u/Comfortable-Wonder62

Often I go through my day with some level of numbness, or habitually dial down some of my emotional perception and reaction, and move through certain experiences mechanically, emptily, coldly even though there's something about it that bothers me, and I focus instead on what I want to get done or what's higher in priority.

This filtering has an invalidation or oppression of my feelings, even when I get trampled or violated. Then over time, I don't know what to do with the bottled up emotions that are reaching boiling point, or already gone past boiling point.

Yesterday I told my therapist about a minor incident that happens to me once in a while, about my balcony being used as a public space because it's on the first floor and is unfenced. But only mine is being trespassed, out of all the first floor balconies. Over the years I have been peeved by it, and have done different things about it, but of course to no avail and eventually just swallow my anger every single time, although one improvement in all this is that instead of getting more and more peeved, I am more and more stable and grounded as I experience it each time.

Today there's another trigger which is also a long-standing problem where I have no emotional outlet. A neighbor complained about our property manager charging him for another person's bill, but calling that as his "condo fee." Seems like quite a gross negligence and privacy violation, and he's angrily demanding some rectification. I don't have exactly the same experience as him but I have other grievances with the manager about their incompetence, professional negligence, lack of duty of care, misuse of authority, etc., which they and the condo board dismiss, so this results in me swallowing my grievances. I am not alone in my dissatisfaction with the board and the manager, but over the years we have all been dismissed and oppressed, then we gradually grow "smaller", no longer complaining though silently very indignant.

I think lately I'm coming to a point in my healing where I need to look squarely at all these different oppressive scenarios and my habitually repressed emotions, and open up those wounds. It's not just anger but grief too. There's this familiar childhood feeling of my parents not honoring my emotions and as a child I didn't know how to make sense of or deal with them, this sense of overwhelming helplessness and disorientation that is part of the emotional cluelessness I had in carrying myself around, then I just grabbed other things to override this emotional cluelessness, so it became harder for me to listen to my own feelings.

Previously I would eagerly look forward to the upcoming therapy session. Because I was too dependent on my therapist. I gave her too much power, and I underestimated (and invalidated) my own power.

Now I don't look forward to the next session. In fact, I dreaded it, wanted to postpone it, but felt that it's better to keep a more regular checking in, in case I slowed down or sidetracked or whatever.

But I think this is for the better, because she didn't seem to want to take me as her client anyway, I was because I was so desperate that she agreed, and I paid for all the sessions upfront, so I committed us both to a set number of sessions.

Now it's coming to an end. Tomorrow is my last session. I don't know what I will do after that, because I still feel powerless and not able to trust my ability. But I have less fear and worry about the future now. I don't know what my future will be like, I don't know if I can turn my life right side up by myself, but I don't panic or fret about it now.

I will just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and hopefully I will create the life I want.

I find myself keep coming back to feeling resentment toward my cousins. Although over time this feeling has lessened in intensity, but it's still weird that I cannot exit this pattern. Then I realized, it's because I keep harboring the hope that they would one day come to me to give me their attention, understanding, acceptance, etc.

And I realized, this habit of yearning for attention from someone who would never be able to give it to me, is from my relationship with my mother who was an emotionally cold person. As a child, I did stare into space for a long time, getting used to waiting and hoping for her attention, and repeatedly being disappointed.

I keep trying to exit this pattern, but I still fall into this pattern and get stuck in it often. As soon as I pine for someone's attention, I won't let go, even though that person has moved on, or does not even know or want to give me their attention, I will still cling on to the hope that they will one day come back to me.

So with my cousins, they deliberately ignore me, and I again activate this pattern of wanting and waiting, the more they ignore me, the more I yearn for their attention, then the more resentful I feel for being neglected and the more I find it unfair that they have become more and more neglectful, then the more I want them to see and understand the pain they have inflicted on me, but of course they won't so I feel even more hurt, etc.

It's a loop that has no end and just gets worse and worse every time I think of them.

Then when I realized it's because I am lacking attention and seeking their attention, I think I am able to exit this loop, because I don't need them to give me their attention. I can give myself the attention I need. I just need to retrain my habit.

So I am gradually training myself to see myself, instead of seeing them, and seeing their refusal to give me their attention. Focus on myself.

