Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
no, silly, not the literal covidic masking and social distancing. the metaphorical masking and social distancing for which i learned as a child prostitute and have since invested a great many therapy hours to understanding. as a child prostitute, masking was a necessary social skill. yes, janie dear and johnny dear, you are the hottest lovers in the whorehouse. one of a kind. . . choke, choke, cough, cough. . . i didn't mean it when i cooed, "hurry back." either. just doing my job. of course i had no formal psycho terms for the practice. it was primal to survival. psycho terms have rapid cycled since i began therapy in 1972, so the formal names used then are as obsolete as analog phones, anyway, but the work continues under whatever name fits the current convo. mindful awareness remains my primary psychotherapy tool for the still going psycho tick. masks and social distances are necessary social skils in any profession. car mechanics who tell customers of any gender what they REALLY think of them generally get fired in a hurry. ditto for car mechanics who try to get customers with fat budgets to adopt them. mind your social distances, moron.
within my street-acquired understanding of masks, assumption is the mask i am currently sorting. in street survival, assumption is the safest mask available. if the person i was speaking to assumed i was, "just a kid," i knew i was virtually invisible to them. invisibility is a super power. if you can't see me, you can't stop me. what's in YOUR wallet?
since my retirement from construction and engineering in 1995, i have been hiding behind the "housewife" assumptions. yes, ma'am/sir, i am whatever it is you assume that to be, but you can still wash your own freakin' socks. it feels mostly safe and cozy in the shadow of my truly remarkable man, but my science and engineering compulsions still linger, creating unpredictable mischief while the linger unused.
i'm not sure what i am reaching for here. . . just reaching.
thoughts? experience? unsolicited advice?
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
Most people have no idea what goes on in my head. They can't relate.
Unlike some, I find the housewife and mother/parenting role to be meaningful as I said on another post. I think it should be glorified higher. My husband does wash his own clothes. He always has. But I do the towels and sheets unless I tell him to help me. His income is paying our bills right now. We fit like puzzle pieces.
Lastly, most humans live in a bubble concerned about themselves, their paycheck, their needs. This is being human. Most people don't see people for what is going on in the other person's life. Many people don't realize they are a soul in a human experience, soul first. They don't see the humanity within each person we meet in our day. I look at people and I "see" their inner being. It freaks me out at times. I sometimes get messages that tell me what is going on in their lives or their heads (some say this is being an empath.) But I notice most people do not trouble themselves about other people or do not look into the soul of each person. They just exist. Some are hiding some bad stuff that happened to them as children. This hiding or not noticing other human souls is a form of the invisible mask.
I may or may not have addressed your topic of interest.
first person singular awareness is the key to masking without repressing either myself or the people around me, lest i find myself in one of those bubbles of isolation with a population of one. isolating is one of my psycho bad girls. this "most people" can produce bubbles of isolation at will. with awareness, i can pop the bubble when the "game face" is no longer needed.
however, i have no right to pop someone else's bubbles, second person singular, third person singular or royal we.
for what it's worth
one of my shrinks drilled me in what he called, "grammar therapy." i used to editorialize allot with my royal we's and theyisms. learning how to use first person singular helped me focus more on my own issues than trying to fix the world.
If we don't teach our little ones to be kind to each other, how are they going to learn it? And sometimes kindness means we do have to stifle our true feelings. The irrational and illogical woman I paid for her lunch because she could not find her wallet or had no money and was having flights of ideas at the checkout, talking wildly, making no sense, and unable to pay for her meal. I just kindly said let me pay for you and then you pay for someone else some time. Because I was next in line and wanted to get out with my food and get home! I wore a mask of kindness that day but was also being self serving.
Sometimes masks are okay, sometimes they harm us. Kids get told to not be their true selves or they have no value in the family. Or in abuse situations as you write about. So kids learn to wear masks. Sometimes we have to unlearn these masks as an adult. Masks can be from very rigid thinking which can be from abuse or trauma as a way of fostering our sense of safety.
You are so very intelligent and you give me things to think about.
i'll sincerely salute the notion that sometimes masks are okay, sometimes they harm us. i'll take it a step further and say that masks are necessary. not even my favorite shrinks want to know EVERYTHING about me. professional detachment is part of what makes the formula work. i don't want to know EVERYTHING about them, either. maintain proper social distances, my well-paid employee.
for my psycho nickel, awareness is the key balancing agent in this hall of weirds. i, strictly personal, am psychotically unpredictable when lose awareness of which mask i am wearing.
Humans that don't understand how their own behavior affects others humans often end up unhappy. That is why I say it is good to teach children "good manners" or treating each other well. As in the Golden Rule, for one example. We are not comparing apples to apples in this discussion but it is good to talk about it and I want you to know I value you.
What you were taught as a child was evil and beyond horrible. I could never condone that abuse or the manipulation to make you "follow orders". It was wrong, it was evil.
What is truly in a child's best interest to grow up and be able to lead a functional, healthy life, is not evil. What you were told was never in your best interest to grow up and be able to lead a healthy functional life and was evil.
You matter to me, that is all I can say.
i stand by my premise that "good manners" are a mask which help us to just get along. when i intervene in a sibling dispute between my two foster daughters, i am teaching them to mask their emotions far enough to just get along. stay true to you, my love, but don't place yourself at the center of the universe.