SELF-AWARENESS | CONDITIONING | SURVIVING MECHANISMS | MENTAL HEALTH
Expecting Others to Mind-Read Me Drastically Contributed to Jeopardizing My Relationships
If you can relate, then understanding the root causes that lead to developing that unhealthy pattern might be a good start!
I was raised in a dysfunctional family system. Like many innocent children around the globe, my parents could merely love me conditionally and/or inconsistently.
Interestingly, numerous caregivers give birth to kids while they are still diving into life with their psychological heavy baggage and lacking self-awareness — that wondrous human endowment silenced for most people because of conditioning us to follow the notebook.
In the quality of innocent kids who refuse to believe that their caregivers are anything less than perfect, we find ourselves compelled to form a substitute narrative where we are the villain.
We develop survival mechanisms as an adaptation to parents' unhealthy way of being and communicating so that we may get some love and feel that we matter and belong, at least from time to time.
One of those strategies is what we call the attachment style. Appealingly, the attachment theory has been evolving from its first apparition in 1988. Many sub-types have been progressively introduced.
I love it for its power to explain in detail human behavior and how people interact with each other daily!
The insecure attachment style the former me developed is the Fearful-avoidant. Some experts agree on the terminology disorganized for a very legitimate reason: it is a combination of two opposite poles!
On one hand, we crave connectedness and intimacy. We wholeheartedly invest ourselves in relationships while being naive enough to gift our trust.
One of the superpowers we develop as part of our continuous one-sided investment, most of the time, is becoming very attuned to people, a keen observer of the body language, and tiny mood swings.
A simplistic description would be becoming mind-readers!
And because our conscious mind lacking psychological education doesn’t realize that this ‘superpower’ is anything but a subconscious survival mechanism, we tend to erroneously believe that everybody is supposed to do the same thing.
On the other hand, because of the giving nature and unrealistic expectations from those to whom we are unhealthily attracted — mostly emotionally unavailable individuals, we become too disappointed and resentful at some point.
The result? We instantly disengage and become cold if we stay in the relationship at all!
Three other factors contributed to more chaos in my case. In addition to the insecure bond I formed that I confused with genuine love in all my adulthood relationships preceding my re-birth, my inner will chose the unaware empath overall pathway as a response to my toxic environment.
By unaware, I mean lacking self-consideration, self-appreciation, self-care. In summary, a clear sense of self in addition to strong and healthy emotional boundaries.
How did being an unaware empath worsen the situation, one may ask?
When we disengage, those who took advantage of our lack of self-respect would ask for another chance while providing us with shallow apologies. There could even be some shed tears and a momentary expression of appreciation! We call this tactic hoovering, and it is abusive.
The second factor was being too easy to self-doubt. Being gaslighted — manipulated into doubting our own sanity — by brilliant manipulators was, consequently, a piece of cake.
Last but not least, my rescuer pattern has been the most challenging coping mechanism of all. I was successful in shedding the four layers related to fellow humans and accidentally discovered the fifth — and hopefully the last — one during October. More details here, should it feel worthwhile:
Last words
Like you, I didn’t choose my blood family. Maybe, I didn’t deserve to develop all the unhealthy patterns I took care of exploring today or going through countless traumatic events during my relatively short existence.
The good news is that the Universe has been generous enough for the timing!
Should the list of traumas has presented itself in a different order, I would have probably been called for other missions as my friend Eileen Bild exquisitely expressed it!
Our mental health is probably not our fault. Still, it is our responsibility. Investing in the most rewarding journey of our life — reprogramming our subconscious — is the highest level of bravery and wisdom, it seems to me!
If you liked what your read, you might also resonate with some of the pieces I published about parenting:
If you enjoyed your read and you can get excited about the idea, we can become email friends here! Also, if you find value in my creations and are willing to support me, you can become a patron here: Myriam Ben Salem is creating Blogs | Patreon
Gratitude
As usual, I want to thank all of you, dear readers, who decided to stop by and give this piece some of your precious time!
Also, my gratitude goes to the “Illumination-Curated” publication for giving my words a platform, its brilliant conductor Dr Mehmet Yildiz, all the generous and committed editors, as well as the beautiful tribe of fellow writers and loyal readers!
