Hi @Former-Member @soul .....
I took a lot on in terms of the relationships in my life, and kept trying to make them work, and kept suffering to the point where I just couldn’t go on .... not in terms of si, in terms of burnout. It was only when I realised that the behaviours I was dealing with were abusive - one sided and completely lacking in empathy or intent to engage properly in a give-and-take relationship with me -that I could actually set boundaries over them. Ultimately, that is what saved the relationships, although they could never be what I had hoped for ...... and a current dx that is circling our family but not yet formally established over more than one, certainly explains why .....
There are obviously different levels of behaviour that could be labelled as abuse, and the word ought not to be used lightly, for sure, but until I could actually look at our situation through that lense, I was trapped by my empathetic nature that just keeps on keeping on until you run out of all steam ..... which is the nature of that too, not just in me, but in anyone who has this personality feature. It is both a gift and a challenge.
One of the challenges is not allowing others to take advantage of it, and a mistake I fell into was becoming angry ..... and the unresolved anger turned to bitterness .... and without me even realising, the unresolved bitterness turned to hatred ..... not that I acted on it, but in lieu of acting on it, it was burning me on the inside. On the surface, I was just carrying on, trying to be considerate, helpful, giving .... but with this burning cauldron of anger, bitterness and hatred, albeit smallish, in residence, I couldn’t progress with my life, and it would have adversely affected our children too.
A lady I knew helped me. She came with me to a counsellor. The counsellor asked me to describe certain people in my life, and the ones I was feeling so badly about became very clear to all of us - lady friend was in the room and assisting in the counselling. The counsellor asked me to tell him exactly what I thought of these people ..... and I couldn’t .... it was just not in my nature to say what needed to be said. I needed a lesson in this ..... The counsellor asked my friend to stand behind my chair, put her arms lovingly around me, and then say everything that I was unable to say.
Well ..... she let loose ! She said it like it was .... how dare they treat me like that, after all I had done for them, how awful they were, how selfish, rude, abusive of my offerings and feelings, and totally disrespecting my boundaries with my home, my children, my husband, who I was as a person .... walking all over me and treating me like rubbish .... and I hated them for it ..... She was even swearing with indignity on my behalf. My first reaction was to start giggling with shock at the intensity of what she was saying, but within seconds the giggles turned to sobs, and cried my heart out, recognising that it was abuse I was experiencing, and I felt I had no voice, no power to stop it .....
From there the pendulum swung the other way for a bit ..... I became a menace .... lol ..... shutting down the people who were treating me so roughly and pushing them back in my life, starting with telling my husband that I intended to leave, because the situation was beyond living with. I got listened to. The boundaries got re-set. The people who “got sorted out”were not speaking to me for about two years, even though we continued to share the odd occasion .... it was frosty ..... but within that environment, I learned that I could be firm, but polite ..... that I didn’t owe them anything more than that .... and that if they wanted a relationship with me, they needed to respect my boundaries.
These relationships are still somewhat superficial. We have our moments of a stronger sense of connectedness, mostly when struggling with adversity, which happens with some frequency, but then it returns to a state of polite interaction and nothing more. I have instead invested in friendships that are warmly reciprocated.
I hope retelling this helps someone else ..... catching it at the anger stage, expressing that anger, and setting boundaries is what carries everybody forward. The anger can be expressed to someone other than the person we are angry with, but changes have to happen anyway, to address the source of anger. The polite setting and upholding of boundaries is passive resistance. It’s not aggressive, it just is ......
