The daily breakup: antidote to bitterness
Aug. 27th, 2021 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormWhile I hear rumours that some folks go out of their way to be terrible to other people, sometimes for a long time, I don't meet many folks like that. Even my dad -- who objectively spent nearly seventeen years after the divorce making mom's life hell as a nearly full-time job, including writing multiple self-published books about her and getting known on a first name basis at the courthouse and police station because of the number of times he took her to court/called her in -- didn't conceive of his behaviour that way.
Folks are usually trying to get the minimum amount they think they can survive on, they're trying to get what they feel to be fairness, they're trying to get what they believe they're owed. They're looking for safety and for security. Some people believe that they can get security and care through kindness and through giving security and care; some people believe they're safer when they're open and known. I'm generally in this group by nature but not by early reflex (dad trained us pretty well) and the more I surround myself with folks who are also in this group the more my reflexes are aligned with my nature. Surrounded by similar people, this strategy works.
Other people believe in zero sum. They believe no one would offer them security and care freely. This shows up in a couple ways but the effect is usually manipulative. Maybe the way to get someone to be kind is to present only the most carefully curated and limited self, aligned with what you think the other person wants, so they will never leave you. Maybe the way to feel secure when you've done something harmful is to shift the discourse to how much hurt or panic you feel at the idea of having harmed someone rather than linger on the consequences of harm and the uncertainty of repair. Maybe its unfathomable to think that someone could offer you affection at the same time as they offer someone else affection and so you can't cope with what could be competition.
The problem with zero sum is-- there's no real way to be with someone else, let your guard down, stop playing the game, and just feel ok with your actual self. It's always so much work, and you always know deep down that it's your manipulative behaviours that are keeping folks there and not your actual self so you are trapped in maintaining those behaviours. It's always teetering on a terrifying edge, it's exhausting, and it's alienating.
You know, child abuse only started to be understood as x rays became widely used. There were all these children with broken bones and at first they couldn't understand why, maybe infants and young kids just had bones that acted weird? But no. They were being badly harmed. Folks who grew up during that time, when that sort of parenting was so normal, are still alive. We're not too many generations of parents removed from that, and certainly not from parents who learned their parenting skills from those folks. Of course x rays never caught folks who did soft-tissue damage, and they never had a hope of catching folks who did damage with words. There were a lot of those. And even if a parent was ok there are an awful lot of potentially harmful adults in a child's world.
So of course there will be lots of folks in the world who don't feel safe, who don't feel that kindness and love will be freely given, that showing their selves will be ok. Of course there will be. And of course they fight so hard for the only security they know to exist. Their marvellously crafted brains harness millennia of survival strategies to protect them and they fight, and they fight, and they fight for love, for security, for a place in what they understand society to be. They fight for a place in the kind of society that formed them.
And through that fighting, through that manipulation and withholding, those folks recreate the conditions that formed them. It's a cycle that continues not just intergenerationally but laterally into friends and romantic relationships and colleagues. Good ol' DARVO can spread.
When it's not ok to say "this isn't for me" and step away without someone having done something wrong -- that's entitlement. It requires the world to be cut into team bad, which it's ok to leave, and team good, which is allowed to leave. It denies the diversity of desires and needs in the world. It's reductionist and creates antagonism. That's the cycle winning.
I was going to list more but thinking about it makes me tired, I'm tired, and I have a 5 gallon bucket of lard in my kitchen I can make into soap, I have a pork loin to make into jerky, I have a couple other primals to break down, I have a smoker (gloriously loaded by Josh, it's full to groaning) to start, I have leaf lard to strain into molds for baking, I have biscuits to make. I go down these old dark paths when my mind takes them, but I won't force myself to stay on them right now.
Instead I'll go into the light of my daily life and cradle my heart through the process of making and nourishing. No amount of beautiful food can help someone believe that they are worthy of love and joy as they are, that they are allowed to ask for it and seek it, and that if they're not finding it in some folks there will be other folks who will be happy to give it.
I can't fix that about the world. I just want to. I escaped from those places. I wish at least the people I love also could.
Folks are usually trying to get the minimum amount they think they can survive on, they're trying to get what they feel to be fairness, they're trying to get what they believe they're owed. They're looking for safety and for security. Some people believe that they can get security and care through kindness and through giving security and care; some people believe they're safer when they're open and known. I'm generally in this group by nature but not by early reflex (dad trained us pretty well) and the more I surround myself with folks who are also in this group the more my reflexes are aligned with my nature. Surrounded by similar people, this strategy works.
Other people believe in zero sum. They believe no one would offer them security and care freely. This shows up in a couple ways but the effect is usually manipulative. Maybe the way to get someone to be kind is to present only the most carefully curated and limited self, aligned with what you think the other person wants, so they will never leave you. Maybe the way to feel secure when you've done something harmful is to shift the discourse to how much hurt or panic you feel at the idea of having harmed someone rather than linger on the consequences of harm and the uncertainty of repair. Maybe its unfathomable to think that someone could offer you affection at the same time as they offer someone else affection and so you can't cope with what could be competition.
The problem with zero sum is-- there's no real way to be with someone else, let your guard down, stop playing the game, and just feel ok with your actual self. It's always so much work, and you always know deep down that it's your manipulative behaviours that are keeping folks there and not your actual self so you are trapped in maintaining those behaviours. It's always teetering on a terrifying edge, it's exhausting, and it's alienating.
You know, child abuse only started to be understood as x rays became widely used. There were all these children with broken bones and at first they couldn't understand why, maybe infants and young kids just had bones that acted weird? But no. They were being badly harmed. Folks who grew up during that time, when that sort of parenting was so normal, are still alive. We're not too many generations of parents removed from that, and certainly not from parents who learned their parenting skills from those folks. Of course x rays never caught folks who did soft-tissue damage, and they never had a hope of catching folks who did damage with words. There were a lot of those. And even if a parent was ok there are an awful lot of potentially harmful adults in a child's world.
So of course there will be lots of folks in the world who don't feel safe, who don't feel that kindness and love will be freely given, that showing their selves will be ok. Of course there will be. And of course they fight so hard for the only security they know to exist. Their marvellously crafted brains harness millennia of survival strategies to protect them and they fight, and they fight, and they fight for love, for security, for a place in what they understand society to be. They fight for a place in the kind of society that formed them.
And through that fighting, through that manipulation and withholding, those folks recreate the conditions that formed them. It's a cycle that continues not just intergenerationally but laterally into friends and romantic relationships and colleagues. Good ol' DARVO can spread.
When it's not ok to say "this isn't for me" and step away without someone having done something wrong -- that's entitlement. It requires the world to be cut into team bad, which it's ok to leave, and team good, which is allowed to leave. It denies the diversity of desires and needs in the world. It's reductionist and creates antagonism. That's the cycle winning.
I was going to list more but thinking about it makes me tired, I'm tired, and I have a 5 gallon bucket of lard in my kitchen I can make into soap, I have a pork loin to make into jerky, I have a couple other primals to break down, I have a smoker (gloriously loaded by Josh, it's full to groaning) to start, I have leaf lard to strain into molds for baking, I have biscuits to make. I go down these old dark paths when my mind takes them, but I won't force myself to stay on them right now.
Instead I'll go into the light of my daily life and cradle my heart through the process of making and nourishing. No amount of beautiful food can help someone believe that they are worthy of love and joy as they are, that they are allowed to ask for it and seek it, and that if they're not finding it in some folks there will be other folks who will be happy to give it.
I can't fix that about the world. I just want to. I escaped from those places. I wish at least the people I love also could.
