Zero Attention, Zero Pressure

Did therapy on Wednesday. As you saw I spent the week sort of trying to fit my feels into a situation I could address with LI. I did not find that feel before we my session but I did get there eventually and then did therapy at it ¹If you’re in therapy dealing with trauma and you haven’t talked about EMDR or LI or some other ego state integration process, do. It’s low risk and widely effective for many types of trauma, and it works quickly. It’s also very methodical – you can pick a feeling and sort of just turn the crank to make it go. Not that it isn’t work, or … Continue reading.

So the feeling, as it turns out, is about not being able to get attention when I needed it. It’s about the way I feel like my needs are too great for anyone to really help with, my needs are not normal – at least not for anyone older than an infant – and must be reduced if anyone is ever to care for me. It’s about how I don’t imagine that love includes ensuring sufficient care. And about how I feel like a narcissist for wanting even the smallest amount of attention. It’s about how I imagine that it’s impossible for anyone to provide me with attention or care in a way that doesn’t diminish them, because all interactions are transactional and I have never been able to properly control my I tolerably greedy demand for empathy and care.

And it’s why I can’t ever ask for enough attention. Most enough to ensure I can help with the things you say you want help with. Not enough to keep you from hurting me. And certainly not enough to help with the things I need directly. I’ve learned how to talk about many of my needs but not how to feel safe actually expecting to get those needs met. I must protect myself from disappointment, and protect the world from my excessive and inhuman need. I must learn to make do with less because the amount I think I need is obviously beyond the scope of human capability.

These fears are rooted in my childhood trauma, but they’re reinforced all the time today. You tell me that I’m overwhelming. When I need a thing that makes you uncomfortable, that you don’t feel expert in or are otherwise nervous about, it’s overwhelming to think about doing. When I bring up a feeling you don’t want to think about, I’m overwhelming you by even suggesting that you pay attention to yourself. I’m told that my demand for attention is so far out of whack that my options are to stay silent or to hurt you.

Which I know, in a logical way, isn’t true. I know sometimes you need attention from me – from yourself – even when you don’t like how it makes you feel. And I know that sometimes I need attention from you even when it will be hard for you. But my brain is prepared to accept your rebuff and assume I’m being a creeper for ever thinking I could participate in that sort or interaction without hurting you. That even mentioning an ever expanding list of topics makes me a bad person, and that real humans wouldn’t find it difficult to have close relationships without expecting support or acceptance.

The old feeling I related to this comes from my nighttime panic attacks when I was in middle school. They happened a lot – at least once a week for years – and it was made clear to me early on that I could not have and should not ask for help with them. That my problem was the need for attention and that anything I did to let other people know about that problem was me unfairly forcing them to participate in my selfish weakness. I so desperately wanted help in being calmer but I was asked to not disturb anyone, to not make any sound, to not attract any attention.

For a while I was allowed to move from my bed to the living room couch, so I could detect when people were up and seek help them. But that too was too much need. So I moved to dining room where I could hide and pretend to be asleep but still know that humans were nearby when they got up for breakfast. I couldn’t actually get attention but I could, if I stayed invisible, be allowed to silently sob in the proximity of others, which I used to try to comfort myself. To at least have a distraction while I suffered.

It was still too much I knew. If I was discovered it would be easy to prove my selfish intentions and impermissible behavior. I still shouldn’t need that much attention. The idea that I wanted help being calm enough to breathe or sleep was still evidence of my weakness and inhumanity. I could not get enough care and therefore I must need too much.

This is further complicated when I can see that you’re stressed, that you’re already doing everything you can to just hold on and endure and survive. I know what that’s like, feeling like one more thing will kill you. Knowing that you’re already postponing urgent things because you can’t do all of them at once – can’t get close enough to caught up to put anything else on the priority list. And so of course I can’t ask for your attention. Not for me, not even to help yourself. Even if I’m doing something to help you, something you asked me to do, something that would be damaging or hurtful to wait for – I still can’t imagine the things on my worry list are worthy of your attention. I can always wait. Even if waiting hurts me. Even if you’ll never become ready without at least a little pressure.

