u/Constant-Big4713

I think one of the hardest things for me is because I am so emotionally disconnected internally, I tend to attract emotionally helpless people. People that are essentially prisoners of their own feelings, they feel too much, struggle to regulate, struggle to communicate (feelings are complex), and overall are at the mercy of the internal intensity of their own emotions.

Yet, because I was parentified as a child, I am pulled towards these people like moth's to a flame. It's very easy to just fall into that role for these people. Yet the moment I express my own needs to these people, I am met with invalidation. I feel used by them, like my own existence for these people is to simply fulfill their needs. Then when it doesn't work out, they toss me aside as if I am nothing.

I am so tired of being there for people that don't deserve me, yet I struggle because I am so disconnected from my self most of the time. When I'm not, I just feel irritated by the thought of these people. They're so self-absorbed and blind to see who they are, or they do and make excuses for it. It's genuinely sickening.

I am just worn down, exhausted, and tired. I hate being this way and I hate attracting people like this too. Even when my instincts say "don't get close to this person" I just take that, toss it in the garbage, and then follow this feeling. Only to end of being tossed out like garbage by them.

The only thing I find in the trash is my instinct that I tossed aside. While that person merely replaces me with someone else like I was just some toy out of a toy bin, swapping one out for the other.

I'm glad I walk away from these people, but I do need to stop acting on that pull towards these people.

I know that when I was younger, I struggled with emotional blending, I'd experience physiological arousal in my body. Yet I was not able to differentiate any feelings internally. Instead, I'd just think the emotion that I was feeling strongest at the time was the appropriate one to feel. Every other feeling was non-existent. For example, perhaps I was angry at someone and loved them too, yet the anger was so strong that the affection I felt for them disappeared.

However, someone with emotional complexity can feel anger, sadness, affection, and resentment while being able to differentiate all of them internally.

While someone that may struggle with being able to label their feelings or differentiate them will often experience emotional blending. That is when someone is blending multiple feelings internally all at once, such as anger, sadness, affection, and resentment. Yet because they cannot differentiate those internal feelings, they blend together and can feel like one big internal experience of overwhelm/stress.

The reason why people can experience emotional complexity instead of emotional blending is because of emotional capacity. The window of tolerance for feelings is complex; therefore, the capacity to hold multiple conflicting feelings at once can make it hard to differentiate them.

This is something I talked about with my therapist today about how I deal with abandonment.

My initial reaction towards it is indifference, the avoidant side of me gets triggered and I completely lack the care to maintain the connection, whether they’re there or not there doesn’t bother me. Be friends, not be friends, it’s whatever to me.

Then my anxious side bursts through that emotional wall of mine with gasoline and a lighter ready to burn shit down like no tomorrow. An intense strong feeling to completely cut the person off from every access point. By the time I am done, what once looked like a mess that could possibly be resolved now looks like a nuclear bomb went off and nothing will ever be fixable. I burn it all down, remove them, block them, never want to speak to them again. Internally I am just thinking to myself (Why the hell should I keep any connection with you, look at how you treated me, look at your inability to take accountability, why would I ever want you in my life? You’re not good for me, in fact, I am better off without you).

It feels good too. In those moments where you have control, and the self-regulating that your behavior does to sooth those intense feelings feels great. However, then maybe a few months pass, and you look back on the destruction you caused. Perhaps you regret it and you wish you had better self-control. But it’s too late and all you can do is carry that regret, grow from it and try to be better in the future.

What about y’all? Are y’all bridge burners or do you try to pull the person back in, or just go straight to indifference, stay in it for a while and then reach out with a lot of affection, promises of change, and missing the person?

This is something I talked about with my therapist today about how I deal with abandonment.

My initial reaction towards it is indifference, the avoidant side of me gets triggered and I completely lack the care to maintain the connection, whether they’re there or not there doesn’t bother me. Be friends, not be friends, it’s whatever to me.

Then my anxious side bursts through that emotional wall of mine with gasoline and a lighter ready to burn shit down like no tomorrow. An intense strong feeling to completely cut the person off from every access point. By the time I am done, what once looked like a mess that could possibly be resolved now looks like a nuclear bomb went off and nothing will ever be fixable. I burn it all down, remove them, block them, never want to speak to them again. Internally I am just thinking to myself (Why the hell should I keep any connection with you, look at how you treated me, look at your inability to take accountability, why would I ever want you in my life? You’re not good for me, in fact, I am better off without you).

