I’m Too Much

A thing I hear about myself, particularly in the context of me wanting more inbound sharing, is that I induce a feeling of being overwhelmed in others. This is obviously not ideal. Not for me and not for the people who find themselves overwhelmed.

I know it is not a thing that people necessarily think I am doing wrong or that they feel directly hurts them (depending on how angry you are at the time; angry overwhelmed people are usually pretty clear on how I’m hurting them) but it is a barrier to communication and closeness. And it rubs on my fear of being too much for normal humans. And my fear that my mere visible existence is painful to others.

Historically my response is to try to be less — less visible, less emotive, less needy, less expressive, less frequent in contact. I see the situation occur and I try to back out until we get back to someplace safe. Someplace where my feelings or presence or need won’t hurt people quite so badly. That’s probably a fine short-term response if you have been triggered. I absolutely don’t want to push at something that is causing you distress, nor do I expect you to prioritize my topic over the difficult reaction you’re having.

But I’m thinking that’s not the right long-term plan. That plan leaves me floating alone, afraid even to offer connection let alone to want it. That plan leaves me with an ever-growing set of things that feel important to me but can’t be discussed, and a shrinking list of things it’s safe to talk about and you might be interested in. That plan makes me feel like I can only ever be 4% of myself and the rest is a thing I have to keep away from people so that they aren’t hurt by it.

I realize it’s not my duty to manage your emotions and that’s not my intent. But it is everyone’s duty to be careful with each other, so neither is it irrelevant that I induce an unpleasant experience. More directly, the situation still leaves me choosing between the isolation that will come if I share and the isolation that already exists when I don’t. Either way I won’t have access to your care or insight or understanding, because once you’re overwhelmed those things are no longer available to me. So the version where I don’t share at all is arguably superior because it avoids the part where you feel overwhelmed.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how I can get what I need — support, love, care, belonging, etc. – without hurting the people around me. While I worry too much and sometimes about the wrong things I don’t necessarily think the effort is bad, because the world is complicated so it’s hard to know what you need and easy to hurt people. But it’s tough when I’m staring at a conversation, or thinking about one I might have, or constructing a message, and I feel so constrained trying to find the spot between not explaining what I need and demanding so much that you become overwhelmed.

I’m not sure what to do about it. Presumably my framing is wrong. I suspect there’s some other way to see this same situation that presents a different option for addressing it. But I don’t know what that is. So I feel a little trapped. I’m doing tons of sharing and it definitely builds some of what I imagine it might; it provides a certain kind of safety that I’ve seen is real in important ways. But I don’t know how to translate that into a connection where I can reliably get reassurance or insight or other support because when I ask for it what you hear is overwhelming.

So I need a plan other than the one where I do all the sharing I can muster and expect nothing. The one where I shout into a non-conversation so as to produce as little pressure for interaction as possible while still technically producing sharing. That version leaves me with no connection and no way to build one: the things I share might provide some safety but rarely enough to generate any engagement, and the unilateral nature of our communication means I don’t know anything that’s that’s important to you. So I’m left trying to generate prompts from calendar events and eavesdropping (if I’m lucky enough to be in a position to eavesdrop) in an attempt find some topic that’s engaging for you but not overwhelming, that’s far enough from your heart to be safe but close enough to be interesting, that’s fun enough to not feel like me nagging you about a chore, that’s public enough that I am not a creeper for knowing about it, that’s different than everything else I’ve ever shared with you because none of it ever works.

I also want a plan that lets me offer help when it’s needed, without triggering this same overwhelmed feeling. That why it feels so important to have at least a little access to your larger social network. I’m afraid of sitting at the edge of your life, unable to help while you suffer because I can’t figure out how to do it in a way that feels like help to you. But presumably you don’t have this same problem with everyone you know, and some being able to enlist them feels like a way I could maybe help more without making this so hard on you.

