The patterns I still carry, the ways old experiences can show up in the present, and my effort to sort out what I am remembering from what is actually happening now. Recovery, pattern recognition, regulation, and slowly gathering new evidence.
Somewhere along the way, I learned to convert what other people believed, said, or did into information about me rather than data about them. And the new learning may be: I can register other's behavior as data. I can be deeply hurt by it. I can acknowledge what it means for the relationship. But I do not have to convert it into a verdict about myself. For a long time, I accepted the premise that other people’s hurtful behavior was…
Overstimulation can look like anger, but it isn’t. This is a reminder that sometimes reactions are about sensory and emotional overwhelm, not intention or hostility.
I do not seem naturally wired to preserve "harmony" by pretending not to see what I see and not feel what I feel. It is not as if everyone is having roughly the same experience and others make the more agreeable decision to go with the flow while I make the objectionable decision to diverge, which gets me branded not as divergent but deviant. Difficult to govern gets conflated with untrustworthy and unworthy. Not a team player. I simply cannot…
They didn’t burn witches. They burned women.
The Alchemy of the Unexitable Loop: What happens when someone hurts you, then first denies then explains their behavior as a consequence of your personality? Literally.... a person repeatedly blames you for their mistreatment of you. I am wired to sense shifts in energy. I don't mean that in some mystical way, and I don't mean that I am fucking paranoid. I am attuned at a sensory and emotional level to things other people may have the luxury of not noticing.…
In some families, preserving the system can mean discrediting the person who points out harm. The scapegoat’s experience is often dismissed to maintain control and avoid accountability.
Ten years ago, around my son’s birthday, I was already trying to name something I did not yet fully understand. I sent my original email privately to my mother and sister. My sister’s response expanded the conversation to include her husband, her children, my ex-husband, and his sister. I was asking the adults involved to keep their conflict with me separate from my children. Here is how it unfolded. The irony is hard to miss: I was asking for less…
