@steveoscar you just wrote about the year down feeling you get when rejected by a client… I’ve been going through a similar thing lately and I caught my mind going back to that wounded place of being an imposter, unqualified, not experienced enough. It’s genuinely a shitty place to be if you loose belief in youself. Obviously I can’t turn to social media and spill what happened because I either get a load of bullshit toxic positivity - “you’ll get through this! Think positively!” - which tends to make me worse.
Or - I am the asshole for being wrong and different in my beliefs which if stated publicaly will get me hung drawn and quartered for not being “sensitive” to Trans
So when you wrote about being rejected by a client, I related with that same horrible feeling that’s been gnawing at me for days and weeks. I’ve been meaning to explore it here because I don’t know what else to do. It tends to throw me into a hidden depression I can’t catharsize and work through because I feel censored by society, as though if I were to say what I feel and therefore think I will be doused in rejection, hate and all things negative.
So I’ve been trying to disassemble this feeling for weeks and try to get to the bottom of it, however? The only way out is through it. I have to know what I am exactly so uncomfortable about. The only way I can do that is to spill my guts here and find the right words or language or viewpoint. The way my mind works is it tends to go all apeshit from many directions going “what if-“ and spins me out in all these potential scenarios that don’t help me but make things worse.
So right now I’m going to disassemble the serious nagging feeling I have about Trans. And why I’m feeling so wounded about it. It’s just really pissing me off. I do a good thing, I invest my life into it, to have it torn down and rejected by “TRANS”. Just because “MEN HAVE VAGINAS TOO” - and that makes me rage. That somehow I am not allowed to just say woman, I have to neuter myself just to let men with vaginas feel accepted.
The problem is I THINK OR KNOW THAT I AM RIGHT. And I am not allowed to openly defend this as I have been branded a transphobe.
Ok then, so what if I am? Hmmm here the real problem. The use of words has people all fucked up, they are all struggling and feel they are misunderstood and hated, and search for exclusionary threads to validate themselves and cry out “hater”.
Then I am forced to feel defensive - which puts me in a child state, that I always feel I have done something wrong. Hmmm so I mustn’t feel “defensive”. Defensive is my GO TO STATE. I seem to regress into it by default. And this is what is hard. What if I had the absolute go to with confidence like everyone else? It seems to me that others have this by default and I don’t. So others stay in their “adult” and I goto my child. What the fuck.
How do I stay OUT OF MY CHILD? How do I catch myself before the reaction or during the reaction and make note there is another way to view this instead of defense?
In hindsight I said some things in defense that made things worse and started a range war with people Sharing my content and calling me a transphobe. It just got worse and worse and the feeling of being pulled into defense got worse. Until now, where I am literally retraumatized from the whole thing and took a two week break off social media and stopped pummeling it - loosing sales. If I don’t sell, and I give in to paranoia, apprehension, disbelief,lack confidence, lack pride… I fucking loose sales.
So this shot is BIG it’s important to work on! I must figure out how to stop the goto reaction of defensive child state. Fuck it makes me so unhappy.
I think I spend too long justifying why I am right. I stead of maybe being a bit more open to different viewpoints and just letting them be. No matter if I think they are wrong. Live and let live kinda thing. Recognize the attack as an attack but that’s on THEM NOT A REFLECTION OF ME. I tend to get defensive too easily right?
What if when I recognize this burning defense strategy and flip it. Put myself in a bigger aggressor state than them? For example if anyone says to me if I can change MY WEBSITE, so THEY FEEL MORE INCLUDED.
ASK THEM: DO YOU FEEL EXCLUDED? WHY IS THAT? Put it on THEM to defend themselves and wind themselves up in a state that makes them look overjustifiably crazy. Instead of me.
Ask them: what their feelings are? Ask them: You seem upset? Why are you so upset? What triggered it? Did “made by a woman - HARM YOU?”
Did “made for women - HARM YOU? DIRECTLY?”
So I’m just going to keep on doing this. Rebutt EVERYTHING with more needling specific questions to get THEM to think about their decision to go into flip mode on me. Effectively manipulating their thought processes instead of letting them manipulate me into defense I really must somehow hammer into me, or practice, or drum into me, the ART OF THROWING BACK QUESTIONS to throw the other person off the attack I’m feeling.
So, I’m working on this now, and wonder if this might help you.