From: llama@pooh.cc.utexas.edu (sine nomine)
Newsgroups: alt.angst
Subject: learning to hurt
Date: 18 Nov 92 05:44:27 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

i'm an emotional hypochondriac.

so i slipped crossing the street and skinned my knee last night.
so some major plans fell through last night.
so my newsreader ate my .newsrc (and .oldnewsrc) last night.
so someone stole my purse last night.

so what?

none of this stuff is major. annoying, yeah; my knee hurts, i'm gonna
have a bitch of a time getting my plans back together, it'll take a
while to rebuild my .newsrc, and the large amount of cash i lost is
gonna make things really tight for a while.  not necessarily stuff you
just laugh off, but nothing to start declaring armageddon over.

unless you're me. if you're me, you call someone on the phone and
freak out and want them to comfort you and tell you it's okay and 
keep you from crumbling.  i've been accused of being a walking
contradiction: a very strong person who folds under pressure.
emotional hypochondria -- everything's an emergency, everything's a
crisis. 

so how did i get this way? two reasons:

i never learned emotional triage. i don't sort things beyond the two
categories of "ignore" and "panic." i grew up in an environment where
anything that wasn't directly survival-related could be (and usually
was) ignored, and where reality was defined for me (by someone who'd
kinda lost touch with it). so i was trained never to trust my
instincts anyway.

i never learned how to hurt. i don't mean i didn't have any pain; a
great deal of my life was extremely chaotic and painful. but i never
learned what to *do* with the pain. when i was growing up, the things
that happened to me were worthy of being freaked over (though more
often, i ignored them). and the role models in my home made it clear
that there was no such thing as a minor detail. so everything was
earthshakingly important and the only way to deal with hurt was to
inflict it on other people.

so the only response to hurt i learned was being devastated, and the
only way to deal with it i had was trying to get someone else to make
it better. and it had the added bonus that i got positive feedback
from the people i'd turned to. because, of course, having a crisis
means permission to call people and get support and love. the concept
of calling someone and saying "hey, i just wanted to talk to you
because you're cool and i like you" and having no *reason* for the
call is foreign. (i think it's a self-esteem thing. i'm only important
enough for you to talk to if i have a big problem making me
important.)

so i end up *needing* to be helpless, needing to be overwhelmed,
needing to be helped. someone really nailed me today when he said "the
only time you express your positive qualities fully is when there's
little chance that someone might associate it with you... or maybe
all you know how to do is suffer and to go out and do all of the
things that of course you know would make you happy and less stressed
would mean figuring out how to act when there's nothing terrible going
on." ouch. double ouch. 

i don't want to live like this. i want to learn how to accept pain and
loss, deal with it, then move on to the next thing in my life. i don't
wanna ride this crisis cycle forever. i'm just not sure where to
start.

[irony note: this is version two of this article. i accidentally
killed the first one after i wrote it. that's just too funny for
words.]

--
sine | deb
amazing, that a lover can help you grow as a person...
Newsgroups: alt.angst