme. I wanted to do rainy days, but Sam spoke up first.

“Soul mates.”