It feels good too. In those moments where you have control, and the self-regulating that your behavior does to sooth those intense feelings feels great. However, then maybe a few months pass, and you look back on the destruction you caused. Perhaps you regret it and you wish you had better self-control. But it’s too late and all you can do is carry that regret, grow from it and try to be better in the future.

What about y’all? Are y’all bridge burners or do you try to pull the person back in, or just go straight to indifference, stay in it for a while and then reach out with a lot of affection, promises of change, and missing the person?

Some nights I am completely fine, can fall asleep easily. Tonight is one of those nights where if I don’t take something to help me sleep I’ll be up all night.

I was thinking about my mom that passed away and usually it doesn’t hit me, but tonight is different. I started missing her, even though our relationship wasn’t healthy, she was the only one in my family that I could talk to. Now I am also missing other people as well, it’s a rare feeling too. Losing people as a kid was normal for me, and those people never missed me. As a result, I think I internalized that into a core belief that people don’t miss me. I think that eventually led to me not feeling the missing part when grieving.

But tonight is different, and all I will do is sit with this feeling, that is all I can do. But my heart does ache tonight though.

During these moments, I don’t want to feel this way. It’s heavy, shaky, and I feel physically weak like my body is being drained and the pit in my stomach becomes increasingly noticeable.

I genuinely want to throw up right now from how nauseous my stomach feels right now. I am going to send the apology though if they accept the friend request so I can send it. Not because I want to reconnect, but because I want to take accountability for how I handled things.

But god damn do I feel like running to a toilet right now.

The best way that I can explain this is that I will typically trace back the root cause for why someone has feelings for me.

For example, if I am just someone that they come to vent their feelings about with me, in my mind I am thinking to myself that the underlining reasoning for why they feel connected to me is because of that reason. That if I did not offer that to them, then they would not have any reason to connect to me to begin with.

Even in the romantic relationships that I have had, it always seems like the initial attraction is based entirely on some circumstances that seem less to do with me and more to do with something tied to them that they're missing.

My first love for example, she developed feelings for me because I reminded her of the South (she was from Mississippi) which reminded her of her mother, whom she was separated from and missed. In my mind, my takeaway is the feelings she felt for me were just projection. That if I did not have these specific characteristics then whatever she felt for me wouldn't actually have existed to begin with.

With my second and third relationship, both people seemed more lonely than anything.

My second relationship was with someone that was in a relationship already and I started talking to her, she left him and we got together. I think she was simply only interested in me because I pursued her. But that was it. Beyond that I don't think she really liked me for who I was. She did not like that I smoked, she did not like that I had prior sexual experience, she did not like that I was sometimes quiet. It honestly felt like I was someone she used to take her frustrations out on.

While with my third relationship, it literally started because she said she wanted someone that would be more forward with her. I asked her out, she said yeah, and we dated for a while. But again, it just seemed like she was lonely and she just wanted to be with anyone. It did not seem to matter if it was me or someone else.

With my fourth ex, neither of us ever got to know each other, I think at this point I was so emotionally numb internally that just fulfilling a role in a relationship was fine. We'd exchange I love you's, talk to each other daily, and engage in physical intimacy. It wasn't emotionally intense, but it was stable. Then one day she completely disappeared, and about half a year later I reconnected with an old friend of mine and found out we were dating her at the same time. She eventually went back to him and he told me that she completely denied ever knowing me. Naturally, I think to myself that this too was just another relationship build on functionality. Whether it was me or some other guy, it would not have made a difference.

My 5th ex actually tried getting to know me, but she one day opened up to me about still harboring feelings for an ex of hers while also telling me how she loves me. I felt like this was just another repeat of my first love, that perhaps I reminded her of this ex and that is initially what caused her to develop feelings for me. We broke up shortly after that and never spoke to each other again.

After that I got burnt out on being on relationships. Now every time someone gets close to me, I am always looking at the initial cause for why. For some it's so I can help the regulate their feelings, for other's it's because they're lonely and want to be seen, cared for, loved.

Yet none of it is ever about me, who I am, what my interests are, my likes and dislikes, none of it. I have to offer the information up to them just so they have some semblance of who I am. It's like I am competing with the fantasy version of me that they created and I know how that ends.

It seems like I have now developed this defense mechanism to intellectualize how another person feels about me and create this narrative that their feelings aren't about me to begin with.

But to me, it simply looks true, that this is reality, that whatever they feel has nothing to do with me as a person to begin with.

