Quote:
Originally Posted by learning1
Your story of getting over it's not fair, when your siblings got, and maybe still get, things that aren't fair, was helpful for me and I identified with it.
Your boundaries for getting involved with alcoholics and people with other major life problems have been lower than mine have ever been. The pace with which, according to your threads, you feel you've make deep changes in your life circumstances and relationships is much more rapid than I can imagine in my life. I imagine deeply understanding and changing one's boundaries in friendships or relationships to be something that occurs over a period of years and it often sounds like you've done it in a period of weeks. I think this might be a difference in how confidently you or I would report that we've made a change. Maybe we are towards different ends of an extreme with that.
Your tendency to talk about people in terms that many would consider elitist (such as "quality") is very different from mine. Even though I understand you were using the term another poster used, it still comes across as strongly worded to me. Since you haven't had the boundaries I've had all along, maybe you feel you need to use stronger words to classify and draw boundaries, I don't know. I agree with the poster who said that all (or most) of us have these elitist tendencies consciously or unconsciously. I'm not sure that makes it okay to talk about them explicitly as if they're acceptable though. When I recognize them in myself, I think of them as something to change, not explicitly talk about as if they are a good thing. I don't mean that one should be in close friendships with alcoholics, drug addicts, or people who are letting their mental health issues cross your boundaries in extreme ways. I just mean that I think there are more sensitive ways to talk and think about people in those categories than to label them as lacking quality. Again, if you're in the process of struggling with your own boundaries, maybe it is understandable to think about them in extreme categories like "low quality" for a while though.
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I really feel like I am being misunderstood in this thread. Obviously, I was not as articulate as I should have been in expressing myself, and this has caused a lot of confusion. I was never using the word "quality" to refer to people; I do not think that way or judge people that way. It is really bothering me that people have that impression of me, because it is inaccurate. I realize that my language was not as clear as it should have been, but I was referring to the "quality" of my friendships. Setting boundaries is something I have struggled with-- due to my childhood circumstances-- and it is something I've been working on in T for a long time. Through a lot of hard work, I've begun setting better boundaries and standing up for myself when those boundaries are violated. I've had to confront the fact that I've allowed myself to be in relationships where I'm not being treated very well. That wasn't any easy thing to admit. And, as part of my work of setting better boundaries, I've had to end some of those friendships, because I've realized that they are not healthy for me. That was also hard. Because of my own abandonment history, it was difficult to feel as though I was "abandoning" someone else. That's another thing I had to confront in order to become a healthier person.
The reason I started this thread was because I had just ended what I felt to be my last "unhealthy" friendship, and I was hurting-- I was afraid that my friend would be really hurt by the end of our friendship and I was worried that she wouldn't have anyone to turn to without me. Even though I was upset with my friend and knew I had to end the friendship, I still cared about her well-being. I felt so bad about ending the friendship that I didn't feel like going out with my other friends that night, and decided to stay home instead. Then, I saw on fb that my friend was out, presumably having fun and not even thinking about the fact that our friendship had just ended-- and I thought: "Why am I sitting at home feeling bad, beating myself up over this, and worrying about her, when it seems like she doesn't care?" Then I thought "I need to learn how to deal with my feelings better. I need to stop worrying about how others are thinking/feeling, and focus on myself and my boundaries. I need to stop thinking that it's not fair that I'm the only one who seems to be upset and hurt by this. I'll see if I can get some advice on PC." So, I wrote my post.
At first, it seemed like those who were responding to me had the impression that ALL or MOST of my friendships were unhealthy; that all or most of my friends were treating me poorly; that all or most of my friends were lying to me, cheating, or drinking excessively, and then asking me to bail them out. It seemed that everyone thought this must be a pattern, where I was constantly allowing myself to be treated badly by everyone around me. Since that is not the case, I tried to clarify. I tried to explain that MOST of my friendships were healthy, and that most of my friends did treat me well. There were only a few, out of all of my friends, who were treating me poorly. Then, I tried to explain (as a means of understanding for myself, too) how I had managed to enter into these specific friendships that were healthy-- and how I was working on changing that. However, in trying to write that explanation, I was not articulate enough and I apparently gave the impression that I'm someone I'm not. Now, I feel like my thread has become a series of accusations-- and a series of defenses. It's made me feel much worse than I did before I wrote the thread so, honestly, I wish I had never started it. I did get some good advice mixed in there, but very few of the responses addressed my initial question of how I might be able to better manage my thoughts/feelings about the things in life that "just aren't fair"-- but that we still have to accept.
An unintended consequence is that my thread has made me feel even worse about putting up healthy boundaries because I feel like i'm being perceived as judgmental for deciding that I want to walk away from those relationships in which I'm not being treated well. It was really, really hard for me to stand up for myself and set that boundary-- and my T was proud of me for (finally) doing that-- but the responses to my thread are making me feel pretty low for protecting myself from someone who was violating my boundaries. Last session, my T told me how proud she was of me for (finally) standing firm on my boundaries and communicating directly with someone who violated them (since confrontation is difficult for me, and something I've worked on with my T). That's one of the first times T has ever used the word "proud" and it meant a lot to me-- and I wish I hadn't posted about this topic because, now, when I think about upholding my boundaries, all of the negative feelings from this thread overwhelm that. I feel like a jerk, and I'm really not a jerk. I'm someone who, like a number of us on PC, suffered a lot as a child, and has tried heal from that and create a better life as an adult. I've had poor boundaries because I didn't want to push ANYONE away; what if I pushed away the only people who wanted to stay? What if I was left with no one? I had to get to the place that I was okay being alone, before I could actually set and maintain my boundaries. I had to learn how to love myself enough to believe that I deserved to be treated well. I've been working on these things in therapy for 3 years, and it's been a long and difficult road.
I think I'm going to bring this whole thread in to my T tomorrow. I want her perspective on all of this. She's one of the people who knows me the best, and she can tell me what she thinks is being misunderstood and what she thinks I really do need to work on.