Realizing how unnecessarily alone I am, probably due to my childhood.
My boyfriend is currently on a wonderful holiday to see family back in his home country, and it’s triggering a lot of negative feelings for me.
We’ve been together just under a year and I’m realizing how much of myself is wrapped up in him and his emotional presence, because well, right or wrong, I guess he’s the only source of my emotional needs being met. He’s two weeks into a 6 week trip to see family and friends, and communication is suddenly strained due to being busy and lack of cell service. He’s out doing things from dawn to dusk, having an amazing time, and I’m happy for him. He’s been trying to update me in the mornings before heading out for the day with pictures and such, and it’s nice to see him having a great time.
Rationally, I know he’s not avoiding/ignoring me through limited communication and I actually appreciate his ability to go “phone free” while with loved ones. I love that for him. I’m happy for him that he’s getting so emotionally filled being with loved ones. However, if I’m being truthful about my feelings, the lack of regular communication is triggering feelings of abandonment and rejection, and him having loving moments with family is also triggering something in me. It doesn’t help that I’m currently off my routine as I’m off from work for a bit. He assumes I’m making the most of the time, doing things and seeing people. But I’m not. I’m embarrassed and feel guilty to be sitting around sad instead of doing productive things with my time off.
I’ve realized in the two weeks he’s already been gone just how alone I feel in life. I’m not just lonely because I can’t text him. I feel that deep pain of someone who has always been alone. Last year, after one holiday too many feeling unheard and unseen by my parents, I dove deep into why things are the way they are. I started learning about emotionally immature parents, and the scars they leave their children with. I’ve fallen down that rabbit hole again, which led me to the term “emotional neglect”. It’s dawned upon me that to some extent, I was emotionally neglected as a child, and this likely shaped me into who I am today.
I didn’t expect my boyfriend leaving to see family to trigger me as much as it is, but I guess on the bright side it’s allowed me to reflect on patterns and life experiences I wasn’t fully seeing? I think I’m jealous of him and his trip in a way, that he has so many people in his life, that despite having not seen them for a couple years, they all want to see each other. They all want to hang out together. They want to eat meals and have chats about life. I should be happy for him, and intellectually I am, but emotionally it’s making me feel feelings of resentment toward him. How can he be so happy and fulfilled in life? I’ve struggled in past relationships with choosing avoidant and emotionally unavailable partners. With him being gone, I’m having what I know are unrealistic fears of him leaving me or deciding I’m unworthy. What does he see in me? I’m so dull and uninteresting, and being emotional is even more of a burden, surely he’ll realize I’m not worth it. I’m thinking all this, despite him literally being the best thing to have happened to me in maybe my entire 36 years. He’s emotionally available, attuned, and present to my needs, and cares so deeply for me. He already shows in actions how much he loves me unconditionally. I’ve showed him some of my darkest parts, and he loves me anyways. I shouldn’t be afraid of him disappointing me, but it makes sense that I have these feelings. I was raised this way.
Him traveling hours to see family that love and miss him is triggering me. My parents live 20 minutes away and don’t care to see me. In the past, I would have craved wanting to see them out of obligation and hoping for the best, but honestly I don’t care to see the real version of them I now know. They literally know nothing about my life these days. I don’t know if they’ve ever really known anything about my life, aside from what they choose to know or believe about me. My boyfriend is bouncing around from house to house, catching up with aunts and cousins galore and going on all these adventures. I have 30 aunts and uncles and even more cousins, yet I know nothing about any of them. They know nothing of me, other than being Diane and Bob’s daughter. My parents never gave me access to these family members. At the few events I attended growing up, it was understood that I was to mind my business and not bother the adults.
My parents had no friends. They couldn’t model what healthy relationships look like, and this extended to being unable to model communication skills and healthy reciprocity. I learned it was best to please my parents by obeying their rules and I learned not to speak unless spoken to. I became a selective mute. I was teased and bullied relentlessly my entire schooling for being weird. College was an open door for me. It was where I finally learned what normal people do, and as I learned more about life, my relationship with my parents eroded. They couldn’t control me anymore, and were disappointed by what they perceived as sinful life choices.
I thought I was ok. Ok enough. Nothing really worth complaining about. Everything on paper looks fine. But why do I feel so…down? Dissatisfied? Disappointed? Empty? My relationships with others aside from my partner are all okay but somewhat unfulfilling, if I’m being honest. I don’t have real deep friendships because I don’t know how to connect with people, not to mention that they don’t have the issues I do (to my knowledge, anyways). My boyfriend thinks (or maybe hopes) I’m out seeing people and friends in his absence. Truth is, I’m not. I don’t really want to spend time with my “friends”, because I leave feeling more empty. Unseen and unheard. Everything is so surface level. Maybe it’s them, or maybe it’s me. Both maybe. But my understanding of how to relate to others is damaged.
I’ve also been going through a bit of a difficult mental health/burnout phase due to work. Luckily I am on a break now, and I assumed that the time off and away would cheer me up and make me feel refreshed and reenergized. That’s not the case. The time off isn’t helping me feel more positive about my job that I’ve been debating quitting because it’s so stressful. I’ve realized that I struggled immensely with being told what to do and being controlled in the workplace, and I also struggle with authority figures and feedback. Any criticism, constructive or otherwise, can ruin my day. I think it’s because it triggers those core beliefs (that I pretend I don’t still have) of being defective, a problem, unworthy, a failure, and so on. I struggle to not take any remotely negative experience in the workplace as a personal attack, and at great expense.
I carry so much weight of complex trauma. I studied psychology in school (probably to try to understand myself) and never identified with that term. Never thought I had real trauma. Nothing unusually bad ever happened to me. The “mildly”bad stuff was fairly normal, or my fault. I’ve always dismissed it. I didn’t even fully realize how traumatized I am until a week ago. I’ve always dismissed my experiences, saying “well other people have had it far worse” and thinking myself to be too sensitive. Blaming myself for being bullied throughout childhood, blaming myself for having bad “friends” and “lovers” who use and abuse. All my issues are the result of my own shortcomings. NO. No no no. I have been the victim of trauma my entire 36 years of life, without realizing it, and again I think it has so much to do with what happened in my childhood. I wasn’t given the nurturing and love I needed, and frankly it messed me up. I need to give myself grace and know that I’m messed up but it’s not my fault. I am not bad. I am not a failure.
So yeah. I could keep going, but I’ll pause there. I’m struggling, and it’s not great, but I’m happy that I’m at least making some realizations about where this existential discontent and frustration comes from. Friday was the breaking point where I said out loud I need help. I’ve found a therapist that says she specializes in complex childhood trauma emotional neglect and all the sorts of things and feelings I’m experiencing, so I’m going to reach out tomorrow and see if we can start unpacking this. Ironically, a few years back I tried but then dismissed therapy after a couple meh sessions with someone. I had this gut feeling that she couldn’t help with the deep, nuanced issues I thought I had, but I quickly felt guilty and bad for even thinking I had real issues and just called it quits on the whole thing. That should have been my wake up call that my problems aka my TRUMA IS REAL!!! But, we live, learn, and grow. I went in blindly looking for a therapist the first time around, accepting the first recommendation of my GP because I asked for antidepressants. I’ve since found out what I likely need to look for in a therapist to have any shot at success, so hopefully I will have a much better outcome now, or with another complex trauma/neglect informed therapist. I know I will, because this time I understand myself far better, and I’m truly motivated to fix this.
TLDR: My boyfriend is having the time of his life visiting family that love him, and it’s made me realize just how traumatized I am and I’m starting therapy because of it. Wooo!