Hi @Ali11 ,
Thanks fur your message
But to be honest I'm not sure how to respond, or whether I should be responding here or in email discussion with the moderators.
I made the post just to try and support the thread as best I could, only shared personal details if thought they could help. I wasn't trying to make it an me or my complaints with SANE, which are valid and well founded.
Part of me thinks it would be most appropriate to explain the reason your post was very hurtful to me in a private complaint, because it isn't fair to the other thread participants to change the topic.
Part of me thinks there might be worth in opening some of the issues here as they might relate to emotional safety in friendships and also emotional safety in helping relationships that can affect our self esteem and thus ability to firm healthy, no abusive friendships.
So in that vein I'll continue the gener theme in this post, but follow up the personal details in our ongoing private discussions about the issues on the Forum, I hope that suits?
In general, I guess the post hits for me on something that can go wrong in all kinds of relationships, including friendships, family, helping relationships, work relationships, etc.
I guess that thing is, in general, when people feel hurt, but they also don't feel like they can express the hurt openly or directly, so they express it indirectly. And the other thing is when "the Blame game" happens. When done does express hurt, and the other person them feels hurt from the expression (especially of the person who expressed hurt also expressed anger, or of the accused the first person of some kind of wrongdoing). If the second person feels treated unjustly, and doesn't have the support to work through that, in my experiences they can lash out and start undermining the other person in suble and destructive ways. The undermining can happen for other reasons too and it can, of course be entirely unintended or even unconscious, it can also go both ways.
I find the best thing is to get it out in the open, allow both people to be able to say how they feel, instead of judging the other person or trying to guess orvset their narrative for them, which can be deeply destructive over time, as the person loses their own natural ability to understand themselves and sees themselves in the others' lens. And then, of course it can become the culture and people start doing it to each other.
So to movr it back to me and away from setting general narratives. I feel hurt by your post because I know that if I am hurt and traumatised and reach the point where I need to make formal complaints against other's behaviour, I'm doing it for a really good reason. And if I show lots of emotions while that is happening, that's not because there is anything wrong with me, but because I was hurt and abused for a long time and now I'm trying to recover from the trauma.
Of course I know it makes me unable to participate in simple, friendly conversation, but that is part of the injury and injustice. So many people suffer this way, and rubbing their noses in it is very cruel. I know that of other people had to express things emotionally or talk about hard stuff I'd be there for them, that's what I meant by "foul weather friends". But I also like to keep the people safe who are living peaceful lives and aren't being preyed in by the bad things that have happened.
Paradoxically the postade me realise that sometimes, despite my efforts to keep my problems to myself in the real world I have connected the most when I let them out. And I often find that other people are doing exactly the same thing as me: keeping it all under wraps because that's our culture. When I talk then they think they can too. And I find out one lady who comes to help me with cleaning wrestled with a dx of depression but beat it herself because it was important to her to do it alone, and she has similar ferlings to me about certain professions for similar, if less extreme, reasons. I find that another is heartbreakingly dealing with a husband who drinks and doesn't know what to do but doesn't want to go to a doctor for support because she instinctively feels if she tells them what's going on they will medicate her.
( Iwas thankfully able to give her the details of domestic Violence supports in our area)
What I meant by my post was that I couldn't make friends right now because I'm going through the process of coming to terms with being a victim of institutional abuse in a world where I have to make my own supports because there aren't (yet) any appropriate ones available. Where I have to spend my time talking to people who can change policies and laws, because structural discrimination has backed me into a corner.
Your post was hurtful because it felt like a situation that I was trying to fix, a problem in society that was affecting me, so I couldn't just live a happy life, for all the reasons I said, was some kind of personal flaw in me. Or that I was mistaken by all my bad experiences.
I agree that people can become influenced by their history, but one of the things I'm trying to fight is unconscious biases. The way in which people can become influenced by their history to undermine people who speak out and try to change things, or who show emotions like hurt, sadness, fear or anger, in appropriate and not harmful ways.
It does hurt when someone tells me I hurt them, for example, but it's a "good hurt", it's the reason why hurt evolved, to let us know something was wrong.
If I turn around to them and say "it hurts me to hear that but I'm so glad you told me, let's solve this together" I hope that might help, because that's what I'd like to hear if I were them
But if I turn around and say "You're hurting me and you need to get more aware of how your hurt and frustration hurt others" I wouldn't be being the person I want to be. Because I would have made it all about me. And invalidated and ignored the importance of what they were telling me I was doing that was hurting them.
When it happens in systemic issues, it is sometimes called "tone policing", important issues are buried by focusing on the tone instead of the content, not letting people express appropriate emotions when hurt or harmed.
Ultimately, we are all in this world together. If we keep repeating the cultural mistakes of those who came before us, how will we create a better world? One where maybe people don't have to be or feel isolated when they are sad or down? Because we welcome all our emotions with open arms and we want to resolve things, not push them away?
