Emotion phobia?

Still untangling 'stuff'...

Perhaps my need for nurturance and comfort is so strong that even ordinary kindness and generosity - but wait. I don't have this problem with waitresses or nice people I encounter in superficial situations - it only (? not sure about this?) seems to throw me when I get too close to somebody too fast in my desperate need for intimate (whether physical, emotional or both) contact.

I think that about sums it up, really, but I'll leave the rest of it here for safe-keeping.

I felt:
Set up

Hm, that’s pretty much *it* - the same ol’, same ol’, ‘fall for it’ routine – that somebody *seems* to be there for me when they’re really not. So I trust them, and then, just when I get close enough to *really* hurt myself if I fall – they yank the emotional rug out from under me.

So: I need to keep *my* balance - if 'leaning' on somebody I don't know makes me feel off-balance, then maybe I

shouldn't lean on them? Or, at least, not until I know them better and have taken some smaller 'risks' first.

And I shouldn't respond to their need to be 'helpful' if it makes *me* uncomfortable.

***
Googling (as usual) for ideas to help with this stuff, I came across the term “emotion phobia” in this article, 75 Nice Things People Say to Shut Up Your Feelings, which is here:

http://mindfulconstruct.com/2011/02/18/75-things-people-say-to-shut-up-your-feelings/

(Long-ish) quote from the article, bolds mine:

It’s the other person’s problem
Instead of looking at their own reaction and owning up to their own discomfort when you talk about something that’s “too” emotional — the other person blames you.

Makes it all your fault that they’re unwilling to get emotional, or to be fully present, or to genuinely accept that you feel the way you feel.

People who don’t want to experience their own negative emotions sure as heck don’t want you to express yours. Because then they might have to take response ability for their actions, connect with you, empathize, or get in touch with themselves — which they’ve (unconsciously) decided is way too painful.

You become someone else’s problem when you voice what they can’t accept in their own self.

Pay attention when someone deflects your feelings
Start to listen for those phrases in your every day. You’ll pick up on when people try to censor you.

You might decide not to let someone censor you. Or you might see how uncomfortable they actually are, and rethink how you can (casually) relate to them.

Emotion-phobic exchanges aren’t always the end of the world. Some might even be well-intentioned. But they can prick you when you don’t notice. So just pay attention.

Context matters too. You can’t pour your heart out to everyone. Emotional intimacy is exclusive, not open.

Just remember, you deserve better than emotional censorship.

I find the whole article really helpful on the topic of invalidation, boundary-setting and recognizing when somebody’s blowing you off. The comments section contains some additional useful stuff.

***
The following are the ideas I started with. I've put this part at the end for safe-keeping, but the 'answer' I was searching for is the stuff at the top, which is what I *really* need to keep track of.

I felt that g was ‘taking care’ of me in ways that felt wonderful; and: I *also* felt *suspicious*.

A ‘validation’, perhaps? of that – foreboding? comes to me in this thought:

What if what I experienced as ‘care-taking’ was actually him
micro-managing his emotional environment?

That is, any time anything seemed to have the potential to rock *his* boat, emotionally, he would – control the situation? or shift the conversation in a direction he felt more comfortable with?

This was not *universally* true with him, which makes this harder to suss out – but I think when it was just the two of us alone in a an emotionally close situation, this ‘mechanism’ of his came into play as I got closer to areas he didn’t want me to see yet. So rather than setting a boundary or expressing himself *as soon as* he got uncomfortable, he let me get closer and closer, until he was *so* uncomfortable that he felt he had no option other than to ‘throw me out’.

Which of course felt *horrible*.

Whoa nelly, gettin’ off balance again here. Find your center. What’s true? This is too much about the other guy and not enough about *me*.

Second try at focusing on *me* is at top of post.

***
More of what I’m thinking on the ‘micro-managing his emotional environment’ thing:

He senses me getting uncomfortable about something – cold, hungry, tired (almost as if I were a baby?) – and tries to head whatever it is off at the pass – as long as someone *else* was there with us, his concern was more about the dynamic between the *three* of us.

But as soon as it was just *two* - feels like I’m trying to turn my own brain inside out here – too much work – but if it helps me disengage, disentangle, then it’s worth it –

So maybe he ‘care-takes’ as a sort of pre-emptive form of self defense? It could be that the emotionally loaded talk the three of us had, me, g & f, pre-disposed him to that? Dunno.

