self-improvement jenga
"i can't express myself because nobody understands me" is a particularly nasty pit of quicksand. today i am going to talk about it.
i've had this problem for a while where unexpressed thought and feeling builds upon previous unexpressed thought and feeling. soon enough i can be left with some tangled complicated mess that i'd like to somehow share with somebody / the world to better attack it, but to do so would require months and months worth of exposition (and so the cycle stays alive).
getting out of this is a rough process. i often want to write a post or talk to a friend but have no more content to offer than "argh" (possibly meaning: "this struggle is so tiring (what struggle?)", "i am frustrated with myself (why am i still fighting some particular stupid battle)", etcetera), and of course the idea of crying for attention without being able to explain when anyone tries to help does not appeal.
i guess once we get into that state, we are necessarily left to untangle it on our own. all the same, maybe sometimes we need the company of someone who "understands", not necessarily what's actually going on, but that what's going on can't be shared and yet their support may still be helpful. (and sometimes i try to seek that, by default in some text-based communication, which is particularly awful for expressing that type of connection.)
i entertain fantasies of having enough of myself "shareable" that any pain, any cause for hurt, could immediately be expressed and thence dealt with straightforwardly. every time i find some way to cleanly express something complicated and private, whatever i've been wrestling with, i get a rush of peace/joy/pride, seemingly indicating i've taken another step closer to such an ideal state.
i suspect there are necessarily some bits of myself that are inexpressible, that i always must dodge around when trying to share myself with the world. i guess for some of these i'm also driven to keep them private because possibly they're embarrassing and i only wish they would stop being a defining part of me. i hope that i can build enough of the aforementioned successes that these particular land-mines, so to speak, become of no consequence or fade into history.
i've had this problem for a while where unexpressed thought and feeling builds upon previous unexpressed thought and feeling. soon enough i can be left with some tangled complicated mess that i'd like to somehow share with somebody / the world to better attack it, but to do so would require months and months worth of exposition (and so the cycle stays alive).
getting out of this is a rough process. i often want to write a post or talk to a friend but have no more content to offer than "argh" (possibly meaning: "this struggle is so tiring (what struggle?)", "i am frustrated with myself (why am i still fighting some particular stupid battle)", etcetera), and of course the idea of crying for attention without being able to explain when anyone tries to help does not appeal.
i guess once we get into that state, we are necessarily left to untangle it on our own. all the same, maybe sometimes we need the company of someone who "understands", not necessarily what's actually going on, but that what's going on can't be shared and yet their support may still be helpful. (and sometimes i try to seek that, by default in some text-based communication, which is particularly awful for expressing that type of connection.)
i entertain fantasies of having enough of myself "shareable" that any pain, any cause for hurt, could immediately be expressed and thence dealt with straightforwardly. every time i find some way to cleanly express something complicated and private, whatever i've been wrestling with, i get a rush of peace/joy/pride, seemingly indicating i've taken another step closer to such an ideal state.
i suspect there are necessarily some bits of myself that are inexpressible, that i always must dodge around when trying to share myself with the world. i guess for some of these i'm also driven to keep them private because possibly they're embarrassing and i only wish they would stop being a defining part of me. i hope that i can build enough of the aforementioned successes that these particular land-mines, so to speak, become of no consequence or fade into history.