Lately, I have been struggling with self-expression in my online class. I have something to say, but I keep withholding myself, feeling that nobody will pay attention to me so there's no point in saying. They talk happily among themselves, but whenever I say something, nobody reacts. They all keep quiet, like they're all circumventing me. It makes me awkward, like I'm an elephant in the room.

So whenever I have something to say, I will ruminate in my head a hundred times, say or not say, what and how to say, whether there's a point or need to say, etc. Often, I will arrive at the decision of swallowing what I want to say.

In the rare case when I decide to say, then I will keep projecting the belief that nobody will give a damn, while saying what I have in mind. Then of course nobody reacts.

I find that this belief is quite strong and incessant. Even when I am conscious about it, I still can't stop projecting it outward, partly out of habit, partly because it's very strong. It's like a mad bull charging ahead, nobody can stop it.

I keep watching myself thinking repeatedly "nobody is going to respond to me", I can only agree with it, but I can't stop it. It's like I have fallen into my own self-validation.

Then it escalates to "since nobody wants to give me attention, then I don't want to engage with them," self-validation followed by invalidation of others. Ah, I've trapped myself in invalidation! 😮‍💨

I have just noticed one thing about the way I listen or understand. I tend to attract invalidation, or people who are opinionated and quick to judge, so when they speak, they tend to side one way or another, not neutral. So when someone who is more neutral speaks, I don't catch their meaning that much. Like it's not fully sinking in, and some parts just fly over my head.

I say this because my teacher answered a question from a classmate last year. A few days ago I re-listened to that Q&A. I sort of grasped more of it's meaning, but at the time it still didn't sink in fully. Gradually it started to sink in a bit more. Then I realized, the reason it flew over my head previously was because my teacher was very neutral, almost ambiguous, in her reply, and I was more used to the dictatorship or commanding style from an authoritative figure.

Specifically, the student asked if they should just observe and dis-identify with an issue about her kids. The teacher's answer was like the "yes and no" type, saying that it is her choice as to how much she wants to heal and face.

But now I see that this answer is about being okay with whatever you choose. It's not about judging what is right or wrong, good or better. It's very accepting, not biased toward any particular method or choice. And I realize I tend to ignore or dismiss this type of answer, opting instead for something more concrete which is usually more biased toward one way or another.

One of the effects of my childhood emotional neglect is that it's actually physical, and affects my ability to get my physical needs met. Because my mom had the final say as to what and how much I should have, when and how I should have, what I was not allowed to have even when I needed it, etc., so I developed the habit of waiting for my needs to be given to me, and when that didn't happen, I just kept staring into open space blankly, not knowing what to do because I was not allowed to ask for what I needed, because that would automatically be denied, and when I got really desperate and asked, I would be violently reproached and again denied.

So I learned not to ask, not just for emotional needs, but also physical needs, even when I was rightfully entitled to it, and the other person insisted that they had already given it to me but in fact didn't. Actually that's when it gets even more difficult.

If I prove to them that they were wrong, they would still insist that they're right, and then continue to deny me by genuinely believing that they have done nothing wrong and leaving me deprived and thinking that I should just go deal with my problem myself and not bother them further. At this point I fear demanding further because I'm afraid that they would lose their patience and lash out at me for disturbing their peace.

In one concrete scenario, my therapist said she would send me our recorded sessions, but she didn't, and insisted that she did. What she sent was actually the invitation to the online session that was already over, and I was left to figure out how to get the recorded session out of that invite. I had tried researching through several different ways, but failed. Eventually I figured out with her app, she needed to go to the history section to generate a link of the past session. I taught her how to use her app, and she managed to send me the right link where I could access the recorded session. But she didn't send me the preceding 14 sessions where she didn't generate the correct link. So I kept waiting for her to come to her senses, but realized, she didn't think she owed me anything.

Of course I could have just asked her outright, now that she finally figured out how, but my concern is not just in this specific scenario but in many other situations where people genuinely believe that they did give me what I was entitled to when they didn't, then they dismissed me when I tried to talk to them about it, not even trying to understand exactly what was wrong because they were so damned certain that they were right and I was immediately presumed to be the troublemaker.

Even when I was in the right, I still couldn't get what I was entitled. It's exasperating!