Positivity Bias

Early therapy this week. Tried LI work to come up with happy memories from my past. They have not been forthcoming even as my general childhood recall has improved. They still aren’t. I had one of those interactions that makes CPTSD so hard – the one where people consistently underestimate how bad parts of your life were, even given context. My brain knows it means I’ve been caught being too inhuman and now I’ll have to flee. Or maybe I’m just making it up because I can’t take responsibility for my own life, like every other narc I’ve known.

I talked about Kindergarten, a time found new memories of after reading Maude’s book. My therapist seemed surprised to learn that I was habitually denying my basic needs and feeling inhuman well before school. I got the impression they were expecting or hoping for some period in my life I could remember before that was happening. But I don’t remember a time before I was praised for needing less or punished for needing more, or when I imagined that it was possible to be capable of a thing without being required to always do it for everyone around me.

I did get to social hiest at a narc yesterday, with Cowboy’s help. Though I am sincere even when talking to people who I expect to hurt me, it’s easy for me to imagine that I’m unjustly manipulating people anytime I suspect they will hear a different message than I delivered. But it’s one step easier when I know that someone else sees the careful thing I said, and isn’t afraid of it.

There’s a thing to say about the disservice of imagining your feels as one-dimensional – whe you dismiss the idea that you’re anxious or angry or what we because it’s “just” X or because it doesn’t include aspect Y. But that can wait for tomorrow, so I can get some sleep.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.