I really do appreciate the support here. I talked about some of this today with T - how I take forever to notice that something hurts me, and my patterns involved in that. I am starting to see how I keep stuff like that happening all around me, and how I set people up to give me just the kind of responses that most of you here are giving me.

I need to back up a little bit. One reason that I am more comfortable posting online about my problems than actually talking about them IRL is that I am so scared of emotional invalidation. I grew up being told that what I felt or thought was all wrong and that if I was unhappy then I was selfish and ungrateful, etc. It became so engrained in me that now I not only expect to be invalidated, but I invalidate myself, and I don't even wait to have a feeling before I shut it down and invalidate it. Then I set people up to respond to my invalidation - the options I leave you are to either tell me that I'm right and I really am worthless, or I am wrong and deserve to be cared about. It's awkward either way, isn't it?

From there, I keep the arguments up, claiming that everything is all my fault, ... I do it here and IRL and everywhere. I am sorry and I will work on it, but it's going to be a hard habit to change.

T did validate that it does take me that long (hours, days, weeks, even sometimes years) to notice that something hurts me, and that even if it does seem to someone else like my hurt is made up when I finally do realize it, I really was hurt all along. It helps so much that she understood that.

Okay, I have a long way to go and I really need to stop invalidating myself. If you catch me doing it, call me on it, okay?

Thanks.

Rap