Tavpdfw Youre Too Afraid To Express Your Honest Opinion On Something So You Keep Your Thoughts As Neutral

Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool.

Robert Brault (via thelovejournals)

being in love with the process and not the results is one of the healthiest things in the world

i mean, but also, knowing your limits and knowing when you need to step back so that you don’t act resentful or stressed out by your own kids, is part of being a good parent.

everyone has limits. getting to take a break can make you a better parent, because you’re a little refreshed when you get back, and you’re actively glad to see your kids, and it makes you happy to be with them! they can see that stuff clearly, too.

it’s OK to recognize that you as a parent need more support and more time to not-always-be-parenting. to retain your sanity and self-perception as your whole self and not just the parenting role. burnout is a real thing, and shutting down people who are grappling with this particular stress isn’t going to help them acknowledge or move through those feelings — or figure out ways to help themselves de-stress, recharge, and nourish themselves in spite of their life pressures.

no human can be 100% on, 100% of the time, and that doesn’t change when you have a kid. this is a huge part of why extended families and local communities are so important in child-rearing (‘it takes a village’) — having support makes you, yourself, a better and more patient parent, because you aren’t constantly running on fumes.

speaking from personal experience, my parents raised me without any help. it was really hard on them — and on me, because that just isn’t how children are meant to grow up. but it’s not how parents are meant to parent, either.

i understand that better now that i have kids myself and, hey, i’m still autistic! my limits are clearer than most people’s, and maybe as a result i need more help (=auxiliary carers so that i can take care of myself). it sure has made me aware of this balance.

of course, yes, it’s absolutely not okay for your kids to think or know that you resent them/parenthood, or that you don’t want to be around them. and they REALLY DO know much more than others guess. (again, i was one of those kids. a lot of us were, i imagine.)

but the best way to prevent that whole mess from happening is to handle your feelings yourself, so that you can engage in parent-child interactions better. (with calmness, affection, wisdom, humility, blah blah.) but that requires time and energy for self-care, which is obviously in short supply. aaannnd it also helps not to be judged by strangers on the internet.

sometimes venting to an adult is how you meet your emotional needs enough to leave that stuff aside, and go be genuinely present with your kid, with gratitude instead of resentment.

self care skills are parenting skills. ❤️

“I hope you let yourself learn from the moments of stillness, the moments of silence, and the moments of rest. I hope you see that even when you don’t think there is any growth happening, there is — it’s just steady and slow.”

— Megan Minutillo, Please Embrace The Slowness

AvPD and how we control anxiety.

(Part of my ongoing series of posts on Avoidant Personality Disorder.)

So in anxiety disorders, there are “safety behaviors” that are things you do to manage your anxiety.

Like when people with social anxiety are around other people, they’ll play with their phone,

or stay in the bathroom longer than necessary,

or avoid eye contact,

or only go somewhere with another person.

See also: compulsions in OCD.

It’s something you do while you are in the presence of your Feared Thing, to make it less scary/more tolerable.  It’s like a buffer.

But I’ve had a hard time figuring out what is the safety behavior in Avoidant Personality Disorder. So much of its actual presence in people’s lives (or at least in mine) seems to be: “terrified of being seen/rejected by others.” And where you have anxiety, you should also be seeing safety behaviors, right? But it’s not really talked about.

Obviously you can just AVOID people as much as possible, and not have to deal with it in the first place. (Like, clearly. I myself am a shut-in, because AvPD.) But what if you’re actually in it, facing this anxiety/threat? What do you do? How do you buffer the fear?

To lower AvPD anxiety, you de-escalate the intimacy.

I bet MOST of us have a kind of hierarchy of “how scary/how close is this type of interaction.” And if something is too scary, what do you do? Bump down the closeness a step.

You stop touching, step away, put a barrier in between you; you reduce the level of contact, from phone, to chat, to text, to email. (This is my hierarchy; yours might be different.) If you’re in a group and their scrutiny is freaking you out while you try to talk to someone, you go off and talk alone. Or if being alone with someone is too scary, you get somebody to go with you.

Online, maybe you size down the chat window or minimize it entirely between replies. You silence the notifications. You fullscreen something else over it. (Maybe you compulsively glance over to see if they’ve responded, like I do.)

If you’re trying to share something about yourself, maybe you choose to give it to them long-form all at once, so you can’t lose your nerve halfway through. Maybe you edit out select details that are Too Revealing, too unique, too you. Maybe you only share it with them when you've both agreed to discuss it immediately, so it isn’t hanging in the air between you.

It’s about this:

controlling how much access (ability to disturb) they have to you

controlling what they get to see

and monitoring how they react

The “safest” situation is one where they have very little access to you; where you only allow them to see a bare minimum of personal details about you; and where you can watch and try to mitigate how they are responding to you/what they think of you.

The most “unsafe” situation is one where

you can’t control how much access they have to you (i.e. you live with them or see them every day, you can’t get away from their influence/moods/judgments, or they have power over some aspect of your life)

you can’t control how much about you they get to see (i.e. no privacy, no boundaries)

and you can’t monitor or affect how they react (i.e. they find out a secret of yours and then abruptly leave, or they just won’t communicate their feelings with you at all, or you aren’t even aware of what they know until they confront you).

(Okay, so full disclosure, I basically just described my entire relationship with my mom. So this theory may have overlap with codependency, abusive relationships, and c-ptsd, rather than being pure AvPD.)

De-escalating intimacy = de-escalating trust.

You’re reducing their ability to hurt you -- you’re making “How much I am forced to trust you” as tiny and inert as possible.

Which is very useful in a situation where the person is actually going to (or genuinely might) hurt you.

But this eventual habit of lowering intimacy, lowering trust, also means creating distance between you and people you might actually like to form a connection with.

Once you are out of an unsafe situation, this --

controlling how much access they have to you, controlling what they get to see, and monitoring how they react

-- is no longer about managing a threat, or danger. It’s about managing anxiety.

And here is what we know: Compulsions, safety behaviors, avoidance ... anything we do to defend against anxiety, is self-reinforcing. The more you do it, the stronger the urge to do it next time.

There’s another thing:

When you avoid every single instance of interpersonal conflict, you never get the chance to learn how to handle it in a healthy way.

So, yes, when you get into a normal, not-dangerous argument with someone, or have to stand up for yourself, or defend your boundaries -- 2 things: You haven’t built up the skills to handle it in a way that feels safe, AND, you’re super sensitized to conflict because it’s rare.

Conflict is actually scary and feels out of control, times 2, on top of your pre-established fear. And that can be emotionally violent enough, that it can actually be traumatizing or re-traumatizing all on its own.

This obviously isn’t the whole story of AvPD. It’s a personality disorder, not just an anxiety disorder. But I bet for some people, including me, this is a huge chunk of it.

Stay close to people who make you feel like it’s okay to be yourself. 

i saw this post on facebook and i love it tbh. it helps regulate calm deep breathing.

all i’m interested in lately is love, laughter, my personal health, growth, and becoming an all around radiant soul.

It doesn’t make you unlovable or a horrible person if you don’t have many friends. It can be difficult to meet new people if you’re shy or quiet or have anxiety. It can be difficult to stay in touch with people if you can’t find the time or energy to remain in contact. It can be difficult to make new friends if you struggle to find people you click with or who are interested in the same things as you. None of those things mean you’re unlovable. 

‘The world is out here celebrating like it’s the end of Return of the Jedi.

That’s because it kind of is.’

(via twitter @RanttMedia)