A Few Thoughts

[Lakewolf]

I have read all these posts twice, and have come to a realisation:

Without being aware of it, the manner in which I saw some posters respond elicted a very strong emotional response in me. This is because I myself have been attacked verbally and physically.

I have a very strong emotional need to defend others when I perceive an attack. This is probably due to two factors:

1) Having PTSD, I color everything that is said in a harsh manner as an attack, not realising that sometimes a shock is necessary to wake someone up.

I am also very paranoid.

2) I have emotional numbness that prevents me from properly discerning an attack from a wake-up call.

Number 2 is a brand new realisation.

Thank you for your patience with me. I will work on these issues.

 

[Lakewolf]

I do suffer from a pathological reaction when I believe someone is attacked.

That also causes a numbness which blinds me and makes me think I am being logical, when in fact I am bordering on hysteria.

I am also going to schedule an ongoing therapy to deal with this issue.

Now I'll get somewhere in therapy.

I haven't been able to get to the source of the numbness, but now I see the problem

I'm so relieved I feel like crying. You have no idea how grateful I am to all of you.

 

[Laura]

It reminds me of my grandmother who was never able to ask for something for herself because she had been brought up to think it was "bad." So, if she was in a room that was cold, she would say something like "the baby is cold," let's turn on the heat. The baby may have been bundled in a snow suit... and was not cold. Of course, she did this to me a lot: you have no idea how many times I was cold, or hungry, or tired, or restless, or whatever, mainly because my grandmother was. When I got older and realized what was going on, and she would say something like that, I first tried to get her to admit that she was cold/hungry/tired/whatever herself. Well, she just couldn't. So, I let it go and instead began to turn on the heat, fix a meal, help her get to bed, or whatever it was that she needed but could not speak for herself.

There really wasn't another solution for my grandmother, but here, we really need to work on expressing what WE feel.

The problem was that AngEvil entered a thread where he saw an individual who was wounded and he began to play the stalking game with her. She's bright enough to not get hooked into it, but wasn't able to see that others were trying to help her out. Instead, when AngEvil was being called out, she "felt pity" for him and began to defend him which put her firmly in his camp, so to say. (And that is what he was after to begin with - an ally.)

Since Lakewolf had already declared herself to be knowledgeable about "the work," it was assumed that she was speaking the truth and so the usual terms were used which, since she wasn't seeing what was going on, she misunderstood and took "to heart" so to say. But, because she could not admit that she was cold or hungry or tired, this was projected onto AngEvil and this thread was the result. Lakewolf was really speaking for herself and how SHE felt though she tried to distance it in both words and feelings.

The bottom line is that forum members DO need to take some time thinking about situations and practicing External Considering. Some situations are not exactly simple and there are complexities of projecting and identification etc. Remember, we are here for the wounded and we don't want to hurt them any more than they are already hurt. But for those who are wounders, we have little tolerance. It sometimes takes a little bit of patience to figure out who is on first, but the moderators DO have a lot of practice and they rarely get it wrong. But all of us need to remember that we don't know it all, and there are always new combinations of circumstances and dynamics.