I’m Going To Write About You

I’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating all and any of the sometimes incomprehensible things that people say, do or don’t do, or find offensive or draw a line about... has nothing... not one thing to do with you.

The thing is you experience it as if it IS you that is being badmouthed or ignored or whatever the particular blow up is. You retreat into your shell perhaps questioning if they do they have a point or that they are misreading the situation. (100% likely they are...)

This is the thing ... the equal and opposite is true too, the way you handle this situation is ALL YOU. You can attribute your actions or lack thereof to your adversary’s behaviour but your response is ALL YOU.

People really struggle with this... I struggle with it ... I know it to be true but I still feel triggered, even though I am fully aware of this effect.

I had this amazing friend back in Scotland.. she had an amusing saying “The more you step on a squitter the bigger it gets”. A direct translation into the Queen’s English would be the more you step in a dog turd the more it spreads ...and what she was driving at when she said it, and she said it quite a lot ... was the more you ruminate talk or argue about something the more entrenched it becomes the more space and energy it takes up. In short matters get worse.

That being the case,walking away from an argument might seem sensible. You won’t risk stirring that shit and you can’t fight if you are incommunicado. Nor can you share your point of view, which as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before doesn’t count for squat, like I say it’s not about you.

That could be experienced by the person you are walking away from as the most horrible thing that ever happened, they feel rejected and powerless..but it’s not personal, it just how YOU handle the overwhelm.

We barrel through life, being less than perfect humans...I know from my perspective I never want to cause harm, I tie myself in knots trying to empathise, make allowances for and care about others feelings, but I can’t actually know for sure what those are... and when it boils down to it, all we really have is ourselves. Of course we are a mass of contradictions. Sometimes trying to carry and wholeheartedly believing these contradictions to be true, the cognitive dissonance basket just overflows. Retreat is my way of dealing with that. It’s all about me, I cannot take on how you handle your contradictions and competing desires.

A simple example of this effect took place not 5 minutes ago... in the writing arena. I posted a link “to my recent story” and a comment appeared shortly thereafter.. “there’s no story here”. I immediately fired back assuming that it was a criticism.. “ok it was more of an opinion piece I supposed... Bit harsh though... “ well of course the commenter replied .. actually I was just trying to tell you there was NO story.... in other words I’d mistakenly posted a broken link. My point is ...my set point, my “go to”reaction was to assume I was being criticised, which had nothing to do with the poster who was only trying to help.

I suppose I have this rather forlorn dream that I can write about you, having fully understood you. And you can comment about me,maybe be right and maybe be wrong or somewhere in between...and it won’t go through my trigger filter and I might actually see what you mean. We may not always vibe together, more often than not we probably won’t but aggression and aggrieved reactions are far from helpful, no matter how or why we are interacting. It’s a forlorn hope, yes I know, but it’s a hope nonetheless.