jan13

I'm the one who's responsible for all my relationships souring and ending badly. It's me, it's always been me. It's not necessarily my fault, but it is and has always been my responsibility, and my failures. My lack of self-awareness and self-knowledge, my unwillingness/inability to prioritize and communicate my wants, needs, preferences and difference, my conditioned fears, traumas and baggage, my learned tendency to relinquish responsibility to others and then blame them for my discomfort. It's me, and it's always been me.

This relinquishing of responsibility is so habitual and ingrained that I don't even notice it happening most of the time. I've really just lived my life being pushed and pulled by others, and its partly because, on some level, I don't want to be responsible. It scares me to take on that much responsibility. Unconsciously, I've come to see it as overly rigid and controlling behavior for someone to be asserting, expressing and directing themselves (and sometimes others) to that degree. To be leading, basically. I experience it as friction within myself, when in the right quantities it's just healthy and beneficial for everyone. In me it's like an atrophied muscle, it feels dried out and uncomfortable. I prefer to tune out, daydream and drift around like a cloud rather than fully engage.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” (CG Jung)

I'm not to blame for this necessarily. It's pretty common/normal. But it's true. I'm responsible for all my interpersonal failures and conflicts. No one else was really causing the conflicts or extended harm. The conflicts were in me, and the harm was perpetuated with my implicit consent through continued participation. I was always free to choose other options, such as expressing my discomfort and either requesting what I needed or leaving. I was the one who chose to stay and get caught up in power struggles or caretaking, or submitting and doing things I didn't want to do.

I've basically been in the grip of unconscious forces and projecting my feelings and responsibilities onto others, just as others are doing the same.

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Jesus)

We really don't know what we're doing. We're constantly under the grip of various unconscious forces, and until they're released spontaneously by the mind itself and brought into consciousness (such as in this moment right now), they direct our thoughts, feelings and actions.

This all came to light (aka out of the darkness of the unconscious and into the light of consciousness) because I've recently been engaging with someone who stirs a lot of friction, unease and discomfort in me. Just being around them causes my heart to close off and body language to become distant and avoidant. I don't like being near them or looking them in the eye. I've experienced them to be overly controlling and defensive. And I suspect that they've experienced me to be irresponsible and selfish.

In a sense, we're both right. Both of us are out of balance in a way. Being around this person is pushing me to be more assertive and clear in my thoughts, feelings, wants, needs and preferences, and I do not want to do that. What I want (unconsciously) is to be left alone and to be free to do what I want without being directed, controlled or imposed upon by others. But if I'm engaging with others, I need to either assert myself or be directed. That's where my discomfort is coming in. I don't want to relinquish responsibility for myself to others, but I experience uncertainty and fear around asserting myself because of my own traumas. It's all happening in me, this other person isn't really doing anything wrong. They may be overstepping from my perspective and reacted defensively to my polite attempts to deflect their influence and maintain my autonomy, but that's not something they can control. That's their projections and defenses at work, just as mine are making me avoidant and dissociative around them. And thinking about it this way I can understand their frustration with me. Because I wasn't being forthcoming enough and put them in a position to press, and then judged them for reacting defensively to me when beneath the surface I'd done the same. It was just easier to see in another than in myself.

Every interpersonal conflict throughout my life has been like this to some degree. They all came about because I was unwilling or unable to express myself and give a clear "no thank you. I don't want that, this is what I want". Without blame, fear, anger or defensiveness. I am and have always been essentially free to choose for myself, just as others are free to make suggestions. Do I want what they're proposing, or do I want something else? And if I want something else, what do I want of what's available to me? And then accepting the consequences and benefits of my choice.

But it's easier for me to just suppress my discomfort and go along with things to avoid the consequences of others hearing no from me. On a visceral bodily level I've become terrified of their disappointment and the feelings it might stir in them and myself. That's trauma, because my parents received my attempts to say no and assert myself as extremely personal and threatening. The fear, guilt and shame I've been inundated with now controls my behavior and ruins my relationships. I choose suppression for the sake of superficial/short term external harmony over the momentary conflict and emotional activation that could come with self-assertion/expression. Looking back, this is understandable given my circumstances growing up. But it's not useful or necessary anymore. It's just habitual.

It seems that Life is challenging me to move into and through this. I'm grateful for this coming to light. As it's been seeping in over the past couple weeks I've already been seeing changes to my choices and behaviors, a subtle rebalancing in a way. I've been taking on more responsibility proactively and willingly, without others feeling compelled to foist it onto me. It's been uncomfortable in a way, because often when there are no stakes I'll speak in a way that makes it clear that I'm qualified and capable of more. But I choose not to. I stay in the background and keep my mouth shut, because I experience so much internal resistance to doing so. I don't want to tell others what to do or even what I want, I just want to direct myself entirely from within. But if I don't proactively engage, others will take up more space and push me to speak up because they'll feel like they have to compensate for my lack of participation. And then they start to resent me for not doing more, and I start to resent them for expecting more. It's all quite balanced in a way.

It's all in me. There are a few things I need to move into. One is accepting the increased responsibility and expectations that come when you prove capable of more. Another is making sure that I'm tuning in and communicating my needs and choices, even and especially if others are pushing me to do things that feel wrong for me and/or others. I need to practice speaking up, proactively and without judgment or blame, just expressing myself more. Another is trusting myself more and being willing to make mistakes. I also want to start taking into account the differences and needs of everyone involved more, not just myself. So far I've been out of balance, either completely out of the equation and overly selfless or only thinking of myself. It's time to move a bit closer to the middle. Neither submissive nor aggressive. Just more expressive when the situation calls for it.

While this is all coming to light, I've been finding myself feeling more appreciative of the different strengths that others bring to relationships that compensate for my weaknesses, as well as remorseful for all the judgment and blame I've been projecting. In many cases I've been resenting and resisting qualities and efforts that warranted appreciation. They were picking up the slack where I was lacking. Yeah it can go too far sometimes but it's my responsibility to communicate that and make sure I'm taken care of. Others can't tell, and they know not what they do. We're all just doing what we're compelled to by unconscious forces. No one is to blame. And I can proactively prevent others even feeling the need or compulsion to overreach by being more proactive with expressing what I want, need, feel, prefer and expect. It's me who's been causing this. They've all just been compelled by unconscious forces in themselves to fill in the voids created by my unconscious withholding and avoidance.

This isn't something that's going to change overnight. But I hope that being aware of this and continuing to be with/process the feelings when they come up rather than resisting and projecting them will help them dissolve, so I can start taking up the space that's needed and being asked of me.