Two-step inoculation to most forms of emotional abuse:
Step 1: pay real attention to how you feel about what happens.
Step 2: respect your own feelings.
Congrats, you are now immune to most of these attacks.
(But: both steps can be extremely difficult for most people.)
Conversation
Most aspects of modern life, and most bad parenting memes, prime people for emotional abuse.
Overcoming that isn't as simple as saying a few affirmations or some New Age hippie BS (if anything, those things often help you *ignore* your feelings, thus priming you for more abuse).
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In most cases, people rely on support from people who actually respect & give a shit about their feelings to get out of self-denial, if they're heavy on that.
Not something industrialized life is very forthcoming with.
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The-city-I-live-in-and-am-leaving-soon is full of toddler-level adults who are knocked over by the slightest emotional breeze.
It's not really their fault. The local culture is intensely oppressive and devaluing. It generates profound emotional neediness, that is then denied.
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All of these people would be emotionally healthier if more people they met simply acknowledged their feelings, instead of dogpiling on them or their common foes.
Instead, everyone gets wound tighter into their own cocoon of dissociation & projection/denial.
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A lot of our societies trample people on the fringes, resulting in increased rates of mental health problems in vulnerable groups.
But there are plenty of cultures out there that trample almost everyone. This normalizes poor emotional health, until most people are maladjusted.
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They may look well-adjusted with respect to the general culture, but the general culture saps energy and vitality from *everyone*, so...
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When you leave these areas it's like stepping out of deep mental fog.
Often, there is profound unease. Things once unfelt now pressing on the edges of consciousness.
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There comes an inflection point, much like with addiction, where change becomes so painful that people reflexively avoid it.
It's like leaving a covered wound to fester until it develops severe infections, and then exposing it to the open air.
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And also, much of that change is out of your hand.
Say you're gay in a homophobic country. You can come to terms with your sexuality, and stop internalizing self-hatred, but most of your surroundings will still be hostile. This isn't a problem for you to fix.
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Overcoming or adapting your internal emotional dysregulation will do little to nothing to change the people around you.
You won't change the abusers in your environment. You won't suddenly stop seeing miserable people everywhere. Not if the larger system is like that.
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It is not impossible to change these systems, but attempting to do so will set in motion powerful (and often violent) feedback mechanisms.
You're not going to achieve this by yourself.
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