Which is great for the thing I do when there’s a crisis and attention should flow in one direction, from me to you, without so much as a demand that I be well I informed. And I want to do that. It’s a thing we all need sometimes and I know how to do it in a way that doesn’t kill me. I even know how to do it for weeks at a time and still keep my life going. It’s a thing I’m glad other people believe that I do, and can feel safe about having available. It’s a thing that makes me feel like I might actually be useful for a minute. But it’s not how I want to live all the time.

I came into this wondering how I was going to get things off the anxiety avoidance list – the things I’m worried about and working on that I need your help to accomplish. But I don’t need to know how to get things off that list, I need to live a life where it doesn’t exist. I can hold things to worry about for a day or two while you’re too busy, or even a few weeks if it’s not yet urgent, but I can’t let things build up on this list. I need your engagement to help you with certain things and I am allowed to press for it. I’m also allowed to press on the issue of you not talking to anyone – no more making letting myself make excuses that it’s happening in some way I can’t see. If I love you and I can’t tell how you have enough care you can at least pay enough attention to help me understand, or I get to assume you don’t have enough care and act accordingly ²Obviously I don’t mean without your consent. You can always ask me to leave you alone. But I get to treat that as actual rejection, not just as me expecting too much and needing to make due with less. I can imagine being hurt by that rejection and if we don’t recover, withdrawing my support as needed to keep myself safe from you..

If you have read all this thinking that I’m singling you out, imagine that you’re one of many yous. If you read all this thinking I was singling out someone else and that none of it applies to you, imagine that you’re one of many yous.

There are lots of other feels in this spot. More than fit in this first Screed. But a few new things I know about my past life: I learned that I can’t coordinate with Ben about Mother and Pete because of the way we always had to pick sides. Because of the ongoing existence of sides in my childhood household and the constant and shifting negotiations for every aspect of our lives. About the way we could never get all of our survival needs met at the same time and so had to prioritize among types of survival based on individual urgency and opportunity ³That is, we had our own individual anxiety avoidance lists. We were trying to manage Mother to give us the one next thing we needed to survive and never got that list down to zero items.. Which meant we couldn’t work together on many things, and when we did it was often part of a standoff/mob-rule situation where one temporary alliance forced the other to comply.

I learned about how I can’t have jeans that fit because I had to choose between having pants that (came close to) fit and having jeans. I learned about how I switched my diet primarily to $0.69 2-liter sugar soda ⁴These have many useful properties. They were really, really good on the calories per dollar scale. They didn’t freeze in the car in winter. They didn’t require cooking. They didn’t go bad (under most circumstances) for months. I could drink them while driving. I could absorb them quickly to recover after long periods of fasting or exercise … Continue reading once I was able to reliably obtain that, so that Mother couldn’t punish me with food anymore – I didn’t need her food and never asked for any or had any own my own and when we ate together I ate what she wanted in the amount she wanted and didn’t say anything about it. So I learned to totally decouple my hunger from eating. I had soda when I had the opportunity (typically when I was returning home ⁵I have for a very long time used the word “home” to refer to Mother’s house. I still do. I did not understand how home was supposed to be a thing about me and my feelings. I still don’t imagine the word correctly in many contexts (like this one), even now that I feel like I have a home.) whether or not their might be food later, whether or not I had food earlier, whether or not I was hungry. It was the only way to ensure I got enough calories while minimizing food punishments.

Lots of life happened too, though I haven’t had a chance to make it a sorry yet. I ranted toward M a good bit, and in the middle I got a line about how I make people feel guilty for not talking, but nothing else. I poked V over and over again until for days straight, sometimes in a way that helped and sometimes not. Tonight I feel like things actually improved, got one step less terrible, even if it’s still a long way to the surface. DerbyK posted again and I yelled something I mean as support but failed to do the part that’s likely to actually be useful (and may not get to it tomorrow either, since it’s in the weeks big feels and still needs some sorting). Shanda had a super hard day for feels ⁶This colorful chart is worth considering, to help give you some perspective on where you sit on a “normal” day. I try to tell you about this all the time, but I think some of you would be surprised at how far down the list a typical day for you would be, at least if you take the descriptions seriously. … Continue reading and physically reasons – I did some good taking care of her but it was still hard. I got some great feedback from @BPS [fig 1] and watched several more of their AD videos with Shanda. Work is okay but made 0 progress Thursday with all the other things and feels and people I needed to deal with.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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