Anyway. The above explanation would help make sense of what happened in a way that I can actually *work* with, in the absence of further open, honest, compassionate, caring conversation.

Hm.

Power; vulnerability. (Emotional sabotage.)

My google search string was, "men deny emotional needs." I haven't spent a lot of time here on this blog discussing the stuff I read on misogyny, sexism, patriarchy and feminism, though I read about these things *constantly* to keep myself from going completely insane.

Anyway, one of the 'hits' I got with that search string was the following, which seemed to fit in with where *I'm* at right now (untangling the 'scripts' my parents left me with):

http://www.eurekatribune.com/SaboWhaMan.html

Excerpt:

A child living with sabotaging parents and siblings learns that their desires, feelings and needs don’t matter. They learn that they are unimportant and unworthy of respect, love and the good things in life.Passive aggressive sabotage is a tool used for discipline and control in many dysfunctional families. Parents who feel trapped in their lives and feel there is no hope of obtaining their dreams, often use passive aggressive sabotage for punishment or revenge because that is the way their parents behaved under similar circumstances.

This next section relates more to the original question of 'men deny emotional needs' (bolds mine):

As men they long for a close, honest and caring relationship, but don’t reciprocate or nurture one when they get it. Instead,

they defeat emotional intimacy in their beloved the same way they deny it in themselves and then they wonder why their relationships have no lasting value. Their pain is real and deep, but they don’t change their behavior. They only reenact the same script. In their mind, that script is what a man is.

Feeling emotionally isolated and devalued, they turn to sex as a band aid to stop the bleeding of their wounded self esteem. They risk their health with excesses of Viagra, equating their value as a human being on their capacity to breed. They seem to have forgotten that all mammals breed, but all mammals are not men. In their minds the quality of their worth as a human being has been reduced to an orgasm.
[...]
The more they try to control what is happening to them, the more controlling of others they become. They usually end up alone. Sometimes they attract someone as needy and empty as they are who will tolerate their demeaning talk, negativity and anger which remain a constant reminder of their loss of fulfillment.Too many young men are taught to define a man by what goes on below the belt instead of what goes on above the neck. Sexual gratification is defined as a masculine right, at the same time most of young men are taught to deny their natural need for closeness, caring and respect.

One thing I have to reiterate here: *All* of this is about power - who has it, and who doesn't. Men deny feelings because it gives them power in this world of men.

why

do I feel suicidal every time I'm around my family? If I even speak to one of them, I find myself blurting out things like, "I may not be around much longer", "I can't take it any more". It's like I just can't hold it inside any longer - the pain of being unheard for my entire life. I keep saying it's as if I were bleeding to death alongside a road and nobody stopped to help me - that's what my family feels like. Only the bleeding is all internal, invisible (at least to them), and no one notices til it's too late. It reminds me of when I had gallstones and hadn't eaten for two weeks because of the pain and I had to harass the doctor to pay any attention to me because I 'looked too healthy'. Fuck. It was all I could do to not grab the asshole by the lapels and shake him.

"Look, I know I'm not as important as that heart attack you're dealing with down the hall," I said, "but I haven't eaten in two weeks and every time I eat there's this excruciating pain, unlike any pain I've ever had in my life. I know I look perfectly healthy, but I'm not - there's something wrong." The very first guy I saw at my first emergency room said something about, "Well, it could be gallstones, but you just don't fit the profile." Fuck. Why can't these idiots look past their stupid assumptions and see what's right in front of their noses?

I finally persuaded him to at least refer me for an ultrasound (what the fuck am I paying you assholes all this money for, anyway? Jesus fucking christ.) Sure enough, gallstones. Though there was a weird moment where the lab tech called another tech into the room to say, "Look, her liver's way up here!" And blah blah blah - I guess I was otherwise extremely healthy, and they'd never really seen a normal, healthy body before under their scans - most of the women who came in were 'fair, fat and forty', which is the standard profile for people who tend to get gallstones.

