What do y’all do when you get in your head? When you isolate because you don’t want to bother someone, even if they tell you they don’t mind. It’s arrogant to think I know their own feelings better than them but I can’t release the thought that they really don’t want to spend time with me, even if they say they do. I certainly am not doubtful that they are doing their best to tell the truth, but I cannot see a good reason why I should stop being invisible. It’s the easy way out, and it’s even easier to rationalize.
Advice, opinions, and thoughts are requested.
3 comments
I don’t know. Wish I did so I can help, but I don’t know. I’m very familiar with isolating and very familiar with not knowing what other people are thinking. There’s no good answer to solve this problem. The only thing you can realistically do is just trust people. You’ll never be sure what people are really thinking, even if they tell you themselves. So because of that, all you can do is have faith in other people. Whether you are strong enough to do that is ultimately up to you. And if they are deserving of your faith is up to them.
I am a person whose #1 response to everything is to self-isolate, so this is something I’ve thought about a lot.
It sounds like from what you’ve said that you’re worried about this person’s motivations, and what they think about you/may think about you in the future. Why so their feelings/potential feelings about you being a “bother” feel so threatening?
I’m wondering if it would simplify things at all to consider whether you want to spend time with this person for their own merits, or if there is anything you would like to do. Sometimes I’ve found that focusing on the activity itself makes me less likely to catastrophize about the emotional stakes of the activity.
Yeah, I guess it really is about trust and knowing when to let go. I just have a hard time trusting and I should work on that. I had someone leave in the past in a way that I’ll never get over entirely, and so I guess it makes sense that I want to at least try my best to do everything I can to be able to say that it’s not my fault the next time it happens. But that’s assuming the worst, and it’s probably a self-fulfilling prophecy. And fault doesn’t really matter when it’s over.
Maybe I see life as a continuation of final moments and I don’t want to spend mine bringing down someone else’s happy days. So a better solution is to cover it up and spend time with them being superficially happy until hopefully I trick myself into thinking my joy is real. How twisted. I appreciate the quality input and the thinking it’s making me do.