I kinda hand a mind-blowing realization while watching a show last night, watching a character do this too: in any social moment, I am usually spending ALL my energy trying to figure out what the other person might be feeling, and hardly any energy on ...
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I kinda hand a mind-blowing realization while watching a show last night, watching a character do this too: in any social moment, I am usually spending ALL my energy trying to figure out what the other person might be feeling, and hardly any energy on figuring out what I am feeling.
Thanks to my childhood where attention was unpredictable so I learned to constantly be on alert for what my caretakers were feeling, so I could jump at a chance for attention, or steer clear when things were bad.
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I'm gonna experiment with this and take this next step in unmasking: from now on when I'm with other people, I'm going to turn my energy inward instead of outward.
I want to know what ME is feeling, first and foremost. I want to get this information faster, sooner, clearer.
THEN, I can turn my attention to how other people are feeling. If at all.
And also, maybe I'll just ask others what they are feeling instead of wondering and puzzling! Why not! Saves me so much work not trying to guess.
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I am ok with making this change because i am REALLY FREAKIN GOOD at empathy and figuring out what other people are feeling and thinking, having developed it as a survival mechanism from babyhood onward. Couple that with communication and compassion being a special interest, which I consider a result of a traumatic childhood and the social trauma that gets compounded by being autistic.
There is LOW TO NO risk of me being unempathetic. That muscle is almost overly strong.
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And another thing!!! <sassy pointer finger in the air>
I've been thinking a lot in the past few months about how girls are socialized to be the Emotional Managers of every situation.
We are taught to always be considerate of other's emotions (often males) by proactively noticing them. And then we are taught to tend for these emotions by either changing OUR feelings in support of theirs, or silencing ours if it would make the other person more comfortable.
AND I AM SICK OF IT.
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I am tired of being the most emotionally skilled person in the room, and that skill not being reflected back to me.
I am tired of tending to other's emotions at my expense, and never receiving the same expert and finely tuned care.
I am tired of noticing every single little nuance of everyone else's feelings around me in a social situation, and no one else is noticing any of it, in order to help share the burden of care.
Care like that is good! But not when there's only one person doing it.
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Katanova, the Forest Nomadreplied to dyani 🫠last edited by
@dyani If it makes you feel any better, I'm a cis male, I taught myself all those skills, and I'm also really fucking exhausted of it.
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@katanova those of us with the skills are doing such a heavy lift for the rest of the people who are clueless!!
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Katanova, the Forest Nomadreplied to dyani 🫠last edited by
@dyani I've found that doing the lifting by myself is somewhat fruitless.
Where I put effort in, is teaching people how to develop those skills themselves, and to do that requires some pretty deep trust, and some degree of means to put your foot down and enforce boundaries when others aren't exercising those skills
Which is to say, in most environments in our society, passing on these skills is a steep uphill battle.
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Katanova, the Forest Nomadreplied to Katanova last edited by
@dyani In fact, it's not really exercising these skills that's exhausting.
It's exercising those skills in the face of people who've built up their lives and identities around ensuring that they have authority over the people they rely on, to prevent others from enforcing boundaries.
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@katanova i totally agree. what isn't said in my thread is that i will happily do a lot of emotional labor for people who do it for me! and there are similar people who are teachable, but it's an even rarer situation to find someone who wants to learn.