eva
MVP
Ugh, this might be a really long and rambling post. I'm sorry in advance.
Generally, when I notice a string of people I know and like acting standoffish or inconsiderate, I'll get upset and hurt at first but when I 'come down' from my hurt and anger over it, I will try to step back and ask myself 'why', to see if maybe there's something in my own behaviour that might be troubling others without my awareness.
My "self-reflection" period of conflict resolution isn't always effective, though. Sometimes I can identify issues and sometimes I just end up beating myself up without finding any specific issues and sometimes, I even just carrying on feeling wronged or taken advantage of.
Doing a headcount I can think of a number of occurrences that are making me feel treated unfairly and alienated:
- This first one is a big tangled mess!! After my cat died in late August, a girl I've known for years, whom has called me her "Best Friend" before, let's just call her K, sent me a text with condolences and offering to spend some time with me. She never responded when I replied with suggestions for hanging out and hasn't spoke to me since. This is following a behavioral pattern she had this past summer where she felt the need to constantly bad-mouth her ex-boyfriend and encourage others to do the same in order to "build a case" against him it seems like, even becoming visibly annoyed when people did not want to participate or wanted to talk about other things, she even exaggerated or completely made up things he had done and became annoyed when I pointed out that I'd been talking to both "sides" separately and knew she was lying about certain things. I don't feel comfortable confronting her at this time because the last communication between us was initiated by me, so I feel as though the ball is in her court. But because I know she can be dishonest at times, I also don't know if I am ready to confront her in a way that is fair. (IE: in a way where I'm listening and not just assuming she's bullsh*tting me). But just to put the cherry on top of all this, her mother has had cancer for the past year and it might be terminal, but it's in remission right now. My boyfriend has no more patience for how she's ignored me for the past few months, and since he's lost his mother to cancer, I think he's judging my friend by his standards and doesn't feel willing to give her a free pass. Because my mother lived to tell the tale with her own cancer fight, I feel like I have some sort of "privilege" compared to my boyfriend and my friend which might prevent me from seeing this whole mess of issues in a more realistic light. But in general I feel used and isolated and I'm considering just walking away for good because even with the hardships of a terminally ill family member, she's still acting like the self-centred, manipulative Queen Bee I met when we were 16.
- A good number of various people seem a bit lacking when it comes to managing feeling "lonely" or being single. A lot of people I like and consider friends have been irritable and taking out their frustrations or feelings of awkwardness on people or on social networking sites (facebook and tumblr and the like). There's a lot of weird ways I've seen this manifest: sometimes people will get prickly and snappy if they notice they're not included or the centre of attention for social functions, or even say to me "but you have a boyfriend!" as a response when I try to explain I feel alone and like an outcast sometimes. I've even had friends deliberately organize social functions so that I'm never at the same event as their "crushes" because of jealously over these people relating to me and paying attention to me - even though I've made the effort to establish boundaries. This has ended in people drastically cutting back how often they speak to me or spend time with me because of their fixations elsewhere. Entirely deliberate or not, it still feels like I'm being treated differently because I have something they don't.
- I had to change my plans for New Year's at the last minute because the friends I was going to see did something inconsiderate that made me feel unwanted and like I wasn't respected, and as a result I felt too uncomfortable about visiting them. Without going into unnecessary detail, this person, which I'll refer to as M, was planning a weekend trip in Februrary to another city. She asked my boyfriend and I to come too because they would need a hotel. My boyfriend said maybe because we would need to figure out money for it, it was likely that we'd just come up for the day but we weren't sure yet. Then when we asked M later it turned out she got an offer to go in for the hotel with other friends. She assumed that boyfriend and I would be opting for the day trip, but she never checked for sure, nor did we get the chance to confirm our plans with her, and neither did she explain to us beforehand that she'd had another offer come up. It made me very hurt and angry because it was such a huge communication breakdown that would not have required any extraneous effort to prevent. I chose to cancel my plans to visit them for New Year's and I also don't feel excited about trying to wiggle my way into the Februrary trip since these friends were rather literally inconsiderate about it. I explained that I was angry and why and also that this made me feel extremely disrepected and unwanted, because these people were close to me and I never would have expected them to just make an assumption and forget about us after extending an invitation. Nobody has really responded to me or talked to me since I explained why I was upset.
