A lot of random thoughts going on since this is a big transitional time for me where I’m trying not to start new things.
I just finished reading a book called The Body Keeps the Score that I’d seen recommended somewhere or other a couple times. It was a really interesting book for me as a writer because it talks a lot about how people deal with trauma or what symptoms of someone having trauma might be. And it also talks about therapeutic approaches to trauma which was helpful for one book idea I’ve had percolating for a few years. I don’t want to write a world that would cause harm if implemented in real life.
But it also made me think that maybe some people who get diagnosed with something like ADHD really need to dig deeper and look at whether they’re treating a symptom of trauma when they take ADHD meds. Maybe it’s my biased Twitter sample but almost everyone I see on there that talks about their severe ADHD has also mentioned a sexual assault or being no contact with family or something else that would be considered trauma. If so, EMDR or neurofeedback or something like that might be a more permanent treatment.
I’m not a psychologist though, so absolutely no one should take that opinion as more than the idle thought it is. Just something to consider or discuss with a professional.
I’ve also been thinking this week about relationship repair. Why is it that some relationships end and others survive setbacks. My own family is one that’s had more than one period of heavy relationship drama over the years and yet eventually in most cases the parties have set aside their differences and come back together. (Although the weight of all of those prior conflicts are still there just waiting to rear their ugly heads. We are not a family who solves our issues, we just bury them.)
I used to hate the idea that some guy I was dating would mess up and his solution would be, “here are some flowers, sorry” because it was such a kneejerk reaction to the situation that didn’t consider what I personally value or care about. (I’m not big on flowers, especially after my dad died and everyone on the frickin’ planet sent them.)
And I often look at people saying “I love you” with a bit of side-eye because I know that I usually say that to people either out of routine (like at the end of a phone call with my family) or while I’m actively doing something that other won’t like (when I’d tell my dog I loved her as I trimmed her toenails). It’s also a phrase that’s sometimes used to impose obligation on the other, “But I love you, how could you…”
But if I step back from my own personal reaction, I see that both are a good relationship repair or maintenance tool.
They’re either someone taking a first step and saying, “Look, I care enough about the relationship we have to express the fact that I’m sorry” or a way to say, “I still want this relationship to continue.”
And then of course to repair the relationship the other party has to reach back. It has to be a mutual situation where one person reaches out and the other reaches back. And then they continue to do that back and forth.
Usually relationships end when one person stops responding. They fade when both people stop reaching out at about the same time. Sometimes relationships end with a bang and sometimes they just drift to an end. For me personally they’re more likely to drift to a close.
Which is why over the years, being the weirdo I am, I will occasionally think of a situation that went wrong and reach out to that person with the equivalent of “hey, sorry,” because in almost every relationship both sides have contributed to the outcome. None of us are perfect.
Sometimes my doing so is ignored or never seen. Sometimes my doing so results in a “oh, thanks for saying that” comment and then absolute silence. (Which is often all I actually wanted to accomplish.)
On rare occasions it results in a “thanks for saying that and I’m sorry about my part in things, too.” (Although not too often because people suck at admitting their mistakes or failures and also maybe it feels like I was only saying sorry so they’d also say sorry. IDK.)
And then very, very rarely it actually results in being able to rebuild a relationship.
All of which are perfectly acceptable responses. There are people in my past who if they showed up today and were like, “Hey, sorry” I’d be like, “Cool, thanks” and then hope they never reached out to me again. Because some people are simply not compatible, some friendships/relationships worked for a period of time and then fade, and some people have done such harm that sorry is good, but not enough to risk letting them back into your life ever again.
Interestingly enough I find that I reach out that way far more than the people I’ve known do.
And I don’t think it’s because I’ve been that much worse of a person in my relationships than others have. I think it’s because my role in my family has always been the one of mending and emotional regulation. I’m the one that sees that X person is starting to get upset with Y person so steers Y person to do something to fix that before things boil over. Or the one that mediates between X and Y person to get them to repair things. Or the one that puts myself between X and Y and takes the emotional hit so that they can continue their relationship while either X or Y hates me for a bit.
I also just have more free time on my hands to process things and think about them and look at them from different angles so that sometimes I see that my initial characterization of something (that person hates me) was wrong (no, they were actually lashing out in hurt due to things they experienced long before they ever knew you existed).
Most of my friends at this age (mid-40’s) are so buried in work and kids and some probably also have health and addiction issues of their own or someone else’s to deal with that they can barely take a moment to breathe let alone analyze their pasts.
That’s why I’m kind of looking forward to the new job. I need less thinking time. And I need less time to spend seeing the dramas of others on the internet. Especially because when I get too bored I sometimes find my way to pages or sites that are there to amplify the outrage.
As an example, there is one Twitter page I occasionally go to that is there to specifically share some of the horrible, awful things that men will say in dating situations or do in relationships. And it’s meant to be a WTF sort of page or a “see how hard it is out there” sort of page.
But what it really does is highlights that very very small minority of men that really are absolute shits and makes it seem like that’s all men out there. In reality very few guys are like that. Most single guys are not hanging around using weird lingo for women and talking about a woman’s body count and whether she’s used. They just want to find someone who they can spend time with who won’t make them feel like shit or use them. And they may make the occasional, “huh?” sort of comment, but they aren’t women-hating psychos.
I wouldn’t know that though if all the time I spent was online. Because, “Hey, I had an awkward, very boring interaction with a guy who really isn’t interesting to me” doesn’t get shared.
It’s like the news, right? They lead with outrage because outrage drives viewership and so if you were to listen to the news and then rank what you think your actual risks in life are you’d be completely wrong. (You are far more likely to be seriously injured or killed in a car accident than to be abducted and killed by a stranger, but guess which one will be covered on the news and which is so common it’s barely a blip on the radar.)
They’ve done psychology studies to show this sort of bias we develop and that was long before the internet amplified it to such an extreme it’s almost painful.
Anyway. My random thoughts for the day thanks to family drama over a stupid phone.
I now need to force myself to take a walk/hike since I don’t have a sad-eyed dog to drag me outside anymore. Sigh. (For the record, if I had to choose either dogs or humanity, I’d choose dogs.)