Usually I never feel this, I went most of my life never having that desire to reach out to anyone from my past. Just seeing their social media was enough to satisfy that feeling. Yet the more I attend therapy, and as that emotional wall slowly fades away, that feeling becomes more prevalent.

It's a feeling I genuinely hate because I never wanted to be like my parents, being raised in an environment where they'd cycle between their toxic on and off again relationship; the fighting, the violence, the cops showing up and my father getting arrested or him leaving, then I'd be left with the mess to clean up. Only to have it end up happening a few months later after my mom begged for him to come back or he'd get released.

I honestly hardly ever resented my father for this, my anger went straight towards my mom while I felt indifferent towards my father.

Yet, when I lost friends from growing up because we'd move all the time, that was easier. I never saw them again, they were gone and that was it. It's like my brain looked at two different experiences and chose the one that was far more manageable. By the time I was 7, I was already used to losing people because of this. I did not have helpful coping skills, nor did I have anyone, so I just kept moving forward never looking back.

I never missed those people either because missing people was an emotional experience I was not allowed to have, you cannot be vulnerable in the type of environment I was raised in.

Yet now that feeling of missing someone, of seeking out connection, is slowly coming back to the surface and I hate that feeling. Because I know that I won't act on it because I don't think it's a good thing to dig up the past. Plus, it wouldn't be from a place of closure or taking accountability, I'd want more from it. But I know that feeling is a feeling I cannot have, so I just sit with this agonizing feeling and patiently wait for that wall to go back up.

Do you emotionally mask? What I mean by that is do you express things to others that you don’t actually internally feel? Because I used to do this quite often because my typical non reactive self has a tendency of being off putting towards others. As I am usually described as ‘chill’ when around other people. But realistically I am not chill, I’m just internally emotionally numb.

I used to mask far more when I was younger, but now not so much. When I would mask I would actually be able to make friends more easily. But now that I no longer do it, my social circle isn’t what it used to be.

I have become very self-sufficient and now don’t really experience any desire to connect to others. Yet I do want that, but also don’t want it. As I am tired of constantly having the same relationships where the people I get involved with just expect me to fulfill some role in their life but never reciprocate.

I wonder if any others experience this or have moved past this?

One thing that I see quite often in people tends to be this 'fix it' mentality in people that tend to be emotionally immature. When conflict arises, there is this tendency to either try to resolve it quickly or become reactionary when the conflict is introduced and not immediately resolved.

I wish life or people were truly that simply, it would make solving problems of not only interpersonal conflict easier, but even issues in society as well. If only these people had the option to have control over the situation and resolve it, then the problem would go away. Yet there is a lot to unpack here. The need for control, the tension of dealing with conflict, and conflict avoidance.

I personally grew up in domestic violence, conflict almost never got resolved or fixed in my family, it was just a cycle of on again, off again. The fighting never resolved anything between my parents, it just allowed them to release all that tension, start to store it again, then release it. The cycle continued over and over again that by the time I was 5, I was relatively numb to the violence. I learned from a young age that conflict can stay unresolved and life just keeps moving. Obviously, this isn't healthy either.

Yet I often find myself noticing patterns in people that instantly see conflict and just need to instantly resolve it, if it isn't resolved they stay stuck in it. It bothers them, affects their life, causes them to hyper-fixate on it. I envision someone frantically panicking, biting at their nails, unable to sleep, unable to think, worried about what will happen. The uncertainty, the lack of control, the anger, and this strong sense of injustice they feel is being inflicted upon them. "How dare this person leave me to deal with this, to make me sit with this feeling." Yet what this person doesn't see is their own inability to see with the discomfort, it must be resolved as quickly as possible. Because they cannot handle the weight of their own feelings nor the weight of someone else's feelings.

These people never learnt that conflict can stay unresolved, that it does not have to be fixed. People that sit with their feelings and don't instantly try to resolve a problem are actually okay with sitting with that ambiguity. They are okay with giving their feelings the space to breath before deciding to make a decision. Yet those who need to resolve things quickly? They aren't okay with that, they feel like a victim to their own feelings and to other people's behavior.

If you are such a person, next time conflict arises, ask yourself what else you can do besides trying to resolve the conflict, perhaps ask yourself what is this person trying to communicate to me? What is their perspective? They came to me with how they felt, what can I do in this situation? Should I instantly resolve it or should I sit with them in this experience together with them? If I try to instantly resolve it what does that tell them? How would I feel if I came to someone and I was instantly met with a resolution to how I felt?