- I found out at the 3-month review of my new job that everyone really likes me, but there are some fields where I'm not doing very well. This was hard to deal with because work was a positive place and a good motivator for me, where I felt like people understood and respected me and would allow me to succeed. Because I have the right personality for the job and everyone I work with seems to genuinely embrace me as a person, my boss and I worked out an improvement plan for me, based on my strong areas. We're going to work on it and meet again later to re-review. I appreciate that my workplace wants me to succeed and are keeping me around, but I'm very troubled by the fact that my review had very few reports of specific examples of my shortcomings, and most specifics provided were things taken out of context - which, fortunately, my boss gave me the benefit of the doubt on and the chance to reasonably explain. But now I feel nervous and frustrated on my commute to work because it feels like my teammates think I'm stupid, but cannot say so to my face. It's a very good place to work and it feels like more than "just a job", so I want it to work out. Part of me is trying to be realistic and remember that I already have the right attitude, which is a far harder skill to learn and master than the actual skills and procedures required of the work. But another part of me is also thinking that I'm truly incompetent and only being coddled by the staff because I'm nice to people at work. I'm even a little terrified even writing this part down because of how particular our social media policies can be!! Could this get traced back to me and make someone look bad? I dunno, but I don't know where else to turn to sort out my feelings and look for realistic insight.
I'm not sure why I feel the need to "hold onto the receipts" of social transgressions between people. It probably makes me sound like some typical teenager who just wants to be in on everybody's business, but these situations are just a few examples of the level of emotional toxicity that's been brought to my life. It adds to my anxiety and feelings of whether I belong. I think I owe it to myself to make sure I am around people with whom I have mutual respect with, but there's so many tangled threads that I don't know where to begin without just chopping off entire limbs of my social life, so to speak, and depriving myself of hobbies or other activities I actually like. It helps me to keep track sometimes because then I know that my feelings are rational - I went through a lot of life with people just telling me to "calm down" or that I was wrong for feeling how I do, so knowing that I'm acting with - or at least trying to act with - equal parts reason and emotion helps me feel more balanced and 'okay'. I don't think I make a habit of holding onto anger, because I am pretty good about expressing my emotions in an honest way and putting all the cards on the table because I don't like "games", but I feel wronged and a bit like I've failed, and it's hard dealing with the anxiety and isolation from that. How do I continue doing the things I like - my hobbies, my job, social functions - without exposing myself to the headaches that people bring due to things like in-fighting, or being passive-aggressive or manipulative or even selfish to the point of making others feel bad? And I haven't yet worked out coping for times I cannot escape these problems.
Generally, when I notice a string of people I know and like acting standoffish or inconsiderate, I'll get upset and hurt at first but when I 'come down' from my hurt and anger over it, I will try to step back and ask myself 'why', to see if maybe there's something in my own behaviour that might be troubling others without my awareness.
My "self-reflection" period of conflict resolution isn't always effective, though. Sometimes I can identify issues and sometimes I just end up beating myself up without finding any specific issues and sometimes, I even just carrying on feeling wronged or taken advantage of.
Doing a headcount I can think of a number of occurrences that are making me feel treated unfairly and alienated:
- This first one is a big tangled mess!! After my cat died in late August, a girl I've known for years, whom has called me her "Best Friend" before, let's just call her K, sent me a text with condolences and offering to spend some time with me. She never responded when I replied with suggestions for hanging out and hasn't spoke to me since. This is following a behavioral pattern she had this past summer where she felt the need to constantly bad-mouth her ex-boyfriend and encourage others to do the same in order to "build a case" against him it seems like, even becoming visibly annoyed when people did not want to participate or wanted to talk about other things, she even exaggerated or completely made up things he had done and became annoyed when I pointed out that I'd been talking to both "sides" separately and knew she was lying about certain things. I don't feel comfortable confronting her at this time because the last communication between us was initiated by me, so I feel as though the ball is in her court. But because I know she can be dishonest at times, I also don't know if I am ready to confront her in a way that is fair. (IE: in a way where I'm listening and not just assuming she's bullsh*tting me). But just to put the cherry on top of all this, her mother has had cancer for the past year and it might be terminal, but it's in remission right now. My boyfriend has no more patience for how she's ignored me for the past few months, and since he's lost his mother to cancer, I think he's judging my friend by his standards and doesn't feel willing to give her a free pass. Because my mother lived to tell the tale with her own cancer fight, I feel like I have some sort of "privilege" compared to my boyfriend and my friend which might prevent me from seeing this whole mess of issues in a more realistic light. But in general I feel used and isolated and I'm considering just walking away for good because even with the hardships of a terminally ill family member, she's still acting like the self-centred, manipulative Queen Bee I met when we were 16.
