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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 1 year

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On one of your reblogs a couple weeks ago, you said something about friend/relationships not being transactional and that we need each other and my brain has it on a rotisserie. I often see things as that way and try to keep things even…more in me never needing them, I’ll help anyone, anytime. Do you have any experience with shifting your mindset? This question might be misplaced and in that case, it fine to disregard.

Hello nonny dear.

I understand where you're coming from. There are a lot of reasons that one can keep track of who's done what for whom and making sure it stays "even."

I don't know what your reasons are, so I can only speak to my own experiences and what helped me. I hope that it's helpful to you.

I spent a lot of time having a terrible relationship with myself. Because of this, I was constantly doing whatever I could for the people around me. No favor was too large, no trouble too big, no mountain too high, no river too... you get the idea. But I never, ever asked for anything for myself. The idea of needing someone was abhorrent to me because in my mind I didn't deserve needing anyone's time, respect, or love.

One thing that helped me was to shift my perspective and consider how it would feel if it was a friend of mine who felt this way.

You say that you will help anyone, anytime, and it's no trouble to you. So, if you were someone else and saw yourself in need of help, it wouldn't be any trouble to assist, would it? If a friend of yours was hurting and you later found out that they didn't ask you for help, wouldn't you feel sad that you couldn't be there?

Once I started thinking of it not in terms of asking for myself, but giving my friends a chance to be the kind of friend to me they wanted to be, it got easier.

It also helps to realize that if you think that you're not worthy of being friends with someone, or needing them, then you're actually also placing an unfair judgment on them. You're saying what they should and shouldn't spend their time on, who they should and shouldn't hang out with. You're judging their choice in people. But you love these people, right? So why would you put that judgment on them? Let your friends decide for themselves who is worth their energy. And if they think that's you, then that's on them to decide. Not you to push away.

Don't take that choice from them.

Last year, I lost two friends whom I loved very deeply, shattering my trust in people. I'm still very much in the grieving process.

I say this not for sympathy, but to emphasize to you how much I understand the deep, deep pain that loved ones can bring to us. I do not stand before you as someone who loves or trusts easily (frankly I don't know that I'll ever trust again, but that's what my therapist is for).

Rather, I stand before you as someone who understands that as much as she wants to shut herself off from all others, she can't.

It is terrifying to need people. To need love and companionship. To need assistance. Especially the last few decades we have been taught (in the United States at least, not sure where you're from) independence above all else. To do it all, all on our own. Historically, that is not how we operate. Living alone and cooking all our own meals and doing all our own chores and working full-time is not how it's been for the majority of civilization.

You can't do it all. You just can't.

And needing people means that you might get hurt. It means your trust will be betrayed. It means you're going to screw up the courage to ask for something you need, be it a ride to the airport or respect, and you're going to be denied.

But put simply, you have no choice.

You are going to need to cry to someone, to laugh with someone. You are going to need someone to drive you to the damn airport. Because if you refuse those things, you will be miserable. This is in little ways, like paying out the nose for a taxi or cooking your own meal when you're sick, or in bigger, less tangible ways like depression born from deep, deep loneliness.

And you'll find what happens when you stop keeping score is that a weight is lifted off your shoulders. Because the secret is that it always ends up even. It really does. Because you're going to go through times in your life when you are in the shit and you need all the help you can get. And then you're going to be on top of the world and your friend will be the one in the shit needing all hands on deck to help them. You can't keep it even. You just can't. But if you let go of that, you'll find that really, over time... you're all needing each other equally. Because that's what humans are. That's what community is.

The fact is we're social creatures, nonny. We are made to love.

Look at the oldest signs of civilization. It's not grand palaces. It's not war spears. It's not inventions. It's art. It's people buried with love, and with mended bones, because they broke them and their loved ones made a splint and carried them from place to place and fed them. It's baskets for holding food and gardening supplies and cooking utensils because we learned to cook for each other, to feed each other.

Civilization is community.

A lack of trust, or a lack of self-worth, did not change my need for people. Refusing to eat doesn't mean your body stops needing food. So why starve yourself? And why act as though all food is poisoned or eating enough to satisfy yourself is gluttony?

You wouldn't poison the food. You wouldn't call your friends gluttons. So don't do that to yourself.

Your friends want to help you. The world often tries to prove me wrong but I swear by every speck of boiled blood in my body and every fleck of ash in my black shriveled heart, I know people are inherently good. They want to help. They want to love. They want to take care of you.

Let them. Nonny, please let them.

Remember:

keeping score will only exhaust you

that it's impossible to keep things 100% even, but that all things are fair in the end (in a healthy relationship) because we all have our ups and downs

that if you would help anyone, anytime, then you can't deny others the opportunity to do the same

not to deny your friends their agency and choice by refusing to even ask for things.

Remember that just because you refuse to eat doesn't mean you aren't hungry.

I hope this helped. It will take time to adjust. I recommend writing down some of these reminders and putting them up around your home like on the bathroom mirror and on the fridge. Change their position or put up different phrases every so often so they don't become invisible. The more you say these things, the more you'll believe them, and the easier it'll be to act on them.

I wish you all the best.

#mads answers things #a lot of times I get asks that frankly are more an ask for a therapist #not because it's invasive or anything #but because in order to provide a helpful answer #I would need to know a lot more very personal information #a lot of what will help us in changing our mindsets #is dependent on what we need to unpack in our personal history #and what traumas we need to heal from #so I urge nonny and everyone else to also look into therapy #because a therapist can help you with those particular personal hang-ups #on which I am not qualified to give advice (nor should I as a stranger on the internet)#but as someone who is currently deeply struggling not to regress on years of hard work #because of her recent trauma and grief #I felt I could offer some helpful perspectives #and I hope that I could be of assistance

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