Drinking poison and hoping it hurts others.

[Suzette]

@Suzette , you are being so kind. The only way I can absolve myself of the hurt that I caused myself is through love and care.

Yes! I am not being "kind". I am being a friend. You simply can not arrive at "love" by trying to meet to the unreasonable and irrational demands you have placed upon yourself. I am just telling you that you made a wrong turn.

So as you go about your day and some random thought pops up that makes you feel bad, that bad feeling is your warning that you are going in the wrong direction.
The thing to do is to push the thought away then give yourself a mental high five. That mental high five feels pretty good. So as each new thought occurs ask yourself if it feels good, right and true. If the thought feels bad, it is not good, right or true. Then it's not a thought worth having and you can let it die.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Yes! I am not being "kind". I am being a friend. You simply can not arrive at "love" by trying to meet to the unreasonable and irrational demands you have placed upon yourself. I am just telling you that you made a wrong turn.

So as you go about your day and some random thought pops up that makes you feel bad, that bad feeling is your warning that you are going in the wrong direction.
The thing to do is to push the thought away then give yourself a mental high five. That mental high five feels pretty good. So as each new thought occurs ask yourself if it feels good, right and true. If the thought feels bad, it is not good, right or true. Then it's not a thought worth having and you can let it die.

Thank You!

 

[stevens]

I am very good at that.

I have to accept that taking care of my own well-being is not the worst thing in the world I could possibly be up to.

I have to stop seeking external validation.

I have to be my own source of comfort.

If I can’t take of myself, I will never be able to take care of another.

It's a nice touch to use the addiction community's saying, "like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die" which essentially captures the concept of alcoholic drama. Making others' drama my problem was the beginning of a vexatious social development for me in childhood. Later, in alcohol I believed I found the neurological cure, in an over-the-counter drug. It worked, but with side effects. Another false promise.

Your reminder to yourself of how to deal with the need for external validation is something that I used most to survive the public schools, many years ago. On the other hand, propping yourself up solely year after year leads to occasional thoughts that "maybe it's different this time." It's wishful thinking, but occasionally desperation rises to the surface. The pandemic has made this worse.

Something I'm experiencing for the first time is aging, which leads to possible situations where self-reliance is in some cases not even a theoretical option. For someone who achieved much self-reliance, this is a threat. For the autistic, it may be a threat with unsatisfactory solutions.

Like many others I quit drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It seemed like a bit challenge at the time. At the moment, it seems like the challenge described in my preceding paragraph may be an even greater challenge. Far greater. Social media doesn't provide a solution. Studying social psychology hasn't provided a solution. Really I am still considering the problem, but it is tough.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

If that is a mother's love, - you couldn't leave fast enough. There are a lot of men that had horrible moms that ended up as serial killers. So your foray into a unhealthy life choice is understandable. And your new choice to love yourself and your voice to stand up for yourself is very important. I had to really work on boundaries, my own and boundaries of anyone new l meet. This has helped and l find less need to medicate which involved overspending.

Exactly. I was too passive as a teen and young adult and ended being whipsawed by the expectations of others. It was a long process to reclaim my agency and develop personal boundaries and be able to advocate for myself. Having agency is so very important.

 

[watersprite]

Having agency is so very important.

I was pondering that all day yesterday.

Wondering and considering whether growing up in an abusive family situation would poison, in effect, a child’s natural ability towards agency.

Particularly when it is a child on the spectrum I think achieving agency is challenging and requires a creatively different road map as it were, & some kind of reliable supportive person(s).

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I was pondering that all day yesterday.

Wondering and considering whether growing up in an abusive family situation would poison, in effect, a child’s natural ability towards agency.

Particularly when it is a child on the spectrum I think achieving agency is challenging and requires a creatively different road map as it were, & some kind of reliable supportive person(s).

I think there are many wais to poison a person's agency, some of which we do to ourselves with damaging negative thoughts. While not growing up in an abusive family, my father provided no direction, and my mother, while feeding my interests, had no idea of the social help I needed and was emotionally incapable of raising a son. I learned, small step by small step to live by myself, and gaining some confidence to advocate for myself. The hardest part was learning social convention, and there, activity groups helped me. The hardest part was learning to approach women I was interested in to seek connection, advocating for my happiness while being hopeful and not needy. (and, there was a great reservoir of need, being socially avoidant while desiring connection.)

I am learning to view positively what I had to overcome to break out of the cage of my neurology.

 

[Crysalis99]

Some of us have less financial choices in life and we are forced into situations that are better then being by ourselves. Older woman face this predicament 24/7.

I just want to piggyback this sentiment and say after working with abuse victims, it’s far easier said than done to simply leave a situation.

Heck, even myself! I should have left the ex-wife right after our son was born over four years ago. But I stayed. Part of it was because I was a social worker (my own cognitive distortion, I know) and thought I could save the ex. The other part was the kids. Primarily because I knew exactly this was how the divorce would go down. The social worker in me is very aware how badly a child needs their mother, but the father in me feels very differently. But I stayed far longer than I needed. And I’m glad I got out when I did as the ex-shut me out of her mental health treatment end of 2020 and was six months into a new provider when she was trying to Blame the entire marriage on me and not her borderline (highly manipulative, yes).

Abuse sucks. It comes in all forms. But leaving is one of those things that’s much harder to do when you try to do it. And I live in an area that is a hotbed for social service agencies like rape crisis and battered womens shelters too.

 

[Aspychata]

With children or teenagers involved, it's so difficult to walk away from the marriage. I stayed about 2+years in marriage so that l could drive my daughter to school and pick her up. She was broken and needed careful chaporoning as her father had an extremely long commute. She doesn't talk to me now however she is completing the uni, on to her masters and has been in a long-term relationship. I left in her senior year and gave her my car. She brought herself in for depression treatment a year after l left and no longer is on meds. Ours was a very abusive situation and l am a work in progress.