confession: i am generally extremely terrible at relationships
i’ve gotten better at sharing myself authentically in short bursts, but there are so many “nope, no more intimacy than this” walls set up in my psyche, and i don’t always know when they’ll pop up—
Conversation
i just know that when they do, i can start to avoid people who i actually really like :( this weirdly strong anxiety arises and something in me just badly wants to nope out without saying anything
its lost me several friendships..and sabotaged budding ones that seemed promising—
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i know its something from my past i’m not seeing fully that made me this way. maybe rooted in how i was punished for showing my true feelings growing up. so now when something starts to feel “unsafe” to be honest about, i shut down/run away instead of talking about it. —
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or at any sign of potential conflict or “difficult conversation” i shut down/run away, perhaps subconsciously anticipating the kind of one-sided, antagonistic, threatening reactions my parents so often gave. —
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anything i don’t have experience with & thus can’t give helpful advice on... i shut down/run away... feeling too “useless” to deserve to continue talking to that person. or if they just say something that feels kinder than what i “deserve”, i can shut down. the list goes on... —
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most of my inner work thus far has exclusively been around healing my relationship with myself. shifting how i feel when i’m alone, or around people in a casual way. but now that i feel like i’ve made some headway there, —
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i think its time to focus more on healing my “relational self”.. all the places where i flinch back from knowing and being known more deeply... all the places where there is still fear.
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i was told recently "private healing is a warm-up for relational healing" and i was like shut uuuuuuup nooooooo 😅
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lmao omg... sounds true but i feel that reaction so hard.
for me its like,
“but i was doing the private healing in hopes that i wouldn’t HAVE TO do any relational healing!!! 😩”
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