Anyway. The whole point is, nobody ever believed me. I was not a hypochondriac; I hardly ever came in at all, except for routine exams and pap smears. My so-called 'regular doctor' practically didn't know who I was, I came in so infrequently. And yet the one and only time I came in with a serious complaint, they treated me like - I don't know what. Like I didn't know what was going on with my own fucking body. Jesus. The hubris, the arrogance. I've encountered this so many times now with the medical profession, whether standard or alternative, and with dentists as well. In fact anybody with any 'credentials' seems to be almost entirely about 'proving' themselves, something to do with ego. Truly, nobody ever grows up. We're all just children in oversized bodies. Sigh.

And my family is the same: I don't know if it's because of all my years of silence and only speaking up now, but it's as if I've lied, or cheated, or - I don't know what. They just won't listen, won't hear. I've read recently that people resist having their motives questioned, their - whatsit - morality? or something - impugned. Their 'honor', maybe? Dunno. Seems like truth doesn't matter to most people at all - it's all about image, the mirage, the projection. Like the Wizard of Oz, once again. All smoke and mirrors, no substance. Fuck.

It's that invisible feeling - like I don't matter, like nobody cares, nobody hears. No matter how loud I shout or scream, all they hear is that I'm being inconvenient for them. They don't appear to hear, see or otherwise perceive the pain. They're like that 'deaf, dumb and blind kid,' only they don't even play a mean pinball... (song reference.)

Feeling like you don't exist. Like the pain inside of you will just explode - like you'll explode - your mind, your body. Like a gasket, or some gizmo that's been under pressure too long and has worn out. Something just gives out - heart, mind, soul, spirit. Something.

But I don't want to go. I don't want to die. I just don't want to deal with them any more. I want them to go away and leave me alone. The problem is, they're only too happy to do just that. In fact it's just more of the same - I can't even appreciate it as the cessation of an unpleasant noise because there never was any noise to begin with - just the deafening SILENCE.

Silence. Fucking SILENCE. By speaking my truth, I've alienated them all - they've closed ranks, shut me out, now more than ever. But it's not the blessed relief of silence after too much noise - no, it's the further pain of being totally ignored on top of never having been taken seriously in the first place.

If anybody from the family ever reads this and cares enough to try to understand, THIS is where the pain comes from: The silence of having nobody to care, nobody to listen. Having everybody walk away and turn their backs on you every single time you express any kind of emotional need that makes them the least bit uncomfortable.
***

From an article on the powerful long-term effects of prolonged emotional invalidation:

"We regularly invalidate others because we ourselves were, and are often invalidated, so it has become habitual. Below are a few of the many ways we are invalidated:

• We are told we shouldn't feel the way we feel
• We are dictated not to feel the way we feel
• We are told we are too sensitive, too "dramatic"
• We are ignored
• We are judged
• We are led to believe there is something wrong with us for feeling how we feel

You Can't Heal an Emotional Wound with Logic
People with high IQ and low EQ tend to use logic to address emotional issues. They may say, "You are not being rational. There is no reason for you to feel the way you do. Let's look at the facts." Businesses, for example, and "professionals" are traditionally out of balance towards logic at the expense of emotions. This tends to alienate people and diminish their potential.

Actually, all emotions do have a basis in reality, and feelings are facts, fleeting though they may be. But trying to dress an emotional wound, with logic tends to either confuse, sadden or infuriate a person. Or it may eventually isolate them from their feelings, with a resulting loss of major part of their natural intelligence."

***
The culture at large is complicit in these games of dominance and manipulation: A culture that believes in 'might makes right' and 'survival of the fittest' isn't going to have much compassion for those who lose at the game of life. Contempt is what you'll get, adding insult to the injury of already having 'failed' in the eyes of so many who look on and judge those of us who, by nature, inclination, temperament, circumstance or some combination thereof, are not suited to 'winning' the so-called game. Particularly if you're a woman, where, in this 'game', you're not even a player, not even on a 'team' at all, but are instead the ultimate object of derision: The ball. To be kicked and abused at will. Merely a means by which the 'teams' compete with one another. You (the woman) in and of yourself have no intrinsic value or merit other than as a means of manipulating the other guy into feeling more or less superior.

The enforcers in this game are the Pshrynks. They take the role of referee, and like all refs, are never truly impartial - they have their favorites, preferences, biases. They see what they want to see. More ideas on how we are blamed for 'playing the victim' by all parties: Beyond the Psychiatric Box.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.