I talked about this with M today, which was useful to pull together some bits from other parts of this same feeling and pattern of thinking. It’s sort of the same reason I’m afraid to do makeup or clothes or whatever even once I’ve accomplished something I think is sufficiently good¹Here’s a point I can’t ever seem to make in a way other people understand, about the way in which some things about my identity are hard for me. I have two main fears. One is the one you all assume and advise me about, where I try to protect myself from rejection. Where people who aren’t careful with me could hurt me with various forms of … Continue reading. It’s definitely the same as the thing where I imagine even dogs find me socially intolerable; it’s the same as the thing where Mother’s relentless rejection convinced me that I was broken in some way that hurts people. And while I know that’s not true I don’t know how to get out of the pattern. I have somehow arranged a life where keep getting this message even long after I’ve left her, from people who like me (or at least hate me less), and who in general treat me much better. But this button gets pushed so hard sometimes, no matter the lower stakes or better intent.

I should note that I’m a little afraid to share the above, for fear that some of the individual “you”s here will read it as a demand or a criticism of you. That’s not my intent. I’d take your help on the topic if you have any to offer, but I’m trying to figure out what I need to do differently for my life to be better, not to guilt you into doing anything. I do think more sharing would be good for many of you and I’d be happy to help you do it. I’d even let you imagine it’s for me (because it is) if that makes it easier. But changing how I feel about isolation isn’t a thing you can do directly, or a thing I’m asking you to attempt.

Therapy was on this same topic. We did a run through the Lifetime Integration thing, where I picked a current feeling and jumped back to a time when I had it before and then sort of walked through between the two, trying to provide some reassurance to past me about this feeling, and trying to build connections along that emotional line among different parts of my life. Because this topic was on my mind this week it was an easy place to start — the feeling that everyone would be better off if I needed less or was less or otherwise didn’t interact as strongly with the people around me. So we went back to the day I moved to the porch and imagined a way current me might have made it safer²Leaving. The way to make it safer would have been leaving. If we didn’t violently force young people back into bad homes even taking off at 5 might have been a good plan., if I was there. Then we walked through the list of memories, trying to keep 5-year-old me and current me both tied to the feeling. I knew that was the plan but it was different doing than I imagined it might be. Which is good; the whole point of therapy is that I can’t easily imagine what might work, or accomplish it independently even if I do. It was sort of reassuring to imaginary 5-year-old me, to think that outside help existed and that instead of feeling trapped on the porch I could feel like I was one step closer to leaving. Like I could take off any night and be gone for probably 20+ hours before anyone even could notice, let alone would care or react.

Went to the gym with E. Or tried at least. You had some weather/bike trouble getting there, and then were far too much of your earnest honest self to deceive the discrimination agent at the door. I hate all the ways we fuck with young people, but today I’m extra pissy about age discrimination in otherwise public commercial institutions. I have sort of resigned myself to the idea that I have to accept gender discrimination in a gym and in bathrooms and the like, but the idea that someone who has been alive for 564 million seconds can’t be admitted while someone who has been alive for 567 million seconds can be is fucking bullshit. I haven’t decided what to do about it yet, beyond being pissy. I’d like to go to the same gym as Shanda, but I also don’t want to support that policy. And their sauna sucks; after running for ~45 minutes it was only up to 130 at the roofline. After running for 10 minutes it had hardly hit 110.

Other things happened today. M sent me a picture of one of your current projects. A thing that’s smooshy but looks tensioned, that’s without structure but which will be used to build one, and that’s appealingly smooth. Work gave me no new SRs and I gave it almost no work. Dog seems better with the drugs though I’m still only at half steam. I got another minute of chat with DerbyK. I got more snacks, and an idea on how I might organize them. I also got a piece of Melissa’s mail from the SS office; we put in a forwarding order a couple of weeks ago but this wasn’t caught (didn’t go to fully computerized regional sorting probably) so I still have to deal with it. And it’s like day 3 of me not quite achieving normal food despite pretty good support from Shanda.

Probably other important things happened — Shanda had her pretrial conference for example — but this is already a lot and I really should have supper.

ZiB