- A good number of various people seem a bit lacking when it comes to managing feeling "lonely" or being single. A lot of people I like and consider friends have been irritable and taking out their frustrations or feelings of awkwardness on people or on social networking sites (facebook and tumblr and the like). There's a lot of weird ways I've seen this manifest: sometimes people will get prickly and snappy if they notice they're not included or the centre of attention for social functions, or even say to me "but you have a boyfriend!" as a response when I try to explain I feel alone and like an outcast sometimes. I've even had friends deliberately organize social functions so that I'm never at the same event as their "crushes" because of jealously over these people relating to me and paying attention to me - even though I've made the effort to establish boundaries. This has ended in people drastically cutting back how often they speak to me or spend time with me because of their fixations elsewhere. Entirely deliberate or not, it still feels like I'm being treated differently because I have something they don't.
- I had to change my plans for New Year's at the last minute because the friends I was going to see did something inconsiderate that made me feel unwanted and like I wasn't respected, and as a result I felt too uncomfortable about visiting them. Without going into unnecessary detail, this person, which I'll refer to as M, was planning a weekend trip in Februrary to another city. She asked my boyfriend and I to come too because they would need a hotel. My boyfriend said maybe because we would need to figure out money for it, it was likely that we'd just come up for the day but we weren't sure yet. Then when we asked M later it turned out she got an offer to go in for the hotel with other friends. She assumed that boyfriend and I would be opting for the day trip, but she never checked for sure, nor did we get the chance to confirm our plans with her, and neither did she explain to us beforehand that she'd had another offer come up. It made me very hurt and angry because it was such a huge communication breakdown that would not have required any extraneous effort to prevent. I chose to cancel my plans to visit them for New Year's and I also don't feel excited about trying to wiggle my way into the Februrary trip since these friends were rather literally inconsiderate about it. I explained that I was angry and why and also that this made me feel extremely disrepected and unwanted, because these people were close to me and I never would have expected them to just make an assumption and forget about us after extending an invitation. Nobody has really responded to me or talked to me since I explained why I was upset.
- I found out at the 3-month review of my new job that everyone really likes me, but there are some fields where I'm not doing very well. This was hard to deal with because work was a positive place and a good motivator for me, where I felt like people understood and respected me and would allow me to succeed. Because I have the right personality for the job and everyone I work with seems to genuinely embrace me as a person, my boss and I worked out an improvement plan for me, based on my strong areas. We're going to work on it and meet again later to re-review. I appreciate that my workplace wants me to succeed and are keeping me around, but I'm very troubled by the fact that my review had very few reports of specific examples of my shortcomings, and most specifics provided were things taken out of context - which, fortunately, my boss gave me the benefit of the doubt on and the chance to reasonably explain. But now I feel nervous and frustrated on my commute to work because it feels like my teammates think I'm stupid, but cannot say so to my face. It's a very good place to work and it feels like more than "just a job", so I want it to work out. Part of me is trying to be realistic and remember that I already have the right attitude, which is a far harder skill to learn and master than the actual skills and procedures required of the work. But another part of me is also thinking that I'm truly incompetent and only being coddled by the staff because I'm nice to people at work. I'm even a little terrified even writing this part down because of how particular our social media policies can be!! Could this get traced back to me and make someone look bad? I dunno, but I don't know where else to turn to sort out my feelings and look for realistic insight.
I'm not sure why I feel the need to "hold onto the receipts" of social transgressions between people. It probably makes me sound like some typical teenager who just wants to be in on everybody's business, but these situations are just a few examples of the level of emotional toxicity that's been brought to my life. It adds to my anxiety and feelings of whether I belong. I think I owe it to myself to make sure I am around people with whom I have mutual respect with, but there's so many tangled threads that I don't know where to begin without just chopping off entire limbs of my social life, so to speak, and depriving myself of hobbies or other activities I actually like. It helps me to keep track sometimes because then I know that my feelings are rational - I went through a lot of life with people just telling me to "calm down" or that I was wrong for feeling how I do, so knowing that I'm acting with - or at least trying to act with - equal parts reason and emotion helps me feel more balanced and 'okay'. I don't think I make a habit of holding onto anger, because I am pretty good about expressing my emotions in an honest way and putting all the cards on the table because I don't like "games", but I feel wronged and a bit like I've failed, and it's hard dealing with the anxiety and isolation from that. How do I continue doing the things I like - my hobbies, my job, social functions - without exposing myself to the headaches that people bring due to things like in-fighting, or being passive-aggressive or manipulative or even selfish to the point of making others feel bad? And I haven't yet worked out coping for times I cannot escape these problems.
