(This post was written March 1st 2023 but lost due to server problems then recovered thanks to way back machine.)
I don’t know what to do. I am so stressed out. I am trapped in a crevice with nowhere to go and I can’t endure the crevice any longer. I can’t talk about the crevice either because there is an upcoming trial in which I am a witness. I could write in my journal or talk to the nice shrink the government gave me but at the end of the day telling her my thoughts and feelings doesn’t change anything. I already know what I think and feel. I just don’t know what to do or how to endure. I don’t see any practical solutions. And I’m too anxious to pray cause when you are anxious and try to send out your thoughts they just spiral back down onto you. And to be real about it, it was my faith in God that got me into this trouble in the first place. So I don’t know what to do. If I stay in my current position, I will lose my mind. Imagine if every time you spoke the people around you started shrieking like chickens then swirled around in circles collapsing on the floor where they shook and screamed “Why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me?” over and over. And you don’t know what you’ve done. How long can a person live like that and not go insane? I feel like I’m trapped in the Queen of Heart’s court in Wonderland. And I can’t even talk about it. Except vaguely like this.
No matter what I do I am always bad. There is always very complicated reasoning as to why I have done something wrong. So you just start recessing more and more. But no matter how recessed you become it doesn’t matter. Now your whispers count as screams and one wrong word makes you a murderer. So you try harder. You try different things. But every step you take is just one more crime you’re guilty of.
Somehow I ended up at a Wikipedia page about psychological manipulation and it had a list of traits that the recipients of manipulation generally share. It was like reading an exact description of my personality.
| Naïveté or immaturity | People who find it too hard to accept the idea that some people are cunning, devious and ruthless or are “in denial” if they are being taken advantage of.[17] |
| Over-agreeableness | People who are too willing to give another the benefit of the doubt and see their side of things.[17] |
| Low self-esteem | People who struggle with self-doubting, lacking in confidence and assertiveness, and who are likely to go on the defensive too easily.[17] |
| Over-intellectualization | People who try too hard to understand and believe others have some understandable reason to be manipulative.[17] |
| Emotional dependency | People who have a submissive or dependent personality. The more emotionally dependent a person is, the more vulnerable they are to being exploited and manipulated.[17] |
I’ve always had the hardest time accepting that someone could truly be lying or acting in a devious manner. I don’t know why. And if I am close to people I tend to believe anything they say without question. Even if I know for an absolute fact that it is untrue, something in me still believes. I’ve always struggled to have confidence in my own perceptions, instead I let other’s words override them. I will bend my mind into a pretzel trying to make sense of what people say, no matter how self-contradictory or flying in the face of reality their words may be, and I have always been emotionally & physically dependent on others to a humiliating degree.
So I guess this is a chance for me to learn how to trust in my own perceptions. Do I believe the person who says I am hurting them when I’m pretty sure I’m not or who says I am screaming when I’m pretty sure my voice is room temperature? Objectively I know what is true, I just don’t know how to have faith in my own mind. My faith automatically goes to believing what I am told. Unless you have this problem yourself, I fear it won’t make much sense.
Another big problem is my need to be good, which is used like a cattle prod to control me and force me into situations of increasing powerlessness. If you assert yourself, you are bad. You can get screamed at, but if you scream back you are bad. You must treat other people’s emotions like Golden Kings to be worshiped while ignoring your own or you are bad. You must swallow the words you are fed no matter how little sense they make or you are bad. You must accept that you are bad or you are bad. You must accept that other people weren’t hurting you, you were hurting them, or you are bad. You must believe what you are told or you are bad. Because if you don’t accept the words that are thrown at you you will see those around you crumple on the floor shrieking “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!!!! LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!!!” Now you can see how bad you are with your own eyes.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to hold my mind together. When it gets bad I can hardly sing, clean or function at all. I can rarely think or plan. The thing that helps is complete detachment. But once again, this triggers my issues with being”bad” because it is bad not to care. You are supposed to care about other people.
And I WANT to care. It’s just that it becomes the rope that is used to strangle me.
* I just realized that titling this help sounds bad, like I am playing the victim. Anyway, don’t worry I will think of something.
** I was just walking and panicking cause my arms have started to shake probably due to nerves because I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel…. it feels like the road leads off a cliff. And having the shakes is making it harder to perform basic tasks causing me to panic even more. Anyway, just when I was about to break down I saw this on the corner of a sidewalk.
It felt like a sign, because I see teddy bears as being one form that angels take. It’s like no matter how alone you feel there are always more beings watching and ready to help you than you could ever realize.